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This book explores the complex and contested terrain of conflict and peace in Southern Kaduna, Nigeria, through the voices of community members and the author’s own lived experience. It centers people’s narratives to illuminate the historical and contemporary dynamics of land, identity, and power among ethnic minority communities and the dominant Fulani and Hausa groups. Through these accounts, the book reveals how colonial legacies, state policies, and enduring sociopolitical structures have intensified struggles over belonging and territorial entitlement. Responding directly to the voices of those affected by violence, it challenges homogenizing discourses surrounding victims and perpetrators and offers a grounded, everyday understanding of peacebuilding rooted in survival, negotiation, reconciliation, and coexistence.
"This is a detailed and sensitive work on the complexity of identity formation. It expertly weaves together accounts of how identity is made and remade in relation to everyday experiences. The book goes beyond superficial explanations of identity to patiently unpack a multidimensional process. Highly recommended"—Roger Mac Ginty, Durham University, UK.
"Benjamin Maiangwa offers one of the most carefully researched and comprehensive studies of how local communities in northern Nigeria experience ethnic and religious conflict (and cooperation) at the grassroots level. Where many Nigerian politicians and community leaders stoke outrage and offer slick, misleading narratives of complicated conflicts, Maiangwa’s study describes the lived experiences of people in ethnically and religiously divided communities and how they define the stakes of those conflicts. Maiangwa doesn’t shy away from the role of local actors in developing conflict narratives that, when they reach the national level, often escalate violence and hate."—Brandon Kendhammer, Professor of Political Science and Director of International Development Studies, Ohio University, USA.
"Benjamin Maiangwa’s Narratives of Peace and Conflict is a courageous and intellectually compelling intervention into one of Nigeria’s most contested political landscapes. Through remarkable narrative sensitivity and analytical depth, Maiangwa restores complexity, dignity, and voice to communities too often reduced to stereotypes and theoretical abstraction. This is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the fragile labour of coexistence and peace in plural societies marked by historical tensions and contested claims to home".—Zubairu Wai, University of Toronto, Canada, author of Epistemologies of African Conflicts.
"In Narratives of Peace and Conflict and the Politics of Origin in Southern Kaduna, Benjamin Maiangwa examines the complex interplay of land, identity, and autochthony in Nigeria. Through extensive personal testimonies, this rigorous study reconceptualises localised peacebuilding, offering a robust framework for reconciliation in highly contentious contexts."—Muhammad Dan Suleiman is an assistant professor of International Relations at King Fahd University (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia.
Benjamin Maiangwa is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Lakehead University.