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Conclusion: Violence and Political Culture
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
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If politics is about the ability to deWne the middle ground and make compromises , violence may be about the ability to avoid the middle ground in order to establish one’s power and make one’s opinions the new hegemony . Violence has become an integral part of Nigerian political culture, where it is often used to resolve major arguments and conXicts between the state and its citizens, between the state and its component units (as in the case of the civil war of 1967–1970), and between civil society and the state. Intracommunity disagreements in Nigeria are also often resolved through recourse to violence rather than through a slow deliberative process of dialogue and persuasion. The coercive mobilization of people in Nigeria for or against policies has strengthened the power of ethnicity, which is often used there in combination with acts of violence to produce political outcomes. Violence is not an irrational behavior. The British used violence to unsettle and conquer the precolonial states and their leaders. This book has provided key examples: the large Sokoto Caliphate crumbled, the powerful Empire of Benin destroyed, and the arrogant Ijebu humiliated. This violence had a clearly deWned political agenda: to attain political domination. The British justiWed the atrocities that accompanied violence by pointing to the supposed barbarity of their would-be colonial subjects, who were preventing the march of progress. They presented the Aro as brutal slave traders, the Ekumeku as murderous insurgents, and the Muslims as bloodthirsty crusaders. These were no more than labels used to justify the use of violence against precolonial states and many of their innocent citizens. Yet the colonial power that unleashed various acts of violence pursued its mission with a sense of moral justiWcation for all its actions, acquiring territory as if it had some kind of divine right to it. The British believed that 171 conclusion Violence and Political Culture they could seize land by peaceful means where possible and by violence when necessary. Although they criticized Nigerian groups that fought back as “barbarians,” they had no moral qualms about their own motives and the instruments they used to attain them. They regarded their own acts of treachery, duplicity, and fraud as normal, and they treated those who implemented them as justiWed. On the Nigerian side, the women Wghting against the policy of taxation in 1929 were neither irrational nor careless. They mobilized themselves for violent resistance in order to communicate a clear political message: women must not be asked to pay taxes. The women had the support of the male population, they deWned the targets to be attacked, and they knew their enemies. They were intelligent enough to realize that their actions would not bring about the end of the colonial regime, but they knew that they could challenge the power of the colonial oªcers over them. They understood the symbolic meaning of attacking warrant chiefs and courthouses. Their methods varied, from the strategy of those who used control of the Lagos markets as leverage for negotiations, to that of those who fought against both the colonial government and against the kingship at Abeokuta.1 Their politics were very active at the grass roots, where people discussed issues of common interest, political leaders, and their overall future aspirations for themselves and their children. Similarly, union leaders who used angry words knew that they needed to mobilize thousands of people to instigate mass rebellion. They did not always make public their goal of using violence in part because they realized that if they did so, the authorities would use the power of the police and army against them. Today, Nigerian citizens realize that they have yet to translate their numbers into the power to exert pressure on the state to make it deliver positive goods and services. Those in power have achieved that power through violence and have used violence to maintain their control of state power. The police and the army are not agencies of development or progress but instruments of state terrorism. Members of the political class have e¤ectively co-opted the police and the army to actualize state terrorism. The successful men in power have converted themselves into mini local governments that include security apparatuses to protect themselves against both armed bandits and poor people who seek change. The competition for power is always intense, and it involves thuggery, ritual murder, and the assassination of opponents. Members of civil society who seek change and opposition political parties also believe in...