Religion and the Making of Nigeria by Olufemi Vaughan (review)

Olufemi Vaughan's Religion and the Making of Nigeria examines the entangled histories of Islam and Christianity in Nigeria and how these world religions shaped power relations during British colonial rule, decolonization, and the emergence of the postcolonial Nigerian nation-state. Vaughan argues that Islamic and Christian religious structures were integral to the formation of modern Nigeria. To support his claims, Vaughn uses a variety of archival sources, including the writings and speeches of religious scholars and Muslim jurists, the letters of Christian missionaries, mission reports, and newspapers. Religion and the Making of Nigeria demonstrates how the enduring structures of the Sokoto caliphate, indirect rule, and mission Christianity combined to shape the development of ethno-national identities, the formation of political alliances, and governance in postcolonial Nigeria.

Religion and the Making of Nigeria explores the role of religion in Nigeria from the nineteenth-century Sokoto jihad to the emergence of Boko Haram in the twenty-first century. The book breaks down this turbulent period of transitions into two sections. The first analyzes the impact of Islam and Christianity on the three major Nigerian regions (the Hausa-Fulani Muslim North, the traditionally non-Muslim Middle Belt, and the Yoruba Muslim-Christian southwest). The second section reflects structural imbalances along ethno-religious and ethno-regional lines by detailing the recurring contestation between northern Muslims and Christian elites from other regions over the Nigerian Constitution and the expansion of Shari'a law.

The initial chapter offers an examination of the Sokoto jihads in northern Nigeria in the early nineteenth century and the conditions that gave rise to Christian missionaries among the Yoruba in the southwestern region. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the complex structures and contrasting experiences of indirect rule in the Hausa-Fulani Muslim north and the Christian missionary communities throughout Nigeria. In chapter 4, Vaughan underscores the rise of micronationalism during decolonization, as northern Muslims and united Christian communities endorsed opposing political structures for independence, including customary law versus Shari'a law, a strong federal government versus a loose federation with a weak federal center, and immediate independence versus British-supported gradual approaches to independence. In chapters 5 and 6, ethnoreligious, ethnoregional, and intrareligious struggles for state power and local interests in postcolonial Nigeria are explored through detailed accounts of the Nigerian Civil War, the 1978 debate over Shari'a law, the orthodox Muslim Izala movement, and the global networks of the Pentecostal movement. Chapter 7 highlights the contentious discourse over expanded Shari'a, education, secularism, and states' rights in postcolonial Nigeria that reflected multiple religious and regional identities, while Chapter 8 examines arguments against the constitutionality of expanded Shari'a, religious violence, and progressive interfaith efforts for reconciliation. The book's final chapter features Nigeria's twentieth-century struggles related to Shari'a and the 1999 Nigerian Constitution, women's rights, and the growing frustrations with the implementation of expanded Shari'a that gave rise to the militant Muslim reformist group Boko Haram.

While most African nations struggled with tribalism and ethnic divisions during the twentieth century, Vaughn's text delivers a penetrating case study of Nigeria, where religion displaced ethnicity as an identity marker and created deep political fault lines. Unfortunately, the text's uniqueness also presents its largest weakness, as it focuses exclusively on how religious conflicts exacerbated public policy decisions, political violence, and Nigeria's transition to modern statehood. As a result, Vaughn understates the role that the United Kingdom's differing approaches to indirect rule in the northern Muslim and southern Christian regions had in creating and maintaining the ethnoreligious divide. Overall, Vaughn gives little weight to the role of British colonialism and appears to see religion as the primary cause of the crisis of the nation-state, as opposed to it being one of many. Putting the British colonial roots of the sociopolitical turmoil that has plagued Nigeria since the nineteenth century on par with the shortcomings of the modern nation-state would have strongly benefited the text.

Nonetheless, Vaughn must be commended for...