Causes Of Genocide In Nigeria

Nigeria is a country with abundant resources and the potential to be a very powerful nation, but it is hampered by many problems. These problems are caused by Nigeria’s colonization by England. Because of this intrusion on their way of life, their future was altered dramatically. The nation of Nigeria as a whole has suffered greatly as a country because of this colonization, its problem is rooted in the way it was colonized and ruled.

“Seldom in history has a once-dominant group suffered so terrible a reversal of fortune as the Tutsi of Rwanda”- Robin Hallet. The event that Robin Hallet is referring to is the Rwandan Genocide, the “genocidal mass slaughter” of the Tutsi (the minority group in Rwanda) and a few Hutu (the dominant group in Rwanda) by “members of the Hutu majority,” which resulted in at least 1 million Rwandan deaths. The Rwandan Genocide was indirectly caused by European colonists; severely damaged relations between the two ethnic groups, almost irreparably; and had a destructive effect on the survivors of the genocide.

The Boko Haram sect in Nigeria has been a huge problem for the country in the past, and the threat is only growing. This group is considered responsible for a handful of government attacks, targets on the United Nations, and often churches who undermine the Islamic religion. Their actions have spawned from the idea that their country is controlled by “fake Muslims”, and aim to create an Islamic nation ruled with Sharia law.

Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. “The ‘Darfur Genocide’ refers to the current mass slaughter and rape of men, women, and children in Western Sudan” (Mitchell Hamline School of Law). Not only are these atrocities happening, but the Darfurians are being force from their land and into refugee camps, mainly in the country Chad, but also other countries like Ethiopia or Kenya. Darfur genocide causes can be found both culturally and politically. The cultural and political causes come from the same source of that being an underdeveloped country with no effective government protecting the rights of the Darfurians. Darfurians were violently pushed around, physically and mentally, with the western world not stepping in to assist. Although eventually, both Britain and the United Nations came to the same conclusion that the atrocities occurring in Darfur were genocide and “one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises” (Thomson Reuters). Genocide occurred in Sudan in the Darfur region starting in 2003 and continues today. The long-standing divide between Arab herding tribes and the African farming tribes and the political opportunism arising from the environmental calamity led to the genocide in Sudan.

Different sources have different causes of what they say was the motivation for Boko Haram’s attacks. Some sources say it was the killing of their leader in 2009 and some even say that the it was due to global warming within that country, but whatever it is, it is a big problem not only for the Islamic states but all of the other countries of the world. Their different attacks seem to show what the source of this motivation was. The group is very hard to understand in terms of their overall motivation because there is so little known information about them. Information in general is hard to come by from Nigeria. Police officers and city officials so corrupt that they give the citizens little to no information as to what is going on (Walker, 2012, p. 7). They are too motivated by their own selfish goals. The Boko Haram group itself has given no really helpful information as it has denied bombings and other terroristic activities.

Throughout the course of the class, we have explored genocides from the perspective of perpetuators and studied the effects that their decisions had on their victims. Although all of these genocides may have different leaders and different causes, these genocides are all similar because they have manipulated people’s psyche, in order to accomplish their goal. Psychology, the study of how people act and the reasons behind them, states that the decisions that people make are influenced by the decisions that the people around make and by rewards that they receive from a certain decision.

A detailed and objective description of the human rights issues presented in this week’s readings is genocide of Sudan. Genocide is the intentions to harm a society’s of their existence. The word genocide goes back to biblical days. The Old Testament of the King James Bible, in general the first five books, depict God as “a despotic and capricious sadist, and his followers as eager genocidaires (genocidal killers) (Jones, 2006). There is many instances of the use of the word Genocide in the history books that dates back to 1490. The Zulu kingdom, between 1810 and 1828, under Shaka Zulu attacked what is now a large part of present-day South Africa and Zimbabwe (Jones, 2006). Zulu army’s mission was defeating and causing destruction to his enemies.

Nigeria would be of a seed if there was any Nigeria before 1914. Britain was so ambitious to change our way of life; hence Biafra problem started. Maybe Biafra would be beautiful and civilized if there was no Fredrick Lugard in 1914. Lugard tampered with what was organic that has led to early graves over 5 million Biafrans, that was when Biafrans rejected fact of being unjust. The death of the over five million Biafrans cannot be in vain. Then read the New York Times report of 1966, 1968, 1969 and 1970 about the persecution of the Biafran people. We must agree that Nigeria was created as a trap to destroy Biafran people and to serves the interest of Britain. Radio Biafra (Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB) has made it clear that Biafrans do not understand what Nigeria

Both of these events that occurred in human history caused seriously traumatic impact to the citizens, who were surrounded by all the destruction, devastation, and mayhem that resulted from it. In similar cases like these, violence is clearly not the answer. The reason being because so many innocent people get hurt and they are mostly the people who would never cause any harm in the first place. In the situation of Boko Haram and his beliefs, he wanted a nation that was entirely Islam and any country or person who was against it was his enemy, which resulted in most of the Nigerian population being eliminated from existence. In relation is the Holocaust, which had Germans disliking Jews because they were seen as “inferior” towards the Germans

In Mike Keefe’s cartoon he reveals the brutality of what happened it Sudan and how the UN could have done something to stop the massacre of the Sudanese people. Even after a horrific genocide occurred The UN were still slow to connect the dots of what happened. The genocide was “spelt” out right in front of the UN they still didn’t see what happened. They could have jumped in and prevented the killing from happening but instead did not come in till after the fact. The UN tried to ignore the fact of what was happening to avoid having to interfere with the ongoing genocide. Unless the killing is happening in their own back yard they are slow to react.

I am furious that over thirty innocent people died after the market was blasted. They could be mother father, daughters, son, brothers, sisters, etc. to those people in the village. I cannot comprehend how barely anyone from the rest of the surrounding world, stepped in to intervene and stopped the terrible tragedies of the Sudanese Civil War. I think it is ashame that eventually this Civil War will escalate into the Sudanese Genocide, when it could have been stopped earlier on. This conflict has not only hurt the lives of these boys, forever, but also everyone else. For instance, even though people around the world have been affected by the conflict directly, they have still faced impacts such as allowing a greater number of refugees in countries,

For the past seven years innocence have been injured, killed, or brutally tortured by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. They have lost their homes and precious possessions due to a cruel, selfish satisfaction of this organization. Boko Haram members believe that these “brutal penalties” is just an ordinary way to express their culture. Although Nigeria came to a conclusion that these terrorists had given up, it only took five months later to realize it was not the end. Nigeria’s strategies had gotten them nowhere and only led them back to where they started.

You would think that the world would never another genocide after the Holocaust. Until 1994 when the Hutu citizens of Rwanda wanted to wipe out the whole Tutsi population. Even though the people from the Hutu and Tutsi tribe are the same the Dutch split the two making one side Hutu and one side Tutsi. Everyone got a card telling who was Tutsi and who was Hutu. There was always tension between these groups, so 1994 is when the Hutus hit their boiling point with the Tutsi. Right after the president of Rwanda was assassinated the Hutu extremist group the “Interahamwe” started slaughtering the Tutsi. Around 800,000 people and 75% of the Tutsi population was killed. The amount of deaths could have been a lot less if the Interahamwe would have realized

Independent from British ruling since 1960, Nigeria today still suffers from ethnical and religious divisions as well as unequal distribution of power and resources among its regions. A high degree of violence and insecurity has shaped Nigeria’s political framework since colonial times. The region is characterized by systematic human under-development and socio-political decay. By draining resources from development, terrorism creates an additional burden on the society and interferes with development opportunities.

The first was the weak sense of nationalism caused by all the ethnic groups where religion played a major part of the division. The main three ethnicities in Nigeria are Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo; the former is Muslim while the two latter are Christians. The second cause mentioned was the “divide and rule” which was a British tactic to employ ethnic groups against one another, and thus “helped ensure that ethnicity would be the main line of political cleavage after Nigeria became an independent country.” The third cause is the personal rule system based on “big men” and what this means is that Nigerian’s who worked for the British used their personal relationships to gain power and wealth, and in a certain way it is still used today in the Nigerian government. The fourth devastating cause was the “creation of an increasingly active and interventionist state during WWII and after until its independence in 1960, but that opened the doors to patronage, which would be used to gain political power and wealth. The past reveals the problems Nigeria has had for several decades, some of which have not disappeared but seem to get progressively worse. (CITATION)