ABSTRACT
Post-Cold War Africa is a continent endlessly at war with itself. Africa has known the ravages of protracted and intractable conflicts, with many states either mired in conflict or coming out of it; Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, finds itself in-between the two positions. Over the last two decades, the country has struggled to contain religious revolts and maintain its territorial integrity. Since its re-emergence in 2010, Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group from the northeast, has stretched Nigeria's security apparatuses to their limits, extending its violent campaign to the entire Lake Chad Basin, including the borders of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. This chapter discusses the role of religion as an identity marker and exploring how rabid religious identity is implicated in violent spasms that have speckled Nigeria since gaining political independence in October 1960. It describes the popular portrayal of religious terrorism and contextualizes this discourse in relation to the emergence and reach of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria.
