ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses non-state armed groups and resistance movements that have risen up since 1999 to challenge Nigeria’s legitimacy and monopoly of the use of violence. It shows how the repressive Nigerian state and the non-state armed groups and resistance movements reinforce each other in the production and sustenance of violence. On the one hand, I analyse the militarised nature of the selected armed groups—including how they instrumentalise religion, ethnicity and geopolitics in their struggles and contestations of power with the Nigerian state. On the other hand, I analyse the Nigerian state’s recourse to violence as (a) producer and (b) responder to threats and perceived threats to its sovereignty, legitimacy and monopoly of force.
