Territoriality and the Discourse of Ethnic Groups’ Clashes

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Territoriality and the Discourseof Ethnic Groups’ ClashesWale Adebanwi aa Cambridge University ,Published online: 17 May 2007.

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Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 13:213–243, 2007Copyright C© Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1353-7113 print / 1557-2986 onlineDOI: 10.1080/13537110701293450

TERRITORIALITY AND THE DISCOURSE OF ETHNICGROUPS’ CLASHES

WALE ADEBANWICambridge University

Conflictual relations at the level of political and civil society are usually repli-cated, represented and re-presented in the media. Where such relations concernterritoriality, the media through a discursive strategy, re-fold space into—orre-bind space with—power, producing a territoriality, which not only reflects thepolitical economy of ethno-spatial struggles, but also amplifies these struggles.This essay focuses on how the symbolic manifestation of territoriality—discursiveterritoriality—was used in the press, within a time-space tapestry, to structureother manifestations. Media framing of the violent Kataf versus Hausa com-munal clashes and the trials of accused persons in Nigeria is analyzed withinthe context of the discursive territoriality, which these “communities of discourses”establish and amplify. This case illustrates the fact that struggle over territorialityis simultaneously struggle over identity, resources and power.

As for politics . . . space, like identity, is contingent, differentiated, andrelational, and . . . it thus makes little sense to conceive of any spaceas stabilized, fixed, and therefore outside of the possibility of counter-hegemony. In this view, all space-identity formations are imbued withoppositional potential. And thus a practical task of politics is to activatethis potential through denaturalization, exposure, and contestation so asto achieve new appropriation and articulation of space and identity.

J. P. James and P. Moss, 19951

Conflictual relations at the level of political and civil society areusually replicated, represented and re-presented in the media.Where such relations concern territoriality, the role of the mediaas “power containers,” expressions of power relations and purvey-ors of such power relations, usually consists in rendering inter-pretations in which meanings are constructed in the service ofpower. The identification and interpretation of space in the mediain ways that inscribe space with meanings also connect space to

Address correspondence to Wale Adebanwi, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge,CB2 1TJ, Cambridge, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]

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what Penrose2 calls “uneven and asymmetric constellation(s) ofpower.” The media, in this context, through a discursive strategy,re-fold space into—or re-bind space with—power; consequently,they produce a territoriality, which not only reflects the politicaleconomy of—as in the specific instance of this essay—ethno-spatial struggles, but also amplifies these struggles. Time, spaceand power structure discourse and are structured by discourse inturn. We can therefore gain more insight in the analysis of thediscourse of identity and power by problematizing space andterritory.

Without doubt, space has referents that exist outside theparameters of discursive constitution or construction. Yet, it is notimmutable—given the fact that its self-evident powers are highlycomplex and elusive.3 The two types of latent power, which—inPenrose’s insightful analysis—space holds, can be given new andparticular kinds of meanings in the service of certain structuresof the political economy. The first of this is the material dimen-sion of space, comprising the substance that is fundamental tohuman life—land, water, atmosphere, etc. This dimension throwsup relational dynamics. The second is the emotional power ofspace. Filtered through human experiences of time and process,space has the capacity to invoke or release emotional responses.4

The combination of these dimensions of space—material andemotional—which turns them into sources of concrete powerin society, through human agency, also transforms space intoterritory—captured in the idea of territoriality.5 Territoriality, asthe geographic expression of power, is one of the most com-mon strategies for exercising political control, given that, amongothers—as Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson6 puts it—itimplies social relationships and cultural identifications. In thiscontext, it is understandable that the “juxtaposition of differentcultural formations in a locality” therefore “generates multipleunderstandings of political space, action and thought.”7

Penrose’s elaboration of space can be related to that of KevinR. Cox.8 In addressing the content and form of the politics ofspace, Cox makes a crucial distinction between what he callsthe spaces of dependence and the spaces of engagement. The firstis defined by “those more-or-less localized social relations uponwhich we depend for the realization of essential interests, and

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Territoriality and Ethnic Groups’ Clashes 215

for which there are no substitutes elsewhere; they define space-specific conditions for our material well-being (what Penrosecalls the latent material dimensions of space) and our sense ofsignificance” (what Penrose calls the latent emotional dimensionsof space). The spaces are inserted in broader sets of relationships,which threaten to undermine or dissolve them. People need to“organize in order to secure the conditions for the continuedexistence of these spaces of engagement,” but they do so byengaging with other centers of power, which may include thelocal, state or national governments and the press. By doing this,another space, the space of engagement, is constructed, whichbecomes “the space in which the politics of securing the spaceof dependence unfolds.” Useful for my understanding of spatialdiscursivity is the role of the press as space of engagement in securingthe space of dependence. On his part, Lefebvre focuses on themultiple ways in which space is experienced and identifies threetypes of socially produced space.9 These are perceived, conceivedand lived spaces. Perceived space or spatial practice “encompassesthe material spaces of daily life where social production andreproduction occurs”; conceived space, or representation of space,“refers to the socially constructed discourses, signs, and meaningsof space”; lived space, or representational space, “encompasses thecoexistence or interaction of the first two types of spaces.” Thelatter, as “the actually lived material and symbolic experience,”can be a “terrain for the generation of “counterspaces,” spaces ofresistance to the dominant order.” Martin and Miller10 argue thatLefebvre’s conceptual triad can be useful in the analysis of con-tentious politics, “as it recognizes the material spatial dimensionsof social life, the symbolic meanings of space, and the impositionof, and resistance to, dominant socio-spatial orders.”

Even though there is some consensus in the literature onthe theoretical importance of space, there is limited consensuson how to theorize it. There is a divide between those whoseek to concretize spatiality in traditional materialist terms andthose whose conceptualization locates space within a system ofmetaphors existing in discursive practices.11 However, as Natterand Jones have noted, this tendency to dichotomize the conceptu-alization of space is based on an a priori split in the representationof social life and social life as lived, “a distinction that fails toproblematize the inter-relationships between material conditions

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and their reproduction by, and consequence on, representationand discourse.” Recognizing that material conditions of social lifeare connected to discursive practices is crucial to overcoming thisdichotomy towards a theoretically informed social analysis.12

Similarly, two views of territoriality are present in the lit-erature. The first, and now largely discredited, position seeshuman territoriality as “a natural, instinctive phenomenon,” andassumes that human beings “have an in-built territorial urgeor an inner compulsion to acquire and defend space.”13 Thedeterministic—and inevitability-of-conflict—assumptions of thisthesis are largely responsible for its widespread rejection. Thesecond thesis ignores deterministic assumptions in spatial rela-tions. It holds that human territoriality represents a geographicstrategy that connects society and space. In stating this thesis,Robert D. Sacks14 posits that territoriality is “the attempt byan individual or group to affect, influence or control people,phenomena and relationships by delimiting and asserting controlover geographical area . . . called a territory.” In line with this,Penrose states that,

Territoriality is a significant form of power. This is because it createsterritories which are seen to satisfy both the material requirements oflife and the emotional requirements of belonging—of placing oneself inboth time and space . . . For human beings, some measure of control over aterritory, whatever form it takes, has been constructed as fundamental to asense of control over one’s self and, by extrapolation, to a society’s controlover itself.15

Territoriality is therefore a spatial expression of power, whichemphasizes the potency of space as a component of power.16

Sacks, in his technical definition which emphasizes the fact thatterritoriality is a relationship, and not an object, defines territo-riality strictly as “as attempt by an individual or group (x) toinfluence, affect, or control objects, people, and relationships(y) by delimiting and asserting control over a geographical area.This area is the territory.”17 His elaboration of the tendenciesof territoriality is very useful for the analysis of its manifestationin particular contexts. For Taylor,18 territoriality involves: (1) aninterlocked system of attitudes, sentiments and behaviors that are(2) specific to a particular, usually delimited, site or location,

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which (3) in the context of individuals in a group, or a smallgroup as a whole (4) reflect and reinforce, for those individualsor groups, some degree of excludability of use, responsibility for,and control over activities in these specific sites.

In what I would like to call Taylor’s citizenry-based conceptu-alization of territoriality, inclusion and exclusion in rights andduties are central. What happens in this case is rejection—basedon non-territorial membership—by exclusion. However, in hiselaboration of various views of territorial functioning, Taylorwould seem to point to particular conceptualizations that presenta paradox in the definition of territorial membership—relevantto the empirical case in this essay. For instance, territorialityconceived as “association with a place due to repeated usage orthe passage of time,” echoes J. J. Edney’s position that territori-ality implies “those places with which persons or individuals arelinked by a more or less continuous association.”19 In this view,claim to territoriality is based on long residence—like the Hausain the empirical case below—as against “original ownership” ofterritory—on which Kataf claims are based.

Power is at the heart of territoriality; the will to powerconditions the struggle over territoriality. Anderson argues thatterritoriality gives relationships of power greater tangibility. Italso “simplifies issues of control, and provides symbolic mark-ers of property, possession, inclusion and exclusion.” However,Anderson makes the important point that these strengths ofterritoriality are ironically its weaknesses:

While simplifying control, territoriality oversimplifies and distorts socialrealities and it arbitrarily divides and disrupts social processes . . . Whilegiving greater tangibility to power relationships, it de-personalizes andreifies them, obscuring the sources and relations of power. It sharpensconflict and generates greater conflict as its assertion encourages rivalterritorialities in a “space-filling process.”20

The contradictory nature of territoriality, or its inherentparadox, implies that domination and resistance, hegemony andcounter-hegemony are simultaneous potentials inscribed in itspractices, though not necessarily as cast-iron binaries situateddifferently in social polarities. The binaries may manifest atdifferent conjectures within the same entity or group and within

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the same territory. There is a debate in the literature on whetherAntonio Gramsci, in his influential exposition on the conceptof hegemony, uses it to capture the non-coercive, non-forcible(ideological) aspect of the structure of consent in society, or if hemeshes the coercive with the non-coercive aspect of hegemony.21

While the territorial conflict examined here has both the forcibleand the non-forcible dimensions, and in fact, represents a symbi-otic relationship between the two dimensions, the paper concen-trates on how the ideological aspect, which “at its most pristine,”as Agbaje argues, constitutes “the construction of consensus,consent, and dissent through subtle, indirect and non-forciblemeans,”22 is used to respond to a crisis involving the violentpush towards hegemony and the violent counter-hegemonicstruggle that this provoked. The attempt at the “idealization of(a group’s) schema into a dominant framework that reigns ascommon sense”23 becomes the basis for hegemonic and counter-hegemonic struggles.

Territoriality can have historical, cultural, political, economicor symbolic manifestations,24 which are capable of polarizingterritories. In some, it manifests as institutional divisions whichset artificial limits; in others, as economic factors (central market,single-crop economies, raw materials); or as social factors (aspecific community organization); in yet others, as political factors(capital city, location of administrative centres); or as cultural fac-tors (different languages, own customs, different worldviews).25

In this essay, I concentrate on how the symbolic manifestationof territoriality was used to structure other manifestations. Idescribe this symbolic manifestation as discursive territoriality, onein which the media become resources, “through which power isexercised to produce—or disrupt—systemic regularity.”26

Discursive territoriality is a dimension of spatial politics,one in which the material and emotional dimensions of spaceare harnessed in the discourses of power; these discourses thenalign particular people firmly, and sometimes also exclusively, toparticular territories and privilege their claims to the materialbenefits of—and emotional attachment to—such spaces.Discursive territoriality emphasizes and amplifies the unitingor divisive potentials of space and boundaries. In the processof amplifying particular forms of “sameness” and “difference”discursive territoriality helps in turning the material power

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of space which exists as resources for human survival, into“our” resources that are necessary for “our” survival.27 Contraryor competing claims to these spaces/resources are thereforenarrated as attempts to negate “us”—or even in extreme cases,are seen as attempts to exterminate “us.” Discursive territorialityinvolves the struggle over meaning enmeshed with the struggleover material resources, one in which—as Valentin Volosinovpoints out in his notion of semiotic struggle—it is hoped thatchanging the structure of meaning could lead to a changein specific human interactions, social organization and thedistribution of resources.28 Discursive territoriality focuses onthe representational apparatuses of space, investing them withmeaning. As a reflection of power and space and spatial power, ithelps in constituting and deploring meanings and reflecting themin the modulation of actual territorial contests. Such meaningcan even be shared across time and space, beyond the particularterritory in contention—as the empirical case below shows.

Discursive territoriality is a means of discursively reifyingpower, given that, as Sacks29 avers, territoriality provides ameans of reifying power, because it makes potentials explicitand real by making them invisible. Therefore, the imbricationsof power in territoriality can be analyzed—following AnthonyGiddens”30 conception of power—as “relations of autonomy anddependence between actors in which these actors draw upon andreproduce structural properties of domination.” Implied in thisis a conception of power as a transformative capacity within situatedsocial relations.

Jurgen Habermas has been very influential in the attemptto understand and theorize the discursive realm in social re-lations, and analyze how the socio-economic structure relateto consciousness-signification. Habermas sees the interpenetra-tion of material and subjective actions and consciousness asconstituting a “lifeworld.”31 However, much of the critique ofhis work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, hascentered on a rejection of his assumption of a single publicsphere that is grounded exclusively in rational discourse.32 Thediscursive realm of the civil society, most contemporary theoristslike Eley33 and Fraser34 argue, consists of multiple, often non-rational, contestatory, even conspiratorial public spheres. Thesedifferent, but overlapping public spheres, which Jacobs, following

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Calhoun, calls “communities of discourse”—or in fact, commu-nities of discourses—are often established and maintained bythe media,35 pointing in a Gramscian sense, to the fact that, “acomplex web of hegemony (is) woven into the very fabric of civilsociety.”36

How is the struggle over territoriality encountered discur-sively in the press? How is space discursively negotiated asan instrument—and as prism—of power in dominant versusmarginal ethnic groups’ relations? Focusing on the framing inthe press of the violent clashes between the marginal Kataf andthe dominant Hausa ethnic groups in Nigeria—within the contextof the discursive territoriality—I examine the “communities ofdiscourses” which this process established and amplified.

Zango-Kataf: A Space of Struggle

The explosive nature of ethno-religious competition and rivalry,and the often-unjust reactions of the post-colonial state, arewell illustrated in the Zango-Kataf crisis. Also the constitutive,constraining and mediating roles of space37 in identity politicsare also evident in this crisis. The background to this is im-portant here. The grievances of the Southern Kaduna minorityethnic groups in Nigeria (including the Kataf) center on theirrelationship with the majority Hausa (-Fulani), regarded as thedominant ethnic group in Nigeria. The Hausa are the singlemost populous ethnic group in the north of Nigeria. They wereconquered during a Jihad, led by a Fulani religious teacher,Usman dan Fodio. The minority Fulani who conquered the Hausaand imposed the Islamic religion on the largely “pagan” Hausa,adopted the Hausa language and culture. The two groups alsointer-married and meshed so much so that, owing to the politicalsagacity of the Fulani elite, they formed an unusual ethnic amalgamthat is called the Hausa-Fulani.

This ethnic-amalgam sought to incorporate smaller ethnicgroups in the north while imposing its political institution, cul-ture and language and even religion (Islam) on the minori-ties, some of which had embraced Christianity. In spite of itsconsiderable success in this bid, the hegemony achieved hasexperienced (and still experiences) constant counter-hegemonic

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challenges from the minority ethnic groups, particularly thenon-Moslem ones. Many of the minority ethnic groups in thenorth of Nigeria—even though the Hausa language became theirlingua franca, with the Hausa traditional dress almost becomingtheir “national costume,”—were receptive to Christian conver-sion and education, in spite of the efforts of British colonialofficials to discourage Christian proselytizing in the north inobservance of an unwritten Anglo-Fulani pact. The adoptionof Hausa language—which was first adopted by the conqueringFulani—and in a few cases, culture, by the minorities, however,did not lead to assimilation/integration of these minority groupsinto one cultural group.38

In the relationship between the dominant and the dom-inated groups in the north of Nigeria, political, cultural andreligious domination mesh with economic inequalities. In theresulting vortex, the minorities accused the Hausa-Fulani eliteof deliberate economic underdevelopment of the non-Hausa-Fulani areas of the north. As Dear and Wolch39 point out,territorially-specific crisis can occur if a particular combinationof economic, political, or social crises is concentrated in a singlelocale. When the identity of those who occupy a land/spaceis called into question, a situation is presented in which suchidentity and identification with the land/space can be mobilizedinto a cause.40 This situation is potentially more combustiblewhen conflicting social groupings that are ethnically—and/orreligiously—constituted are situated within a shared territory.

Ibrahim and Igbuzor41 note that the crisis created by thefailure to fashion a national framework and establish justice andequity in the distribution of resources and rewards in Nigeria is“most graphically illustrated by the emergent patterns of inter-ethnic conflicts it has engendered in relation to access to eco-nomic resources and political power at the local level”:

The situation in Zango-Kataf is fairly unique and more complex ascenturies of interaction between the Hausa on the one hand, and theother communal groups such as Bajju and Kataf (Atyab) have failed toproduce the basis of a more enduring harmonious community life. Inthis respect the situation differs from other cases where the adoption ofIslamic religion and inter-marriages have attenuated the level of socialand cultural distance between “immigrant” Hausa population and the“host” communities. What one finds in the Zango-Kataf area of southern

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Kaduna is the tendency for ethnic boundaries to remain impervious tosocial and cultural exchanges such as marriages across ethnic and religiousboundaries.

The tension between the two communities over territorialitywas a long-standing one. The Kataf, in their submission to theCudjoe Commission of Inquiry into the February 1992 violentclashes between them and the Hausa, claimed that the Zango-Kataf land belonged to them and that they had accommodatedthe “Hausa immigrants” on generous terms. The Kataf claim thatgoing by the traditional system of land holding, the land shouldrevert to the original owners. They were therefore seeking to “re-claim” their land from the “squatting” or “stranger” Hausa.42 Thishistorical claim to being indigenous to the land (which, in Nige-ria, is called the principle of “indigeneity”) was contested by theHausa who claimed to have become “indigenous” to Zango-Katafafter living there for centuries. Ibrahim and Igbuzor43 aver that:

It would seem from the grievances of the Kataf who presented a deluge ofcomplaints of injustice, socio-economic deprivations and cultural suppres-sion, and the extent of the chains of the violent outbursts targeted at theHausa in 1992 that the ultimate goal was to “reclaim” their land by wipingout the Hausa community in Zango-Kataf. Otherwise, it would be difficultto come to terms with the scale of ethnic mobilisation, the sophisticationof the weaponry deployed, and the scale of violence unleashed by bothHausa and Kataf (Atyab) on one another.

This situation typifies Sack’s argument that territorial rela-tionships are defined within particular social contexts in termsof differential access to things and people, with a malevolentrelationship occurring where differential access through territo-riality benefits one group at the expense of another.44 This comesinto sharper relief, as this case shows, as identity achieves itsstrongest expression in political situations of conflict over landand territory.45

Zango-Kataf local government area first erupted in violencein February 1992, starting from Zango town. The Local Gov-ernment Council, under the chairmanship of Juri Babang Ayok,a Kataf, announced that the Zango weekly market would berelocated from the (Hausa-dominated) town center to a newsite on the outskirts of the town. The ostensible reasons for this

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relocation were congestion in the old market center, with little orno space in the market to accommodate new traders; the poorhygienic conditions of the old market; the unsuitable locationof the market in the midst of residential houses belonging tothe Hausa.46 These “technical” reasons constitute an attempt todisplace attention from the relationship between the controllerand the controlled on the territory,47 because “the local govern-ment has so decided.” However, the relocation, it would seem, wasinfluenced more by the “felt-need” to reduce Hausa commercialdomination and expand opportunities for emergent Kataf tradersin Zango than by the above reasons—given the demonstratedattachment of the Kataf to their soil (homeland48) and theresolve to benefit more than any other group from the economicpotentials derivable from that soil. The reasons were thereforestrongly territorial in both emotional and material dimensions, asthe market—as a significant site—became an object or centre ofcontestation.49 The attempt to present the relocation therefore,as a “technical” decision by the local government, highlights theterritorial tendency towards classification. Territoriality classifies byarea, rather than by type50; making the location or relocation inspace appear disentangled from, as in this case, ethnic group in-terest, though, as Taylor51 reminds us, even “small shifts in spatiallocation may result in major changes in territorial cognitions orbehaviours, or both.” Social rules, such as the need to maintainhygienic conditions in the market and reduce congestion, andterritorial rules, such as the need to redress the “unsuitable”location of the market, are mutually constitutive—a phenomenoncaptured by the term spatiality. Such spatial relations invest placeswith power.52

The Hausa community opposed this move, claiming that thesite for the new market was part of the Muslim praying ground.The Hausa also saw this as a “vindictive” cartographic strategyto upturn its economic advantage and strength. The Hausatherefore asked the courts to grant an injunction stopping therelocation, which was granted. As the ensuing violent territorialcompetition showed, it was not a competition for space per se, buta competition for things and relationships in space.53 This “com-petition for things” was configured around economic relations,which then set off—within the “relationship in space”—particularpatterns of political struggle and social strife.54

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On February 6, 1992, when the new market was scheduled toopen, violent clashes erupted between the two groups which ledto 95 people (mostly Hausa) dead, 252 injured and 133 housesand farm lands destroyed.

The market issue was only an avenue for the Kataf to expresstheir rejection of the (minority) Muslim Hausa domination ofpolitical, cultural and economic life in Zango-Kataf, which man-ifested in many ways including the derogatory reference to theKataf as “arna” or “kaffir” (pagans), because they were Christians.Territoriality therefore provided a means for the reification ofpower, as the potentialities of power are made explicit and realby making them visible.55

The Commission of Inquiry into the crisis had hardly con-cluded its public sitting when a new riot broke out in May. Thenew clashes spread to other places such as Kaduna, Zaria andIkara. This was sparked by a written threat by Kataf village headsindicating their decision to repossess Kataf land “appropriated”by Hausa, the subsequent uprooting of crops on Hausa farmlandsby Kataf youths, retaliatory attacks on Kataf, and alleged manip-ulation of the proceedings of the commission, among others.With the violence spreading to other cities and towns, the dom-inant Hausa directed their attacks on Christians generally, andspecifically Christians from the south of Nigeria, who happenedto be mainly the Igbo. In this way, ethno-religious groups notdirectly involved in the crisis were brought into it by direct attackson them. The ongoing debates, disagreements and polemics oninter-ethnic relations in Nigeria, which polarize—at one level—the north and the south, and Christians and Moslems, formedthe background to these attacks on non-belligerent groups likethe Igbo, Christian northerners and some Yoruba in Kaduna. Thecrisis was therefore as much spatial as it was politico-religious.This also explains why the “southern press” was inserted into thestruggle as the mouthpiece of the Kataf, who did not have mediaoutlets of their own. The “southern press,” in its on-going, larger“war” against (Muslim) Hausa-Fulani “domination,” appropriatedthe Kataf (territorial) struggle.

In the May bloody riots, Zango town was virtually reduced torubble. Several churches were burnt and Christian clerics killedin the riots. Over 60,000 people were displaced. The casualtiessuffered by the Hausa in Zango-Kataf itself and in Kaduna—where

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it was believed that the Igbo who had been targets of incessantattacks by religious fanatics over the years were well armed todefend themselves against their attackers—were said to haveshocked the northern (Muslim) power elite, who vowed to punishthose responsible for the riots. The official response was also anexpression of shock. Hundreds of Kataf people were arrestedand held without charge for a long time. Six prominent Katafmen, including retired General Zamani Lekwot, former militarygovernor of Rivers State and former Nigerian ambassador, werecharged before a special tribunal with complicity in the riots. Thetrial drew national attention. The prosecution later withdrew itscase, but security agents rearrested the suspects as they left thetribunal. In September 1992, the Kataf men were charged beforea tribunal again, with 14 of them, including the retired general,later sentenced to death. In spite of the virulent insistence byhighly-placed Hausa-Fulani, both in the military and in the civilservice, led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation,Aliu Mohammed, and security chief, General Haliru Akilu, thatthe Kataf men be executed,56 the Federal Military Government(FMG), under General Ibrahim Babangida, commuted the sen-tences to five years imprisonment. The verdict of the tribunalsparked off another national conflict as Christians and south-erners condemned both the tribunal and the government forsiding with the dominant Hausa, while northern Muslims and theHausa-Fulani responded that the verdict should have been upheldby the FMG. In 1995, Lekwot and his constituents were releasedfrom prison after serving their term.

While the Hausa were regarded as a minority group inZango-Kataf where the Kataf controlled the local government,they were however, a majority in the larger context of the north ofNigeria—and (alongside the Fulani)—in the country as a whole.There is the tendency in the literature to define ethnic minoritiesin the context of the power spectrum in particular national/stateformations in a way that mechanically fixes them at the lowestrung of the power ladder. This tendency is typified by ThomasH. Eriksen and Eghosa Osaghae. The former defines ethnicminority as “a group which is numerically inferior to the restof the population in a society, which is politically non-dominantand which is being reproduced as an ethnic category.”57 Thelatter emphasizes the relational nature of the category by stating

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that ethnic minorities are “usually defined in contradistinctionto major groups with whom they coexist in political systems, asgroups which experience systemic discrimination and dominationbecause of numerical inferiority and a host of historical and soci-ological factors, and have taken political action in furtherance oftheir collective interest.”58 The existence of politically dominantethnic minorities is read out of these definitions. As Osaghaeputs it, “Almost as a rule, minorities which are not subjectedto domination or discrimination, and instead constitute domi-nant and hegemonic groups59 . . . are excluded from the categoryof proper minorities.” Do numerically inferior groups who arepolitically-dominant cease to be minorities? No. Is the categoryof minority a function of numbers? Yes. Or is it a function of(political, economic, etc.) power? No. As argued elsewhere,60 oneway to get out of this bind, and yet be able to inscribe the locationof power in minority–majority relations in specific contexts, is tocapture it as marginal–dominant relations. This helps to explainthe Zango-Kataf case in which, in the particular case of thisterritorial contest, the Kataf were the majority while the Hausawere the minority; but, in the overall context of the Nigerianstate, the more consequential territorial space in which the battlefor supremacy eventually was fought—after the completion ofthe violent clashes—the Hausa were the majority, while the Katafwere a minority group. In the whole picture, while the Kataf werethe majority in the specific locale, they were also the marginalgroup while the Hausa, who were the minority in Zango-Kataf,were the dominant group, both in that locale and in the largercontext.

What resulted from this mix was the clash of a social definitionof territory61 by the Kataf, who saw themselves as the “natural” and“legal” heirs to the land, in spite of the location of “squatters”on that space; and the territorial definition of social relationship62 bythe Hausa whose “ownership” was based on actual and long-termpossession.

Data and Method

I examined the universe of articles, news stories and editorialspublished over this crisis in one newspaper, New Nigerian andone newsmagazine, TELL between 1992 and 1995. New Nigerian

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and TELL in their founding, editorial direction and role arereflections of the conflictual ethno-religious and ethno-spatialrelations in the country. The two were chosen given their overtand strong support for either side in the dispute. New Nigerian, atthe time of this crisis was the only regular nationally distributedprint medium that defended the interests of the largely Islamicnorth of Nigeria. On the other hand, TELL was perhaps themost virulent in the (Christian) southern media war against whatwas perceived to be (Islamic) Hausa-Fulani domination. Thestand-point of both media therefore recommends them for anal-ysis in the Zango-Kataf crisis, as well as the fact that no othermedium in the north and the south focused on the crisis as muchas these two.

Admittedly, there is a clear imbalance in the location andinfluence of the print media in Nigeria. Most of the influentialand successful newspapers and newsmagazines are located inand around Lagos, the former capital city in the south—a factwhich has necessitated their description as “Lagos-Ibadan press,”“southern press” or even “Ngbati press.”63 TELL is one of theleading organs in this “Lagos-Ibadan” press. Professional journal-ists, who were dissatisfied with alleged collusion by the editorialchiefs at the Newswatch, where they worked before founding themagazine, founded the newsmagazine in 1991. TELL immediatelybecame agitatorial and confronted the tyrannical military regimein power and consequently became a key pillar of the eventualpro-democracy struggle. This struggle was as much against mili-tary rule as it was against alleged ethno-regional domination bythe Hausa-Fulani power elite.

On the other hand, New Nigerian was founded in 1966 by thedefunct Northern Regional Government to correct the media “im-balance” in Nigeria and as an instrument of northern power—inwhat one of its former managers described as a “war of unequalcombatants.” In its inaugural editorial, the paper affirmed that,“as (the) Northern newspaper, we shall seek to identify ourselveswith the North and its peoples, their interest and their aspirations.For that we offer no apology.”64

The data gathered are subjected to narrative/discourse anal-ysis to tease out their implications in the process of construct-ing and/or deconstructing the power of territoriality. FollowingJacobs,65 I analyze the data through three different aspects of the

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discourses on the Zango-Kataf crisis. These are plot, characters andgenre.

Plot is concerned with the selection, evaluation and attri-bution of differential status to events.66 It is fluid and complexin its relationship to events, with the capacity to “linger” on aparticular event, flashback to past events or flash forwards tofuture events. Which events are chosen for discursive narrationand which are ignored therefore provide critical clues concern-ing the understanding of community in a time–space67 horizonthat links the past, present and future in an organic way withcertain spaces68—what, in Rapport and Dawson’s69 words, couldbe described as “fixities of social relations and cultural routineslocalized in time and space.” Character analysis in a discourseis key to understanding the construction of heroes and anti-heroes70—and by extension, thesis and anti-thesis. Research hasdemonstrated the use of binary civil discourse to “purify” publicactors and their allies and “pollute” the Other, the “enemies.”71 AsJacobs elaborates it, to discursively position themselves as heroic,actors cast themselves as rational, controlled in their motivation,open and trusting in their relationships and regulated by theimpersonal; while, on the contrary, the Other is cast as irrationaland uncontrolled in their motivation, secretive, deceitful andarbitrary.72

Genre provides “a temporal and spatial link between char-acters and events.” Of the four “archetypal” genres of Westernliterature, only tragedy is useful for the purpose of this article.Usually in a tragedy, “the hero typically possesses great power,but is isolated from society and ultimately falls to an omnipotentand external fate or to the violation of a moral law.”73 However,as Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz74 warn, there are inconsistenciesthat must be found in the strictures of these different modesof presenting stories; therefore, the analyst must determine howeach relates to events and social settings.

Kataf-strophe: The Press and the Discourse of Territoriality

Generally, before the first Zango-Kataf riots broke out in February1992, the “Lagos-Ibadan” press75 (here described as pro-Katafpress) tended, both implicitly and explicitly, to present theminorities in the north, particularly those in the area called

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Southern Kaduna or Southern Zaria, as suffering under the yokeof Hausa-Fulani domination. TELL typifies this tendency in itsinitial report on the trial of the accused Kataf men:

The trial has generated public interest and it was seen as significant inthe volatile relationship between the minority Kataf people and the Hausacommunity in Kaduna state. The Kataf are only one of the minority ethnicgroups in the state, especially in the area known as Southern Zaria, thathave remained sensitive to perceived domination by the majority Hausaethnic group.

When the riots broke out, the discourse was therefore fittedinto this larger frame, more so when it was the first time themajority Hausa ethnic group suffered huge losses of life in aclash with a minority ethnic group in the north. In response tosuch accounts as this, the New Nigerian publishes an essay, whichdescribed the “southern (pro-Kataf) press” and “their masters” as“die-hard Hausa-Fulani haters”:

During and after the Zango-Kataf massacre any keen observer wouldhave noticed the well-planned and orchestrated disinformation going onespecially among the Lagos/Western (southern) axis print and electronicmedia. Their hatred for the North (they and their masters) has blindedthem to even attempt an objective coverage of the crisis. It is a well-knownfact that the hatred by the southern press and their masters is disguised asa hatred for the Hausa-Fulani.

In the pro-Kataf press, the February clash was presented asa riot resulting from an attempt by a marginal and marginalizedgroup—Kataf—to throw off the yoke imposed on it by the domi-nant (Hausa). But for the pro-Hausa New Nigerian, “The (riot was)a conflict over land and petty jealousies over economic advantagesof one tribe over the other.” Having stated the territorial basisof the crisis, the discourses then emphasized issues of justice andfairness as these relate to dominant–marginal relations in Nigeria.

While the press was still reacting to the first round of clashes,another spate of riots broke out in May of the same year. This waseven bloodier. In his reaction, General Babangida stated that allaccused persons would be considered guilty until they could proveotherwise. This was the point at which the trial to follow beganto be discursively de-legitimized by the pro-Kataf press. When

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the accused eventually came to trial in late July, it was evidentin the narratives that the pro-Kataf press framed the trial of theKataf leaders as only a necessary step towards their dischargeand acquittal. The process was narrated as the first step towardsreversing the history of injustice against a marginal group, theKataf, perpetuated by a dominant group, the Hausa:

Last (week) appearance . . . was the first by Lekwot who had beenkept incommunicado since he was arrested by security agents lastMay . . . As expected in such a celebrated case, the court was crowded withlawyers . . . Among (them) . . . was Yohanna Madaki, a retired colonel andformer governor of the defunct Gongola state. Like Lekwot, Madaki is amember of the Southern Zaria community that have been having testytimes for many years with the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group . . . (This) trial(is) another milestone in the testy relationship . . . The Kataf people haveprotested alleged partiality of the state government.

Linkages with the past constitute a regular mode of combin-ing present events (injustice) with similar acts in the past, towardsthe construction of a just and equitable future. In its reportingand commentaries on the clashes, the pro-Kataf press emphasizedthe drive towards “undue” territoriality by the Hausa. In one ofthe articles, TELL reports that Ayok Juri Babang, the chairmanof the Zango Kataf local government, a Kataf, who was amongthe accused, told the tribunal that, when the May riots began,he was holding a security meeting over a letter sent by Zango-Kataf (Hausa) Muslims to the leader of northern (and Nigerian)Muslims, the Sultan of Sokoto, which informed him that a jihadwas about to begin in Zango-Kataf “as a result of the 100 Muslimsmurdered during the February riots in the town”:

The letter which was signed by Aliyu Jibril of Zango-Kataf, complained thatafter the riots, several Muslims had lost their houses or farmlands, whichthey had inherited from their forefathers for more than 70 years . . . Jibriltold (Sultan) Dasuki that Nigerian Muslims are patient people, “but inaccordance with the injunction of the holy book, if we are cheated, and ajihad occurs in Zango, any Muslim who kills the unbeliever to heaven hewill go, and if he is killed, still to heaven he will go.”

With this “fact” on the attempt by the Hausa to carry outa Jihad—in the version of the major Jihad starting in 1804which subjugated the “pagan” tribes in the north and established

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Fulani (and Hausa) ascendancy over a wide territory that becameNorthern Nigerian—the magazine argues that the prosecution“lost steam” and “was in despair.” For New Nigerian, the emphasiswas on those who gave evidence that pointed to the resolve bythe Kataf to “exterminate” the Hausa on shared territory. Forinstance, the paper reports a witness that elaborated on thisalleged display of exclusionary territoriality by the Kataf:

(A) group of Katafs numbering 500 gathered and surrounded the Zangotown. He said this was after uprooting the Hausas’ crops on their farms,and killing many of them. He told the tribunal that the Hausas weregathered at the old market by the Katafs and were forced to sing whilethe Kataf danced, until when they (Katafs) were tired of dancing. They(Katafs), he said, forced the Hausas to move to the new market sitewhere they ordered them to lie down on the ground and then set themablaze.

The allegation of the movement of the Hausa “captives”from the old market to the new market where they were al-legedly “set ablaze,” carries a strong image of social power overspace/territory, given the opposition of the Hausa to the newmarket site. Similarly, the allegations of the destruction of thecrops of the Hausa evokes the fact that territoriality manifestsin safeguarding or destruction of the objects of “our” or “their”material well-being respectively. Here, through discursive territo-riality, the New Nigerian amplifies a particular form of differenceby emphasizing the destruction of the material power—that is theresources—of the Hausa.

When the accused were discharged on a four-count chargeof unlawful assembly, rioting with deadly weapons, causing distur-bance and arson, the pro-Kataf, anti-Establishment, press celebratedthe “victory” while canvassing for the immediate release of theKataf men. But when the accused men were re-arraigned on a 22-count charge of unlawful assembly, disturbing public peace, andculpable homicide, among others—punishable with death—thepro-Kataf press, through its discursive presentation of the re-trialimplied that something other than justice was to be the result ofthe second trial. The latent theme here was that of denial of justiceand/or persecution. Such discursive structuring of the process oftrial was to make it easy for the pro-Kataf press to present theaccused as “heroes” who were facing a tragic turn in the history

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of their relations with their “squatters” and “guests”—the Hausa.But, the pro-Hausa press did not see “heroes” in the Kataf men,rather they were “perpetrators of genocide,” who—in spite of thefact that “going by historical precedents and facts of life, all tribesand races of the world have undergone some forms of migratorytrends”—could not live peacefully with those who have settled onthe same territory with them for several years:

The Kataf mobilized and armed themselves with guns, swords, knivesand all kinds of dangerous weapons, descended on the unsuspectingHausa-Fulani community in their houses, farms, mosques, etc. in a viciousattack, shooting, cutting their children, wives, looting, raping their wivesand children and set(ting) the whole buildings in the community on fire.

When the leading defense counsel withdrew from the caseover his dissatisfaction with the process of trial, the pro-Katafpress constructed the tribunal as a “hang man’s rope tailoredspecifically for the people (the accused).” Not so, the pro-Hausapress, as represented by New Nigerian, seems to contend as itstates its own version of the implications of the withdrawal:“The tribunal, undaunted by the withdrawal of defense counsel,assigned . . . Okhasememoh, one of the best criminal lawyers in thecountry, to defend the accused persons as required by law” (em-phasis added).

The government’s plan to rebuild Zango town, inhabitedmainly by the Hausa, was another point of contention, giventhat the other towns in Zango-Kataf inhabited by the Kataf werenot slated for reconstruction. The state governor, TELL writes,had “proposed to the federal government a rehabilitation planto include extensive development of infrastructure and a re-designing of the town’s old cluster of settlement pattern.” This,for the magazine, “could be another source of trouble”:

The Katafs contend (that) the entire area belong(s) to them and theyare in a deviant mood, waiting for the government to attempt anysettlement. For one thing, they are indignant that nearly all government’spronouncements on the Zango-Kataf crisis tend to give short-shrifts tothem and their age-long complaints over what they call the overbearingattitude of the Hausa community.

When the “modern town” was eventually built in Zango fromthe “slummy settlement occupied by the Hausa” the pro-Kataf

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press narrated the “grouse” of the Kataf who insisted that thiswas yet another example of government’s “discrimination” againstthem:

Zango’s good fortune is one of the reasons why tension runs a hightemperature in Kaduna state, especially Zango-Kataf. The Kataf peoplepoint out that several houses were destroyed in Zonzon, a Kataf villagebordering Zango, yet, up till today nothing has been done to rehabilitateor compensate the victims.

Against this condemnation of “discriminatory” resettlement,New Nigerian publishes a comment, which praised the rehabilita-tion work:

I saw the rehabilitation works, which has been carried out with extremeefficiency by any standard. That we could heal the scars in so short a periodof time is a clear demonstration by the government to ensure return ofpeace.

TELL does not see “the return of peace,” as narrated by NewNigerian. On the contrary, it quotes a minority rights activist lawyerand retired army colonel who state that the crisis was embeddedin the simple “principle of self-determination, quest for equality,freedom of religion, the right to think and dress as one likes ina normal social environment, not the one dictated by some self-appointed religious leaders.” This contest was therefore a contestover territoriality and who defines life and living, including properconduct, on the territory. The market issue was captured as “aveil over the real issue” which was that “people from SouthernKaduna, including the Kataf, simply want to be on their own” andnot, ostensibly, under Hausa-Fulani suzerainty: “So the market isjust a tool used by the powerful people to continue to oppress thedisadvantaged for their selfish end.”

TELL relates the matter to the issue of traditional headshipof the communities:

(T)he British Indirect Rule policy . . . adopted the Hausa-Fulani Emiratemodel of native administration and, in consequence, brought many non-Hausa-Fulani groups under the rule of these two ethnic groups . . . TheKataf, as well as many other minority groups in the north, battle with thishistorical antecedent. They battle daily with cultural imperialism.

This crisis was seen as partly a result of this. The magazinetherefore reports that:

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(T)he totality of the Nigerian citizenry is confused particularly now as towhere power truly lies. “Is it at the government house with the governor,emirate or chiefdom?” But since the government insisted that it cannotdo without traditional rulers, “it is only fair for each minority group toappoint its own custodian of traditions” . . . In trying to assert themselvesas an ethnic group, the Kataf have agitated for several decades for thegranting of their own chiefdoms.

Even if peace were to return, the pro-Kataf press insisted that“it will bear the legacy, a carry-over and constant reminder ofthese turbulent times.” A key example of this, a newsmagazinepointed out, was the construction of police barracks “suited toconveniently separate the Hausa and Kataf villages. Somethinglike a modern Berlin Wall.”

When the guilty verdict and death sentences were eventuallypassed, the pro-Kataf press expectedly assailed the validity of thejudgment and framed the condemned men as “freedom fighters”and “heroes.” The key sub-texts in the characterization of theaccused as “heroes” included those of deviance (by the condemnedmen) honor (of the condemned men) persecution and injustice(against the condemned men and the Kataf) subversion of justice(by the tribunal, particularly the chairman) and reprisal (by theHausa-Fulani against Kataf and southerners). The discursive taskwas clearly that of faulting the trial process that led to the verdict,the demonization of the tribunal (particularly the chairman) andcondemnation of the death verdict.

The characterization of the chairman of the tribunal as “anti-hero” was to rob the tribunal of legitimacy and therefore, todismiss the validity of the judgment. The pro-Kataf press alsogave prominence to the mass protest by “Bible-wielding (Kataf)women, effervescently changing Christian songs” against thedeath verdict. This was reportedly preceded by inter-denomina-tions (church) services:

The protest march began as soon as prayers ended. By six a.m. thedemonstrators began to troop into the streets with the womenfolk andchildren in the vanguard. They barricaded the major streets carryingplacards. To further illustrate their anger, the women carried two coffinscovered with white cloth. Inscribed on both were the words, “Justice andFair-play are dead.” The women were joined by the men after a fewkilometres as they marched through the city centre. By seven a.m., theyhad cordoned off the major roads, singing with copies of the Bible in theirhands.

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The Bible, in this context, was constructed as a symbolicbarricade, more or less signifying a symbolic (Christian) territorialdefense, ostensibly against the forces of “Hell.”

But for the New Nigerian, Justice Okadigbo “(is) not only alearned and transparently honest judge, but a devout Christian whocould not have passed the sentence on Lekwot and co. withoutample evidence” (emphasis added); therefore, “If the law is to bestrictly adhered to, the federal government may have no option(than) to confirm the death sentence.” Here, contrary to thecharacterization by the pro-Kataf press, the religion (Christianity)of the chairman of the tribunal was used by the New Nigerian tolegitimize the death sentence he passed on fellow Christians (theKataf).

In its reports of the death sentences, the pro-Hausa pressre-stated examples of culpability of the condemned men, castingthem firmly, in contradistinction to the discourse of the pro-Katafpress, as “anti-heroes.” The key sub-themes in the New Nigerianwere those of proper carriage of justice, deserved guilt, inhumanity(allegedly) displayed by Lekwot and other Kataf, and unjust treatmentof the Hausa by the Kataf . While Lekwot and the others were“Kataf leaders” and (rarely) “condemned men” for the pro-Kataf(southern) press, they were “condemned criminals” for the anti-Kataf (northern) press. The pro-Hausa press praised the deathsentences, reporting that “nothing should be done to put a wedgebetween the condemned criminals and justice.”

When the highest military legislative council commuted thedeath sentences to prison terms, the sub-themes of defiance,dignity, honor and future victory remained salient in the pro-Katafpress. The pro-Hausa press was annoyed by this kind of discourse.It therefore directly attacked the “southern press” and the Chris-tian Association of Nigeria (CAN) for being on the side of “massmurderers of innocent worshippers in the mosques,” “fuelling thealready volatile situation” and for “crying foul over the verdict”:

Since the tribunal passed its judgment, the southern press in their usualstyle of confusion and outright crucifixion of objectivity have began anotherwolf cry on what they described as “shock inflicted by the Okadigbotribunal verdict.” The shameless southern press . . . questioned the legalityof (the) composition (of the tribunal) . . . (if Lekwot and co. escape the

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death verdict) it would amount to high rape of justice and a completenegation of the law (emphasis added).

After Lekwot’s release, the pro-Kataf press continued tomonitor events in the area. When new chiefdoms were createdin the area in consonance with the yearning of the marginalethnic groups, it was captured by as the “clipping (of) Caliphalwings,” one which “has rekindled a ray of hope in the heartsof the oppressed minority of Southern Kaduna and other partsof Northern Nigeria who have lived under the yoke of feudalcaliphate rule for more than 200 years.” This was an exaggeration,because, even as at that point, the Jihad that led to the creation ofthe Caliphate was nine years short of its bicentenary. However, inspite of its campaign against the Kataf, the pro-Hausa press still, inits discourse, insisted on a “united north” (including the Kataf andother southern Kaduna minority groups), an all-embracing terri-torial power that would stand against the geographical “south”:

What the southerner . . . hate(s) to hear is that the north is one, a singleentity . . . Do not be deceived by the apparent hatred for the Hausa-Fulani.The hatred and contempt is for anything north and its people whetherChristian or Muslim. We, the people of the North have no alternative thanto stick together. We should not allow some people to reap where they didnot sow. We share a common destiny.

A paradox, it can be argued here, is inherent in this territorialcontest—both in its actual and discursive contexts. While theHausa and the Fulani claimed territorial “rights” against, and inopposition to, the minority Kataf, they nonetheless discursivelyinsisted on a “united north” that incorporated the many minoritygroups under Hausa-Fulani suzerainty, complete with the dissim-ulation of the religious (Islamic) core and religious identity thatis integral to the majority in the attempt to “stick together.” Inthis context of the “north” versus “south” discourse, the pro-Kataf,southern press also reported the tension that persisted in Kadunawith threats that the certificate of occupancy (on lands) by Igbosoutherners may be revoked if they continued to support theKataf.

The territorial struggle in a small locale is thus emblazonedunto the territorial struggles in the larger national space condi-tioned by the inherent material and emotional dynamics of space,

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and the search for pan-ethnic (political, economic, social andcultural) accommodation. The press—as a space of engagement—was discursively inserted in the localized social relations thatdefined space-specific conditions—spaces of dependence—forthe material well-being and sense of significance of the Katafand the Hausa. While the trial was officially framed as a “law-and-order” matter, the press “politicized” this framing, pressingsocio-economic and political dynamics into the discourses.

Conclusion

Of all events that “demand narration,” crisis ranks as one ofthe most important.76 In territorial crisis, socio-political andeconomic contradictions are realized spatially.77 Consequently,the contradictions of space fuel the contradictions of social re-lations, turning spaces, which bell hooks calls “home places,” into“sources of self-dignity and agency, sites of solidarity in which andfrom which, resistance can be organized and conceptualised”.78

In Foucaultian terms, these “home places” are “heterotopias,”that is “performed spaces” which contain physical as well associal boundaries where resources are marked by their avail-ability to some and non-availability to others.79 Recent schol-arship has been engaged, as Smith80 puts it, in an effort toretrieve the “spatiality of local politics” from “habitual invisi-bility.” Thus, the role of narrative-discourse in understandingand analyzing such “performed spaces” and social processes hasbecome increasingly central for social scientists, particularly inthe last 30 years.81 This is because discourse/narration helpsin constituting identity and enabling social action82 linking dis-parate individuals together in a combinatorial identity forma-tion that locates them in particular “imagined communities”—communities which then produce and reproduce what hasbeen described as “a radically stabilized collision of compet-ing meanings.”83 Again, as Edward Said84 points out, territorialstruggles are not fought only with soldiers and cannons, theyare also fought at the level of ideas, images and imaginations.Thus, analyses of identity formation—particularly those basedactively on territoriality—have made major contributions to ourunderstanding of social agency. For instance, such analyses haveshown the dynamics and limitations of the rigidifying aspects

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of (ethnic) identity, by looking at these from what Somers85

calls the “categorically destabilizing dimensions of time, space andrelationality,” which emerge when identities are combined withdiscursivity. To enliven space as I have essayed to do here, asRoutledge86 correctly understands it, is “to move its discursive“site” from that of an assumed inert backdrop against which socialpractices unfold to the foreground of analyses of resistance andthe cultural politics of identity.”

Locating the discourses of the Zango-Kataf crisis within thestrictures of temporal and spatial configurations of dominant–marginal ethnic relations in Nigeria highlights the latent andmanifest material and emotional dimensions of a territorial cri-sis in which both sides attempted to create differential accessto resources and power based on identity. As this case indi-cates, the struggle over territoriality is struggle over identity =struggle over resources = struggle for power. The discoursesrepresent and reproduce existing patterns of power relations,given the capacity of humans to find gaps and contradictionsin any social structure.87 Such discursive formation reproduces“something which has materiality already as the result of a nowpast production.”88 The resources on which power draws, “havesome real existence prior to their enablement of some action thatconstraints some other’s action.” When discursive territoriality isunderstood as enmeshed in a struggle over power, our attentionis drawn to what Louw describes as “the impact that ‘lived battles’over hegemony have on communication.”

As this case again indicates, a socio-spatial dialectic is inher-ent in territoriality, in terms of the fact that “territorial outcomesare contingent upon the essentially unpredictable interactions ofthe spatial with economic and the political and social (cultural)spheres.” Social life therefore structures territoriality and viceversa.89 To ignore territoriality or simply to assume that it has asubsidiary role is to miss a major part of the spatial manifestationof struggles for power and resources.90 The task of the theoryof territoriality, as Sacks91 advances, “is to disclose the possibleeffect of territoriality as levels that are both general enough toencompass its many forms, and yet specific enough to shed lighton its particular instances.” In this essay, against the backdrop ofwhat I call discursive territoriality, I have attempted to point to the

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insertion of the press in the interface of power and territorialitythat structures dominant versus marginal relations in Nigeriaby exploring the attempts by the Kataf and the Hausa—and,by extension, their polarized supporters—to affect, influence orcontrol people, resources and ethnic relationships through thedelimitation and assertion of control over a particular space.Inherent in such practices is the potential to reproduce and alsoto transcend existing social relations towards significant socialchange.92 My argument here is located within the spectrum of anagency conception of power, which sees power as “to a large extentstructurally determined.” In the discourse of dominant–marginalethnic relations in Nigeria, the press uses the structural context inwhich these relations are located as resources in the mobilizationof identity and the struggle to gain primacy in a territorialstruggle, particularly, with an eye on the political, economic, socialand cultural implications of such victory. The rival newspaper andnewsmagazine supporting either side in the crisis emphasized andamplified, in different ways, the unifying and divisive potentialsof territory, turning the material power of space which existsas resources for human survival, into “our” resources that arenecessary for “our” survival.93 Space is therefore central to therelations between dominant and marginal groups, particularlythose forced by historical or political circumstances to sharethe same territory. What the press does, as in this instance, isto elaborate and deploy the latent emotional powers of spacein affiliating the Hausa or the Kataf to the material (physical,political and economic) properties of space towards constructingthe space as “ours” as opposed to “theirs.”94

Finally, it must be noted that even though territorialitycannot singly alter social relations in particular contexts in away that changes the structure of the entire society, it is capableof setting in motion “unforeseen, and often undesirable, socialconsequences”95 as this Hausa-Kataf territorial struggle shows.

Notes

1. J. P. James and P. Moss, 1995 in Paul Routledge, “A Spatiality of Resistance:Theory and Practice in Nepal’s Revolution of 1990,” Steve Pile and MichaelKeith (eds.), Geographies of Resistance (London/New York: Routledge,1997).

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2. Jan Penrose, “Nations, States and Homelands: Territory and Territoriality inNationalist Thought,” Nation and Nationalism, Vol. 8, No. 3, July (2002), p.278.

3. Robert D. Sack, “The Power of Place and Space,” Geographical Review, Vol.83, No. 3, July (1993), p. 326.

4. Penrose, pp. 278–9.5. Ibid., p. 279.6. Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, “Territoriality, Anthropol-

ogy, and the Interstitial: Subversion and Support in European Border-lands,” Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2003),p. 13.

7. Sam Kaplan, “Territorializing Armenians: Geo-texts and Political Imaginar-ies in French Occupied Cilicia, 1919–1922,” History and Anthropology, Vol. 15,No. 4 (2004), p. 400.

8. Kevin R. Cox, “Spaces of Dependence, Space of Engagement and the Politicsof Scale, or: Looking for Local Politics.” Political Geography Vol. 17, No. 1(1998), p. 1–23.

9. Lefebvre, 1991, in Deborah G. Miller and Bryan Martin, “Space and Con-tentious Politics,” Mobilization: An International Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2004),p. 146.

10. Ibid.11. Joshua Van Lieu and John Paul Jones, “Discursive Limits to Agency,” in

D. Wilson and J. O. Huff (eds.) Marginalized Places and Populations: AStructurationist Agenda (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 1994),p. 150.

12. Ibid.13. Penrose, “Nations, States and Homelands,” p. 279.14. Robert D. Sacks, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 19.15. Penrose, “Nations, States and Homelands,” p. 282.16. Ibid., p. 282.17. Sacks, Human Territoriality, p. 56.18. Ralph B. Taylor, Human Territoriality Functioning: An Empirical, Evolutionary

Perspective on Individual and Small Group Territorial Cognitions, Behaviours andConsequences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 81.

19. Ibid.20. Anderson, p. 27 cited in Donnan and Wilson, “Territoriality, Anthropology,

and the Interstitial,” p. 13.21. Michele Barrett, The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault (Stanford:

Stamford University Press, 1991), p. 54; Wale Adebanwi, “The City, Hege-mony and Ethno-Spatial Politics: The Struggle for Lagos in Colonial Nige-ria,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics Vol. 9, No. 4, p. 5.

22. Adigun A. B. Agbaje, The Nigerian Press, Hegemony and the Social Construction ofLegitimacy, 1960–1983 (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin MellenPress, 1992), p.11.

23. David D. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among theYoruba (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 19.

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24. Paasi, p. 42 in Penrose, “Nations, States and Homelands,” p. 280.25. See International Labour Organization, “Territoriality as a Strategic Prin-

ciple,” 1–9, http://ciaris.ilo.org/english/tos/strprinc/territor/tx princ/princp 1.htm – preg1 (accessed 2 June 2005).

26. Clegg, Frameworks of Power (London/Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989), p.143.

27. Paasi, p. 42 in Penrose, “Nations, States and Homelands,” p. 280.28. Volosinov in Eric Louw, The Media and Cultural Production (London: Sage,

2001), p. 24.29. Sacks, Human Territoriality, p. 33.30. Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (London:

Macmillan, 1981), p. 29.31. Eric Louw, The Media and Cultural Production, p. 24.32. Ronald N. Jacobs, “Civil Society and Crisis: Culture, Discourse, and the

Rodney King Beating,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 101, No. 5, (March1996), p. 1238.

33. Eley, in ibid., pp. 1238–9.34. Fraser (1992) in ibid.35. Calhoon, in ibid.36. Clegg, Frameworks of Power, p. 160.37. Dear and Wolch, “How Territory Shapes Social Life,”, p. 9.38. Adefemi V. Isumonah, “Migration, Land Tenure, Citizenship and Commu-

nal Conflicts in Africa,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2003),p. 15.

39. Michael Dear and Jennifer Wolch, “How Territory Shapes Social Life,” inJennifer Wolch and Michael Dear (eds.) The Power of Geography: How TerritoryShapes Social Life (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 11.

40. Michael Saltman (ed.) Land and Territoriality (Oxford: Berg, 2002), p. 3.41. Jibrin Ibrahim and Otive Igbuzor, “Memorandum submitted to the Presi-

dential Committee on Provisions and Practice on Citizenship and Rights inNigeria,” Citizen’s forum for Constitutional Reform (CFCR), (8 February2002).

42. Isumonah, “Migration, Land Tenure, Citizenship,” p. 15.43. Ibrahim and Igbuzor, “Memorandum.”44. Sacks, Human Territoriality, pp. 57–8.45. Saltman, Land and Territoriality, p. 3.46. Rotimi T. Suberu, Ethnic Minority Conflicts and Governance in Nigeria (Ibadan:

Spectrum Books and IFRA 1996), p. 54.47. Sacks, Human Territoriality, p. 59.48. Ti-fu Tuan has pointed to the deeply significant nature of homeland, with

almost every human grouping regarding its own homeland as “the centreof the world.” Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (London: EdwardArnold, 1977), p. 149.

49. Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, “Ritual, Distances, Territorial Divisions: Land,Power and Identity in Central Nepal,” Michael Saltman (ed.) Land andTerritoriality (Oxford: Berg. 2002), p. 126.

50. Sacks, Human Territoriality, p. 58.

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51. Ralph B. Taylor, Human Territoriality Functioning , p.4.52. Sacks, “The Power of Place and Space,” p. 327.53. Sacks, Human Territoriality, p. 59.54. cf. Dear and Wolch, “How Territory Shapes Social Life,” p. 11.55. Sacks, Human Territoriality, p. 59.56. Personal discussions with a government-owned media chief, who doubled, at

this period, as unofficial security adviser to the Babangida regime. Toronto,Canada, 15 July 2004.

57. Thomas H. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives(London: Pluto Press, 1993), p. 121.

58. Eghosa Osaghae, “Managing Multiple Minority Problems in a DividedSociety: The Nigerian Experience,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol.36, No. 1 (1998), p. 3.

59. He cites the examples of white colonial regimes in Africa and Asia, theAfrikaner whites in apartheid South Africa, the Tutsi in post-1994 Rwandaand the Fulani in Nigeria. Ibid.

60. Wale Adebanwi, “The Press and the Politics of Marginal Voices: The Narra-tives of the Experiences of the Ogoni of Nigeria,” Media, Culture and Society,UK. Vol. 26, No. 6, (November 2004), pp. 763–83.

61. Sacks, Human Territoriality (1986), p. 61.62. Ibid., p. 60.63. The latter was first used as a positive description of the “Nigerian press,”

as “a press that is voluble if not cantankerous, a press that is buoyed by ano-holds-barred approach to matters of national interest, and with a capacityfor advocacy and adversarial haggling against those it considers guilty ofmalfeasance objective.” Odia Ofeimun, “The Ngbati Press,” TheNEWS, Lagos(14 February 1994), p. 15. The word itself, “Ngbati” is a pejorative onefor the Yoruba of Western Nigeria, where Lagos—and Ibadan—is located.However, “Ngbati Press,” as later used by a Lagos journalist, Waziri Adio(“The Ngbati Press,” ThisDAY , Lagos,August 1999, back page) capturespopular sentiments in the north—and to some extent, among Igbo—thatthe dominant sections of the press in Nigeria pander to the interests of theYoruba ethnic-nationality.

64. Turi Muhammed, Courage and Conviction: New Nigeria, The First Twenty Years(Kaduna: Hadahuda Publishing Co. Ltd. 2000) p. v.

65. Jacobs, “Civil Society and Crisis.”66. Steinmetz, 1992, in Louw, The Media (London: Sage, 2001).67. Anthony Giddens (1979, 1981 and 1984) has noted, in his works, the

importance of time–space relations in the structuration of society. He arguesthat time unfolds at three levels which recursively connect it to spatiallocales. These include the duree, dasein and longue duree. For an expositionof Giddens’ views on this, see, Lieu and Jones, “Discursive Limits to Agency,”in D. Wilson and J. O. Huff (eds.) Marginalized Places and Populations: AStructurationist Agenda (Westport, Conn./London: Praeger, 1994), p. 10.Time–space relations, sharply put, concerns “specific sets of human relation-ships, located within concretized localities and within identifiable periods.”Eric Louw, The Media and Cultural Reproduction (London: Sage, 2001), p. 4.

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68. cf. Ibid.69. N. Rapport and A. Dawson (eds.) Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a

World of Movement (Oxford: Berg, 1998), p. 4.70. Ibid.71. Ibid.72. Jacobs, “Civil Society and Crisis,” p. 1244–5.73. Ibid.74. Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz, ibid., p. 1246.75. Included in this section are pieces from TELL and New Nigerian published

between 1992 and August 1995.76. Jacobs, “Civil Society and Crisis,” p. 1241.77. Routledge, “A Spatiality of Resistance,” p. 70.78. bell hooks in ibid, p. 71.79. Pile and Thrifts 1995, in ibid.80. Cited in ibid, p. 101.81. Sawyer, “A Discourse on Discourse,” p. 433.82. Jacobs, “Civil Society and Crisis,”, p. 1240; cf. Margaret R. Somers, “The

Narrative Construction of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach,”Theory and Society, Vol. 23, No. 5 (1994), p. 606.

83. Donnan and Wilson, “Territoriality, Anthropology, and the Interstitial,”p. 18.

84. Edward Said, “Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 7.85. Somers, The Narrative Construction of Identity,” pp. 605–6.86. Routledge, “A Spatiality of Resistance,” p. 101.87. Louw, The Media and Cultural Production, p. 12.88. Clegg, Frameworks of Power , p. 144.89. Dear and Wolch, “How Territory Shapes Social Life,” p. 4.90. Sacks, Human Territoriality, p. 55.91. Ibid., p. 216.92. Dear and Wolch, “How Territory Shapes Social Life,” p. 4.93. Penrose, “Nations, States and Homelands,” p. 280.94. Wale Adebanwi, “The City, Hegemony and Ethno-Spatial Politics,” p. 25.95. Sacks, Human Territoriality, p. 215.

Wale Adebanwi is a Bill and Melinda Gates Scholar at Trinity Hall,University of Cambridge, UK. The author wishes to thank Professor IrisMarion Young of Chicago University, Ebenezer Obadare, London Schoolof Economics, Professor Adigun Agbaje, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, andthe late Dr. Sue Benson.

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Territoriality and the Discourse of Ethnic Groups’ Clashes

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