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Date: April 19, 2024 Fri
Time: 1:19 pm
Time: 1:19 pm
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1 results foundAuthor: Matfess, Hilary, ed. Title: Power, Elitism, and History: Analyzing Trends in Targeted Killings in Nigeria, 2000 to 2017 Summary: Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and largest economy, has attracted considerable policy and academic attention. Studies by Transparency International and others have revealed breathtaking levels of official corruption and graft in the country. Despite the attention paid to Nigeria, there is little information about the prevalence of targeted killings against individuals in the country - and the relationship between this phenomenon and corruption is not well understood. The lack of attention paid to targeted killings in Nigeria reflects a gap in the literature on political violence more generally. Zaryab Iqbal and Christopher Zorn lament in their paper 'The political consequences of assassination' that social scientists 'have paid relatively little attention to explaining assassination as a form of political violence, and even less to assessing its social and political consequences'. In Nigeria, where power is often personalized and the mechanisms to transfer power are often opaque and non-institutionalized, assassination and other types of targeted killings play a particularly important role, making the dearth of information on this type of violence all the more glaring. Reflecting on the country's history of targeted killings and assassinations, a 2009 op-ed published in news agency Sahara Reporters said, 'Obviously, Nigerians are accepting the situation as part and parcel of our day to day living, thus it is not unusual that when new about the assassination of a journalist, politician, businessman or just about any other Nigerian breaks on television or radio, people no longer cringe. We just shake our heads and move on.' The first step towards explaining a phenomenon lies in knowing its dimensions. To this end, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized crime created a dataset, Targeted Killings in Nigeria, 2000-2017, as a means of remedying these gaps. This data sought to document instances in which individuals were specifically targeted for violence. For the purposes of this report, the term 'targeted killings' is used to denote planned violence directed at an individual, which may not necessarily result in death. In this paper, 'targeted killing' therefore includes planned, fatal and non-fatal attacks on specifically targeted individuals. By analyzing newspaper reports from 2000 to 2017 using LexisNexis, and a small team of researchers and human coders, the Targeted Killings in Nigeria dataset has catalogued more than 1,650 targeted killings in Nigeria. Emerging from the dataset is the suggestion that criminality may be linked with targeted killings to a greater degree than with other forms of non-state, anti-state or violent organizations. Whereas the country's North East has been ravaged by Boko Haram, whose indiscriminate violence has claimed tens of thousands of lives, the region has seen comparatively few targeted killings. Conversely, the country's southern states, which are renowned for criminal activity, are where most targeted killings occur. The dataset suggests that the current configuration of power and authority in Nigeria, and particularly in the country's south, has resulted in staggering numbers of targeted killings, which require domestic and international policy attention. This report examines the patterns of targeted killings in Nigeria in an attempt to shed light on this oft-overlooked category of political violence, and to probe what historical, economic and social forces have contributed to the prevalence of this form of violence. The dataset also suggests that the country's return to democracy in 1999 did not herald an era of peace and stability, nor a shift away from criminality within the political sphere. The findings corroborate the idea that electoral freedom has been insufficient to comb through the tangled relationships between politicians, businessmen, criminals, civil servants, traditional leaders and the perpetration of violence. If this is the case, Nigeria is far from alone in experiencing a deeper entanglement of criminality with the state following the introduction or resumption of electoral freedom. Instances in which democratization has increased opportunities for criminal outfits have been noted elsewhere: in describing 'criminal politics', Nicholas Barnes notes that in many instances, 'the transition to democracy has also produced, not resolved, competitive state-building dynamics', offering as an example the development of the Russian mafia, whereby 'violent entrepreneurs - former military and public security officers - form(ed) their own criminal organizations and private protection firms that undermined the state's own monopoly of violence'. It is therefore entirely possible, though beyond the scope of this dataset, that the imperfect process of democratization, the shadowy workings of Nigerian political parties, and the demands of competition over votes in Nigeria may have contributed to the further entanglement of these various sectors and groups since the end of military rule in 1999. By documenting and assessing instances of targeted killings between 2000 and 2017, the Targeted Killings in Nigeria dataset is the first step towards assessing the prevalence and characteristics of targeted killings in Nigeria's Fourth Republic, and the data and findings lay a foundation for further study of criminality, corruption, governance and violence in modern Nigeria. Details: Geneva, Switzerland: The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2018. 39p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 18, 2018 at: https://globalinitiative.net/analyzing-trends-in-targeted-killings-in-nigeria/ Year: 2018 Country: Nigeria URL: https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/TGIATOC-Targeted-Kilings-in-Nigeria-Report-1975-web.pdf Shelf Number: 154066 Keywords: AssassinationCorruptionGraftKillingsNigeriaOrganized CrimePolitical ViolenceTargeted Killings |