From Civil Disobedience to Separatism: Democratization as a Catalyst of Neo-Biafran Conflict in Nigeria (1999 to Present)

The Nigerian civil war (1967 – 1970) ended with a decisive victory by the Nigerian federal government against the separatist southeastern region of Biafra, but it left two complex legacies: First, it solidified the political role of the Nigerian military, resulting in nearly three decades of successive military regimes; second, it ended with a de jure effort to reintegrate the formerly separatist southeast that nonetheless saw significant de facto political marginalization of the Igbo people of that region. When Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999, long-repressed neo-Biafran sentiments reemerged and a new class of activists took up the cause of self-determination, with civil disobedience eventually transforming into militancy as activists and successive Nigerian governments became caught in a cycle of violent escalation. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in southeastern Nigeria and interviews with key actors, this paper examines how Nigeria’s democratic transition paradoxically paved the way for renewed separatist conflict at precisely the moment that Nigerians had the highest hopes for a political system that would accommodate ethnic self-expression. This paper shows how democratization instead proved to be a double-edged sword: While the 1999 transition removed many of the barriers to collective action that had existed under military regimes and raised expectations among the Igbo community about their political fortunes in the new electoral system, the transition did not fundamentally erase many of the “authoritarian vestiges” (Loxton, 2021) of military rule. Instead, the elite bargain behind the 1999 transition merely subordinated the military to a degree of civilian oversight without changing the broader authoritarian culture of violence within the Nigerian state. Furthermore, while democratization did not give the ordinary citizen as much voice in their government as hoped, it created a hyper-competitive political environment for elites who, if successful in elections, could redistribute state resources in a prebendal fashion (Joseph, 1987). These factors combined to produce a highly disjointed state response to increasingly vocal forms of dissent after 1999, including the neo-Biafran separatists. New civilian political elites in the southeast sponsored neo-Biafran activists as a means of securing power in the highly cutthroat electoral environment, even as the federal government drew from the former playbook of military rule, repressing these activists in a draconian, indiscriminate fashion. This resulted in both wider popular grievances among the Igbo population as well as new forms of political patronage that would-be insurgents could draw on, lowering the opportunity costs of conflict, which eventually emerged by 2020. This paper adds to our understanding of regime transitions and the nexus between political liberalization and political violence, particularly in the Global South. By focusing on the ways in which the elite bargains that typically underpin regime transitions can impede full democratization and the development of accountable institutions, the case of Nigeria underscores that moments of liberalization can heighten the risks of political violence as surging popular expectations run headlong into a new, insecure regime characterized by authoritarian vestiges.