LAGOS – Nigeria had long been plagued by problems associated ethno-religious and political backgrounds going centuries before its British colonizers brought the Hausa-speaking people of the North into a union with the equally diverse peoples of the South through the 1914 Amalgamation.

"What I see is present and clear danger ahead of this nation, now fragmented along ethnic and religious line more than it has ever been," Sylvester Odion-Akhaine, security expert and director of Center for Constitutionalism and Demilitarization (CENCOD), told IslamOnline.

"Nations with such problem hardly escapes splitting."

The recent killings in Jos, a city sitting between the Muslim North and Christian South, have ratcheted up ethno-religious tension in Africa's most populous country.

Nigerian Muslims Condemn Jos Massacres

Investigating Jos Ethnic Tensions Roots

"We No Longer Sleep"

Nearly 109 people, mostly women and children, were reportedly killed by Hausa-Fulani Muslims in attacks on three Christian villages inhabited mainly by the native Beroms on the outskirt of Jos.

Police and others say the attacks were reprisal for the massacre and stuffing into wells of hundreds of Muslims by Christian mobs in January.

The latest fatalities add to the tally of thousands who have already perished in the country in the last decade due to religious and political frictions.

"I bet you that the killings in Jos are a dangerous signal for the unity of this country because it has gotten to a stage where each side, the so-called natives and settlers, now plot how to exterminate the other without security agents able to ward off imminent attacks," says Odion-Akhaine.

Some voices have already started hinting at the possible disintegration of Nigeria, a multi-religious society with 50 percent of the population Muslims and 40 percent Christians.

"If this political experiment called Nigeria is not working, can’t there be a negotiated, peaceful way of allowing those who want to opt out of the union to do so?" Ikechukwu Amaechi, a prominent Christian newspaper columnist, wrote last week.

"It is not compulsory that this must be one country."

A union of the Muslim North and largely Christian south was forcefully imposed on the different peoples of the areas in 1914.

Worrying

Census Ekpu, a former commissioner and security expert, believes Nigeria is on the verge of collapse.

"My assessment of the Jos crisis is that the minority Beroms see the Hausa Fulanis as a threat, so they don’t feel safe," he told IOL.

"They interpret whatever steps of the herdsmen, however innocuous, in the negative sense. This is a sign of imminent breakup, God forbid."

Ekpu warns that this cat-and-mouse relation is a recipe for future clashes which could force ethnic nationalities in the country to go their way.

Odion-Akhaine, a security expert, says the country's problems are not limited to Jos, making the situation more precarious.

He cites the insurgency in the oil-rich Delta and clashes over land and threats of secession by Igbo-speaking people in the country’s Southeastern region.

"All these pointed to failure of state institution and resort to self-help, which, God help us, may tear the country apart."

The US State Department predicted in a bulletin of 2005 the possible balkanization of Nigeria, listing persistent ethno-religious violence as one factor.

Experts say the location of Jos makes the crisis there particularly worrying.

Sitting between the Muslim North and largely Christian South, the crisis on the Plateau has ratcheted up the tension and provoked finger-pointing and calls for the different peoples to go their separate ways.

"The crisis all over Nigeria is ethnic-based and it has never been managed by the political leadership," says Dr. Dipo Fashina, a senior lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), one of the country’s influential ivory towers.

"It is the same dynamics of ethnicity that is happening at the level of politics. Religion has little or nothing to do with it," he contends.

"So I’m afraid that the persistent clashes in Jos are moving the country closer to the precipice, because it now creates a scenario where you see yourself as a Berom and your neighbor as a Hausa-Fulani man, rather than see yourselves as Nigerians."

Nasir Kura, a top Northern civil rights campaigner and expert on ethnic-related issue, believes the crisis is one of nationhood and citizenship.

"I see it as a serious crisis, but one that could be resolved with sincerity of purpose. I don’t see it as irreconcilable difference," he told IOL.

"The people could be reconciled, because the issue involved has an answer in constitutionalism.

"But I must point out that it threatens the unity of Nigeria, because it is part of leadership crisis we are talking about, which must be resolved urgently before it tears apart the entire country."