The search for security in Muslim northern Nigeria

The article puts forwards the argument that there is a pervasive anxiety among Muslims over their security, both physical and spiritual, in today's northern Nigeria. It is an anxiety partly millenarian, partly political, that seeks to recreate a stronger sense of the 'core North' as dar al-Islam, with notionally 'closed' boundaries - just as it was in the pre-colonial Sokoto Caliphate. This has led first to the re-establishment, within twelve of Nigeria's 36 states, of full Shari 'a law and then to the formation of a sometimes large corps of hisba (wrongly called 'vigilantes') - this despite Nigeria having a constitution that both is secular and reserves to the federal government institutions like police and prisons. The article explores the various dimensions, past and present, of 'security' in Kano and ends with the problem of 'dual citizenship' where pious Muslims see themselves at the same time both as Nigerians and as members of the wider Islamic umma.