A counterbalance to the predominant study of Islam's role in social and political struggles, this book examines life in Ede, south-west Nigeria, offering important analyses of religious co-existence. Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since 9/11, religion has become an increasingly important factor of personal and group identification. Based on an African case study, this book calls for new ways of thinking about diversity that go "beyond religious tolerance". Focusing on the predominantly Muslim Yoruba town of Ede, the authors challenge the assumption that religious difference automatically leads to conflict: in south-west Nigeria, Muslims,Christians and traditionalists have co-existed largely peacefully since the early twentieth century. In some contexts, Ede's citizens emphasise the importance and significance of religious difference, and the need for tolerance.But elsewhere they refer to religious boundaries in passing, or even celebrate and transcend religious divisions. Drawing on detailed ethnographic and historical research, survey work, oral histories and poetry by UK- and Nigeria- based researchers, the book examines how Ede's citizens experience religious difference in their everyday lives. It examines the town's royal history and relationship with the deity Sango, its old Islamic compounds and itsChristian institutions, as well as marriage and family life across religious boundaries, to illustrate the multiplicity of religious practices in the life of the town and its citizens and to suggest an alternative approach to religious difference. INSA NOLTE is Reader in African Studies, University of Birmingham, and Visiting Research Professor, Osun State University, Osogbo. OLUKOYA OGEN is Former Provost, Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo,Professor of History, Osun State University, Osogbo, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow, University of Birmingham. REBECCA JONES, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Birmingham, is author of At the Crossroads: NigerianTravel Writing and Literary Culture in Yoruba and English, published by James Currey in 2019. All three editors worked on the ERC project 'Knowing Each Other: Everyday Religious Encounters, Social Identities and Tolerance in Southwest Nigeria'. Nigeria: Adeyemi College Academic Press (paperback)

Scholarly Research Paper from the year 2012 in the subject History - Africa, grade: none, - (Association of African Borderland Studies), course: African Borderland History, language: English, abstract: This study offers a compelling revision of the meagre Nigerian historiography on the Bakassi Peninsula. It argues that Nigeria's claim of ownership of the Peninsula is logically indefensible and historically unsustainable. It contends further that Efik irredentism which found its expression in Nigeria's attempt to forcefully annex the Bakassi Peninsula is based on historical claims that are in reality largely ahistorical. The study is of the opinion that Nigeria's occupation of, and attempts to exercise sovereignty over the Peninsula emanated from the predictable desire of the Nigerian ruling elite to appropriate Bakassi's abundant natural resources and the strategic advantage that the Peninsula holds for Nigeria's oil interests in the Gulf of Guinea. This study further analyses the border-cum-migration problematics that prevail in the Peninsula. It argues that patterns of migrant life rooted in historic and still functioning socio-cultural and economic networks persist in defiance equally of national and international agreements and political claims to ethnic solidarity. The study concludes that peace can only be guaranteed in the Bakassi Peninsula, and indeed in virtually all conflict prone African borderlands, if African governments respect the old 'glass houses rule' (i.e. the 1964 Cairo Declaration by the OAU) and acknowledge that colonial treaties and national borders, irrespective of their arbitrariness and artificiality, constitute the foundation of all modern African state structures.

A counterbalance to the predominant study of Islam's role in social and political struggles, this book examines life in Ede, south-west Nigeria, offering important analyses of religious co-existence. Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since 9/11, religion has become an increasingly important factor of personal and group identification. Based on an African case study, this book calls for new ways of thinking about diversity that go "beyond religious tolerance". Focusing on the predominantly Muslim Yoruba town of Ede, the authors challenge the assumption that religious difference automatically leads to conflict: in south-west Nigeria, Muslims,Christians and traditionalists have co-existed largely peacefully since the early twentieth century. In some contexts, Ede's citizens emphasise the importance and significance of religious difference, and the need for tolerance.But elsewhere they refer to religious boundaries in passing, or even celebrate and transcend religious divisions. Drawing on detailed ethnographic and historical research, survey work, oral histories and poetry by UK- and Nigeria- based researchers, the book examines how Ede's citizens experience religious difference in their everyday lives. It examines the town's royal history and relationship with the deity Sango, its old Islamic compounds and itsChristian institutions, as well as marriage and family life across religious boundaries, to illustrate the multiplicity of religious practices in the life of the town and its citizens and to suggest an alternative approach to religious difference. Insa Nolte is Reader in African Studies at the University of Birmingham, and Visiting Research Professor at Osun State University, Osogbo. She is President of the African Studies Association of the UK(2016-18) and Principal Investigator of the ERC project "Knowing Each Other: Everyday Religious Encounters, Social Identities and Tolerance in Southwest Nigeria". Olukoya Ogen is Provost of Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo; Professor of History at Osun State University, Osogbo; and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. He is the Nigerian coordinator of the "Knowing Each Other" project. Rebecca Jones is Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the "Knowing Each Other" project. Her book, A Cultural History of Nigerian Travel Writing, will be published by James Currey in 2017. Nigeria: Adeyemi College Academic Press (paperback)