When Separatists Secure the Homeland: The Neglected Role of Securitisation in Ethnonationalist Violence in Southeastern Nigeria

Abstract

The resurgent Biafran separatism in Nigeria has been analysed through three theoretical models: relative marginalisation; material deprivation; and state violence. These conventional perspectives, however cogent, are structure-based and sidestep the agency of Biafran separatists as ethnopolitical entrepreneurs who draw on ethnic fear to securitise the state, employ inflammatory language to mobilise their followers, and resort to emergency measures to stamp out perceived threats with the aim of establishing a state. I underscore the agency and political strategy of Biafran separatists and identify distinct causal pathways that do not fit well within the structure-based models conventionally applied to separatism in Nigeria. The aims and objectives of this article are twofold. First, I contribute to the existing literature on ethnonationalist conflicts in the southeast region by foregrounding political agency whilst transcending the structure-based explanations that neither capture nor comprehend the lifeworlds of political actors―that is, separatists―who contest the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence. Second, I contribute empirically to the broader literature on securitisation beyond the state by accentuating how non-state actors are not invariably passive receptacles of security discourses fashioned by state actors―presidents and prime ministers, for example―but active agents of securitisation in the face of perceived threats to societal security.