When Maps Create Conflict: State Formation, Indigeneity, and Borderland Violence in Nigeria.

Abstract

Maps have produced conflict wherever administrative lines have cut through lived human geographies, from the partition of South Asia to the internal borders of post-colonial Africa. This article examines that phenomenon through two Nigerian border corridors, drawing on fieldwork comprising key informant interviews and focus group discussions in the Vandeikya-Obudu and Konshisha-Yala communities, alongside process-tracing of colonial and post-colonial boundary decisions. Integrating territoriality theory and the concept of structural violence, it argues that borderland residents are governed simultaneously by four competing orders of belonging: civic, statist, customary, and indigeneity-based. Where these orders collide over boundary lines, as in Vandeikya-Obudu, conflict is recurrent but containable; where they collide over identity, as in Konshisha-Yala, violence produces displacement and exclusion. Community-rooted peace mechanisms outperform state security responses but cannot substitute for boundary and citizenship reform. The article recommends residency-based citizenship, participatory demarcation, and institutionalised borderland peace committees.