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Sub-Saharan Africa

A Christmas nightmare averted: lessons from the 2009 ’underwear bomber’

By experts and staff

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  • John Campbell
    Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies
People gather to pray at a mass grave for the victims of religious riots, in Nigeria’s central city of Jos December 27, 2010. (Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

In Nigeria, as elsewhere in Africa, religion is a central identity for a large part of the population along with ethnicity. Both are likely to play a significant role in Nigeria’s April 2011 presidential elections.

In this article I did for the Washington Post’s “On Faith,” I analyze Christian-Muslim conflict in Nigeria on the anniversary of Abdulmutallab’s efforts to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.