Horrendous killing of college sophomore highlights the country’s ethnoreligious fault line, but interdenominational rivalry in the south is of no less moment. All in all, reactions to the murder of Ms. Deborah Yakubu, a 200-level home economics student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, have exposed Nigeria’s deepest political fractures and lingering questions over citizenship, national identity, and secularity. On May 12, following disagreement over a WhatsApp voice note deemed to have been blasphemous against Islam and Prophet Muhammad, a mob comprising some of the twenty-two-year-old’s schoolmates brutally clubbed and stoned her to death, after which they proceeded to incinerate her body.

Last week’s gruesome murder of Deborah Yakubu, a home economics sophomore at the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto, comes at a time of escalating social and economic tension in Nigeria, and will most certainly raise the political stakes as the country enters electioneering season in preparation for next year’s presidential election.

Last week, Nigeria’s House of Representatives urged the Nigerian federal government to declare a state of emergency on the rising incidence of ritual killings in the country. Following a motion by its Deputy Minority Leader Toby Okechukwu, the country’s lower legislative chamber also called on the inspector general of police, Usman Alkali Baba, to “take urgent steps to increase surveillance and intelligence gathering with a view to apprehend and prosecute (sic) all perpetrators of ritual killings in Nigeria.”

This update represents violence in Nigeria and related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger from December 4 to December 10, 2021.

This update represents violence in Nigeria and related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger from October 30 to November 5, 2021.