Competing prayers: the making of a Nigerian urban landscape

Abstract

While Christians are seen as aspiring to make the Nigerian city of Jos into a Christian city, Muslims are believed to be trying to turn Jos into a Muslim city. There is a struggle over the urban landscape that is being fought most significantly on the ground through attempts to erase the presence of the other — the traces of their activities — at the same time as asserting one's own. Jos's urban landscape has materialised as an intrinsic part of the city's conflicts. Embedded in it are people's fears, wishes and prayers for the future, and violence is more often directed at these and the landscape itself — the body of the city — than at people's physical bodies. Fought with tools such as burning down buildings, renaming areas, praying in the street, using loudspeakers, clothes, roadblocks and signboards, it is a battle over what is present and absent in the urban scenery.