P F Ejiofor
Biographic Data
| ID | 55183 |
|---|---|
| NAME | P F Ejiofor |
| GIVEN NAMES | P F |
| FAMILY NAME | Ejiofor |
| SIGNATURE | EJIOFOR P F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4276-1460 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Gendercide and terrorism studies
Despite the centrality of gendercide against non-combatant males to terrorists’ aim of achieving political, religious, military, and ideological objectives, the phenomenon has received minimal attention in terrorism studies. Whereas terrorism researchers have underscored that non-combatant males are subjected to gender-based violence in the specific form of sexual violence, the limitation of gender-based violence to sexual violence forecloses us …
Igbophobia as Racism
Igbophobia―the racialization of people of Igbo descent―remains pervasive in Nigerian society but is often mischaracterized as tribalism. We contend that framing it as tribalism obscures and trivializes its structural and racialized dimensions. Drawing on critical insights from ethnic studies, we reconceptualize Igbophobia as a virulent racism that dehumanizes/maltreats people of Igbo descent particularly along biological, economic, and political …
Ethnopopulism and genocidal eliminationism
Scholars have written extensively on the link between ethnonationalism and genocide, but, so far, little has been written about how populism factors into genocidal violence. In this article, we theorise the link between ethnopopulist discourse and genocide. We begin by arguing that ethnopopulism is a tripartite sovereigntist discourse that elevates the ethnic nation as the ‘true’; or ‘authentic’ sovereign, rejects ‘penetrated’ sovereignties such …
Climate Change and Cultural Security in the Postcolony
When Separatists Secure the Homeland
The masculine threat
Conflict scholars have long underscored that gendercide against noncombatant males manifests in contexts of warfare and contended that this stems from gendered threat perceptions which posit men as potential threats in conflicts. It is contended that this gendered threat perception engenders the elimination of noncombatant males as a military tactic to eliminate competition from opponent-enemy forces. We build on and broaden this literature on ge…
The Forest of Reasons
Broken Communities
Why do some pastoralists join bandit groups in Nigeria? This conundrum is yet to be explored in the emerging scholarly literature on pastoral banditry in Nigeria's troubled northwest region. Whereas the upsurge in pastoralist‐related banditry has been predominantly explicated with the theoretical frameworks of ungoverned spaces and relative deprivation, the role of structural violence in some pastoralists' decision to become bandits has not recei…
From conflict to cooperation
Farmer-herder conflicts have generated extensive scholarly interest across the West African region, with scholars exploring their incipience, escalation levels, and de-escalation strategies. These conflicts remain prevalent and are becoming more sophisticated and lethal as time unfolds. Yet, studies have paid relatively little attention to how farmer-herder conflict resolution processes could be decentralised, democratised, and anchored through i…
Dread in the Homeland
The revival of Biafran separatism in contemporary Nigeria is often explained with three leading theoretical frameworks: relative deprivation, political economy and state repression. Whereas relative deprivation and political economy perspectives posit that the resurgent separatism derives from the perception and empirical reality of socioeconomic deprivation amongst Igbos, the state repression perspective maintains that the state's repression of …
Accumulation by/for terrorism
The proliferation of terrorist groups in the northwest region has compounded the security crises in Nigeria as security personnel are deployed across the state in an attempt to halt the violent activities of the terrorists and to restore peace to local communities. Existing scholarly literature on terrorism in the northwest region has predominantly focused on excavating the root causes or sources of the security conundrum or on the consequences o…
Multipastism
Despite the prevalence of anti-Muslim discrimination in parts of Africa, the two predominant conceptualisations of Islamophobia are problematically Eurocentric and pay little attention to manifestations of the phenomenon in Africa. On the one hand, the cultural racism model theorises Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism which began in Europe with the Christian Crusades against Muslims before being exported elsewhere. On the other hand, the g…
Social Exclusion and Radicalisation in the Context of Resource Conflicts
Existing research on farmer-herder conflicts across the Sahel has predominantly focused on their causes or consequences as well as the broader economic, security, and social implications. However, a significant gap remains in understanding how these conflicts prompt exclusionary practices which can foster radicalisation among both smallholders and Fulbe herders. This study employs a narrative design, utilising interviews and focus group discussio…
Out of the West
Cultural racism - the racialisation of groups with culturalist arguments - is a somewhat universal phenomenon that exists in virtually all multi-cultural societies in the world. However, the concept has been predominantly defined as the racialisation of hitherto racialised non-whites by whites in Western societies. It is typically argued that cultural racism has supplanted biological racism as appeals are now made not so much to real or imputed b…
Hobsbawm on rebellion in the postcolony
Nigeria’s northwest geopolitical zone is increasingly bedevilled by banditry perpetrated, in part, by aggrieved pastoralists. Pastoralist participation in banditry has been characteristically analysed using theoretical frameworks that portend their violent activities – kidnapping, cattle raiding and murder – as ordinary crimes deriving from ungoverned spaces and socioeconomic deprivation. While such theoretical outlooks shed light on the nature o…
In pursuit of statehood
Since Nigeria’s return to democratic governance in 1999, there have been renewed calls―predominantly amongst ethnic Igbos in southeast Nigeria―for the restoration of the defunct secessionist state of Biafra. The resurgent Biafran separatism has been explored through the prisms of relative marginalisation and material deprivation. However, some scholars have drifted away from dominant discussions on the rationale behind the re‐emergence of the sec…
Ethnic cosmopolitanism, cultural identity and conflict dynamics in the Kusaug Traditional Area of Northern Ghana
This study investigates the perceptions of ethnicity and their impact on conflict dynamics and cultural identity with the aim of proposing a pathway towards the building of an ethnic cosmopolitan worldview for peaceful coexistence. The research adopted a qualitative methodological approach with interviews and focus group discussions involving 50 purposively sampled participants from the Kusaasi, Mamprusi, Mossi, Busanga, and Hausa ethnic groups r…
Long-distance nationalism, diaspora mobilisation, and the struggle for Biafran self-determination in Nigeria
Existing works on the sources of secessionist agitations in postcolonial Africa tend to be methodologically nationalist but also circumvent the diasporic dimension. Particularly, the resurgent ethnic separatism amongst Igbos in southeastern Nigeria has been predominantly analysed from the theoretical standpoints of relative marginalisation and material deprivation that focus on domestic politics in post-war Nigeria. We broaden this literature by …
Decolonising Islamophobia
The predominant conception of Islamophobia defines it as anti-Muslim racism. The consequence of this rather narrow characterisation is that Islamophobia is treated as a Western conundrum—that is, as a form of racism in Western societies—that affects Muslim immigrants from non-Western—Arab, Asian, and African—societies. I contend that whilst the conception of Islamophobia as racism is germane to Western societies, it is hardly universalisable not …
The parochialism of compound racism framework in Islamophobia studies
AcknowledgementI am grateful to Professor Graham Denyer Willis at the University of Cambridge for his comments on a draft.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)
Anti-Muslim tribalism
One of the leading interpretations of Islamophobia in Europe is anti-Muslim racism. Scholars who conceptualize Islamophobia as a form of racism typically draw on the theoretical framework of cultural racism to contend that Muslims in Europe are discriminated against not only on the basis of religion and culture, but also on the basis of physical features or ancestry. This strand of contention is based on the fact that most Muslims in Europe are n…
Criminal Enterprise
Since 2011, criminal activities of armed bandits in Northwest Nigeria have skyrocketed with enormous impact on lives and livelihoods. In the first seven months of 2019, the Nigerian government recorded over 330 attacks from armed bandits that resulted in the death of about 1,460 civilians. This briefing paper-which draws on relative deprivation theory- provides an account of the increasing cases of rampant banditry in the region, focusing on the …
Beyond Ungoverned Spaces
The emergence of criminal groups—“armed bandits” in the local parlance—in the northwest geopolitical zone has compounded the security conundrums in Nigeria. The dominant explanation for the ongoing banditry draws on the “ungoverned spaces” theoretical framework to contend that the phenomenon is a by-product of the state’s abject failure to monopolize violence over its territory. The failure on the part of the state to impose order on its territor…
Jewishness without Jews? Ontological Security, Ethnonationalism, and the Social Power of Analogical Reasoning in Postcolonial Nigeria
Why do Igbo nationalists subscribe to the view that Igbos are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel and thus descend from Jewish people despite evidence against such genealogical and cultural ties? This problematic is largely underexplored in the copious literature on ethnonationalist agitations in Nigeria. Drawing on ontological security theory, I contend that Igbo nationalists employ the analogy of Jewishness to posit the Igbo as a unique ethnorelig…
We don't have anything
Since 2011, the Sahel has been bedevilled by insecurity spawned by communal strife, social fragmentation, and religious extremism. Some of the security conundrums in the region are perpetrated by some pastoralists who have turned criminals and established strong ties with terrorist groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Boko Haram. Whi…
Fulanis are foreign terrorists’
Whilst the triggers of the peasant-pastoralist conflicts in the Sahel region have been explained through factors such as climate change, environmental scarcity, population pressures, urbanisation, political ecology, and the failure of traditional negotiation mechanisms, less scholarly attention has been given to the narratives that draw on history to categorise the Fulani as a potentially dangerous ethnoreligious group and how such narratives mak…
Beyond Ungoverned Spaces
The emergence of criminal groups—“armed bandits” in the local parlance—in the northwest geopolitical zone has compounded the security conundrums in Nigeria. The dominant explanation for the ongoing banditry draws on the “ungoverned spaces” theoretical framework to contend that the phenomenon is a by-product of the state’s abject failure to monopolize violence over its territory. The failure on the part of the state to impose order on its territor…
Long-distance nationalism, diaspora mobilisation, and the struggle for Biafran self-determination in Nigeria
Existing works on the sources of secessionist agitations in postcolonial Africa tend to be methodologically nationalist but also circumvent the diasporic dimension. Particularly, the resurgent ethnic separatism amongst Igbos in southeastern Nigeria has been predominantly analysed from the theoretical standpoints of relative marginalisation and material deprivation that focus on domestic politics in post-war Nigeria. We broaden this literature by …
Ethnopopulism and genocidal eliminationism
Scholars have written extensively on the link between ethnonationalism and genocide, but, so far, little has been written about how populism factors into genocidal violence. In this article, we theorise the link between ethnopopulist discourse and genocide. We begin by arguing that ethnopopulism is a tripartite sovereigntist discourse that elevates the ethnic nation as the ‘true’; or ‘authentic’ sovereign, rejects ‘penetrated’ sovereignties such …
The Fear of Ethnic Domination
Peasant-pastoralist conflicts are prevalent in postcolonial Africa—especially in the Sahel. Typically confined to rural areas, these conflicts have taken on ethnic, religious, and regional dimensions, engendering food and human insecurity as well as paralysing economic development in weak African states with fragile democratic experiments. Whilst volumes explaining the causes and consequences of the conflicts through environmental security and po…
In pursuit of statehood
Since Nigeria’s return to democratic governance in 1999, there have been renewed calls―predominantly amongst ethnic Igbos in southeast Nigeria―for the restoration of the defunct secessionist state of Biafra. The resurgent Biafran separatism has been explored through the prisms of relative marginalisation and material deprivation. However, some scholars have drifted away from dominant discussions on the rationale behind the re‐emergence of the sec…
We don't have anything
Since 2011, the Sahel has been bedevilled by insecurity spawned by communal strife, social fragmentation, and religious extremism. Some of the security conundrums in the region are perpetrated by some pastoralists who have turned criminals and established strong ties with terrorist groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Boko Haram. Whi…
When Separatists Secure the Homeland
The Forest of Reasons
Hobsbawm on rebellion in the postcolony
Nigeria’s northwest geopolitical zone is increasingly bedevilled by banditry perpetrated, in part, by aggrieved pastoralists. Pastoralist participation in banditry has been characteristically analysed using theoretical frameworks that portend their violent activities – kidnapping, cattle raiding and murder – as ordinary crimes deriving from ungoverned spaces and socioeconomic deprivation. While such theoretical outlooks shed light on the nature o…
The parochialism of compound racism framework in Islamophobia studies
AcknowledgementI am grateful to Professor Graham Denyer Willis at the University of Cambridge for his comments on a draft.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)
Criminal Enterprise
Since 2011, criminal activities of armed bandits in Northwest Nigeria have skyrocketed with enormous impact on lives and livelihoods. In the first seven months of 2019, the Nigerian government recorded over 330 attacks from armed bandits that resulted in the death of about 1,460 civilians. This briefing paper-which draws on relative deprivation theory- provides an account of the increasing cases of rampant banditry in the region, focusing on the …
Jewishness without Jews? Ontological Security, Ethnonationalism, and the Social Power of Analogical Reasoning in Postcolonial Nigeria
Why do Igbo nationalists subscribe to the view that Igbos are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel and thus descend from Jewish people despite evidence against such genealogical and cultural ties? This problematic is largely underexplored in the copious literature on ethnonationalist agitations in Nigeria. Drawing on ontological security theory, I contend that Igbo nationalists employ the analogy of Jewishness to posit the Igbo as a unique ethnorelig…
Fulanis are foreign terrorists’
Whilst the triggers of the peasant-pastoralist conflicts in the Sahel region have been explained through factors such as climate change, environmental scarcity, population pressures, urbanisation, political ecology, and the failure of traditional negotiation mechanisms, less scholarly attention has been given to the narratives that draw on history to categorise the Fulani as a potentially dangerous ethnoreligious group and how such narratives mak…
The Fear of Ethnic Domination
Peasant-pastoralist conflicts are prevalent in postcolonial Africa—especially in the Sahel. Typically confined to rural areas, these conflicts have taken on ethnic, religious, and regional dimensions, engendering food and human insecurity as well as paralysing economic development in weak African states with fragile democratic experiments. Whilst volumes explaining the causes and consequences of the conflicts through environmental security and po…
Boko Haram, Women, and Suicide Bombing in the Lake Chad Region
The future of humanity
With the recent advancements in scientific comprehension of genetics and the decipherment of complex techniques for editing human genomes, liberal eugenics—eugenic ideal premised on the liberal values of autonomy and pluralism that leaves reproductive choices to parents rather than anachronistic statist authoritarian interventions—has inevitably become a polarising conundrum in contemporary liberal societies as to its utility and destructiveness.…
Beyond Ungoverned Spaces
The emergence of criminal groups—“armed bandits” in the local parlance—in the northwest geopolitical zone has compounded the security conundrums in Nigeria. The dominant explanation for the ongoing banditry draws on the “ungoverned spaces” theoretical framework to contend that the phenomenon is a by-product of the state’s abject failure to monopolize violence over its territory. The failure on the part of the state to impose order on its territor…
Jewishness without Jews? Ontological Security, Ethnonationalism, and the Social Power of Analogical Reasoning in Postcolonial Nigeria
Why do Igbo nationalists subscribe to the view that Igbos are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel and thus descend from Jewish people despite evidence against such genealogical and cultural ties? This problematic is largely underexplored in the copious literature on ethnonationalist agitations in Nigeria. Drawing on ontological security theory, I contend that Igbo nationalists employ the analogy of Jewishness to posit the Igbo as a unique ethnorelig…
We don't have anything
Since 2011, the Sahel has been bedevilled by insecurity spawned by communal strife, social fragmentation, and religious extremism. Some of the security conundrums in the region are perpetrated by some pastoralists who have turned criminals and established strong ties with terrorist groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Boko Haram. Whi…
Decolonising Islamophobia
The predominant conception of Islamophobia defines it as anti-Muslim racism. The consequence of this rather narrow characterisation is that Islamophobia is treated as a Western conundrum—that is, as a form of racism in Western societies—that affects Muslim immigrants from non-Western—Arab, Asian, and African—societies. I contend that whilst the conception of Islamophobia as racism is germane to Western societies, it is hardly universalisable not …
The parochialism of compound racism framework in Islamophobia studies
AcknowledgementI am grateful to Professor Graham Denyer Willis at the University of Cambridge for his comments on a draft.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)
Anti-Muslim tribalism
One of the leading interpretations of Islamophobia in Europe is anti-Muslim racism. Scholars who conceptualize Islamophobia as a form of racism typically draw on the theoretical framework of cultural racism to contend that Muslims in Europe are discriminated against not only on the basis of religion and culture, but also on the basis of physical features or ancestry. This strand of contention is based on the fact that most Muslims in Europe are n…
Criminal Enterprise
Since 2011, criminal activities of armed bandits in Northwest Nigeria have skyrocketed with enormous impact on lives and livelihoods. In the first seven months of 2019, the Nigerian government recorded over 330 attacks from armed bandits that resulted in the death of about 1,460 civilians. This briefing paper-which draws on relative deprivation theory- provides an account of the increasing cases of rampant banditry in the region, focusing on the …
Hobsbawm on rebellion in the postcolony
Nigeria’s northwest geopolitical zone is increasingly bedevilled by banditry perpetrated, in part, by aggrieved pastoralists. Pastoralist participation in banditry has been characteristically analysed using theoretical frameworks that portend their violent activities – kidnapping, cattle raiding and murder – as ordinary crimes deriving from ungoverned spaces and socioeconomic deprivation. While such theoretical outlooks shed light on the nature o…
In pursuit of statehood
Since Nigeria’s return to democratic governance in 1999, there have been renewed calls―predominantly amongst ethnic Igbos in southeast Nigeria―for the restoration of the defunct secessionist state of Biafra. The resurgent Biafran separatism has been explored through the prisms of relative marginalisation and material deprivation. However, some scholars have drifted away from dominant discussions on the rationale behind the re‐emergence of the sec…
Ethnic cosmopolitanism, cultural identity and conflict dynamics in the Kusaug Traditional Area of Northern Ghana
This study investigates the perceptions of ethnicity and their impact on conflict dynamics and cultural identity with the aim of proposing a pathway towards the building of an ethnic cosmopolitan worldview for peaceful coexistence. The research adopted a qualitative methodological approach with interviews and focus group discussions involving 50 purposively sampled participants from the Kusaasi, Mamprusi, Mossi, Busanga, and Hausa ethnic groups r…
Long-distance nationalism, diaspora mobilisation, and the struggle for Biafran self-determination in Nigeria
Existing works on the sources of secessionist agitations in postcolonial Africa tend to be methodologically nationalist but also circumvent the diasporic dimension. Particularly, the resurgent ethnic separatism amongst Igbos in southeastern Nigeria has been predominantly analysed from the theoretical standpoints of relative marginalisation and material deprivation that focus on domestic politics in post-war Nigeria. We broaden this literature by …
Climate Change and Cultural Security in the Postcolony
When Separatists Secure the Homeland
The masculine threat
Conflict scholars have long underscored that gendercide against noncombatant males manifests in contexts of warfare and contended that this stems from gendered threat perceptions which posit men as potential threats in conflicts. It is contended that this gendered threat perception engenders the elimination of noncombatant males as a military tactic to eliminate competition from opponent-enemy forces. We build on and broaden this literature on ge…
The Forest of Reasons
Broken Communities
Why do some pastoralists join bandit groups in Nigeria? This conundrum is yet to be explored in the emerging scholarly literature on pastoral banditry in Nigeria's troubled northwest region. Whereas the upsurge in pastoralist‐related banditry has been predominantly explicated with the theoretical frameworks of ungoverned spaces and relative deprivation, the role of structural violence in some pastoralists' decision to become bandits has not recei…
From conflict to cooperation
Farmer-herder conflicts have generated extensive scholarly interest across the West African region, with scholars exploring their incipience, escalation levels, and de-escalation strategies. These conflicts remain prevalent and are becoming more sophisticated and lethal as time unfolds. Yet, studies have paid relatively little attention to how farmer-herder conflict resolution processes could be decentralised, democratised, and anchored through i…
Dread in the Homeland
The revival of Biafran separatism in contemporary Nigeria is often explained with three leading theoretical frameworks: relative deprivation, political economy and state repression. Whereas relative deprivation and political economy perspectives posit that the resurgent separatism derives from the perception and empirical reality of socioeconomic deprivation amongst Igbos, the state repression perspective maintains that the state's repression of …
Accumulation by/for terrorism
The proliferation of terrorist groups in the northwest region has compounded the security crises in Nigeria as security personnel are deployed across the state in an attempt to halt the violent activities of the terrorists and to restore peace to local communities. Existing scholarly literature on terrorism in the northwest region has predominantly focused on excavating the root causes or sources of the security conundrum or on the consequences o…
Multipastism
Despite the prevalence of anti-Muslim discrimination in parts of Africa, the two predominant conceptualisations of Islamophobia are problematically Eurocentric and pay little attention to manifestations of the phenomenon in Africa. On the one hand, the cultural racism model theorises Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism which began in Europe with the Christian Crusades against Muslims before being exported elsewhere. On the other hand, the g…
Social Exclusion and Radicalisation in the Context of Resource Conflicts
Existing research on farmer-herder conflicts across the Sahel has predominantly focused on their causes or consequences as well as the broader economic, security, and social implications. However, a significant gap remains in understanding how these conflicts prompt exclusionary practices which can foster radicalisation among both smallholders and Fulbe herders. This study employs a narrative design, utilising interviews and focus group discussio…
Political science (23 works) · Law (21 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Politics (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (11 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Criminology (8 works) · Geography (8 works) · Economics (7 works)