Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

Several experiences in Africa in recent times, from the religious to the socio-cultural, have threatened the value of life. The timeline of the deadly attacks of the Boko Haram insurgents and other religious crises in Nigeria and her bordering countries during the last ten years is alarming. These crises, religious, ethnic and political, have led to the loss of property, and above all, a decline in the value of human life. Navigating from the religious to the political scene reveals even more. The 1966-67 genocide orchestrated by the military and political figures against Biafra during the Biafra-Nigeria War, has had great implications for Igbo migration since the end of the Civil War. The Asaba massacre, Onitsha Apostolic Church massacre, rapes, etc., are evidences of how wanton crimes were committed against humanity in Biafra. Again, on November 20th 1999, the President of Nigeria ordered the invasion and subsequent destruction of Odi community in Bayelsa State by the soldiers of the Nigerian Army. It was an invasion that was genocidal and a gross violation of the rights of the victims, principally to life. The question raised and attended to in this piece is the implications of these religious, ethnic and political crises on migration. The methods of research employed in this paper is the historical and hermeneutic methods of investigation. The paper found out that migration, in Nigeria especially, as in many parts of Africa, is strongly connected to religious and political violence.

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