ETHNIC and religious violence is often presented as an intractable problem, deeply rooted in ancient hatreds.
Either the pre-modern nature of the competing groups or ‘fundamentalism’ from one side or another tends to be cited as reason for the hatred. 
Yet in Africa this is not always true.
Hatred and conflict among Africans has not always resulted in natural differences between tribes.
Most ethnic and religious conflicts have their roots in colonialism.
The root causes are traced back to the Berlin Treaty of February 26, 1885 when the European imperialists carved up boundaries that divided territories inhabited by indigenous societies and lumped people together based on European interests.
Britain along with other European nations simply drew lines on the map, creating new political entities that had never existed before. 
Nigeria is one such entity which bears the brunt of colonialism and continues to suffer from effects of colonisation.
With a population of 174 million, Nigeria is home to over 250 ethnic groups, of which the largest are the Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba.
The country whose Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is US$590, 9 billion, the largest economy in Africa, has, however, been wracked by periodic episodes of ethnic and religious violence.
This year alone an insurgent group, Boko Haram has killed over 300 people in Nigeria.
Boko Haram has been fighting for six years to enforce Islamic law in all 36 states of Nigeria, which is roughly equally divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south.
When the British drew the map of what would become Nigeria, they lumped together people of radically different culture, language and religion for their own economic and political benefit.
They ignored clan and ethnic boundaries and exaggerated the conflict between the tribes as they did in Zimbabwe between the Ndebele and the Shona.
In January 1914 British Governor-General in Nigeria, Lord Frederick Lugard, forced 250 diverse and distant ethnic groups and two separate provinces into the single nation of Nigeria by combining the Northern Province protectorate which provided a security buffer against the French and the German colonies, and the Southern Province protectorate, which provided raw materials such as oil for export and revenue.
The amalgamation brought together these three main ethnic groups, the Hausa-Fulani from the Northern region, the Igbo from the Eastern region and the Yorubas from the Western region. 
The Hausa were Muslim and had a system of government that was relatively feudal. 
By contrast, the Yoruba and Igbo were mainly Christian and had a different and relatively modern system.
Igbos and the Yorubas sustained more economic and cultural interaction with the British.
Missionaries established Western educational institutions in the Southern protectorate.
Some children of the southern elite went to Great Britain to pursue higher education.
The disparities arising from differences between British treatment of the two provinces was pointed out by Sir Hugh Clifford, Governor General of Nigeria, who stated that while Southern Province Nigerians were educated, there was no Northern Province Nigerian who had been “sufficiently educated to enable him to fill the most minor clerical post in the office of any government department.”
By independence in 1960, regional differences were striking. 
But strangely, the British hoisted a political system that favoured the North.
The transition from the British to the Nigerian rule was programmed and supervised by the British who gave the North under Northern People’s Congress (NPC) a political advantage over the East and the West political zones.
The North was carved out to be bigger than East and West put together.
Hence, after the 1959 election, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, a Hausa-Fulani Muslim emerged the Prime Minister from the North (NPC), while Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe (NCNC), an Igbo and a Christian from the East, became the first Ceremonial President in Nigeria and Chief Obafemi Awolowo (AG), a Yoruba and a Christian from the West settled for the post of the Leader of Opposition.
By this political arrangement, it became obvious that the erstwhile colonial master left the West African country with politics defined along ethnic and religious lines.
This act marked the beginning of ethnic struggle for power in Nigeria.
Christian anxieties about Muslim domination of the national political space and the accompanying fear that politically dominant Muslims would use their privileged perch to Islamise national institutions and impose Islamic Sharia law on non-Muslims became rampant.
Muslims, especially those from Northern Nigeria, for their part, sought to fend off what they regard as ‘uncontrolled Westernisation’ and have sporadically sought refuge in parochial religious reforms.
The same ideology and values driving Boko Haram which is predominant in the North Eastern part of Nigeria in states like Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
Their fundamental ideology is “Western education is forbidden”.
They attack churches, mosques, schools, police stations and government, private and public owned facilities from the South. 
To compound the underlying ethnic hostilities, a British orchestrated controversial census in 1963, a disputed post-independence election in 1964, and explosive Western regional elections in 1965 eventually led to the Igbos in the South-east to secede from independent Nigeria.
They formed a new country they called Biafra. 
This led to the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970 which was fought between the self-declared secessionist and the independent government of Nigeria.
It resulted in between one and three million deaths.
And again Britain had a hand in the massacres.
The then Harold Wilson-government backed the Nigerian government all the way, arming its aggression and later apologising for its actions.
British officials feared that if Biafra, led by Odumegwu Ojukwu, were to secede many other regions in their vast African empire would too. 
The priorities for London were maintaining the unity of Nigeria for geo-political interests and protecting British oil interests. 
“Our direct interests are trade and investment, including an important stake by Shell/BP in the eastern Region,” the Foreign Office noted a few days before the outbreak of the war.
Shell/BP’s investments amounted to around 200 million British pounds, with other British investment in Nigeria accounting for a further 90 million British pounds.
Most of this oil was in the Biafra region.
In 1968 Britain sold Nigeria nine million British pounds worth of arms, six million British pounds of which was spent on small arms.
British officials consistently justified their arms supply by saying that if they stopped, the Russians would fill the gap.
Religious animosities grew from that tragic episode of Nigerian history.
Clashes between Muslim groups mainly ethnic Hausa and Fula and Christian Yoruba and Igbo and traditionalist communities have since become a monthly affair, with devastating consequences.