Moses Ochonu, Vanderbilt University

In this talk, Dr. Moses Ochonu, Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, will historicize the political, theological, and economic events and anxieties that produced the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria. He will deploy, as a structuring analytical device, the theological and polemical construct of munafunci (or hypoc­risy). Munafunci is a recurring trope in the rhetorical claims of Muslim reformers and other critics of political and religious orthodoxies in Northern Nigeria. He will use this grid of munafunci to interrogate the reformist impulses that have animated theological and political contests in Northern Nigerian society, contestations for space and power that prefigured the rise of Boko Haram.