The spate of violence, unrest, and outrage, which has roiled Nigeria in the past several weeks, has at its heart a prodigious wave of discontent now ominously finding expression through a twin-headed conduit - Boko Haram and Nigeria’s disgruntled plebeian class.

The collective force of the two stirred up nationwide protests, ground economic activities to a near-halt, paralyzed oil and energy industry, fuelled fears of sectarian strife and killed over 250 people in January alone. The fuse was first blown when President Goodluck Jonathan’s government announced a complete rollback of oil subsidies on January 1 as part of its efforts to rein in mounting national debt and boost the economy.

While the reform was a long-pending recommendation by the International Monetary Fund, the manner in which it was implemented wasn’t. Instead of rolling back oil subsidies in gradually introduced phases Jonathan’s government pulled the rug without warning. Fuel prices spiked overnight by 110% in a country where three fourth of the 160 million populace still lives under $2 a day. Nigerians exploded in collective fury.

In a fierce showdown with the government hundreds of angry protesters took to the streets in nationwide rallies, often threatening to turn violent, and subsequently prompting a military deployment. In unison trade unions across various sectors went on an industrial strike for over a week, the longest Africa’s second largest economy has ever seen, causing a loss of $1.2 billion to the national coffers.

About the same time, discontent of a different variety went on a spectacular display. Boko Haram, fast emerging as Nigeria’s indigenous Taliban, started the year with a bigger bang than it ended the previous one with. After killing nearly 40 people in multiple bombings on Christmas day, the radical Islamic sect launched a fresh wave of vicious attacks across the country in January killing hundreds, including 185 in Kano alone.

The rising frequency and ferocity of its violent campaign in the last two years has not only morphed Boko Haram into Nigeria’s immediate national security concern, the international community is shifting uneasily as well amid growing evidence the group shares ideological and spiritual links with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The attack on UN’s Nigerian headquarters in Abuja last August looked more sophisticated than any Boko Haram was ever known to have executed.

More worryingly, a recent UN report strongly suggests Boko Haram and Somalia’s al-Shabaab may have access to ”large quantities of weapons and ammunition from Libyan stockpiles” smuggled in to the Sahel region during Libya’s civil war.

This binary combination of turbulence does not bode well for Nigeria. For one, history is not on the side of its profoundly fractured society. Ethnic and religious crevasses, a legacy of its colonial past and the 1967 civil war that killed over a million people, run deep in Nigeria.

The Muslim-Christian divide in the country can be geographically mapped between a poor largely Muslim North and oil-rich mainly Christian South – a fault-line that bears a colossal impact on political, socio-economic and cultural spheres in Nigeria.

From power sharing arrangements to distribution of oil wealth and food production, the transactions between the North and the South are brittle and precariously exposed to mercurial religious sentiments. (Interestingly, a BBC survey in 2004 had found Nigeria to be the “most religious country in the world, with 90 percent of the population believing in God and willing to die for their respective religion.”)

Albeit, seven years late but Boko Haram came to understand the fragility of this balance and is now pounding on it with brutal force. The group, which condemns western education and rejects modern science including the Darwinian theory of evolution, upped its ante in 2009 after lurking on the fringe for several years since its foundation.

Boko Haram’s jihadi ideology in general and detestation for western influence in particular can be traced back to 100 years ago when Sokoto caliphate spread across what is now northern Nigeria fell under British control. However, its present objective is to dislodge the Nigerian government and establish a shariah-abiding Islamic state in its place.

It comes as no surprise then that the military campaign against ‘terrorist outfit’ Boko Haram authorized by President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the South, has come under sharp criticism in the North and is largely viewed as politically and religiously-motivated. His government has set aside a staggering 20 percent of the 2012 budget toward national security.

Arguably, Islamic Boko Haram’s resentment toward the Christians is also symbolically directed at their comparatively more prosperous Southern abode. As history has amply shown, inequalities, however miniscule, look amplified when viewed through a sectarian prism.

So how have a radical group and a popular backlash added up to become Nigeria’s latest quagmire? To connect the dots, recent popular outburst over oil subsidy is not entirely different from Boko Haram’s brand of disgruntlement. In many ways both upheavals are symptomatic of a deeper malaise that has beset Nigeria for decades.

Southern part of the country may score higher on socio-economic indices than the ‘marginalised’ North but Nigerians all across the country are growing weary of their venal political class, lack of opportunities, a deeply corrupt system and widening gulf between the haves and have-nots.

As Africa’s top oil producer, Nigeria has a daily output of nearly 2.5 million barrels of crude, which also accounts for 40% of the annual GDP. However, proceeds from the country’s vast oil exports are yet to trickle down to the lowest rung of the society especially in the poorer North, the home to Boko Haram and its sympathisers. According to UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report, over 80% of the Nigerians live in poverty in stark contrast with their country’s petro-dollar wealth.

The Nigerian government’s own official estimates put 22 percent of the population as unemployed, many of them with higher education degrees. Not surprisingly this is reflected in Boko Haram's rank and file; most of its recruits are university students and jobless graduates. Health, education and power sectors are equally moth-eaten and haven’t seen any substantial improvement in years, thus providing little in way of boosting common Nigerians’ quality of life.

In accordance with the economic policy recommendations, the Jonathan government rolled back oil subsidies, to the tune of $7.4 billion a year, arguing it would have eventually bankrupted the country. But all economic common sense aside, cheap fuel was the only comfort common Nigerians could count on. Now with that blessing half gone again, the country is only pushed back harder to the wall.

Things need to change in Nigeria. And soon. The behemoth of religious, political and economic grievances is growing larger by the day in this vibrant African nation. The anger bubbling right under the surface is already beginning to rekindle memories of the 1967 civil war.

If the scale of mass fury on display last month is any indication, Nigeria may well be brewing an indigenous version of Arab Spring in its courtyard.

The author is an independent researcher and writer