At least over the last century, the world has been growing increasingly unstable in the social sense. Though so many forces have contributed to this, it is obvious that conflict and violence are a major part of the world’s reality. Since 2016, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been the epicentre of the world’s conflict, violence, and terror. In 2016, SSA was responsible for only 38% of the world’s violence-driven internal displacement. Since 2021, SSA is now home to at least a staggering 80.4% of the global share. Nigeria is generally seen as the major hotspot of SSA with the African state consistently placing among the world’s worst 3 countries in terms of deaths related to terror between 2015 and 2020. Since 2009, most of the conflict in Nigeria has been in the north-eastern region. In northern Nigeria, most of these incidents occur in open space. This includes farms, forests, and informal markets. This is where the typology of the informal market becomes a centrality of the study. At an estimated average put at 57.7% of the nation’s GDP, Nigeria has the third largest informal economy in the world coming behind Zimbabwe and Afghanistan. A majority of the country’s 217 million people rely on the informal sector for livelihood. This is primarily through the informal markets. There is therefore not only a social need for markets to be safe, but also an economic need as well. Over the past decade, conflict in the north has caused serious disruptions to markets in terms of food flow, market size, as well as trade within and outside the region. Spatial studies on conflict and violence in Nigeria have not been as robust and sophisticated as needed to sufficiently appraise the social developments. Markets have received even far less attention. When spatial studies of conflict are done in Nigeria, space is largely treated as material and insights derived are often devoid of deep appraisals of social phenomena. In the wake of the instability in the northern region, it is increasingly imperative to socio-spatially understand the vulnerability of certain spaces to conflict with the aim of informing better development decisions. With their high aggregation of people and their role in the informal economy, markets become a very important space in this regard.

Using a mixed methods approach of spatial analysis driven by ethnography; this thesis looks at the spatial impact of conflict and violence on markets in Northern Nigeria. Abuja—Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) is chosen as a primary city of study because it is the country’s capital. Also, due to the government’s presentation of it as an urban fortress, it has not been thoroughly investigated, with respect to conflict and violence. Abuja is also the center of power in Nigeria, and it plays a primary role in the narrative of conflict and violence in the country, especially in the leadership of defence and counter-violence. The study employs ethnographic and spatial data from the field to engage notions of conflict impact and vulnerability in Abuja markets. Spatial data is gotten from the following: government authorities, a full embedment as an actor in a market, and interviews across the city that include focus groups across two major markets strategically selected as cases. About 1641 interviews were physically conducted in Wuse and Nyanya markets. An extreme case comparison is also made with markets and spaces in Maiduguri, Borno state, a region that has been the epicentre of conflict and violence in Africa since 2009. Abuja is compared with data from 5110 physical interviews carried out in Maiduguri across all of its neighbourhoods during the time this study— the largest of its kind in city.

The study shows noticeable spatial variations of vulnerability across markets in Abuja, especially from spatial standpoints like boundaries, interstitiality, layout and social structure. It reveals a bias of government attention to markets in the city as opposed to the periphery. It is seen that the public perceive vulnerability in some similar ways to the markets and their actions in response are capable of impacting the socio-economic form of Abuja markets and the FCT at large. Findings also show that the contiguities of Abuja also pose additional threat to the FCT’s safety and under extreme cases, markets can see potential danger as the new normal, which can stagnate development efforts to increase resilience and security. For the first time, there is overwhelming evidence of not only the fact that Abuja is very vulnerable to conflict and violence, but also the ways in which the spatiality of its vulnerability is at play. The study presents practical formal and informal intervention pathways from the government and the community to sustainably develop Abuja markets. It argues that hybrid collaborations from the government and the community at various levels of policy is needed to reduce vulnerability in Abuja markets, and possibly eliminate violent attacks in the FCT as we know it.