Scary how easily Nigerians reach for death, for murder, for violent killing as the solution, as punishment for offences real and perceived. Once you oppose to offenders being killed (not in combat) you are seen to be supporting the offence. We are addicted to blood. To violence.

And it starts from our cultures, our communities. With very few exceptions our cultures are violent. Our lives are violent. Our religions express and sometimes practice such violence that you wonder if anything makes Nigerians happier than killing their enemies.

A thief steals a chicken we beat them to death. Regular people. Men. Women. Children. Church going. Mosque going. They join in. Strip the person naked. Beat them. Until they swell. And bleed. And die. And these killers go about their day. They live and work and love and sleep.

You do not even need a particularly violent religious ideology in Nigeria to be violent. Because terror is all we understand. It is the language we speak. Someone insults you? You ask your police or soldier boyfriend to go get them. And torture them. And destroy their property.

Someone bashes your car? You call your boys to come beat them to a pulp. You challenge soldiers? They return with tanks and shoot you your friends and your family and destroy your houses. A governor doesn't like you? He will personally drive a bulldozer over your house.

Do you know a policeman? That is how you settle all your quarrels. By locking people up and torturing them. And we are all complicit. Men. Women. Children. Christians. Muslims. So if a violent religious ideology finds Nigerians it finds a ready home. A perfect breeding ground.

Because in the absence of true justice we revert to the things that work: extra judicial killings, enforcing the laws of our gods, establishing violent control over those who do not worship our god and those who do not conform. In the absence of justice we have gods.

In the absence of a government that works religion has stepped in to provide order, to give hope, to promise justice. And when religion makes demands, we give back. Whether this means suppressing women or queer people or infidels; it can mean killing them.

And so we very quickly say let's kill. Kill kidnappers. We say let's kill Shias who dare to touch the chest of a general. Let's kill thieves, let's kill people who commit crimes, let's kill those who blaspheme (and yes I have added real and perceived crimes together).

Is there a violent strain of Wahhabism that has found a ready home in Nigeria? Without a doubt. But all across the country we practice such extreme forms of Violence on a day to day basis. Yes violent religious ideology is a different problem, but we share this bloodlust. We all.

Those of you who think your cultures are better than those who want to kill in the name of religion, think again. It is so easy to point fingers at that religion. That ideology. When you and your people will kill a human being just as easily. When you kill and go to bed.

We are a country where terror does the job that the state has failed to do. In our homes. In our churches. In our mosques and Islamiyyas. In our communities. In our government. Our army. Our police. We are a nation of murderers. Serial killers everywhere.

Not the same people who justified soldiers shooting nearly a thousand men women and children in December 2015 also screaming that they hate terrorist sympathizers. Not you who said they deserved to die because they are disruptive and "violent". We are a nation of hypocrites.

So yes we will talk about jihadi salafism and its effects on our society. But we will also talk about why it is very easy to spread this in Nigeria. We will talk about even the victims also being violent themselves. About the victims also having victims.

In a state like Kaduna people like me suffer the threat of violence from major groups all our lives. In "religious" riots. In being treated like a lesser human. In discrimination. But guess what? My ethnic group also attempts to lord it over smaller ones. And there are clashes.

I remember the 2011 when there was what was allegedly a reprisal attack in my village in Kaduna. Dozens, some say hundreds of Hausa Muslims were rounded up and by many accounts killed. Of course the argument was that our people have been killed for long. We died in Kaduna etc

When I wrote about that "reprisal" in Zonkwa my own people attacked me. My boss (also from SK at the time sent me a private message and asked who was paying me). I had written about visiting an IDP camp of mostly Muslims who fled Southern Kaduna and Zonkwa in particular.

But I have also written about the violence in general. And there is no way I can justify killing people whose only crime is being the same religion and ethnicity as those who kill you.
In the end it is a question of the failure of state. Nigeria has failed as a country. Woefully

So if you like call people terrorist sympathizers. It won't change anything. For as long as Nigeria fails to work, it will be easy to spread violent religious ideology. Because you know what? Nigeria has shown us that violence works. It gets results.

Where there is peace and development there can also be pockets of extremist views. But the spread of violent religious ideology on such a massive scale and to have so many identify with it, takes a failed country that gives its citizens nothing. So we retreat to enclaves.