Far from sinking into atrophy with the rise of modernisation, as foretold by the secularisation thesis, the deepening influence of religion has remained visible in the modern world, as evidenced by epochal events such as the Islamic revolution in Iran, the rise of liberation theology in Latin America, the fall of Communism, the 9/11 attacks and the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The continued salience of religious political parties and radical religious sects across the world, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, Jama'at-i-Islami in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'Awati Wal-Jihad in Africa's Lake Chad Basin region, and, more recently, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, demonstrates that religion today is a product of modernity as well as a response to it. Olufemi Vaughan's Religion and the Making of Nigeria is a salutary reminder of this point, revisiting, as it ably does, the longue durée of religious movements and their adaptive centrality to the making of the modern state.

Using the very apt case of Nigeria, a deeply divided country in which state-society intercourse is precariously underpinned by religious reckonings, Vaughan draws on over two centuries of historical analysis to demonstrate how Muslim and Christian structures provided the social and ideological framework on which the Nigerian colonial and post-colonial state was constructed. The analysis extends to how these two formidable world religions shaped, and were shaped by, indigenous social and political conditions. At the outset, Vaughan claims that social science scholarship in Nigeria has hitherto overlooked a ‘methodological approach’ that interrogates the ‘entangled histories’ of Muslim and Christian movements as an important conduit for understanding the evolution of the modern Nigerian state (p. 7). For those looking for the gap that Religion and the Making of Nigeria fills, this is it.

The book is structured into two major sections consisting of nine chapters that seem at times to overlap and/or overstretch. The introduction provides a detailed discussion of the book's thematic concern, although this sometimes appears belaboured. In Section One, Vaughan deftly compares the impact that the Muslim reformism of the Sokoto Jihad and the evangelisation of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) has had on Nigeria's three major regions: the Hausa-Fulani and Kanuri Muslim North, the traditionally non-Muslim Middle Belt region, and the Yoruba Muslim-Christian South West region. In Section Two, Vaughan shifts his analytic focus to the recurring crisis of sharia (Islamic law) in Nigeria, arguing that this underscores two important issues: first, the depth of the structural imbalance between northern Muslim states, on the one hand, and Southern and Middle Belt states, on the other; second, the crystallisation of the ethno-religious and ethno-regional struggles between Muslims and Christians (p. 228).

The book concludes by looking at the religious militancy of Boko Haram in Nigeria and situating its emergence within growing frustration in the implementation of expanded sharia (p. 219). However, Vaughan does a rather cursory job of relating Boko Haram's militancy to prevailing religious, political and socio-economic conditions in the northern region. Indeed, it is somewhat baffling why such an important religious warfare was only treated en passant in the conclusion.

Religion and the Making of Nigeria is an excellent resource for scholars interested in the role of the politics and practice of religion in state-making in Nigeria. The book sets the scene for Ebenezer Obadare's forthcoming book Religion and Politics in Nigeria, which shows how the jostle for ascendancy between different religious forces in modern Nigeria is fundamental to the remaking of its political landscape.