Report on Citizenship Law: Nigeria practice, the usual requirement is that the person has ancestral roots in the community, often through the father only.49 As a result of this system, Human Rights Watch has argued: The population of every state and local government in Nigeria is officially divided into two categories of citizens: those who are indigenes and those who are not. The indigenes of a place are those who can trace their ethnic and genealogical roots back to the community of people who originally settled there. Everyone else, no matter how long they or their families have lived in the place they call home, is and always will be a non-indigene.50 Or, in the words of a briefing from the Nigeria Research Network, a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Development Research and Projects Centre in Kano, northern Nigeria: Indigeneship effectively introduces a two-tier citizenship in Nigerian’s 36 states and 774 Local Government Areas. Some can lay claim to ancestral connections to the soil and consequently enjoy ‘indigeneship’ rights, while others have no such ancestral claims, and must therefore suffer different degrees of political and social exclusion.51 There have been various efforts to try to reduce discrimination against ‘non-indigenes’ who are internal migrants within Nigeria, including by the Citizens Forum for Constitutional Reform, a civil society coalition established immediately after the return to civilian rule in 1999, led by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).52 The National Assembly has conducted several constitutional review processes, the most consultative being during the 2011-2015 mandate. During the same period, President Goodluck Jonathan also convened a ‘National Conference’ made up of 500 delegates drawn from different interest groups and different parts of the country. The report of the National Conference regretted the lack of definition of indigene and the discrimination related to internal migrants that resulted from the constitutional provisions.53 49 For discussion of the rules applied see, for example: ‘Indigeneity, Belonging, & Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Citizens’ Views from the Street’, Policy Brief, Nigeria Research Network (University of Oxford and Development Research and Project Centre Kano, 2014); V. Adefemi Isumonah, ‘The Ethnic Language of Rights and the Nigerian Political Community’, in Citizenship, Belonging, and Political Community in Africa: Dialogues between Past and Present, ed. Emma Hunter (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016); David Ehrhardt, ‘Indigeneship, Bureaucratic Discretion, and Institutional Change in Northern Nigeria’, African Affairs 116, no. 464 (July 2017): 462–83; Laurent Fourchard, ‘Bureaucrats and Indigenes: Producing and Bypassing Certificates of Origin in Nigeria’ Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute 85, no. 1 (2015): 37–58; Henry Gyang Mang and David Ehrhardt, ‘The Politics of Paper: Negotiating over and around Indigeneship Certification in Plateau State, Nigeria’, Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 52, no. 3 (2018): 331–47. 50 Human Rights Watch, ‘They do not own this place’: Government Discrimination against ‘Non-Indigenes’ in Nigeria. Volume 18, No. 3(A), April 2006. Summary p. 1. 51 Nigeria Research Network (NRN), Indigeneity, Belonging, & Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Citizens’ Views from the Street. NRN Policy Brief No 5. p.1 Accessed 30/03/2020 via https://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/sites/www.odid.ox.ac.uk/files/nrn-pb05.pdf. 52 See Human Rights Watch, ‘They Do Not Own This Place: Government Discrimination against Non-Indigenes in Nigeria’ (2006) 63; Adimbola O Adesoji and Akin Alao, ‘Indigeneship and Citizenship in Nigeria: Myth and Reality’ (2009) 2 Journal of Pan African Studies 151; Otive Igbuzor, ‘Constitutional Reform In Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Challenges To Civil Society Organisations’, Paper presented at a general meeting of Citizens Forum for Constitutional Reform, Abuja 24 September 2005, http://www.gamji.com/article5000/NEWS5168.htm; Idayat Hassan, ‘Nigeria’s constitutional reform process: The quest for a people-driven constitution’, blog post, ConstitutionNet, International IDEA, 18 October 2017 http://constitutionnet.org/news/nigerias-constitutional-reform-process-quest-people-driven-constitution. 53 ‘The National Conference: Final Draft Conference Report’ (Government of Nigeria 2014), section 5.2.2. 16 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/12- © 2020 Author(s)