Central to the recurring inter-communal conflicts between the Hausa-Fulani Muslims and non-Muslim ethnic minorities in northern Nigeria is the production of narratives of victimhood and resistance. However, most studies of conflict in the region have only focused on social, economic, political, religious and environmental factors, ignoring salient historiographical/textual and discursive roots and processes of the phenomenon. This project interrogates how the extra-textual meaning-assigning agency of historiography is manufactured and weaponized in conflict situations. As monster-making technology, these narratives originally popularized by journalists gradually sneaked into the academia, creating a dissident community of discourse – academic authors, activists, priests and publishers who together constructed a popular cultural resentment against the Hausa-Fulani Muslims. The consumers of these narratives are constantly reminded of the historical injuries of the 19th jihad wars in Hausa land and mobilized along the most dreaded discursive idioms – "Kaduna Mafia: the Killer Squad", "northern minorities, why we fight them", "Hausa-Fulani violence", and "pastoral jihadism", which featured regularly in both academic and popular discourse. Between 1980 and 2016 more than 100 violent communal clashes – in which thousands of people including women and children lost their lives – were reported in the volatile Middle Belt areas of Jos, Benue and Southern Kaduna. To what extent do these historical discourses function as incentive to violent clashes? Located within critical work that is attuned to the salience of knowledge-conflict nexus, the project seeks to demonstrate how historical narratives, animated by rumours and conspiracy theories, acquired functional discursive properties and social meaning. Preliminary reading of the conflicts suggests deep-seated intersection between historiography, victimhood, vengeance and violence.