On a sweltering March afternoon, hundreds of men clad in all black marched in a winding procession through the main thoroughfares of Kano, one of Nigeria’s largest northern cities. They carried framed portraits of Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, waved Iranian national flags, and filled the air with chants denouncing joint US-Israeli military strikes on Iran, declaring unwavering solidarity with what they called “a nation under oppression.”
To casual onlookers lingering at roadside storefronts or peering out from passing public buses, the demonstration looked like a scene borrowed from a conflict drama unfolding thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East. But for Nigeria’s minority Shia Muslim community, the public rally was far more than performance: the US-Israeli campaign against Iran hits close to home, bound by decades of ideological, religious, and cultural ties.
In the weeks following the outbreak of the latest Middle Eastern conflict, nearly identical pro-Iran demonstrations have cropped up across major Nigerian cities, from Kano and Sokoto to Gombe and the federal capital Abuja. Organized primarily by members and supporters of the proscribed Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) — one of the most influential Shia movements across the African continent — these rallies lay bare a stark reality: global geopolitical tensions can reverberate powerfully among local religious communities thousands of miles from active battlefields.
The gatherings also underscore the persistent ideological pull Iran has maintained among segments of Nigeria’s Shia population, nearly 50 years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Tehran inspired grassroots movements across the Middle East and large swathes of Africa. “We believe Iran is standing against oppression and foreign domination,” explained Ibrahim Musa, a 32-year-old local trader who joined the Kano march. “As Shia Muslims, we feel connected to their struggle.”
Nearly 100 days have passed since the February 28 US-Israeli attacks on Iran ignited a broader regional conflict, and its economic and political aftershocks continue to ripple far beyond the Middle East. In Nigeria, where the vast majority of the country’s large Muslim population identifies as Sunni, the Shia minority has cultivated deep spiritual and ideological bonds with Iran for generations, viewing the country as a global symbol of anti-imperial resistance. These ties solidified in the late 1970s and 1980s, when the IMN emerged under the leadership of Sheikh Ibrahim el-Zakzaky.
Drawing direct inspiration from Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Zakzaky built a movement centered on grassroots political activism, community social welfare programs, and uncompromising opposition to Western political influence in West Africa. Over decades, the IMN built formal educational and religious partnerships with Tehran, with hundreds of members traveling to Iran to pursue advanced Islamic theological studies. Today, Iran remains a potent symbolic touchstone for much of Nigeria’s Shia community.
“Supporting Iran is not only about politics. Many people see it as defending Muslim dignity against powerful Western countries,” noted Abdullahi Sani, a Shia cleric based in Sokoto, in an interview with Middle East Eye.
Moses Abolade, a leading African geopolitics scholar and peacebuilding consultant with the Peace Education and Practice Network, explained that Iran has spent decades carefully building ties across African nations through religious training scholarships, investment in local religious institutions, humanitarian development projects, and targeted diplomatic outreach. While Tehran’s overall influence on the continent pales in comparison to global powers like China, the United States, and Russia, it has successfully nurtured deep loyalty among Shia minority communities in countries including Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania.
“The recent protests by some Nigerian Shia Muslims over the US-Israel-Iran tensions reflect how global conflicts increasingly shape local identities, emotions, and public discourse far beyond the Middle East,” Abolade told Middle East Eye. “For many participants, Iran represents not just a sovereign nation, but a symbol of transnational religious and political solidarity. While these demonstrations may not shift the balance of global geopolitics directly, they deliver symbolic morale boost and reinforce narratives of international solidarity that strengthen Iran’s ideological standing against Western powers.”
Even so, Abolade emphasized that the rallies do not represent the views of all Nigerians or all Nigerian Muslims, and warned that framing the conflict through a sectarian lens risks deepening existing domestic social divides. “The deeper concern is how transnational narratives, social media amplification, and global political tensions can worsen polarization, spread misinformation, and stoke sectarian mistrust within already fragile Nigerian society,” he said. “Nigeria’s extraordinary religious and ethnic diversity demands that these issues be approached with extreme caution and responsibility to avoid importing foreign conflicts into local community dynamics.”
For Nigeria’s Shia community, which has long faced official suspicion and repeated government crackdowns, the protests also serve a quiet domestic political purpose. The IMN has endured years of tense, often hostile relations with the Nigerian federal government, particularly after a 2015 clash in Zaria where Nigerian army forces killed hundreds of IMN members. The government formally banned the movement in 2019, and in the years since, IMN members have organized regular public demonstrations to demand accountability for the Zaria killings and greater official recognition of the movement. For many members, global developments connected to Iran act as a natural rallying point, creating space to reaffirm their shared religious and political identity and reinforce collective unity.
Not all observers view the demonstrations as benign, however. Retired Colonel AY Gwandu, a senior security official at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, noted that “there is inherent concern whenever foreign conflicts begin to shape the activities of local religious groups.” He added that many ordinary Nigerians fear the rallies could deepen domestic sectarian divides or create new domestic security risks.
Nigeria has struggled for decades with violent insurgency linked to Sunni extremist groups including Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province. While the IMN holds distinct ideological positions that separate it from these extremist organizations, Nigerian security agencies have continued to closely monitor the movement’s activities. Although authorities have occasionally dispersed IMN gatherings over public safety concerns, the recent pro-Iran demonstrations have remained overwhelmingly peaceful.
Even so, many residents of northern Nigeria still worry that these displays could heighten sectarian tensions in a country already grappling with chronic insecurity, rising religious extremism, and deep political instability. Political analysts add that the demonstrations also put Nigeria in a diplomatically delicate position, as the country maintains formal ties with Western nations, Israel, Gulf Arab states, and Iran simultaneously. While open public displays of support for Tehran by local groups are unlikely to shift Nigeria’s official foreign policy directly, they highlight how increasingly global power rivalries are reshaping domestic political discourse in African states.
Political scientist Abdulqodir Yunus explained that the Nigerian government is currently navigating pressure to “balance respect for freedom of expression with legitimate domestic security concerns.” He added that “these protests make clear that international conflicts now have unavoidable local dimensions” across the globe.
For the protesters themselves, however, the movement is as much about collective belonging as it is about geopolitics. In Kano, demonstrators of all ages — including women and children — marched through crowded commercial streets under heavy police observation. Some carried large banners accusing the United States and Israel of unprovoked aggression, while others called on the international community to stand with Iran. Similar scenes were documented across Sokoto and Gombe States, where participants chanted for unity and condemned Western military intervention in the Middle East. While solidarity with Iran was the rally’s official central theme, the gatherings also doubled as public assertions of religious identity and resistance to what participants frame as global injustice.
“If another Muslim nation is suffering, we cannot ignore it,” said Musa, the Kano trader. At a rally in Gombe, religious chants filled the afternoon air, punctuated by large posters featuring images of Iranian leaders alongside portraits of IMN founder Zakzaky.
To outside observers, this display of transnational solidarity may seem striking in a West African nation grappling with its own severe economic struggles and security crises, but protesters insist their shared struggle transcends geographic borders. For Tehran, these public displays across African cities confirm that the Islamic Republic’s ideological message still resonates globally, even amid decades of diplomatic isolation and crippling economic sanctions. For Nigerian Shia, the rallies reaffirm their connection to a broader transnational movement.
“These protests give us a voice,” said Fatima Aliyu, a university student who joined the demonstration at Abuja’s National Mosque. “Even though we are far away, we want Iran to know they are not alone.”