The Jama’tu Nasril Islam (“Group for the Victory of Islam”) was founded in 1962 by a coalition of Muslim leaders in northern Nigeria, and served as an umbrella organization for a variety of Muslim groups and interests. The goal of the organization was to unify northern Muslims and to promote their interests in the wake of independence and the formation of the first Nigerian Republic. Following the assassination of Ahmadu Bello, a prominent northern Muslim politician and descendent of Usman Dan Fodio, the northern Muslim community became fragmented. In the 1970s, the JNI’s leader, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, became critical of its apparent lack of strict Islamic discipline, and encouraged followers to break away and form the Izala, which eclipsed it in the following decade.
Sources
Toyin Falola and Ann Genova, “Jama’atu Nasril Islam,” Historical Dictionary of Nigeria, eds. Toyin Falola and Ann Genova (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2009), p. 178.