Kano, Nigeria - Mosque loudspeakers beckoning faithful Muslims to evening prayers have barely finished echoing across Nigeria's Islamic north as drinkers settle in for a bawdy evening of beer and MTV at Kano's "Be Kind Cool Spot."
Down the row of colorfully named saloons selling goat soup and gin in Nigeria's devoutly Muslim region, women sporting microskirts and desperate lipstick-painted smiles hover outside hotels not known for quiet slumber.
It's Friday night in Nigeria's Shariah-free zones known as "Strangers' Quarters" or "New Towns" — enclaves where outsiders, primarily Christians, have lived for generations in an uneasy balance with their indigenous Islamic neighbors.
The districts have long been violent flashpoints and with tensions on the boil with the approach of elections meant to cement civilian rule, residents hope cynical community leaders who stoke enmities don't again whip up mob violence for their own ends.
"There are entrepreneurs that gain from the crises. Political, religious fights, that's when they're relevant," says Ibrahim Mu'azzam, a professor at the Bayero University in Kano, the largest city in the 12 states constituting Nigeria's Muslim north.
"No crisis, no relevance," says Mu'azzam, a Muslim.
The crises that have wracked Nigeria since civilian rule replaced strict military rule in 1999 are no better illustrated than in Kano, where hundreds have died in religious and ethnic violence. Nationwide, some 15,000 have perished in such fighting.
Nigerians of varied religious and ethnic makeup live in mixed communities in many cities, but Kano's history as a center of the Muslim-dominated north has determined its current makeup, where outsiders from elsewhere are less integrated.
Hundreds of years ago, members of southern-based Christian and animist sects moved northward from the Atlantic coast. When they arrived in Kano and other northern cities, speaking different languages and holding different traditions, the Islamic leaders known as emirs asked them to settle outside the old city walls.
The once-proud barriers surrounding the center of old Kano, a tangled warren of mud-brick houses, are now little more than degraded mounds of red earth. But the demarcations persist, dividing the city of 3 million.
The New Town in Kano — popularly known among Muslims as "Israel" since that's where Christians hail from — is home to tens of thousands of Nigerians from the faraway south, where Christianity reigns.
Muslims live here, too, but primarily those from elsewhere. Where mosques and government-funded street signs praising Allah dot most of Kano, it is churches and bars that can be seen in the New Town.
The stark differences on display underline real divides. But many Nigerians say community leaders drive people apart in hopes of inciting jobless young men into a jingoistic fervor that they can then harness to their own political or economic ends. By controlling and manipulating mobs, they exert their influence.
Many residents say that dynamic drove the installation of Shariah across northern Nigeria after the latest dawn of civilian rule in 1999 — an attempt by community and state leaders to show their influence to the federal government, which looked askance at the drive to install Islamic law inside a secular country.
The result has been occasional pitched battles in Kano. In 2001, the city exploded into violence, leaving more than a dozen dead. Earlier bouts of violence dating back decades have killed hundreds.
It's mostly disaffected young men who fight, provoked by older men who play up religious and ethnic chauvinism, Nigerians say.
"Kill, kill, kill — and they claim (it) for religion," says one young female sex worker, standing in the shadows of a New Town hotel.
Day to day, however, there are few problems in an impoverished country where the focus is on survival and not differences of religious doctrine.
"Most of the Muslims, they are good," says the woman, who gave her name as Regina. "They don't fret us."
Tensions are rising again in Kano with presidential elections scheduled for April 21. If successful the ballot will see Nigeria's first-ever civilian-to-civilian handover of power.
After seven years of southern Christian President Olusegun Obasanjo, all of the main candidates are Muslim, part of an informal deal struck among the political elites to rotate power among the main blocs in a country of 140 million roughly split between Muslims and Christians.
In Kano's New Town, residents report that guns and bullets are being stockpiled in case there are problems. Some residents have left to return to their native areas in the south.
But on a recent Friday night, the bars are still packed and streets are full of motorcycle taxis — signs that people are confident enough to leave home for leisure activities.
Most people want peace and hope that strengthened democracy will mean some leaders will stop using mass violence to advance their goals.
"Sometimes they put religion into it, but smart people know it's not about religion," says Festus Ayinla, a printer and head usher at a Baptist church. "It's just a lack of understanding."
Still, many believe relations have improved in recent years, as economic interests bind groups together and with mass communications — like the MTV blaring in Kano's bars — establishing common cultural ground.
"We're trying to have peace, accepting that we're one Nigeria," says Ayinla, 55. He says he'll tough out any problems in Kano, where he has lived for decades. "This is my home ... It's where I make my daily bread."