In Nigeria, a confraternity is a group that is nominally university-based, though 'street and creek' confraternities began in the 1990s. The first confraternity, the Pyrates Confraternity was created as a social organization for promising students.
However, as new confraternities were formed, they became increasingly violent through the 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s, many confraternities largely operated as criminal gangs, called "campus cults" in Nigeria. Besides normal criminal activity, confraternities have been linked to political violence, as well as the conflict in the Niger Delta.
