Follow Us on Google
Nigeria, my beloved country, which has been rendered fragile by centrifugal forces of religious separatism, ethno-geographic conflicts, identity politics and economic predation, recently came under more strain when the American authorities re-designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern [CPC], arising from serious concerns over mass killings of Christians as well as their persecution. A Country of Particular Concern is a designation by the United States Secretary of State of a country responsible for “particularly severe violations of religious freedoms” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. These could include denial to right of life, torture, illegal detention, abduction, inhuman treatment and general restriction of religious practices by state authorities.
In designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, the State Department cited Nigeria’s “severe violation of religious freedom and persecution of Christians,” with President Donald Trump going as far as describing Nigeria’s Christian community as “endangere” while threatening a direct military intervention to root out “Islamic terrorists” responsible for the mass killings of his much “CHERISHED Christians.” But this recent designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern has triggered intense, if not heated, talking-down on each other by Nigerians across the Muslim and Christian divides over the claim of Christian genocide in Nigeria in a manner that has once again opened up Nigeria’s deep religious fault lines.
While Christians are speaking out about their plight in the hands of terrorists and mass killers, Nigerian Muslims seem to be countering their fellow countrymen with the proposition that Muslims are also victims. And to disprove the claim of Christian genocide, some posit that more Muslims have been killed than Christians since the country descended into heightened insecurity more than a decade ago. In fact, rising sectarian tension in Nigeria, which is driven by arrogance of ignorant biases and acute religious bigotry, portends an immediate threat to national security much more than Trump’s threat of invasion because, if the authorities in Nigeria do not rein in agent provocateurs, the country may indeed descend into a Lebanon-like sectarian warfare.
While the arguments continue over whether there is indeed a Christian genocide in Nigeria or not, one truth that cannot and should not be denied is that there are targeted killing of Christians in Nigeria by Islamist jihadi groups like the Islamic State of West Africa Province [ISWAP] and killer Fulani herdsmen operating in the Benue/Plateau axis of north-central Nigeria, among many other splinter jihadi groups operating in Nigeria. Otherwise, what is Islamist jihad without the cleansing of non-Muslim ‘infidel’ population to give rise to a puritan Islamic state? And while it is true that Islamist jihadi groups also target Muslims, it should be known that such Muslims are not considered Muslims by the killers. It’s called the Takfiri doctrine; a condition wherein certain Muslims are considered unbelieving infidels on account of sectarian and ideological differences. So, while some Muslims are targeted because they are not considered Muslims, Christians are targeted because of who they are: Christians. That Christians are targeted by Islamist jihadi groups because of their faith suggests an intendment of a Christian genocide.
In my many public discourse intervention and occasional interactions with men and women in authority, I have consistently cautioned against the categorisation of the mass killings in Benue and Plateau and forceful appropriation of land by killer Fulani herdsmen as either communal crisis or farmer/herder conflict. Unfortunately, the authorities of the state have stayed fixated on this illogic and in the process Yelwata in Benue happened recently. The fact that the killers are mostly Fulani herdsmen that are Muslims and their victims are predominantly Christian indigenous people of the Benue/Plateau area similarly fits into the general definition of an unfolding genocide against Christians.
Similarly, Christians are indeed persecuted in Nigeria, particularly in the predominantly Muslim North, where the Sharia law is in force. Beyond the application of blasphemy laws, the imposition of Sharia laws over 12 states in Northern Nigeria, which effectively renders these states ‘Islamic,’ fundamentally violates the citizenship rights and privileges of Christian indigenes of these states, because Muslims and Christians do not enjoy equal status in a Sharia-ruled Islamic state. And because Christians are fundamentally of inferior status to Muslims in 12 out of 19 states of Northern Nigeria, it means that Christian communities in the region are legally, structurally and perpetually under political, economic, social and religious persecution as their exclusion, suppression and marginalization is deemed legally sanctioned to be upheld by the Islamic state as a matter of religious duty.
Not many Nigerians know that there are indigenous Christian Hausa and Fulani communities in predominantly Muslim northern states like Katsina, Kano, Sokoto, Jigawa, Zamfara and others, because they are neither seen nor heard as they are often excluded in the scheme of things in the land of their ancestors on religious grounds. The Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and its leadership can choose to play the ostrich but the entire world is watching and understands that nothing can be more prosecutorial to a religious community than having the laws of another religious group imposed over the land of their birth in an otherwise secular and multi-religious country.
Rather than grandstand and act defensive about the obvious, the Muslim community in Nigeria and its leadership must begin to reflect and stop deflecting from the real issues of that which has gone wrong with members of our demography. Today, the Nigerian state is battling at a very great cost to contain two of Nigeria’s deadliest security challenges: Boko Haram insurgency and killer Fulani herdsmen terrorism, both of which emanated from the Muslim divide of Nigeria. This should be the major source of concern that both Muslims and Christians are being killed by Muslim terror groups; a situation that should worry every Muslim much more than Christians crying out for help against their killers. In fact, this is the time for the Muslim community to show more empathy, care and concern for their Christian brethren that have come under attack from Islamist jihadi groups.
In all of this, I sincerely sympathise with President Ahmed Bola Tinubu. Although Muslim, President Tinubu cannot be accused even by his fiercest enemies of being a religious bigot or Islamist sympathiser whose government can aid or abet Christian persecution or genocide under his watch. Unfortunately, he has had to contend with this problem that was an accumulation of many years of unbridled ‘Islamization and Fulanization’ policy of previous administrations both at the centre and sub-national levels.
The Trump threat should now serve as a shock therapy to wake President Tinubu up to the enormous challenge of restoring security of lives and properties in Nigeria. While the Tinubu administration cannot be complicit in the persecution and killing of Christians in Nigeria, the government must now do much more to contain this menace once and for all. President Tinubu will do well to approach his Middle East allies, the UAE and Qatar, to mediate between him and the White House in order to find a collaborative way to get our friends and allies to help provide a final solution to a security problem that is now existential in nature.
