Peace building in Nigeria
By Debra Fieguth
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| Wreckage of the Deeper Life Bible Church, in the city of Kano, Nigera. Photo: Compass Direct. |
On September 7, 2001, just four days before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, the city of Jos, Nigeria, erupted in unprecedented violence. Muslims began killing Christians, destroying churches and burning houses. No one knows for sure, but some estimate thousands were killed in the days that followed.
Gopar Tapkida, fresh from earning a master's degree in peace studies from Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia, had just begun his work as coordinator of peace programs for Mennonite Central Committee in Nigeria. He had only been back in the country for two weeks when the riots broke out. "Many people were killed, many homes destroyed, many churches and mosques destroyed," he says. In a city that had been known for its peaceful atmosphere, trust was replaced by anger and fear on both sides.
The Jos riots took everyone by surprise. Jos (the name is an acronym for "Jesus Our Saviour") is located in Plateau State, roughly in the centre of Nigeria, where Christians are the majority. But the eruption of violence in the normally calm city was the latest indication of growing tensions between Christians and Muslims all over northern Nigeria in the past few decades. Other cities - Kaduna, Zaria and Kano, for example, where Muslims are the majority - had for years been the scene of sporadic but bloody attacks.
Radical Islam
An increase in radical forms of Islam, not only in Nigeria but in Indonesia, Bangladesh and other places, is one cause of the upsurge in violence worldwide, says Paul Marshall. The senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, DC, says the violence is fuelled by funding from wealthy Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia.
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| Church members meet atop the foundation of the church. Photo: Compass Direct. |
In Jos, "They brought in terrorists from different parts of the country and outside the country," says Rev. Yakubo Pam, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Plateau State. "It wasn't Muslims from here who did that."
Fighting is not based entirely on differences between Christians and Muslims. Conflict often divides people along ethnic and political lines as well, with traditional beliefs also a part of the mix. "If you add to that an overlay of Christian-Muslim tensions, that could be very deadly," says Marshall.
Sharia
State governments in the Muslim-dominated north have also felt threatened for the past six years by the election - twice - of a Christian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, after 20 years of dictatorship, usually by Muslim leaders. Northern governors fear the shift of power in the country, says Marshall, so they have pushed for sharia law. Since 1999, 12 out of 19 northern states have adopted various forms of the Islamic legal system.
When sharia was introduced in Zamfara state in 1999, says Pam, "a lot of Christians were killed. A lot of churches were burned. A lot of leaders were beheaded." In Zamfara, the strictest sharia state, it is customary to amputate the hands of thieves.
The introduction of sharia has "brought a lot of crisis in northern Nigeria," agrees the Right Rev. Ali Buba Lamido, Anglican bishop of Wusasa, in Kaduna state, "especially in Kaduna where thousands of Christians have been killed and thousands of Muslims as well, and property lost."
Christians resist sharia because it makes it difficult to acquire property for churches, and because it does not allow them to evangelize. In some states Christians are told they are exempt from sharia courts, but where there is a conflict between a Christian and a Muslim, they fear their rights will be eroded. In Zamfara, says Pam, "if you are not a Muslim you are considered a second class citizen."
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| A sign of the times in some parts of Nigeria. Photo: Debra Fieguth |
Even moderate Muslims fear the extreme measures of sharia, and many have fled further south to Christian-dominated areas. In Plateau State, there is no sharia, but an influx of Muslims from the north contributed to the city of Jos becoming highly congested before the riots broke out in 2001, says Tapkida.
Compass Direct, a news service dedicated to reporting on the persecuted church, regularly sends out bulletins detailing arrests, killings, church burnings and other violent incidents, many of them related to sharia. Among recent reports:
* In Kaduna last May, a single church was destroyed for the fourth time in five years. (Christians generally respond by rebuilding.)
* In Kano, where Christians represent a small minority, Christian parents in rural areas are upset because their children have to study Islam in the public schools, and last October were forced to observe the Muslim fasting time of Ramadan.
* Also in Kano, the hisba, a newly-introduced police force charged with implementing sharia, demolished a church meant for law officers.
* In Zaria, a Christian lecturer in the university's faculty of law disappeared after a death threat was issued by a militant Muslim campus group when he asked a female student not to wear the hijab because it was against the law society's regulations.
* In Adamawa state, 36 Christians were killed in one village last February and another 3,000 displaced to a neighbouring state.
Christian militia
Christians have not always been the victims of bloody conflict. Church leaders readily admit young Christian men also have destroyed property and killed Muslims, although they generally contend the violence is in self-defence rather than initiated by them.
Pastor James Wuye, who now works for peace in Kaduna state, says he used to be part of the Christian militia. "Kaduna is the nerve centre of northern Nigeria," explains. "At the slightest provocation Muslim young people will go on the rampage."
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| Peace activist James Wuye. |
In the 1980s, he and other young Christian men decided they shouldn't just run away when these attacks happened, but should retaliate. "I hated the Muslims so much that at the slightest opportunity I could pounce on the Muslim and I could kill." By God's grace, he says, he never killed anyone himself, although he lost an arm in an attack.
Then he attended a Christian conference where he heard that if he wanted to reach Muslims, he had to love them. His heart was transformed. "I began to love the Muslims that I had hated so much that I could kill them."
Together with Imam Nurayn Ashafa, Wuye founded the Inter-Faith Mediation Centre in Kaduna in 1995. The two have worked side by side ever since, leading workshops and training teams of Christian and Muslim youths all over the country in basic conflict management.
Honest dialogue
"Those who have been transformed are now part of the solution," says Wuye. Slowly, through peace-building workshops and honest dialogue between Christians and Muslims, "we can heal the rejection and hurts and the suspicion we have for one another."
The peace efforts by Wuye and Ashafa have received international honours. Perhaps more importantly, they have been respected by state religious leaders. In 2002, Muslim and Christian leaders signed a peace agreement committing their people to non-violence. If the Kaduna model was borrowed by other states it would reduce friction throughout the north, says Wuye.
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| Sardauna Anaruwa Sashi, a staunch Muslim resident of Paiko, accepted Christ at a Baptist wedding. According to Compass Direct, he was then detained and tortured by police for four days in late September. Photo: Compass Direct. |
One of the leaders signing the peace agreement was Bishop Lamido, who co-chairs the Kaduna peace committee, comprising the heads of all the major Christian and Muslim denominations and organizations and appointed by the state governor. Dialogue between Muslims and Christians has meant improved relationships, says Lamido, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager. "The journey so far has not been too bad." The support of the state governor, a moderate Muslim, has strengthened the effort, he adds. "He meets regularly with all the religious leaders in the state."
Peace efforts in Plateau State have also made some progress. Since the violent crisis that plunged Gopar Tapkida into his peace work in 2001, MCC has worked hard at building bridges between Christians and Muslims. While state and federal governments had formed peace committees and networks and were holding conferences, encouraging debates and discussions, they did little to stem the antagonism between the two religions. People only became "more frustrated and more angry," says Tapkida.
MCC's focus is on personal and institutional transformation. Workshops encourage both Christians and Muslims "to look inward at what it is we have also contributed" to the conflict. Solutions come from the participants themselves. "We do not come to sessions with answers to their questions but come with questions that provide opportunity for them to talk," Tapkida explains.
Transformations
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| Abdullah Muhammed and Joseph Akinyele of the Inter-faith Mediation Centre in Kaduna - seen here with 'The Kaduna Peace Declaration of Religious Leaders.' |
That approach appears to work. "Many people have been transformed," says Tapkida. One Muslim woman, militant in her hatred towards Christians, was dragged to a workshop by family members. Secretly she carried a charm which she planned to use to kill Tapkida and make herself disappear. But when she sensed she had nothing to fear from him, she gradually forgot about the charm, let go of her hatred and returned to her community as a peacemaker.
The MCC model has been copied throughout the region, with many organizations and churches turning to MCC for training and capacity building. "We work with all the major denominations in Nigeria," says Tapkida. One umbrella group of churches is now establishing a peace office, and seminaries are beginning to offer courses in peace-making.
Leaders agree that dialogue and understanding are vital. Wusasa's Bishop Lamido believes the church needs to study Islam thoroughly. "Churches and dioceses should create programs, and centres that include Christian-Muslim relations," he says. In the Archdiocese of Kaduna, of which Wusasa is a part, that is beginning to happen. Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, whose academic focus is on building peaceful relations between Christians and Muslims, is a leader in that area.
All of this leads to a fragile peace in northern Nigeria. James Wuye describes Kaduna as "peaceable, not peaceful." And in Jos, despite persistent rumours of an impending outbreak of violence, "the situation seems to be encouraging," says Tapkida, "although we have a long way to go."
Debra Fieguth is a freelance writer in Kingston, Ontario, and former editor of BC Christian News. Along with her husband, the Rev. Dr. Ian Ritchie, who lived in Nigeria from 1980-85, she travelled through northern Nigeria last June and July, visiting Jos, Kaduna, Zaria and Kano.
