World News

Is violence in Nigeria simple religious conflict?

By Saeed Shabazz -Staff Writer- | Last updated: Feb 2, 2012 - 12:59:54 PM

What's your opinion on this article?

nigeria02-07-2012.jpg
Red cross officials collect bodies of victims of a bomb blast and gun attacks from a street in Kano, Nigeria, Jan. 21. Coordinated attacks claimed by a radical Islamist sect killed at least 120 people in north Nigeria’s largest city, hospital records show, as gunfire still echoed around some areas of the sprawling city. Photo: AP/Wide world photos
UNITED NATIONS (FinalCall.com) - The specter of a religious civil war in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with 160 million people, has been raised by several Nigerian leaders—including a senior Christian leader, a Nigerian Nobel Prize winner, and President Goodluck Jonathan, who is a Christian.

But the problems facing the country may be more complex than simple religious warfare and desire for a small group to carve out a Muslim state in the North.

SaharaReporters.com reported Jan. 24 the burning of a police installation in Sheka, Kano State, Nigeria’s second largest city, just five days after 200 people were killed in Kano. Agence France Presse reported police found eight cars loaded with bombs on Jan. 23, also in Kano. The violence in Northern Nigeria has been attributed to Boko Haram, which has been described as a violent Islamic group.

The violence also prompted a statement from the U.S. State Dept.: “This is a time for all Nigerians to stand united against the enemies of civility and peace.” The State Dept.’s statement urged Nigerian authorities to fully investigate the attacks.

According to the Associated Press, the Kano violence, and all of the violence against Christians has been caused by Boko Haram. There were also attacks that killed Christians in early January, as the group called for a separate state and imposition of shariah law.

Western news sources say Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden or sinful.”

“Boko Haram draws its membership primarily from clerics, university students, and unemployed youth from the north,” reported writer Scott Baldauf, of the Christian Science Monitor.

nigeria_map_3.jpg
“It’s estimated that 70 percent of Nigerians live on less than $1.25 a day, but poverty is more prevalent up north (far from Nigeria’s oil fields and agricultural areas). Some 75 percent of northerners live in poverty, compared with 27 percent of southerners. The great disparity between haves and have-nots, between north and south, appears to be one major draw for recruitment,” he added.

“Its original leader, Mohammad Yusuf, who founded the group in 2002, was killed in police custody in 2009. His former deputy, Abubakar bin Mohammad Shekau, now leads the organization,” observed Mr. Baldauf.

“Many northerners have come to regard the Nigerian government as a failure, too corrupt to be trusted. While power has been shared with the main ruling party, rotating presidential candidates from north to south, most development and job creation occurs in the coastal south, and many northern Nigerians blame the powerful Christian southern elites for the neglect of development in the north,” he wrote in an article earlier this month.

“In the late 1990s, northern politicians began pressing for the introduction of Islamic law in northern states. But Boko Haram leader Mohammad Yusuf played up disappointment with the implementation of sharia, saying that harsh sentences were meted out only to the poor, and not the corrupt elites,” Mr. Baldauf wrote.

He noted there are suspicions the deadlier violence, which means paying for explosives and other weapons, may be a sign of links to Al-Qaeda or to Nigerian elites using the group to make the country ungovernable and hurt President Jonathan.

The religious violence has been mostly in the North and Northeast states of Nigeria. According to Human Rights Watch, attacks killed 500 people in 2011. Attacks on Christian churches inside Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Christmas Day killed nearly 50 people and prompted calls for reprisals, which triggered fears of civil war. Some are calling for the country to be divided into a Muslim North and a Christian South.

“Christians have been extremely restrained. I think they should be commended,” said Chido Nwangwu, founder and publisher of Houston-based USAfricaonline.com and CLASS magazine. “When people go into churches, kill children and wipe out families—this is not poverty driven,” he said, referring to those who say poverty is fueling the violence, not religiosity.

Some say Christians are to blame for religious clashes that have claimed 14,000 Nigerian lives in the past decade. The Voice of America reported Jan. 10, that a “Christian mob” attacked a mosque and a school in the southern city of Benin; the Nigerian Red Cross attributed five deaths to the attack. The head of the Christian Association of Nigeria declared the Boko Haram attacks “a declaration of war” against Christians, Reuters reported.

Agence France Presse reported a Christian political leader in the state of Jos, which has seen religious clashes, called for Christians to arm themselves and is campaigning for Nigeria to be divided into separate Muslim and Christian states.

Another voice for dividing Nigeria comes from a Yoruba self-determination organization, Apapa Oodua Koya, which circulated a statement last December calling on the United Nations to sponsor a referendum to split Nigeria among its traditional ethnic groups. The Yoruba statement argued Nigeria is an artificial creation and said Nigerian ethnic groups are tired of living together almost 100 years after the state was forcibly merged by foreign powers in 1914. For more information see www.ooduarepublic.org.

“Clearly there are tensions in Nigeria,” said Prof. Nii Akeutteh, an Africa analyst and founder of the Washington-based Democratic & Conflict Research Institute. “But, does this mean that Nigeria is sliding into a civil war? I would say no—but it could happen,” said Prof. Akutteh, who is Ghanaian.

“I was extremely concerned after the Christmas Day church bombings that there would be retaliation by Christians,” said Prof. Akeutteh. The government’s action against Boko Haram had been effective, quieting for now the calls for retaliation, he noted. “The administration arrested five suspects for the Christmas Day bombings on Jan. 17 and has stepped up its protection of civilians,” said Prof. Akeutteh.

Dr. James J.F. Forest, an associate professor in the Dept. of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the Univ. of Mass., like some other analysts, believes economics and poverty also fuel the violence.

“From my view, the violence is a symptom of deep economic, political and religious insecurities that are shared among many in the north and creates an environment in which Boko Haram’s ideology resonates,” Prof. Forest said in an e-mail to The Final Call. He co-authored an article that appeared in the Jan. 12 issue of the Monitor, “Nigeria’s Boko Haram attacks are misunderstood as regional Islamist threat.”

“As in much of West Africa, governance in Nigeria was for decades characterized by the predatory rapaciousness of governing elites and incomplete institutional development plaguing everything from rule of law to social services. Political competition often centered on getting access to the state to control natural resources, including oil. Governance has been based around tribal, clan, or family loyalties,” he wrote in the piece.

“Nigeria must move beyond the blunt use of lethal force by improving intelligence-gathering and building healthier civil-military relations. Sending tanks to the streets and declaring a state of emergency, as President Jonathan Goodluck did a few days ago, may appease the angry public, but it is not an effective counterterrorism policy. The United States must encourage the Nigerian government to address the political, economic, and religious insecurities that give resonance to Boko Haram’s ideology. Finally, the Nigerian government must also empower and protect the many moderate Islamic leaders in the North who have stood up against Boko Haram even while facing assassinations. Ultimately, the real solutions to the Boko Haram menace are local.”

Prof. Forest is a former director of terrorism at the U.S. Military Academy, where he taught on comparative politics and sub-Saharan Africa.

“I don’t think this is mainly a religious conflict,” said Bill Fletcher, Jr., executive editor of the Black Commentator and former head of TransAfrica, a Black lobby group for Africa and the Caribbean.

While the violence is Muslim against Christian, the bottom line is “a grab for resources and power,” he argued.

The violence metastasized in 2011 from using machetes and guns to sophisticated bombings of police stations and using AK47s, IEDs and suicide bombings, according to Human Rights Watch.

In August, 2010 Boko Haram took credit for a car bomb outside of the United Nations headquarters in Abuja that killed 24 people. The death toll for 2009 was over 800 people, according to Human Rights Watch. In July 2009, Boko Haram launched an attack against police in Bauchi State and 700-800 were killed. There were other attacks and battles with police going back to 2003.

“To say Nigeria is headed for a civil war is an exaggeration!” said Chicago-based Imam Misbahu Ahmed Rufai, who told The Final Call he left Kano three days before recent violence.

“It is also difficult to place all the blame for the bombings on Boko Haram,” the Nigerian-born imam and college professor said. He added, Muslims have been killed by Boko Haram. “And you cannot just say Muslims are the aggressors,” said Imam Rufai, who teaches a course in African history and politics.

The Final Call asked Nigerians in New York City their opinions about violence between Muslims and Christians. Noimotylola Olayokun, 19, was born in the Ogun State in Southwestern Nigeria to a Muslim father and is a member of the Nigerian Youth Commission. “We all know what is going on up North,” she said. “My generation wants to put the fighting on hold, and come together, Muslim and Christian taking pride in being Nigerian,” she said.

Ms. Olayokun adamantly argued there was no Christian-Muslim divide in Nigeria.

Bolade Ogungbuyi, 24, is a Christian, but his mother is a Muslim. “It is hard to get the message to the elders to come together as Africans,” he said. Mr. Ogungbuyi added that extremists are copying what they have seen in other parts of the world. “They just want to show they have the power to cause fear,” he said.

Much of the violence has to do with people not having access to resources, Mr. Ogungbuyi added.

Tino Bendel, 39, is a Christian, and insists there is no “religious problem” in Nigeria. “I am a Christian, and I grew up a block from a mosque and we co-existed,” said Mr. Bendel. “Politicians are using religious zealots to keep up the friction to hide their corruption,” he told The Final Call. “Nigerian leadership has done nothing for the people; the people are tired, angry and desperate for change.”

There are reportedly 350 ethnic groups in Nigeria, speaking 250 languages. Muslims make up 50 percent of the population, Christians 40 percent and Traditionalists round it out a 10 percent.

“There is an unseen-hand at work today in Nigeria, taking advantage of a shattered consciousness and a fractured identity and there are definitely outsiders perpetuating the identity crisis,” said Dr. Leonard Jeffries, former director of African Studies at City College in New York and a leading Pan-Africanist. “Nigeria is so important, so critical. Africans must come up with a formula on how to work together through their differences,” Dr. Jefferies stressed.

Mr. Fletcher agreed, saying “different people would benefit from a divided Nigeria,” in particular, oil companies.

“The West stands to gain the most from Nigeria’s insecurity,” said Imam Rufai. “White folks want control of Nigeria’s resources; so, they developed a ‘shock doctrine’ to foment the crisis and then will go in and take over,” he added.

Omoyele Sowore, a Nigerian national and an activist, who has been in the U.S. for the past 15 years, founded SaharaReporters.com. “Nigerians, particularly in the North are struggling to restore their dignity, which has been compromised over the past 50 years,” he said. “What has failed in Nigeria is the leadership and the Nigerian state must restore dignity and economic rights to its citizens.”