Will Kaduna International Inter-faith Centre Tame Religious Conflicts in the North?

Could the opening of the International Centre for Inter-faith Peace and Harmony in Kaduna last week turn out to be a novel initiative to end violence of religious sparks in northern Nigeria? This is the question at the lips of conflict minded players following the opening of the office last Friday in Kaduna. Speaking at the occasion, Sa’ad Abubakar 111, the Sultan of Sokoto asked all those suspecting a grand plan to Islamise Nigeria to perish the thought, saying it is impossible to Islamize Nigeria. Harping on the impossibility of any country surviving religion based identity war, the Sultan pointed out how impossible it is for a multi-religious state such as Nigeria to be Islamised or Christianised. He charged adherents to stop the speculation that anyone plans to Islamise the country and, instead, pull together to explore exit from the threat of religion informed violence to Nigeria’s unity.
The Sultan’s point was acceptable to Dr Yusuf Ibrahim Wushishi, the General Secretary of the Christian Council of Nigeria, (CCN) who stressed the imperative for respecting religious differences in a diverse nation, pointing out the oxygenating role of religion in purposeful leadership and social justice. Dr Emmanuel Udofia, the Co-Chairman of the centre, joined the two to say that religious differences ought not be a barrier to peaceful co-existence of Nigerians and followed the Sultan to warn against incitement because “What comes out of our mouth would either build or destroy us.”
The north has been the hub of violent conflicts of religious parks since the 1980s in contrast to the southern part of the country which is though also multi-religious but has escaped such volatility. Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, Kaduna State governor told the audience in an address at the opening ceremony how 20, 000 have perished in violence of religious sparks in the state over the past three decades. He counted 12 in the series of such violent conflicts which have led to a religious pattern of settlement in the city – the Muslims in the northern part while the Christians live in the southern part in a city which used to be welcoming to everyone as the capital of the old northern region. The governor threw at religious leaders allegation of igniting violence for their own selfish reasons and turning religion into business.
This is a joint initiative of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam and Christian Council of Nigeria which is the domestic arm of the World Council of Churches, (WCC) that does not include the Catholics who are of The Vatican. However, Archbishop John Onaiyekan is part of the International Inter-faith Centre because the WCC and the Vatican are not opposed to each other.
Dr Yusuf Wushishi, the General Secretary, Christian Council of Nigeria (CCN) and Co-Secretary of the centre, traces the project to 2012 when the practice of the global organisation of each of the religions expressing solidarity exclusively to its was abandoned in favour an international model for inter-religious engagement for peace within a collective search for peace by Muslims and Christians. By his account, the JNI and CCN hosted the world Council of Churches as well as the Royal Jordanian Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Jordan who visited Jos, Abuja and Kaduna, recommending the establishment of the centre to serve as neutral space to address and prevent conflict across Nigeria. The centre, said Wushishi, has the objective of contributing to peace through justice and reconciliation between Christians and Muslims with particular emphasis on northern Nigeria. It would try to do this by monitoring and documenting conflicts, creating awareness on conflict prevention, protecting women and children so as to nurture peaceful coexistence and respect. The question now is whether this initiative would make the difference.
Dr Ochinya Ojiji, a social psychologist and conflict management scholar with the Nasarawa State University expressed the view that when it comes to conflict matter, all options with potentials for bringing about peace are worth exploring. He said the initiative must suggest that religious leaders and even their followers must have seen that there are no bases for religion inspired violence. He, therefore, sees the effort as an indication that sections of the society are imbibing the logic of systematic planning, hoping that the initiative would not be turned into a space for seeking employment and contracts to the detriment of the original essence.
Dr Tukur Baba of the Department of Sociology at the Usman Dan Fodio University equally welcomed the initiative which he, however, described as long overdue because, according to him, the north has borne the brunt of the crisis of managing history, diversity, culture, tribes and religion, being the fault line between the two dominant world religions. Islam and Christianity are not so different from each other as to be the cause of the tension and contestation that have characterised Christian-Muslim relations in the north if well managed, he said. He further said that from what the Radio Nigeria, Kaduna programme “Filin Tambayoyin Krista” aired by Two 0’ clocks every Sunday has brought out is that apart from disagreement about the trinity, the two religions share a lot in origin and philosophy, pointing out that “we differ more in the rituals than in the philosophy”. While admitting the problematic nature of inter-faith relations because every religion tends to legitimise itself by alleging the falsity of the other, he still averred that the problem in the case of the north could be mitigated if the new centre steps in against the use of certain words and phrases by either sides in the narrative of each other. Dr Baba thinks that what he calls artificial differences between Islam and Christianity can be eliminated as conflict triggers if the two religions can be made to sit down and reflect.
Pastor Joseph Hayab in Kaduna agreed with Dr Baba in relation to the basic similarity of the two religions since both accept that Adam and Eve are the great, great, great grandfathers of humanity, making all other human beings family under God. Any Christian who feels negative about inter-faith dialogue is confused, the Pastor said, anchoring this on Jesus being the epitome of peace and dialogue as well as those who took over from Him. He said it was time to get into dialogue away from stiff image of the other people as the bad guys.
Admitting that this initiative won’t be the answer to every problem, Hayab is, however, of the view that it is an added avenue. Unlike before when the World Council of Churches would come from Europe and listen to only Christians as victims of crisis and same on the Christian side, the new initiative is a partnership to listen to both groups and encourage dialogue.
Asked about the Kaduna State governor’s lamentation about how divided settlement pattern along religious lines, Hayab said the governor is governor but that he knew many parts of the city not to be so at all, citing Makera and Barnawa as predominantly Muslim parts of the south of Kaduna and parts of Ungwar Rimi, Mando Road to be inhabited by Christians in the northern part of the city.
Nigeria’s conflict management think-tank, the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, (IPCR) declared categorically in 2003 that “since the 1999 election that represented the transition from military to civilian rule, violent conflict has been on the increase in Nigeria”, dismissing the 10,000 estimated loss of lives to such conflicts within the period as being too conservative. The late Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu once said that “in the year 2000, probably more people had been killed on the streets of Nigeria than we have ever had under any government except during the civil war which was under different circumstances”. He told The Vanguard, (15/01/01, p.23) so.
Specifically, Some more detailed survey of the conflicts such as done by Professors Onigu Otite and Olawale Albert in 2001 listed eight communal conflicts within the first half of the 1990s. These were the Ugep-Idomi War of 1992; the Tiv-Jukun conflict in Wukari LGA of Taraba State; the Igbo-Ora case of an intra-ethnic conflict in Yoruba land; the Ife-Modakeke conflict in present day Osun State and farmer-pastoralist clashes in North-Eastern Nigerian wetlands. Others included the Zangon-Kataf crisis in Kaduna State; the Mangu-Bokkos conflicts on the Jos Plateau and the Tafawa Balewa crisis in Bauchi State in 1995.
The chapter of this book dealing with religious conflicts in Kano alone brought out additional list of five such conflicts viz the 1953 ethnic violence; the 1966 crisis; the 1995 ethnic disturbances at Sabon-Gari Market; the Maitatsine Riot of 1980; the Shiite attacks of 1996 and 1997; the 1982 Fagge Crisis; the Reinhard Bonke Riot of 1991 and the Akaluka Incident of 1994. While the first three were essentially ethnic in nature, the second three were intra-religious while the last two were inter-religious. The study, however, did not include the 1987 Kafanchan inter-religious conflict in Kaduna State, the Andoni/Ogonis in Rivers throughout the first half of the eighties; the Umeleri/Aguleri War in Anambra State in 1995; the series of Ijaw-Ilaje clashes in Lagos, the Ijaw/Ishekiri war in Delta State; the Shiite show-down with the FG in Katsina and Zaria in the mid-1990s; the various farmer-pastoralist clashes across Nigeria, particularly in Katsina, Jigawa, Oyo, Benue, among others and the series of ethno-religious clashes between the “Jasawa” and “Jankassa” in Jos North LG of Plateau State preceding the return to civilian rule in 1999, climaxing in the September 2001, June 2004, November 2009 and January 2010.
Professor Ogo Alubo, on the other hand, listed eighty-nine conflicts between May 1999 to January 2004 in his book, Nigeria: Ethnic Conflicts and Citizenship in the Central Region, spanning conflicts of ethnic, cultural, religious, communal, political, territorial and regional sparks. There were the Odi Massacre in Bayelsa State, Sharia Riots in Kaduna State; the Miss World Beauty Pageant violence also in Kaduna State. These did not include the spectre of Executive-Legislature conflicts between 1999 and 2007; the conflict between the president and the Vice-President between 2003 and 2007, the Third Term project and the opposition to it in the polity as well as the numerous inter and intra-party schisms.
While insistence on political power through control of chairmanship of local government councils is key to the case of Jos North LGC, Ife-Modakeke LGC and Tiv-Jukun over Wukari LG, control over a market as in Zango-Kataf in Kaduna State or claims on land and natural resources as in Tiv-Eggon violence in Nasarawa State could be the subject of tension. Other conflicts such as the confrontation between the Movement for the Survival of the Ogonis, (MOSOP) and the state in the early 1990s and later between the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, (MEND) and the state were resource nationalism based insurgency.
An overview of the spate of conflicts by Institute of Governance and Social Research, Jos on this is that the Nigerian state has changed in profound ways since the end of the 20th Century by way of a high incidence of violent conflicts in several parts of the country, especially from 2001 to date. It further said the conflicts set nieghbours, ethnic and religious groups against one another and have been charaterised by breaking of all accepted rules of war such as targeting of civilians and non-civilians, including infants, for massacre just because they belonged to the wrong group. The Institute noted how society had become deeply polarized and characterized by deep rooted, intense animosity; long standing fear; and severe stereotyping driven “by dynamics of direct experiences of violence and atrocities as well as subjective perceptions and emotions” and that there were still tell-tale signs that a major conflagration may still erupt.