Religion is good. Religion encourages peace, tolerance, good character, godliness, perseverance, long suffering, sacrifice and any other good virtue can be ascribed to it.
What is religion?
According to Wikipedia, Religion is a cultural system of behaviours and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organisation that relate humanity to a an order of existence. Different religions may or may not contain various elements, ranging from the “divine sacred things “faith” a supernatural being or supernatural beings or some sort of intimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life.
Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.
Nigeria is nearly equally divided between Christianity and Islam though the exact ratio is uncertain. There is a growing population of non religious Nigerians too who accounted for the remaining 5 percent.
The majority of Nigerian Muslims are Sunni and they are concentrated in the northern region of the country, while slightly majority of Nigerian Christians dominate in the south.
Most of Nigeria’s Christians are Protestant though about a quarter are Catholic. From the 1990s to the 2000s, there was significant growth in Pentecostal churches
Islam dominated the north and had a number of followers in the South Western, Yoruba part of the country. Nigeria has the largest Muslim population in sub-Saharan Africa.
In terms of Nigeria’s major ethnic groups’ religious affiliations, the Hausa ethnic group in the North is mostly Muslim, the West which is the Yoruba tribe is divided among mainly Islam, Christianity, and traditional religions, while the Igbos of the East and the Ijaw in the South are predominantly Christians (Catholics) and some practitioners of traditional religions.
The middle belt of Nigeria contains the largest number of minority ethnic groups in Nigeria and they are mostly Christians and members of traditional religions with few Muslim converts.
This analogy shows the national spread of the two main religion i.e. Christianity and the Islamic religion in Nigeria.
The terrorist attack on the Westminster building in London caught my attention. It was barbaric and must be condemned in its entirety.
A 52 year old British born man called Khalid Masood deliberately drove carelessly in a terrorist attack through the Westminster bridge, killing five people in its wake.
The whole world was shocked, confused about the kerfuffle in England. Investigation showed the man acted alone, had no ties with any terrorist group.
The rest of the world stood with the Londoners over this tragic incidence.
The Mayor of England, Sadiq Khan, assured Londoners the city is safe and people should go about their normal duties, without fear or trepidation.
Who is Sadiq Kahn?
Sadiq Aman Khan is a British politician and the current Mayor of London since 2016.
Khan is the fifth of eight children (seven sons and a daughter) in a working class Sunni Muslim family of Pakistani immigrants.
His grandparents migrated from Bombay, British India to Pakistan following the partition of India in 1947, and his parents migrated to England from Pakistan shortly before Khan was born. His late father, Amanullah Khan, worked as a bus driver for over 25 years; his mother, Sehrun, was a seamstress.
Born in Tooting, South London to a working class British Pakistani family, Khan gained a degree in Law from the University of North London. He subsequently worked as a solicitor specialising in human rights before joining politics.
His election as Mayor of London made him the city’s first ethnic minority mayor, and the first Muslim to become mayor of a major Western capital. Khan held the largest personal mandate of any politician in the history of the United Kingdom, and the third largest personal mandate in Europe. This is not the first time London was attacked.
In the morning of Thursday, 7 July 2005, four Islamist extremists separately detonated three bombs in quick succession aboard London Underground trains across the city, and later, a fourth on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. Fifty-two people were killed and over 700 more were injured in the attacks, making it Britain’s worst terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, as well as the country’s first ever Islamist suicide attack.
Despite all these attacks, I’m bewildered that a Muslim minority could be elected as the Mayor of London.
Sadly in Nigeria, religion that is supposed to promote peace has been politicised and used by political and religious leaders, to cause disaffection and disharmony.
The last general election that produced President Buhari was largely influenced by religious and ethnic sentiments.
It exposed Nigeria as a deeply divided country along religious and ethnic lines.
Nigeria once attempted to rise above religious sentiment when for the first time in history, two Muslim politicians were elected as the President and vice President in 1993 general election respectively.
Late MKO Abiola and Alhaji Babagana Kingibe were elected but sadly, the election was annulled by the military government that conducted the freest and fairest election in Nigeria. It would have marked a watershed in Nigeria’s political evolution.
We missed that golden opportunity.
Religious violence in Nigeria refers to Christian-Muslim strife in modern Nigeria, that can be traced back to 1953.
Timelines of religion violence
The Kano riot of 1953 refers to the riot, which broke out in the ancient city of Kano, located in Northern Nigeria, in May 1953. The nature of the riot were clashes between Northerners who were opposed to Nigeria’s Independence and Southerners made up of mainly the Yoruba and the Igbo who supported immediate independence for Nigeria.
The riot that lasted for four days claimed many lives of the Southerners and Northerners and many others were wounded.
The street of Kano, north western Nigeria were often tempestuous. Have we forgotten the Maitatsine riots of the 80s?
Maitatsine is a Hausa word meaning “the one who damns” and refers to his curse-laden public speeches against the Nigerian state. Many Nigerians were killed, the Nigeria military were drafted to quell the uprising.
The massacre of the Igbos in the north in a counter coup of 1966 led to the declaration of the Republic that culminated into 20 months of civil war in Nigeria. It had religious undertones.
In the mid 80s, the erstwhile military ruler of Nigeria, General Ibrahim Babangida enrolled Nigeria in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. This was a move which aggravated religious tensions in the country, particularly among the Christian community.
In 1995, the beheading of Gideon Akaluka in Kano shocked the nation. Akaluka, a young Igbo trader, allegedly desecrated the Koran. He was arrested after his wife allegedly used pages of the Koran as toilet paper for her baby.
After the police locked him up, a group of Muslim fundamentalists broke into the police station cells, beheaded Akaluka, and paraded his bodiless head around the streets of Kano.
Furthermore, since the return of democracy in 1999, many northern states in Nigeria adopted the Islamic sharia state laws, further polarising the divisions between Christians and Islamic religions. Zamfara state in north west pioneered the sharia Islamic laws and many northern states follow suit.
The events of Abuja in 2000 and Jos in 2001 were riots between Christians and Muslims in Jos, Nigeria about the appointment of a Muslim politician, Alhaji Muktar Mohammed, as local coordinator of the federal programme to fight poverty. Another such riot killed over 100 people in October 2001 in Kano State.
In 2002, the Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel wrote an article that led to the demonstrations and violence that caused the deaths of over 200 in Kaduna, as well as a fatwa placed on her life The 2002 Miss World contest was moved from Abuja to London as a result of the disturbances. The rest of the 2000s decade would see inter-religious violence continue in Jos and Kaduna.
The reaction to the Prophet Mohammed cartoons in Denmark brought about a series of violent protests in Nigeria. Clashes between rioters and police claimed several lives, with estimates ranging from 16 to more than a hundred. This led to reprisal attacks in the south of the country, particularly in Onitsha. More than a hundred lost their lives
Boko Haram
The intervening years of 2000 to date recorded the highest internal religious conflicts culminating to Boko Haram crises.
Boko Haram’s pogrom recorded the worse religious strife in Nigeria. The group known as Boko Haram is said to have emerged in 2002 under the leadership of Mohammed Yusuf in Maiduguri. Yusuf had a strict, fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur’an and believed that the creation of Nigeria by British colonialists had imposed a Western and un-Islamic way of life on muslims
“Boko Haram” in the indigenous lingua franca Hausa, is: “Western education is forbidden”. Boko originally means fake but came to signify Western education, while haram means forbidden. It has also been translated as “Western influence is a sin” and “Westernization is sacrilege”.
The founder came with another brand of Islamic teachings that encouraged followers to resist the western way of life, also be recalcitrant to constituted authority. The poor, the less privileged and the deprived in the society embraced his teachings. Since the system had not been able to take care of them, they found solace in Mohammed Yusuf’s doctrines.
The movement had a large followership in the north eastern states of Borno, Bauchi, Yobe, Adamawa. Unfortunately, the political leaders fraternised with these group because of the large followership to gain political advantage. The then Governor of Borno state, Ali Modu Sheriff had some sort of political partnership with the leader of Boko Haram before they fell apart.
The crisis escalated when the leader of the group was arrested and extra judicially murdered by the security officials.
Nigeria is still battling with Boko Haram crises with its dire consequences. More than thousands of Nigerians have been killed, maimed, displaced and many lives distorted.
For how long are we going to encourage religion to be twisted and destroyed our mutual coexistence?
The two holy books i.e. the Bible and the Quran encourage peaceful coexistence.
Religion that is supposed to be a change agent, promotes peace, tranquillity and engender mutual coexistence has become toxic promoting destructions and despoilation of our sacred ethos.
Can’t we borrow a leaf from England that have in recent times, experienced terrorist attacks but did not allow religion to influence their politics?
The city of London that had been attacked on several occasions could elect a minority Muslim as the Mayor of London.
I have heard so many Nigerians blaming the woes of Nigeria on the colonial master, United Kingdom. They opined the colonial masters handed over a deeply divided nation along religious and ethnic lines at independence.
It’s been 57 years Nigeria got independence and some are still passing blames, instead of doing away with acrimonious bigotry and religious considerations
This is instructive to all promoters of evil and enemies of this country
I wonder what our Nigerian political leaders aim to achieve by stoking the embers of division along religious lines to gain political advantage. What binds us together ought to have strengthened and not to divide us
I’m waiting for a day in Nigeria where we shall be able to rise from religious parochism and elect leaders all levels, without considering the faith of the individual, but will invariably be determined by integrity and the strength of character.
I hope we shall get to a point where we shall be able to emulate the Londoners in choosing those that will represent us without religious inclination.
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