Bishop of Truro
Jibrin Ibrahim
Bishop of Truro, Extremism and Religious Persecution in Nigeria
Jibrin Ibrahim, Friday Column, Daily Trust, 6th March 2020
Last week, I attended a workshop at Wilton Part in Sussex on the theme of fostering social cohesion in Nigeria. It was organized by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The workshop title is framed rather diplomatically as the focus of discussions was the Bishop of Truro’s 2019 independent review into the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s work to support persecuted Christians in Nigeria and globally. The assumption is that Nigeria’s multiple and complex security challenges including Islamist violence in the North East, worsening violent criminality and insecurity in the North West and ethno-religious violence, and farmer-herder conflict across large parts of central Nigeria are all directed at targeting Christians for persecution. For a country with a highly religiously observant population that is roughly divided between the two main established religions of Islam and Christianity, you cannot have a theme as weighty as this.
The report says there is widespread evidence showing that today, Christians constitute by far the most widely persecuted religion. They cite the Pew Research Center report that in 2016 Christians were targeted in 144 countries, a rise from 125 in 2015. It affirms that the most serious threat to Christian communities came from the militant Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, where direct targeting of Christian believers on a comprehensive scale set out to “eliminate Christianity and pave the way for the total Islamisation of the country”. They cite an investigation showed that in 2018 far more Christians in Nigeria were killed in violence in which religious faith was a critical factor than anywhere else in the world; Nigeria accounted for 3,731 of the 4,136 fatalities: 90 percent of the total.
The other area of focus of the report is what they call the new and growing threat to mainly Christian farming communities had emerged from nomadic Fulani herdsmen. The Fulani, says the report, carry out attacks against Christian communities especially in Nigeria’s ‘Middle Belt’, the border territory between the Hausa-speaking Muslim areas in northern Nigeria and land further south mainly populated by Christians. Reports also showed mostly retaliatory attacks against Fulani by “predominantly” Christian farmers, such as the November 2016 killing of about 50 mainly Fulani pastoralists by ethnic Bachama local residents in Numan district, Adamawa state. The causes of this inter-communal conflict are complex and “attributed to many factors”. That said whilst the conflict cannot simply be seen in terms of religion, it is equally simplistic not to see the religious dimension as a significantly exacerbating factor, and the Fulani attacks have repeatedly demonstrated a clear intent to target Christians, and potent symbols of Christian identity.
The general view of the workshop participants, in my understanding, was that the Bishop of Truro, by his terms of reference, worked from the answer to the question and therefore found what he was asked to look for. Many participants pointed out there is indeed evidence of targeting of Christians in Nigeria’s growing culture of violence but also evidence of the targeting of Muslims by the same forces. It is therefore important to have some comparative perspective and balance in assessing the situation. In addition, the multiple conflicts and rapid growth of criminal gangs targeting all sectors of society and community should guide us into developing a more complex evaluation of what is going on.
One of the participants who I referred to in my column last week and who is the Special Adviser on Agriculture, Dr. Andrew Kwasari took up the issue of Fulani herdsmen targeting Christians in the Middle Belt. He drew attention to the work done by the National Committee on the crisis composed of governors and ministers that have found out that essentially, it is a crisis generated by climate change, population growth, expansion of farming and transhumance agriculture based on competition in access to land, pasture and water with feasible solutions. The problem, he argued is that too many politicians and religious conflict entrepreneurs have a stake in deepening the conflict and making solutions difficult to implement. He argued that the ten-year National Livestock Transformation Plan is workable and the surest path to peace and development and should be allowed to work.
The workshop was attended by major faith leaders in the country, inter-faith advocacy groups, academics and human rights campaigners. There was a lot of discussion on expanding the domain of inter-faith dialogue between Muslim and Christian groups to address the continuous flow of inter-faith conflicts and misunderstanding that emerge on a daily basis. Each religious group was also encouraged to counter conflict entrepreneurs from within that are more interested in generating and exacerbating rather than ending the conflicts. Some of the faith leaders complained bitterly that politician and governments will cause conflict and then call on religious leaders to pray and resolve the conflicts. We must work together if we are to build peace.
One issue that called for a lot of attention was the growing sense of injustice in the country, from virtually all quarters. When people believe that are victims of injustice, it’s difficult for them to embrace peace. There can be little progress in peace building unless State actors take up the issue of addressing concerns on the massive injustice in the country. The objective must be for all stakeholders to continue to discuss the challenges of inter-communal violence in Nigeria and examine how collectively government, civil society, faith-based and community organisations and others can work together to build solutions. We need to be more honest in considering the underlying resource competition driving conflict and insecurity in the country. Nigeria is in a dangerous phase in its development where each community now believes the State is not ready to address its problems and that it has to procure arms to engage in self-help. We need to go back to basics such as considering alternative dispute settlement mechanisms to address impunity for those responsible and demands for justice is met for all, including members of religious groups. In this regard, participants were urged to highlight and promote examples in which inter-faith initiatives to promote peace and foster social cohesion have worked are working with the objective of replicating them.
The Bishop of Truro’s report advocated for religious protection, promoting inclusive high-quality education for all and addressing social-economic issues. Clearly, the massive growth of poverty in Nigeria over the past decade makes peace building a very difficult enterprise. The youth bulge and unemployment for both the educated and uneducated young person’s makes interlocutors for peace scarce. These are all elements about building a more inclusive State and society that we have to take on board. The challenge here is the dominance of a self-serving political class whose only objective appears to be the primitive accumulation of capital and self-aggrandisement.
The workshop was conducted under Chattam House Rules so individuals opinions cannot be quoted. Cardinal John Onaiyekan however gave me permission to refer to his major recommendation to the meeting. He said that all of us Nigerians feel that the cost of staying together as a Nation is extremely high and too many of us want to opt out of the State. He warned however that the cost of our being torn apart would be much higher and we should reflect seriously on what we pray for. I endorse the wise words of the cardinal.
Salimonu Kadiri
Skickat: den 6 mars 2020 10:38
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Baba Kadiri,
Professor Jibrin Ibrahim’s accounting that you are responding to is horrific.
Many thanks for highlighting what you have highlighted so succinctly. As a serious Pan-Africanist, I’m trying to imagine what the Constitution of the United States of Africa would look like. Taking Nigeria as a microcosm of the African Continent gives us an insight into the enormity of the challenge if for starters we should take Northern Nigeria – the Muslim North as roughly corresponding to North Africa (Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, I. Go. Before. Others, the Igbo Christians, and Jews also wanting to establish their theocracies in the South East. You get the drift.
Re- “The State (Government) shall foster a feeling of belonging and involvement among the various people of the Federation to the extent that loyalty to the nation shall override sectional loyalties.”
Could it also be restated to avoid the possibility of ambiguity or misinterpretation, to wit, that operating under the same constitutional umbrella of the One Nigeria, sectional loyalties should be subordinated or even made subservient to the national interest?
Easier said than done. As experience has shown and continues to show, in the name of self-interest, “sectional loyalties” is often fraught with all kinds of difficulties, especially when “the various people” become what they already are: The various peoples.
The carefully worded legalese of this section of Naija’s Holy Constitution captures the spirit of its overriding national intention of fostering a national sense, a sense of nationhood and does not need any further clarification. As every Nigerian knows there are many sub-categories to what’s blandly referred to as “sectional loyalties” and in addition to the regional consciousness at the base of some of the “sectional loyalties”, as you have already so painstakingly pointed out, there are also “the two greatest weapons of mass deception in Nigeria… Religion and ethnicity.”
I don’t know why you capitalise/ emphasise religion (with a capital R) but not ethnicity. No doubt you perhaps subconsciously believe that when it comes to matters of identity, religion is more important than ethnicity. However, as you very well know, just as there are the Yoruba men who believe themselves to be first and foremost Yoruba men, and that for such men, being Christian is a secondary issue, Baba Kadiri, just as Wallahi , there are also zealous Fulani and Hausa men who are Muslim over and above being local nationalists, and that of course, being Muslims, personally speaking, the demands of Sharia Law on their halal lives take precedence over laws that could conflict with sharia or compromise adherence to Sharia. In that regard, it could be natural that some soldiers in the Nigerian army could feel some degree of reluctance in taking certain kinds of action against the Islamic Movement of Nigeria
To be continued…
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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segun ogungbemi
"He said that all of us Nigerians feel that the cost of staying together as a Nation is extremely high and too many of us want to opt out of the State. He warned however that the cost of our being torn apart would be much higher and we should reflect seriously on what we pray for. I endorse the wise words of the cardinal." Professor Jibrin Ibrahim.
The scary picture of the cost of separation painted by the Cardinal is an assumption. We have been forced by the British to serve their economic and imperialist interests. Since the British left, we have not had enduring peace. The present carnage perpetrated by Boko Haram, Fulani herder killers, etc with impunity plus an apparent complicity of the present government are convincing indicators in my view that we should go our separate ways to have peace.
Now the elites who exploit the wealth of the country are drumming fear of separation. It is better to try to be independent than to remain in the state of nature. The wise saying of the Yoruba is instructive, Orisa bo' gbemi, wa fimi sile bo' bami, meaning, a deity that does not improve my quality of life, it is better to leave me in my existential condition.
It is better to try that option of being in our existential conditions.
Segun Ogungbemi.
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear Professor Segun Ogungbemi,
Chatham House is a uniquely special think tank. So is The Tavistock Institute. Among the UK Govt Ministries, there’s the Department for International Development. I’m not conflating these three but with regard to the subject matter, we are responding to, it should be interesting to hear what The World Council of Churches has to say about The Persecution of Christians in Nigeria
Another assumption:
In the name of Pan-Africanism and the progress that we aspire to, the foundational premise is the unity of people and peoples living in peace and harmony. This is attainable, even if, unfortunately, the idea is still experiencing some birth pangs and teething problems, all of which have now led to various assumptions and conclusions which by their very nature, are not necessarily true.
I should like to challenge two assumptions, the first either made or reported by Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, the second made by you. If both premises and/ or assumptions are not reliable, then the conclusions that are being based on such shaky foundations do not result in a quod erat demonstrandum
According to Professor Jibrin Ibrahim:
“The assumption is that Nigeria's multiple and complex security challenges including Islamist violence in the North East, worsening violent criminality and insecurity in the North West and ethno-religious violence, and farmer-herder conflict across large parts of central Nigeria are all directed at targeting Christians for persecution” –
more specifically, the Pew Research Center report is quoted as pointing to
“Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, where direct targeting of Christian believers on a comprehensive scale set out to "eliminate Christianity and pave the way for the total Islamisation of the country".
I should like to belabour this point. To begin with, the overwhelming majority of Boko Haram’s victims happen to be Muslims. So, the challenge to the Pew Research assumption is, where is the evidence or proof that Boko Haram has as its agenda to "eliminate Christianity and pave the way for the total Islamisation of the country" ?
You (dear Professor Segun Ogungbemi), a fellow traveller and a fellow sufferer, not shuffering and Shmiling , in this existential moment, I share your sense of anguish as you hint darkly about “an apparent complicity of the present government”. Based on the assumptions listed by your brother Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, that, plus all the bad news about the security/ insecurity situation in Nigeria, the banditry, lawlessness, anarchy and chaos that is our daily heritage provides sufficient reason for you to advocate ( almost explicitly, certainly by implication) separation – “separation “ indeed – easier said than done – like “To take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?”
“Amidst the cries of Let's build a nation!
Separation, y'all, separation t y'all
You say that “we should go our separate ways to have peace.” You say that you are sure that “The scary picture of the cost of separation painted by the Cardinal is an assumption”
The cardinal probably has in mind Jesus suffering on the cross and after Biafra, he must be thinking about what could be the bloody cost of separation, especially if it is not done peacefully, via e.g. a Constitutional Conference at which the stakeholders and separatists decide to secede peacefully.
Sir, there is hope, yet. In my humble opinion and in the humble opinion of other Nigerians ably argued elsewhere, even in the prevailing circumstances, separation is not the solution. Look at the entity known as the European Union, birthed after two tragic world wars. You may want to point to the violent disintegration of what was once Tito’s Yugoslavia. You may pray and hope that by “separation” you do not mean the violent disintegration of Nigeria, having learned the tragic lesson from the short-lived experiment that was buried as Biafra.
BTW , I met Chuck Anthony – an old friend, two weeks ago – I was at his gig in the Old Town in Stockholm and he was in tremendous form , he told me a little about when he played with Fela - he played guitar in this 2000 Blacks that very positive vision for Nigeria: Unity, you and me…
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
You say that,
“Buhari is not helping the situation with his policy of releasing captured Boko Haram members with those supposedly reformed being told by an army spokesman that they could one day become President of Nigeria.”
Releasing rehabilitated and de-programmed Boko Haram “fighters” and returning them to society at large or recruiting them into the Nigerian army. You don’t think that a policy of appeasement is the right path to peace? What about negotiating with Boko Haram? Has that been tried? Can fire be put out by fire? As MG sings, “War is not the answer”, “only love can conquer hate” - the love of which all the Nigerian pastors sing and preach. Have we tried that, to stop the fratricide?
Otherwise, let us pray. Otherwise, it looks like we’re all doomed. If you don’t stop the genocide now, then sooner or later Boko Haram is going to bite your ass. That’s the impression you give. There’s not even a single ray of hope in your summation. In other words, it’s the recipe for disaster when you who search the cosmos far and wide, “ Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge” cannot find a simple solution to the terrorism that’s bedeviling a tiny spec of the cosmos, namely Maiduguri, the epicentre of Borno, a tiny enclave in North-Eastern Nigeria, an area of 57,799 km², roughly three times the size of Israel which is also bedeviled by its own share of terrorism being committed by the religion of peace and likewise, just as their sympathisers in Boko Haram who want to make Abuja the capital of their Caliphate, the Islamic Republic of Nigeria, over the carcass of today’s Nigeria as you know it, so too united in a similar purpose they (their brothers-in-arms, their fellow Islamic terrorists in Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Hezbollah, supported by Iran) also want to eradicate Israel (God forbid) and erect an Islamic State in her place, with the Holy City of Jerusalem as their capital.
Boko Haram is still exclusively operating in the Muslim North. You should thank your lucky stars that they have not yet moved into the Christian enclaves in the South. When and if they do so Nigeria would have become truly ungovernable and you can then say that we have a major problem. Think about it.
Maybe, to begin with, Borno could be quarantined. Isolate them in the Sambisa Forest
“First, we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it," Powell said, while also ... air and naval superiority and the plan to slowly strangle the Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
For more than a decade now, the question has been, who is financing Boko Haram? From where do they get their supplies of water, food, terror equipment, ammunition, bombs, suicide belts? Do these supplies arrive by air, land, and sea? What are their supply routes, supply chains and command structures?
If their supplies are stopped at source – if their supplies dry up, then how could Boko haram terrorism possibly continue?
You say that “Boko Haram has made it clear that the implanting of its version of Islam across the nation is its ultimate vision.”
Fact is that Boko Haram is merely the highly motivated, inspired and committed military wing, the foot soldiers of those whose discourse is the Kalam – the foot soldiers of those whose aim is to Islamise the whole world. They have wrenched some ayahs from the historical contexts in which they occur in the Quran, and they are applying those injunctions which they interpret to be divine commands. They have taken these commandments (Amr) to heart and with the understanding that time is of the essence, they believe that these commandments must be fulfilled in their world - and in Nigeria - now - at this time of their lives. If Toyin Adepoju was a real Muslim and believed that the Creator of the Universe was addressing him thus, what would Toyin Adepoju do? I think that like Ali Shariati, in sincerely believing that Islam is the answer, Toyin Adepoju’ soul would also be on fire, ablaze, seized by the holy zeal, to the extent that he might even be one of those leading the insurgency against kufr, against the moral collapse, against the social injustice, against the economic oppression and against the corruption :
Surah Al-Anfal :39 : “And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah. But if they cease, then lo! Allah is Seer of what they do.”
Surah al Baqarah: 190 - 193 : “Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors. And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. But if they desist, then lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against wrong-doers.”
Back to cause and effect: Apart from sitting in some armchair or Ivory Tower or some other higher moral platform and from there condemning terrorism, one of the theoretical anti-terrorist approaches has been that if you just aim at dismantling and disrupting the ideology that indoctrinates, motivates and supports the terrorism then the terrorism/ terrorists will disband and collapse, inevitably, even instantaneously.
However, the other fact is that the d-evil which according to the fatalistic Christian eschatology is “the ruler of this world” is still freely roaming about, unchained, and is not going to die that easily, to begin with, for the simple reason that the conditions which give birth to terrorism, still persist:
Poverty ( a good recruiting ground) illiteracy, social injustice, unemployment, the rich and powerful exploiting the weak and the poor , so some of the oppressed Muslims resort to terrorism, to reverse all of the aforementioned is their organised response - by which they intend to establish the kingdom of God on planet earth, by acting locally, in this their own earthly corner, their portion known as Nigeria. They want to destroy – to transform the Nigeria that you know into an Islamic State. If their dreams and their struggle should prove successful, we are yet to know exactly what would be the status of His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto and his Holiness the Emir of Kano in their Islamic State apparatus/ government.
What you refer to as their “2011 escalation” was, understandably ( I understand it) their response to the betrayal and unlawful killing ( despicable murder) of their leader Mohammed Yusuf ( May the Almighty forgive him his mistakes and grant him a place in the Firdaus // Jannah // Paradise. I sincerely wish this for him and pray for it for him. Tomorrow, I intend to do tzedakah for him and other martyrs like him.
The rest of your third paragraph suggests that in their eyes, one infidel government led by Pastor Goodluck Jonathan has been succeeded by another infidel government which by definition is not an Islamic government, currently being led by Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari. Which means that even if before he lost the presidential elections, on returning from his pilgrimage to Israel, if Goodluck Jonathan had acceded to their Islamofascist demands and had converted to Islam that would not have slowed down their terrorism to a zero number of atrocities, because if Alhaji Buhari and all the other former Nigerian Muslim heads of state in Nigeria did not dream of abandoning Nigeria’s secular constitution, then it would be unreasonable to anticipate that an Alhaji Goodluck Jonathan should have been the first one to unilaterally declare – or by a nationwide referendum, that Nigeria become an Islamic Republic in order for Boko Haram to “ to stop their atrocities.”
My good friend phoned me last night, he’s just back from home (Edo State). Believe it or not, my first question was “Did you see any Boko Haram in your garden or on your farm?” and to my great surprise, he answered, “No!” After I send this, I’ll be on my way to see him and another Edo Brother who is visiting, to verify the latest developments. As a follow-up to my first question, he told me that with so many people emigrating to Europe from Edo State, the Fulani are gradually moving in to fill in the vacancies – the labour shortage caused by the Exodus from Edo State – and that the Fulani are also gradually taking over some of the farms that have been abandoned by the emigrants. When I reminded him that they (the Fulani) are not so many - he said that they are also coming/ immigrating to Nigeria from some of the neighbouring countries such as Niger. I concurred that that’s a possibility, that in the period 1981-1984 we could see beggars from Chad begging on the streets of Port Harcourt. Stay tuned for eye witness accounts – the very latest about what goin’ on in your portion, your neck of the jungle; Edo State
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
There’s nothing to report yet. The Edo Summit has been postponed, rescheduled for tomorrow.
Your good friends Boko Haram have that feelgood feeling. They believe that they are going to paradise and that if you are not careful, people like you are going to burn in the everlasting hellfire.
You ought not to underestimate the tenacious hold that the ideology and the theology of radical, militant and political Islam has on its frustrated adherents, especially when the militants believe that they are on the right path, that they are the holy warriors of Allah, the new Lions of Allah, that the infidels, i.e. the kuffar and the Mushrikun (the polytheists) are the enemy and that the enemy that opposes them and fights against them are not and cannot be on God’s side, that in fact, the enemy/ the enemies are all currently being led astray by the arch-demon Satan who is their commander-in-chief.
The crux of the matter is those who regard Jihad as one of the pillars of Islam.
Assuming that you have the audacity, then, for instance, how do you intend to go about “de-programming” the so-called ” Army of Islam “ out of the idea that the Jihad that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has in mind and has commanded is not the same as the terrorism that they are practising ?
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