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Our
recent past has been marred by outbreaks of violent ethno-religious conflicts.
Such sectarian crisis has cost the lives of thousands of young people in
northern and central Nigeria. They’ve been dispatched to their early graves
with unrealized potentials. Wherever religious bigotry bares its
bloodthirsty fangs, communities are set on orgies of blood and barbarism
rivalled only by the savagery of demonized jackals tearing at carrion. The
people of Bauchi, Jos, Kaduna, Kafanchan, Kano, Maiduguri, Tafawa Balewa,
Zankwo, Zaria etc—victims and aggressors alike—still bear mental and emotional
scars. They live in societies divided and traumatized; economies crippled, and
development stalled.
But
Nigeria wasn’t always like this.
As a
child, in the eighties, I grew up in Kaduna in a neighbourhood where Muslims
and Christians lived as one happy extended family. We were such good
neighbours; you’d hardly notice any religious differences. Christmas and Sallah
were eloquent testimonies of the bliss of good neighbourliness. We shared food
with neighbours and joined in the celebration. As a child, I always looked
forward to Sallah as much I did Christmas. My best friends in both primary and
secondary school were Muslims. Today, my circle of close friends has only a solitary
Muslim.
Nigeria
is a heterogeneous society. We are comprised of people of different faiths,
ethnicity, and creed. Without doubt, Christianity and Islam are the
largest faiths in Nigeria. We are reputed to be the most religious people in
the world. We are zealous for our faith. Everyone holds tenaciously to his
claim of the truth and would not shift an inch. Yet, we’re one of the least
transparent, one of the most corrupt, disorderly and intolerant nations in the
world.
Forced
by providence to live in the same nation, our entrenched religious dogmatism
and extremism has smeared our recent past with blood and tears. Even in death,
we’re divided along religious lines: we bury our dead in segregated cemeteries.
More than ever before, our society is divided along ethnic and religious lines.
Just take a look at the map of the voting pattern in the last presidential
elections.
How
did we, as a nation, get to this stage? Why have we turned our diversity into a
curse rather than a blessing?
Both
Islam and Christianity are missionary faiths with a relentless drive to
proselytize. The zeal to convert has often placed them on a collision course in
many parts of the world, including Nigeria. Very often, conservative and
extreme elements want to force their version of the truth and their way of life
on other people (especially if they are in the majority), or take exception to
the world view of people of other faiths.
In
Nigeria, the roots of religious intolerance cannot be too far from the collapse
of the political economy of the violence-prone areas of the country in the
mid-eighties and the contentious structure of the government. Running a
centralist form of government, in spite of professing to be a Federation,
provides the fuel for intolerance. In a mono economy where the federating
states depend largely on monthly federal revenue allocations to run their
bloated bureaucracy, and finance scant capital projects, there’s bound to be a
scramble for scarce resources. Contending interest groups are bound to jostle
for power and privilege, shamelessly whip up religious sentiments to position
themselves to gain a strong hand to negotiate access to and control of
resources.
The
losers in this jostle are often ethnic and religious minorities. That may be
why the cry of marginalization so loudly precedes outbreaks of violent
religious conflicts.
Ironically,
both Christianity and Islam teach tolerance and love for neighbours.
Christianity personifies love: God is love; Jesus is the Prince of Peace. Islam
means peace. It preaches justice for all. But many have chosen some passages in
their scriptures to ignite divisive ethnicity and religious intolerance. Some
Christians quote, “thou shall not be unevenly yoked with unbelievers,” to
rationalize their bigoted positions. Some Islamists quote scripture to the
effect that they are implored not to befriend unbelievers, but wage war (jihad)
against them. These, and other, verses taken out of context, drummed into the
ears of depraved adherents, courses hate and exacerbate religious
intolerance.
If we
must live together as a nation, we must not only tolerate each other, we must
accommodate one another. We must understand our differences and accept them. We
must understand our faith, that of others and accept that we all have the right
to freedom of religion, opinion and association as enshrined in the
constitution and taught by our religions.
As
young people, our focus should be on our common aspirations: to live happy,
prosperous lives; to live in peace and security and have opportunities to reach
our full potentials. Instead of focusing on our religious differences, we
should focus on our common humanity and our common problems: poverty; low
quality education, lack of access to quality healthcare, mass unemployment,
environmental degradation, corruption etc. Indeed, there are fewer cases of
religious bigotry in the upper rungs of society: they share a common interest:
the accumulation and control of capital.
As
young people, Nigeria belongs to us. It has great potentials for true
greatness. A great nation is ours to profit. To gain that profit, we must
depart from the way of thinking of the past. We must innovate to create wealth
through entrepreneurship, diligence in our jobs, and aspire for excellence in
whatever we do. The aggregate increase in the wealth of the nation, as a
consequence of this, will improve the economy. This may not completely
eliminate religious intolerance, but the premise is: get the economy (with
equitable growth) up; get bigotry down.
When we answer the question of religious intolerance, a Nigeria that is
the largest economy in Africa and one of the top 20 economies in the world,
awaits us in the future. This future is attainable. It is here.
