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Nigeria's bloody violence isn't about religious division, it stems from one extremist group: Boko Haram
This week, still reeling from Friday's bloody bombings on the northern city of Kano, Nigeria braces itself for more violence ahead. The bulk of the casualties in the attacks on churches belonged to the Igbo people, and this has already led to retaliatory attacks in parts of south-eastern Nigeria. An Igbo group, Ogbunigwe Ndigbo, gave all northern Muslims in the region two weeks to leave or face their wrath. In Lokpanta, where my mother is from, the Muslim Hausa community – which settled there many years ago – were seen leaving in truckloads.
With the deepening crises it has become normal, not just in the media but among ordinary Nigerians, to argue that the violence is a sectarian or religious matter, an issue of north v south, Muslims v Christians. I have spoken to friends who are convinced that it is not just southern Christians who are the primary targets of Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group who have claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Igbos in particular. Well-meaning Igbo leaders are calling on their brethren to "return home", referring to the attacks as "systematic ethnic cleansing". A friend shouted to me over the phone that "Igbos should just secede. Igbo blood is being spilled and the government is doing nothing at all about it."
However, as tempting as it is, polarising the crisis is misleading. First, the position of Boko Haram, whose name translates as "western education is prohibited", is not representative of Nigerian Muslims. Before its rise to prominence, Nigerians co-existed tolerably well, respectful of each other's faith. I spent six years as a child in a boarding school in the north. We said both Muslim prayers and Christian grace before meals.
While there is an undeniable religious element to the assaults, the targets of Saturday's attacks in the Islamic heartland of the country clearly illustrate the problem with such singular interpretations of complex situations. There have, for instance, been suggestions that some politicians in the Muslim north feel betrayed by President Goodluck Jonathan for not honouring the power-rotating pact within the ruling PDP party, which would have not seen a southerner run for presidency until 2015, and that they are using Boko Haram to try and unseat him. Last May there were bomb blasts in two separate northern cities mere hours after Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in, one in the home city of the vice president, Namadi Sambo, himself a Muslim.
Obviously these are troubled times for Nigeria. Many who, like my father, lived through the Biafran war of 1967, are fearful that events might escalate. Indeed, in an address to the nation the president referred to the deepening crisis as "worse than the war". It doesn't help that he seems overwhelmed by the scale of events. It took him almost an entire day after the Kano attacks to address the nation. When he did, it was an uninspired speech delivered through an aide. The escape from custody of the prime suspect in the Christmas Day bombings has shown, as a friend said, "that Boko Haram is stronger than the president".
Yet, despite everything, if the Occupy Nigeria movement protests of the past weeks have taught us anything, it is that there is still hope for the country's future. Amidst the anger, the frustration, the violence, Nigerians joined hands across cultural and religious barriers to rise up against a government they no longer trust.
The images that I hang on to are the photographs posted on Facebook during the protests: Christians keeping watch over their Muslim brothers as they prayed, and young Muslim men in Kano visiting churches across the city. The Igbo have a saying that the hunger that has hope of being stilled does not kill. These photographs convince me that one day we will save Nigeria.
But wTo do so, we will need the help of not just the government, but of religious and cultural leaders. They need to talk across barriers, not just to each other, but also to their followers, to stem the tide of attacks and counter-attacks. Innocent citizens are not the enemy. The enemy is Boko Haram, and the government needs to step up and do whatever it takes to crush this group, before it becomes any more powerful than it already is.
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