Ethnic, sectarian upheavals push troubled Nigeria to the edge

The latest outburst of ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria has raised fresh doubts over the ability of Africa's most populous country to maintain its fragile unity. President Olusegun Obasanjo imposed a state of emergency in Plateau State in central Nigeria on Tuesday, following a Christian massacre of several hundred Muslims by Christian militants earlier in the month. And Kano, the biggest city in northern Nigeria, remains subject to a night-time curfew following the reprisal killing of dozens - possibly hundreds - of Christians there last week. Polarisation between the oil-rich, predominantly Christian and Animist south of Nigeria and the poorer and largely Muslim north appears to be increasing and many civic and religious leaders are calling for a "Sovereign National Conference" to rewrite the constitution and save the country from collapse. "It is either a sovereign national conference now or we go to war because the federal government has failed and the system has collapsed," Islamic leader Datti Ahmed said last week at a protest against the killing of Muslims in Plateau State. The Nigerian Red Cross estimates that over 600 people perished in the small town of Yelwa when militants from the mainly Christian Tarok attacked it on 2 May to kill Muslims of the Hausa and Fulani tribes from northern Nigeria. They shot them with automatic rifles, hacked them to death with machetes and burned them alive in their homes. Ahmed's call for a national conference to work out a new consensus among Nigerians is also echoed by many Christian militants. Colonel Joe Achuzia, a former military commander of the breakaway state of Biafra in Nigeria's 1967-1970 civil war, said he is also ready for a fight if faced with further Muslim agression. "We are eqally capable of defending our people and this we will do," Achuzia told reporters. But he echoed Ahmed's call for the creation of a new national forum of discussion. "We believe the time is now [for a sovereign national conference]," said Achuzia, who is also a leading figure in Oha n'Eze, a pressure group of the large Igbo tribe, which unsuccessfully tried to carve out a separate state in the Christian south-east in the 1960s. "We are either one country, or no country," he said. President Obasanjo, has hitherto rejected the idea of convening a national conference that could rewrite the country's 1999 constitution, arguing that Nigeria's two-chamber parliament is the appropriate body for dealing with such matters. However, confidence in elected officials has withered following last year's general elections which were marred by widespread allegations of fraud and rigging. Obsanajo is therefore under increasing pressure to call a sovereign national conference to enable a free frank discussion of the issues that increasingly are pulling at Nigeria's seams. The latest in a cycle of violence Ethnic and religious massacres are nothing new in Nigeria. However, the latest outburst of sectarian violence comes against a background of increasing poverty in this country of 126 million people, increasing radicalisation in the Islamic north and declining public confidence in its latest six-year-old experiment with multi-party democracy. It was triggered by the massacre of Muslims in Yelwa. But this in turn was a reprisal for the killing of dozens of local Christians in February, many of whom were hacked down in a church where they had gone to seek refuge. The Yelwa massacre in turn triggered attacks on the Christian minority in Kano. Christian groups there say several hundred people were killed, although the police have so far confirmed only 51 deaths. As the events spread tension to other parts of Nigeria, troops and policemen were deployed to known sectarian trouble spots across the country to stop the violence from spreading. On Tuesday, after repeated accusations that the federal government was not doing enough to control the crisis, President Obasanjo declared a state of emergency in Plateau State, sacking the elected governor, Joshua Dariye, and the state legislature. He appointed a former army general to administer the volatile state instead. Obasanjo accused Dariye of not doing enough to check escalating religious violence in Plateau State which has claimed the lives of more than 2,000 over the past three years. “If allowed (to continue) the crisis will engulf the entire nation,” he warned. His apprehension is well founded. Religious riots in the northern city of Kaduna in 2000 sparked reprisal killings of Muslims in the mainly Christian and Igbo southeast. More than 3,000 people died in communal violence across Nigeria that year. It was the highest casualty figure recorded since the civil war in the 1960's, which which cost more than one million lives. Estimates vary, but most indicate that between 5,000 and 10,000 people have died in ethnic, religious and communal violence in Nigeria since Obasanjo was elected president in 1999 after more than 15 years of often brutal military rule. Ironically perhaps, the advent of democracy lifted the repressive lid on the long pent-up anger and frustrations felt by many of Nigeria's component units. A deep rooted problem Today's ethnic and religious tensions have their roots in Nigeria's pre-colonial past and often reflect rivalries that were exploited by British colonial rulers to control the vast territory of more than 250 ethnic groups. The hostility of the minority tribes that occupy much of central Nigeria towards Hausa and Fulani Muslims whose origins lie further north revolve around a fear of domination. In 1804, Islamic purist, Uthman dan Fodio (a Fulani) launched a holy war or jihad which saw him conquer the ancient Hausa city states of northern Nigeria to create the Sokoto Caliphate, one of the biggest pre-colonial states ever formed in Africa. The southward advance of the Caliphate appears only to have been halted by the northward expansion of British colonial rule from the Atlantic coast in the late 19th century. But under British indirect rule system, the Caliphate was allowed to even extend its authority over previously unconquered areas to the south in return for guaranteeing its loyalty to the colonial authorities. This move was resented by most of the tribes in central Nigeria that converted to Christianity. With independence in 1960, the minority groups of Nigeria's Middle Belt felt freed from immediate Hausa-Fulani influence, and began to assert a concept of their own, exclusive homeland. Their claims were made even more acute by the continued southward migration of the Hausas and Fulanis, who are mainly traders and livestock herders. Over several decades, the Hausas and Fulanis have formed large communities among the original inhabitants of central Nigeria. Since these Muslim incomers often been richer and wielded greater political influence than the local people, resentment against them only deepened. This situation has been exacerbated by the introduction of strict Islamic Shari’ah law by 12 states in the predominantly Muslim north since 2000. Prescribed penalties under Shari’ah include the amputation of limbs for stealing, stoning to death for adultery and public flogging for alcohol consumption. “Shari’ah served to reinforce fears of Hausa-Fulani domination and religious hegemony among the ethnic groups of central Nigeria,” Ike Onyekwere, a prominent political analyst and newspaper commentator, told IRIN. Onyekwere said these fears were directly linked to the eruption of Muslim-Christian violence in Jos, the formerly peaceful capital of Plateau State, in September 2001. More than 1,000 people were killed in that outburst of communal violence. Another factor behind the conflict is that many farming and herding communities in Nigeria’s increasingly arid north have been pressing southwards to escape the steady encroachment of the Sahara Desert. This has increased pressure on land in central Nigeria, providing an additional cause of conflict. What is true of Plateau State is some ways also true of Nigeria as a whole. The largely Christian south has resented the north’s domination of political power under both military and civilian rule for most years since the country’s independence and it views the introduction of Shari’ah with great suspicion. The fact that President Obasanjo is a fervent Christian from the Yoruba ethnic group of southwestern Nigeria, does not appear to offer them sufficient guarantees. There is a rising outcry in the south against the repressive nature of his government, the continued prevalence of corruption in his cabinet and the undermining of what are supposed to be free elections by widespread fraud. A new constitution free from military or colonial influence Renowned human rights lawyer Gani Fawehinmi has teamed up with Nobel prize winning author Wole Soyinka to head a coalition of civic groups that are calling for Obasanjo’s resignation and the creation of a sovereign national conference. Fawehinmi argues that Nigerians will accept as more binding a constitution they have made themselves. He says that Nigeria's independence constitution was simply handed to the country by its colonial rulers while all subsequent constitutions have been imposed by military rulers preparing their exit from power. A truly Nigerian constitution, Fawehinmi said, can only be achieved by bringing elected representatives of the ethnic, religious and other interest groups, including labour unions and professional associations, into the discussion. It is not a task that can be simply left to the politicians. “We will discuss everything from Shari’ah to the rights of the man on the street,” he said. “In essence we want a better country, we want poverty to go and the elected to be accountable.” Soyinka believes such a conference would provide the opportunity for Nigerians to decide if there was a better way to govern the country. If for instance, it was cheaper to have part-time legislators instead of the current full-time legislators housed and provided for by the state at huge costs to the economy. “We are talking of going back to the roots, even the very soul of the existence of this country,” Soyinka said.