Checking Spread of The Jos Violence

At a time when notable citizens and even foreign diplomats are battling for the delisting of Nigeria as a potential “terror-risk” nation, by the United States of America (USA), it is most regrettable to experience the manner of senseless killings recorded last Monday, in Jos, the Plateau State Capital under religious guises.

  Media reports say, as many as 200 Nigerians were killed and supposedly sacred places of worship attacked, vandalized and even burnt. Sadly, this is coming less than, two years after the November 2008 sectarian crisis, for which an investigative panel is still searching for solutions to the near frequent resurgence of violence in the Northern part of Nigeria.

  This time around, problem was said to have started at Nassarawa Gwon area of the Jos City, where, a Moslem whose property had been burnt in the 2008 crisis ventured rebuilding, a process which led to protests of encroachment by other residents. That argument, it was said, resulted into fists fights between the residents on one hand and the builder’s workers on the other and which later escalated into a religious affair.

  In the end, the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) Mortuary was littered with corpses of fellow Nigerians with an even greater promise for escalation into a full-blown religious disturbance. On the last count, the Christian community in Jos, has been complaining of widespread attacks on innocent Christians who were returning from Church service, Sunday afternoon, although Moslem youths denied that.

  In order to check further deterioration of the situation, Governor Jonah David Jang on Monday imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the once serene and innocent Tin city. Even so, there were clandestine moves by some sectarian war-mongers to unleash further mayhem on others.

  This is why we consider, most timely, the directive of Vice President Goodluck Jonathan urging the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ogbonna Onovo and other security chiefs to move base to the embattled city. The measure, without doubt, is to nip in the bud any fresh attempt by anyone to further aggravate the already regrettable situation.

  While, we commend that timely Vice Presidential intervention, we cannot do the same about the slow pace in finding answers to earlier disturbances, particularly, that of November 2008. We say so because, had that crisis been thoroughly investigated, key culprits identified and punished, it would have been unfanciful for anyone to foment the kind of unrest, which is now threatening the secular nature of our constitution.

  It is indeed sad that after nearly 50 years, as a politically independent state, Nigeria is yet to flex the right kind of muscle needed to defend our secularity and check avoidable extremism and religious lawlessness. Instead phoney inquiries are repeatedly convoked to investigate disturbances which reports are very often, never published and when they did, known culprits treated with kid-gloves.

  For that singular reason, it has become fanciful for religious rascals to heat-up the polity and endanger lives and properties of other innocent Nigerians in the name of faith. That must stop because, religion is strictly a matter between an individual or group of individuals and the source of their faith and not one which a group should impose on others.

  If, the many churches and mosques in Nigeria daily preach peace, love and piety, instead of hatred, rivalry and violence which appears to be the case today, religious tolerance, instead of sectarian mayhem will prevail.

  This is why, it must be stated for the umpteenth time that a good religion is that which teaches men (and women alike) to be good and not one that daily preaches hatred, violence, mayhem, senseless bloodletting, criminal destruction of public property, rivalry and indeed contemptuous competition.

  Anyone, be he Christian or Moslem, who deviates from that expectation and threatens the secular nature of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should, without hesitation, be treated as one in breach of the constitution and sanctioned as such.

  Unless and until the Nigeria state and her leadership accept this as the right option and spare no sacred cow, we would continue to compromise sectarian wrongs and groom religious rascals, who, in the end would expose the nation and her peoples, to the kind of diplomatic embarrassment which we today face, on account of our listing by the US as terror risk nation. This is in addition to innocent lives repeatedly lost to such crisis. The time to check it is now.