Religious, ethnic rivalries fuel discord in Nigeria
Reprisal killings in central region are breeding fear
By Jon Gambrell
Associated Press / March 12, 2010
JOS, Nigeria — Christians and Muslims once shared their lives together in Nigeria's fertile central belt, buying each other's goods in mixed neighborhoods and cultivating each other's farms across a sun-baked plateau.
But growing religious hatred, political and ethnic rivalries, and increasing poverty have led to two outbursts of savage violence already this year. Men, women, children and even babies were butchered, and that harmony seems lost forever.
Now, many people carry weapons and man impromptu road blocks, fearful of the military, the police and each other.
Sunday's bloodshed was mostly about revenge: Christian villages near the city of Jos were attacked before dawn, less than two months after Muslims were targeted and a mosque torched. Hundreds had been killed in January, their corpses stuffed into wells and sewage pits.
Survivors of the weekend attack say simple, one-room houses were set ablaze, the flames illuminating villages that have no electricity. Residents, mostly of the minority Berom ethnic group, ran from their burning homes. Assailants with machetes were waiting. Many of those who were cut down were children. At least 200 people died.
One 20-year-old man arrested for allegedly taking part in Sunday's attacks said his family members died at the hands of rioters in January. Of those who were attacked on Sunday, he said: "There are some people that kill all our parents. We went to avenge what they did to us."
Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, is almost evenly split between Sunni Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south. The recent bloodshed has been happening in central Nigeria, where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of the nation's fertile "middle belt."
http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa ... n_nigeria/
The religious violence in Nigeria is a tragedy. It's easy to blame one side or the other, depending on your theistic loyalties, but it isn't hard to see how deep the divisons are in Nigerian society.
Survivors said the weekend attackers asked people “Who are you?’’ in Fulani, a language used mostly by Muslims, and killed those who did not answer in Fulani.
It is clear that this violence cannot simply be seen in terms of muslim vs. Christian rivalry. There is much more going on here.
In Jos, as elsewhere, the cause of fighting has, more often been the struggle for resources than it has religion. In Jos, my AFP colleague Aminu Abubakar reports that the original cause of the latest clash was the alleged theft of cattle, blamed by a group of settler-farmers on a group of cattle herders. Often the fighting in the north is between the semi-nomadic cattle herders (who happen to be mostly Muslim) and settler-farmers (who happen to be mostly Christian), fighting about the diminishing access to land.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... m-killings
So, it's not so much about religion specifically, but about the diminishing access to resources and the ethnic and religious tensions that this creates.
How do you even begin to deal with this profound level of hatred that is based in not just religion and ethnicity but economics and politics?
Does anyone have any thoughts on this violence in Nigeria? Will it ever end? Is it solely the responsibility of the Nigerians or do we all have a part to play in the breaking down of religious, ethic, economic and political barriers irrespective of what countries they exist in?
