Hope springs eternal for Christians in Nigeria

Paul Keenan examines a report on a long-suffering Christian community

‘We have never had it so bad.’ 

No. ‘The rule of law is coming back!’

No. ‘Nigeria is in a critical situation both economically and politically.’

An appraisal of the current state of affairs in Nigeria nearly one year into the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is very much an exercise in consulting divided opinions.

Elected in March 2015, the former military commander Buhari, who previously reigned as Nigerian leader after a coup before his ‘rebirth’ as a democrat, rose to power on promises to be a more effective champion than his predecessor in the fight against the Islamist threat posed by Boko Haram.

If that were his only consideration as leader, Mr Buhari would, on the strength of reports last weekend, be doing well. At the time of writing, the nation’s security forces have scored an impressive hit on militants, when, working with partners from neighbouring Cameroon, they struck at a Boko Haram stronghold, dispatching a reported 100 militants and preventing two suicide attacks by detaining young girls who were being indoctrinated for their lethal missions.

Oil glut

Unfortunately, against this, ordinary Nigerians are currently beset by a flagging currency, hit hard by the worldwide glut in oil production, a situation which saw Mr Buhari travel to Saudi Arabia on February 23 to plead his nation’s case as an oil-exporter.

“We are waiting,” Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos said diplomatically in early February when asked for his own appraisal of the 11-month-old administration. “Nigerians are suffering… each direction you turn there is great suffering.” He went on to list areas such as education, roads, health care and water and electricity as issues of tangible concern for Nigerians seeking change.

Days after this, Nigeria’s leading prelate, Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Abuja was more forthright, calling on all Nigerians to fully back President Buhari’s twin-track campaign against corruption and insecurity in the country.

Though the prelates did not vocalise it, their interventions are weighted with a terrible reality within Nigeria that also screams for change, that of the suffering of the country’s Christian population in a disordered society.

The reason this reality arises now, creating headlines in some quarters, is because the international Christian advocacy group Open Doors has released a damning new report on the upward swing of active persecution of Christians in Nigeria, yet another consequence of a failure, willful or otherwise, to address the needs of the nation.

Compiled in conjunction with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the new report builds on Open Doors’ World Watch List 2016, where Nigeria featured prominently as the nation accounting for over half of the recorded 7,000 Christians murdered for their faith globally in 2015 (a startling revelation given current media fixations with the Middle East).

Entitled Crushed but not Defeated, the latest report records, in addition to between 9,000 and 11,500 killings since 2000, some 13,000 churches either destroyed or forced to close; similarly, thousands of businesses and homes owned by Christians have been destroyed. On murders based on faith alone, 2015 saw an increase of 62% over the previous year, with 4,028 killings, and 198 church attacks.

On top of such drastic figures, Crushed but not Defeated points out that between 2006 and 2014, 1.3 million Christians fled to parts of Nigeria considered safer for them – a simple reading would be from the mainly Muslim north to the Christian south.

The report concludes: “Even though Nigeria is a secular state with a constitution that guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the reality in Northern Nigeria is radically different. For decades, Christians in the region have suffered marginalisation and discrimination as well as targeted violence.

“This is happening not only in the Sharia states of the Far North where the pressure of Islam is hard felt, but also in the non-Sharia Middle Belt states where Sharia has not been formally implemented.”

Let’s not, however, slip into a simple denunciation of the onward march of militant Islam here (though the report acknowledges that religion is the “common denominator”). The Open Doors report cautions that the pressures brought to bear on Christians are varied, and while the hand of the fanatical Boko Haram group is behind much of the violence witnessed in the north-east, economic factors have also come into play, prompting the likes of the Hausa-Fulani dual tribal grouping.

Force of arms

Mainly herdsmen, while they are, yes, predominately Muslim, the Hausa-Fulani attacks on outsiders, mainly Christian communities, stems from land disputes as opposed to any underlying desire to Islamise Nigeria by force of arms.

In addition, while not actively using violence, Muslim political and religious figures stand implicated in working to drive Christians from mainstream life in the north to undermine their positions there. Raiding a Boko Haram camp is thus good for headlines, but short of dealing effectively with the root causes of Christian suffering. And fairly useless, too, if you are Christian and torn between fleeing your home, perhaps for the dangerous smuggling routes north towards the Mediterranean coast and Europe, or staying and becoming yet another numerical statistic of Christian persecution globally.

The dangerous implications for inter-faith relations of a failure to act more effectively are summed up by a recent, distinctly local dispute between political leaders.

Seeking to divert attention from a case against him for vote rigging in Ekiti state, Governor Ayodele Fayose loudly denounced President Buhari’s Saudi visit as the first step towards the Islamisation of all Nigeria, a baseless charge, but one which can do nothing but stoke tensions further.

Worrying as the Open Doors report is, though, a close reading of its grim statistics reveals something most curious and altogether more optimistic.

Against all expectations for a community suffering so much, and besieged as it is, especially in the north, the Christian churches there (marked by “an increased commitment to faith and church”, the report says) are simultaneously reporting a growth in Muslims approaching for Baptism. This most bizarre occurrence, in a region where the pressure on Christians to convert to Islam is immense, is recorded as resulting in some instances from “visions and dreams of Jesus many Muslims are having”. That extraordinary factor aside, other reports indicate that Muslims have been astounded by “the love Christians show despite the violence” and find themselves drawn to churches by this.

Amid the political machinations that have seen Nigerian Christians suffer for so long, Christian witness of this sort can only achieve so much. However, should Mr Buhari stay the course towards an improved society assisted by the efforts of the international community that Crushed but not Defeated calls for, there is every reason to hope for a better Nigeria for its beleaguered Christians.

Crushed but not Defeated can be accessed online at: https://www.opendoors.de/Downloads/Berichte/Open_Doors_Nigeria_Kampagne_Report.pdf