Tension rises in northern Nigeria

Christian residents are on edge in the Muslim- dominated north, but both sides have things to answer for

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Like many other Christian outposts in the spiritual homeland of Nigeria’s “Taliban,” the Victory Baptist Church in the northern desert city of Maiduguri no longer relies solely on God for protection.

A modest whitewashed spire in a skyline dominated by mosques, for the past month it has had a military guard to defend it from Boko Haram, the militant local Islamist sect blamed for a string of attacks nationwide in recent weeks.

The soldiers in the sandbagged machinegun nest outside the church, though, were unable save three members of the flock three weeks ago.

Three days after Boko Haram ordered all Christians to leave Muslim- dominated northern Nigeria, Ousman Adurkwa, a 65- year- old local trader, answered the door of his home to what he thought was an after- hours customer. Instead it was two masked gunmen.

“They shot my father dead, and then came for the rest of the family,” Adurkwa’s son Hyeladi, 25, said.

“One chased my brother Moussa and killed him, and the other shot at me, but my mother took the bullet in the stomach instead.”

Hyeladi spoke as weeping parishioners gathered for an memorial service in the Adurkwa family compound, where the carpet was still stained with blood from the gunshot wound suffered by Adurkwa, 50.

But while the sermon from the local pastor, Brother Balani, urged “prayers for those who God has taken away, and comfort for those who remain,” it diplomatically avoided the more earthly question of who did it.

For one thing, no one can be sure the killing was not the result of a private feud. And for another, Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sinful,” and which wants hard- line Shariah law across Nigeria, has a track record of killing anyone who points the finger at them.

Yet some of the Adurkwa family’s neighbouring Christian households have already made up their mind, fleeing the district in fear.

“We are going through a very difficult time because of Boko Haram,” said Joseph Adams, 30, who lives next door to the Adurkwas. “All the houses around me are emptying.”

Whether such killings really do herald the start of a pogrom of Christians remains in dispute. What is less in doubt is the alarming evolution of the sect, which has progressed from using machetes and poisoned arrows in its infancy to sophisticated car bombs and mass gun attacks.

Started as a religious study group in Maiduguri more than 15 years ago, it took up arms under the leadership of a firebrand former civil servant, Mohammed Yusuf, and focused its wrath mainly against the Nigerian government, which it accused of neglecting the impoverished Muslim north.

Today, however, it is changing into a new pan- African jihadist franchise, forging links with both al- Qaida in the Islamic Magreb, which operates in the vast Sahara region north of Nigeria, and al- Shebaab in Somalia.

Last August, in what diplomats fear may signal a campaign against Western interests in oil- rich Nigeria, it killed 24 people with a car bombing of the United Nations building in the capital Abuja.

But what is causing even more worry is its parallel lurch into more sectarian violence, aggravating historic tensions between the Christian south and the Muslim north, and potentially destabilizing West Africa’s most powerful nation.

That new agenda was spelled out with a brutal sense of occasion on Christmas Day, when a car bomb killed 42 worshippers at morning mass at Saint Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madalla, just outside Abuja.

Among the bereaved was Steady Esiri, who rushed to the scene to find a charred corpse wearing the distinctive Sunday best dress of his pregnant wife Uche, 26. Her fetus had been torn from her womb.

“We were supposed to attend Mass together, but I was busy and planned to go the evening service instead,” he said. “Then I heard a huge explosion, and when I rushed here I recognized her dress. She was a wonderful woman, a perfect housewife, now I will have to start my life again. What kind of people do this for political ends?”

For Rev. Isaac Achi, who feared his 3,500- strong congregation might carry out reprisals against local Muslims, it was cause for a heartfelt sermon the following day reminding them of the Christian virtue of forgiveness.

“I told them revenge would just increase the number of souls dying on both sides,” he said, looking out over church’s wrecked facade. “But if the government cannot stop this kind of thing, I will be worried about the future of Nigeria.”

We are going through a very difficult time because of ( Islamist group) Boko Haram.

JOSEPH ADAMS

MAIDUGURI RESIDENT

For some Christian leaders, however, the time for meekness is over.

In comments that angered Muslim leaders, the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Ayo Oritsejafor, branded the attacks a “declaration of war” against Christians, and warned that they would “have no choice but to respond appropriately” if the authorities failed to stop them.

Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, has declared a state of emergency throughout selected northern areas. Troops, tanks and pickup trucks of menacing- looking plainclothes police have flooded Maiduguri’s unpaved boulevards, where motorbikes — long the favourite method for Boko Haram’s hit- andrun attacks — have long been banned. Nevertheless, an air of menace remains, with the six p. m. curfew enforced not just by the soldiers, as by the knowledge that the sect generally mounts attacks from late afternoon onward.

Pacifying the city has been made harder by the local hostility to the security forces, whose heavy- handed approach has won few hearts and minds over the years.

In 2009, more than 700 people were killed when troops fought a five- day battle against Boko Haram followers which culminated in the capture of their leader. But the government’s victory was marred by reports that he was summarily executed in police custody, a move that galvanized Yusuf supporters to regroup, and put some locals off cooperating with the authorities.

Maiduguri, however, is not the only flashpoint city in the region, and nor do Muslim extremists have a monopoly on aggression.

In the religiously mixed city of Jos, north of Abuja, Christians are held equally to blame for clashes that have claimed several thousand lives in the past decade.

The city, said to be an acronym for “Jesus Our Saviour,” sits atop a balmy plateau that provides prime farming land. But it is jealously regarded as a historic fiefdom by the Christian Berom tribe, who still view the Muslim Hausas who came here a century ago as interlopers, despite having sold them much of their land.

On a walk through Jos’s Bukuru district, scene of MuslimChristian clashes which claimed 150 lives two years ago, the conflicting visions become clear. While the two groups still live side by side in dense shanty towns, patches of no- go areas abound for each, and no two accounts of how 2010’ s bloodshed arose are alike.

“It is the Berom who cause the problems, trying to get their land back,” said Mohamed Yakuba, 32, gesturing to a row of burnt- out houses where his father and eight other relatives died during the clashes.

True, he is still on good terms with his Berom neighbour John Jang, who also lost his home. But when asked for his version of events, Jang insists: “The Birom were simply retaliating for attacks that the Hausa started.”

Yet while most Berom and Hausa still muddle along together in every day life — urged on by street posters saying “Stop this wickedness” — some of the Jos’s politicians have a less- compromising view. None more so than Toma Davou, 73, the Scripture- quoting leader of the Berom parliamentary forum, who greets foreign visitors to Jos by saying “Welcome to Beromland.”

“The Hausas want to push us out, and although it is about land occupation, they say it is religious so that they can get the sympathy of Saudi Arabia and al- Qaida,” said Davou. “Christians should arm to the teeth to meet this threat from them and Boko Haram.”

Davou is now campaigning for Nigeria to divide into separate Muslim and Christian states, a move that for many would evoke memories of the Biafran civil war of the 1960s.

The Nigerian government dismisses such talk, pointing out that the vast majority of its 150 million citizens get on with one another peaceably, but there is less clarity on the remedy for Boko Haram and al- Qaida, its new ally.

Some Nigerian officials even question whether the sect really exists, saying much of the havoc in Maiduguri is the work of criminal gangs who use its name to frighten people.

But others are convinced that Boko Haram’s relationship is indeed having a fledgling relationship with al- Qaida — not least Robert Fowler, a Canadian diplomat kidnapped by al- Qaida in the Islamic Magreb while serving with the UN in Niger in 2008.

The gang who held him in the Sahara for 130 days repeatedly told him of their aim to destroy governments across central Africa as a precursor to establishing a pan- African caliphate. And among their number, they also included a Nigerian.

“It would be an obvious partnership to form, even if there isn’t any hard evidence yet,” Fowler said. “The world should be worried, because Nigeria is a huge country, and if it implodes it will take the rest of West Africa with it.”