The United States of America recently declared that there was a religious war, specifically the persecution of Christians, going on in Nigeria. The Nigerian government promptly denied the claim. But the basic truth is that, whereas one may not want to join habitual pyromaniacs in further setting the country on fire, there is an undeclared war going on in Nigeria. And it has to be confronted headlong.
As many senior government officials have always claimed, some of the inter-ethnic violence, especially in the North, has been caused by ancient hate inspired by old quarrels over access to land or forest resources.
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No one can doubt that some of the attacks against churches, especially by Boko Haram elements, tend to give the impression of that Muslims are attacking Christians. To be fair, Christians in the North have always argued that if there had been a Christian version of Boko Haram, Muslims would have been yelling “blue murder.”
Geographically, Christians occupy the southern belt of the North. When Boko Haram attacked places like Chibok and neighbouring communities, those who were not familiar with the demographic composition of the area concluded that the town was primarily attacked because it was a largely Christian community.
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American Campaigners
In a way, one could understand why the American comedian, Bill Maher, campaigned against what he saw as genocide in Nigeria: “I am not a Christian but they are systematically killing Christians in Nigeria. They’ve killed over a hundred thousand since 2009. They’ve burnt 18,000 churches. These are the Islamists, Boko Haram…”
Congressman Riley More petitioned US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, urging him to designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern (CPC) halting all arms sales and technical support to the country. Texas senator Ted Cruz was more brutal, accusing the Nigerian government of “ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians by Islamist jihadists.”
“Nigeria has become the deadliest place in the world to be a Christian, and the United States cannot stand idly by”, said Cruz. “I urge you to use all diplomatic tools available, including designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) and halting arms sales and all associated technical support until the Nigerian government demonstrates it is sufficiently committed to ending this reign of persecution and slaughter,” he added.
The Nigerian government has rejected those accusations flatly. The Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, dismissed Cruz’s claims as “malicious, contrived lies”.
However, Ministers of the Baptist Theological Seminary rose from their 65th Annual Conference in Kaduna insisting that Christians in Nigeria are facing persecution in various forms. They nonetheless appealed to the United States Government not to place the country on its Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list.
Ethnic Colouration
But even with all that, anyone with a deep knowledge of Nigeria cannot describe what has been happening in Nigeria as a religious war. Far from it, although some of the battles wear ethnic and expansionist colouration with the involvement of foreign fighters imported to help their fellow tribesmen seize territory.
The recent killings in Yelwata, Benue State, further highlighted the state of anomie in parts of Nigeria. Indigenes of the farming village claim that Christians constitute about 98 percent of the population and that the village also serves as a settlement for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who fled earlier Fulani militia attacks in other towns.
In neighbouring Plateau State the story is not different. A fact-finding committee set up by the state government was headed by Major General Nicholas Rogers (Rtd) The committee found out that in two decades, no fewer than 420 communities across 13 Local Government Areas had been destroyed and become desolate; 11,749 people had been killed in two decades of violence.
The fact-finding body is quoted by Daily Newshub as aggregating the level of destruction as follows: 35 per cent destruction of livestock; 32.5 per cent displacement of communities; 16.8 per cent destruction of food supplies; 9.9 per cent destruction of houses; 3.4 per cent illegal land occupation.
There is no denying the fact that there is insecurity in many parts of Nigeria. There are elements of ethnic cleansing in some of the killings, particularly in those by armed militias tagged ‘imported Fulanis’. But to claim that there is an outright religious war between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is far-fetched.
Rather than play that kind of game, the more urgent task confronting us is the undeclared environmental and economic war raging under our upturned noses.
Foreign Threat
While we are arguing about religion and ethnicity, Nigeria’s sovereignty is currently being threatened by foreign interests working in cahoots with local quislings under the armed protection of mercenaries. China and France may not admit it, but Nigerians on the ground see the connection between their mineral wealth and many of the current mini-wars happening all over the place.
I hear that the cause of the recent surge in killings in the Kogi, Kwara and Oyo states is mineral deposits. The natives don’t know that they’ve been sitting on mineral deposits. Chinese and French engineers and geologists working for sundry concerns in the country, not excluding road construction companies, simply identify the location of the minerals and then commission rampaging bands of killers to help clear the identified sites of human habitation. The Sahel, as is well known, is the market for weapons and killers for hire.
The kill-and-occupy strategy has worked so well in the northern states where bandits control large swathes of territory and operate crude mines without any regard for the environment. Sad to say, the ruthless system is more efficient than the local governments whose administrators have got used to tax collection and stealing funds meant for development.
In terms of local collaborators, it is also alleged that the system is so well organised that when a businessman, politician, or some other so-called ‘big man’ identifies an area rich in mineral deposits, he passes on the information to his foreign backers who then provide the logistics for commissioning Fulani ethnic militias and other armed groups (sometimes from as far away as Mali, Chad, or Niger), to terrorise the locals to abandon their land or face death. Organised displacement for mining access is the name of the game.
Billions at Stake
According to experts, Nigeria loses about $9 billion annually to illegal mining. Zamfara’s gold is being smuggled to fund arms purchases by terrorist groups. Truckloads of lithium vanish under the radar In Nasarawa and Kogi, shipped abroad while the host communities remain impoverished, if they are lucky to still be inhabiting their villages.
In a country where one of our national pastimes is hiding our head in the sand, identifying killers by their ethnicity may be regarded in some quarters as malicious ethnic profiling. But how else do we identify these imported killers if not by the language they speak and their ethnic origin? We have got to a stage where we should confront this raging evil frontally before it consumes us all.
We have long passed the stage of using kid gloves to tap the head of the monster. In the last few years, this columnist has been begging the government to do a quick fix while rearming, reorganising and repositioning the armed forces to secure our future.
Right now, what we need are private military contractors to take out terrorists of all hues, no matter the fancy names we have given them.
We have got so used to looking behind our backs that we are unable to focus on our desired forward march. Just imagine how delightful living in Nigeria would be if this undeclared war were deleted from the list of our challenges!
Wole Olaoye is a Public Relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached on [email protected], Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021
