Ecumenical visit to Nigeria
(Abuja/Jos, 27.05.2010) An international delegation travelling on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC) was welcomed to Abuja by Nigerian church leaders during an ecumenical celebration organized by the Christian Council of Nigeria (CCN) on 16 May 2010. It was the first stop of a four-day visit to Africa's most populous nation as living letters of solidarity. The visit was continued in Plateau state, where more than 500 people were killed in ethnic violence in the early part of 2010. Prelate Ola Makinde, head of the Methodist Church Nigeria, described the visit as an expression of the worldwide solidarity of churches with fellow Christians in Nigeria. He lamented that people in the northern part of the country have been neglected and denied basic rights.
The ecumenical team took part in a religious service held for the new president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, and for the family of the former president, the late Umaru Musa Yar'Adua who died recently after a protracted illness. At the service, the primate of the Anglican Church, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, gave a sermon on "Servant leadership". He said the time had come for Nigerians to think of being productive rather than being consumers of goods brought from the western world. Greatness does not come from buying things for fashion, but from producing things, he said.
During a meeting with the delegation, the governor of the Plateau state, Jonah David Jang said that “religion is used to cover up all conflicts, although other factors also exist”. While explaining certain reasons for the conflicts, the governor admitted that “I am a committed Christian. As governor of this state, I am elected by the people and God gave me the mandate to direct the people in the righteous way”. Jang, who is a minister of the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN), has been governor of the Plateau State for the past four years. Jos, the capital city of the state has seen one of the worst ethnic conflicts in recent years. In March, violence claimed more than hundred lives. Most of those killed were Christians. The governor said that Christianity and Islam had no reason to be at loggerheads. Jang said that his government had begun to take proactive steps to promote peace. "We have set up an inter-religious council of peace and harmony long before the crisis started. Right now we are adopting some other measures that we believe are yielding fruit presently," he said.
Archbishop Michael Kehinde Stephen of the Methodist Church Nigeria and Bishop Dr Robert Aboagye-Mensah, vice-president of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) and member of the WCC Central Committee, told the governor that the group had come on a solidarity visit to all who are suffering due to the conflicts and violence irrespective of their religious identities. Archbishop Stephen said: "We believe that both the Christian and Muslim religions preach peace and are working for peace. We don't see any reason why there should be violence in this part of the country if there is tolerance among adherents of the two faiths." He observed that the state had been bedevilled with several crises, noting however that religion has been used to cover other factors responsible from the incessant bloodletting in the state.
Listening to survivors of violence
It was a deeply moving experience when the delegation gathered to pray around a mass grave at Dogonahawa, near Jos, in the Central Plateau State. In early March 501 people, mostly women and children from two adjacent villages, Dogonahawa and Bukuru, were killed in their sleep during an outburst of communal and ethnic violence. Dogonahawa is a hamlet of about 100 houses, all clustered in a circle. It is located just seven miles from Jos, the capital city of the Plateau State. Vestiges of the sectarian clashes still surround the people. The community has been reduced to a ghost village as only a handful of people now live there.
The team also visited the town of Bukuru, part of Jos metropolis, which was equally deserted. An entire market had been burnt and hundreds of houses and shops destroyed. The local government premises were also razed. Reconstruction work is yet to begin in most of the affected quarters of Bukuru. Members of the team could not hide their grief as they met with men, women and children who lost loved ones. The community leader David Jik told how he lost his children and grandchildren during the violence. A 60-year old woman, Kumbo Chuwang, who was maimed during the violence, cried and explained how she and her family members had been attacked. A teenage boy, Tebita Danjuma, showed his body, burnt in the fire that was set to engulf the buildings in the hamlet. The Anglican Bishop of the Diocese of Bukuru Jwan Zhumbes, who accompanied the team to the villages, said several members of his church were killed in the violence, while many escaped and relocated in the wake of the crisis.
The delegation visited the Centre for Peace Advancement in Nigeria (CEPAN), an interfaith group based in Jos. Hajia Lantana Abdullahi, a Muslim woman who is the centre's programme director said her group had been working, especially with the youth, to ensure that various ethnic and religious communities live in harmony. The chairman of the Plateau State division of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama, of the Roman Catholic Church, welcomed the team stating that God wants us to be one. He added that the impression that Christians and Muslims in the state were fighting is not correct. "It is not the religions that are fighting but some people who adhere to the religions that are involved. There is no war between the two faiths," he said.
The Living Letters team was received at the headquarters of the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN). Addressing the delegates to the COCIN 74th General Council, Bishop Dr Robert Aboagye-Mensah, from Ghana, said Christians should work for peace and reconciliation even when they have been offended. He wondered if Christians in the state have been listening to what God is saying in the midst of the destruction they have found themselves and asked: "Do we hear God's voice. What is God saying to us?" He said: "Christians have a challenge to work for peace. Peace and reconciliation begin with us. The offended one is to begin the process of reconciliation and peace." The COCIN president Rev. Dr Pandang Yamsat affirmed the commitment of his church members to work for peace in the troubled areas, a task he sees as a prophetic witness of the church.
Call on religions to work for peace
At the end of their visit, the Living Letters team met with the Nigeria Inter-religious Council (NIREC), an initiative of Christian and Muslim leaders set up three years ago to help stem the tide of communal violence in the country. The council comprises of both Christians and Muslims, with administrative support being provided by the Nigerian government. It is currently headed by the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Roman Catholic Archbishop John Onayekan, and by the Sultan of Sokoto, Haji Saad Abubakar who is the spiritual leader of the Muslim communities in Nigeria. According to Outi Vasko, a WCC Executive Committee member from the Finnish Orthodox Church, the Living Letters team visit to Nigeria was very successful but also demanding since the team was able to meet victims and understand the difficulties that they are facing. The visit encouraged and strengthened the commitment of the local churches to work for peace.
Archbishop Onayekan observed that there was some kind of disconnect between the NIREC and the clerics of both faiths at the grassroots level: "There are many of my priests who don't consider my optimism for dialogue and this also applies to the other side. My conviction is that people living in the grassroots don't have problems living together but the imams and pastors leading them sometimes send wrong signals by the kind of messages they preach." He also noted that the situation is somewhat difficult for NIREC because the people in government had sometimes used the perpetrators of violence for their political agendas. While confessing that NIREC was still in its infancy, Hajia Bilikisu said the group had been instrumental in creating a multi-sector alliance on issues of development. She stated that NIREC had been useful in curtailing the violence in the country but she was critical of the policies of the Nigerian government for its tardy response to security issues in the troubled regions. “The problem we are having is failure of security and failure of leadership”, she said. Arne Saeveras of Norwegian Church Aid shared experiences of interfaith cooperation in Norway, where religious groups work together for peace and justice. Saeveras suggested that religious communities in Nigeria should "jointly advocate for the government to make immediate and sufficient provisions for security for all communities“.
Development and justice needed to address communal conflicts
The conflict is of social and economic nature, the Nigeria's Foreign Minister Henry Odein told church representatives. The church delegation advocated for government action to develop the area and to bring to trial those responsible for an outburst of communal violence last March. For Nigeria's Minister of Foreign Affairs the country faces "a lot of challenges which are largely misunderstood by the international community". The situation in the central Plateau State is "much more complicated" than it is usually portrayed, Odein argued. According to him, the religious factor compounds a conflict between an indigenous population and an immigrant community in that area. "The issues are of social and economic nature", he said. Odein expressed his views at a meeting with the World Council of Churches programme executive for Africa Dr Nigussu Legesse and the programme director of the Christian Council of Nigeria Rev. Babatunde Olusegun on 21 May 2010.
The church representatives met the minister at his residence in Abuja on behalf of the Living Letters team that had visited the country 15-20 May 2010. “We visited the villages near Jos, in the Plateau State. We were in Bukuru, where houses and markets were burnt and in Dogonahawa, where 323 people killed last March have been buried in a mass grave. We have met the survivors, talked to them, listened to them and prayed along with them and assured them that the global community of churches is with them in their moment of crisis”, Legesse said. He urged the minister to "help facilitate development in Jos through the federal government". He pleaded that those responsible for the killings are brought before the court of law, "as the question of impunity was a concern widely mentioned by the people we met during our visits”.
The Living Letters team was composed of representatives of churches and WCC staff from Ghana, Kenya, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, India and Ethiopia and organized by the WCC in cooperation with the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC). Living Letters are small ecumenical teams visiting a country to listen, learn, share approaches and help to confront challenges in order to overcome violence, promote and pray for peace.
Hans Spitzeck / WCC News, reporting Gbenga Osinaike, publisher of the Church Times of Lagos
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Last Update: 21.06.2010 16:20:17 |
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