February 16, 2010
Jos has happened again. Each time I hear about a crisis like that which just took place in Jos I remember the words of two men. The first is John Donne, in his work, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions - the same work from which the famous poem For Whom the Bell Tolls was excerpted. The other is Mordecai, the Uncle of Esther in scriptures.
Jos has happened again. Each time I hear about a crisis like that which just took place in Jos I remember the words of two men. The first is John Donne, in his work, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions - the same work from which the famous poem For Whom the Bell Tolls was excerpted. The other is Mordecai, the Uncle of Esther in scriptures.
Donne wrote, “Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take my own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.” Mordecai put it another way,” Do you think”, he warned, “that because you are in the king's house you alone of all the Jews will escape?” They both make the point that in some way or the other, the tragedy of some affects all. This is especially true of the Christian community of faith in Nigeria. This sword that has been unsheathed in Jos will one day point toward Abuja and Lagos. Let there be no mistake about this, the killings will happen again. This coordinated attack on Southerners and Christians by fanatical Muslim sects will repeat itself, and the reprisal killing of innocent Muslims by frustrated southerners will certainly happen again as well. It is time for the leadership of the Church to come up with a more creative plan than simply burying the dead and hoping for a better future. Now is the time to find ways to anticipate the riots and mitigate their effects, if there is no way to stop them.
We have seen these killings before; Jos in 2001, 2004, 2008, and now 2010. We also had one in Boko Haram in 2009. We saw the Igbo massacre in the sixties, Maitatsine insurrection in1980, several deadly Bauchi riots with the latest occurring just this year, and the Danish cartoon riots in Maiduguri. We also witnessed the Bodija, Ketu/Mile12, Sagamu, as well as the Onitsha riots, the last of which majority of the victims were Hausa Muslims. Clearly no single tribe or religion has a monopoly on violence; however a pattern is beginning to emerge in the North: While not all victims in these riots are Christians, Christians always make up the overwhelming bulk of casualties. While not all burnt worship places are Churches, Churches are specifically targeted. While not all victims are southerners, southerners make up most of the body count once the dust settles. At some point we have to face up to the fact that most cities in the North are no longer safe for southern Christians to live in.
The seed of extremism does not die easily once planted and, unless the Church faces up to the challenge and deals with it with the urgency it deserves she will continue to bury her children, and may eventually be supplanted. The history of Albania, that Balkan nation that was once majority Christian, but is now predominantly Muslim, should make a very interesting study for the Church in Nigeria. What today appears to be sporadic and uncoordinated series of attacks may evolve into something much more tragic. The situation in the North presents the perfect landscape for disaster: a largely illiterate population, a geopolitics that plays to the historical struggle between Islam and Christianity, a terribly distracted and divided Church across the country, and a shockingly insensitive government. The nation can close its eyes to these realities and continue to leave in blissful oblivion, or face up to them and begin to do the right things. It is often said that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.
Up until the present crisis the Nigerian Church as a body has responded to the attacks with sincere condolence and some degree of effort to gather aids for victims. In Jos, there are currently a few humanitarian initiatives in and around Air force, Rubeka Baracks and Mobile Police quarters. The Church does condolence pretty well, but condolence speaks to the past riots only without addressing the next one. The victims are our people, the sheep of our Lord’s pasture. Those new widows are our sisters; and the orphans are our children. It is our men that are being hacked down with machetes in broad day light. This is not a movie, it is real. How much aid will it take to address the needs of the orphans left by the charred bodies that we see in Newspapers? How useful will these aids be to those that will most certainly die in the next riot if something is not done. Somehow we must seek to silence these guns that rob the innocent of their lives and the terrible sound of machete on human skulls. As we seek to help the survivors on the short term, we must look to solutions that will address these incidences for the longer term. These dark moments call for a more innovative response, one that reduces the people’s exposure to this recurrent evil, and challenges the government to act on her behalf.
The Church in Nigeria is understandable frustrated and angry, especially in the North. However anger does not wear well on the Church. When she deploys anger as a response on occasions like this, she only fuels the very hatred that breeds the cruelty she seeks to quell. The non-Christians caught in the web of violence deserve the same considerations we give to our people. We must entertain no secret joys at the death of some of the very people we are called to save. The Christian community must live its creed and roundly condemn the reprisal killing of Hausa Muslims that follows these riots. Anger is not a befitting response for a community in danger. As our people are being killed off, we must begin to think of practical ways to protect them.
The Church needs to pray, but first, she needs to examine herself. Frankly she needs to repent. The Lord will not listen to the platitudes of a self-indulgent body, nor will He heed the pleas of a backslidden Church. Unless the Nigerian Church begins to take steps toward repentance and reformation I see little hope. As long as the leadership is fixated on ephemeral things it can not overcome the challenges posed by fundamentalist Islam. The Lord has long endured the Church’s misplaced priorities. He sees her little fiefdoms on plush street corners, and knows how she neglects His missionaries. He sees the languishing poor amidst her even as she directs resources toward meaningless expansionist projects. Jesus listens in at her prayer meetings and hears the selfish stuffs His people throw up to the sky. From pulpit to the pew, today’s Church bears little resemblance to that left behind by those missionaries who settled in Jos a long time ago. Peter the Apostle said it best in I Peter 4:17 where he warned that Judgment must begin from the house of the Lord.
After repentance, the Nigerian Church must begin a sustained and concerted effort at prayer. She must treat this threat as an existential struggle which she can only win with divine help. This prayer must be different from the ones she is used to offering because our Churches have historically prayed a lot but much of her prayer has been to consume upon her own lusts. She prays aloud but the Lord is little impressed with her simulated emotion. She prays for hours on end hoping that if she stayed at it long enough the Lord might change His mind, therefore projecting her capricious nature unto an immutable God; however the God of all the earth plays no such games. She must become mindful of the content and motive of her prayers. If the cry is for the Lord’s Kingdom to come and her desire is to see God’s will done then she will be answered. She must pray that the light of the knowledge of the glory of God which shines in the face of Jesus Christ comes upon the most extreme of fanatics and their enablers in spite of the cruelty since the Lord Jesus does not want the death of any sinner.
Next the leadership of the Nigerian Church should re-evaluate their response to these crises. Those rather tepid press releases have obviously achieved nothing. The many high-power delegations to Government Houses have not stopped the killings so far. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) needs to get more innovative. After the latest crisis, the Plateaus State Christian Elders Consultative Forum condemned the attacks issuing a veiled threat saying, “...we call on our Muslim brothers and sisters to see this as the last of such provocation on the Christian in the state. Enough is enough!” Unfortunately fanaticism never responds to threats. We can do better by the brothers and sisters in Jos. This is a unique opportunity to unite around a common cause, and emerge a closer and better community. The times call for inspired leadership at all levels, starting from CAN, to each head of household within the Christian Community.
Next, the Church must put her money where her prayers are. It is time to love in deed, not just in words. She needs a campaign to organize member Churches around the welfare of the brotherhood, rather than around programs and structures. This will be very tough since pulpits these days are mostly controlled by people with ulterior motives. Each denomination however can attempt a review of its branches in the troubled spots of the country and strategize to relocate them to safer areas within the cities. For example, since the Nasarawa Jos North area of Jos township has become a virtual death trap during riots, alternative sites should be sought in relatively safer areas of Jos South such as areas around Rukuba Barracks, Jarawa, Apata, Busa Buji, and Maternity, all of which have recorded fewer casualties in past riots. This might require significant investment by the Church but it will be well worth every life that can potentially be saved during the next riot. If there are reasons within the realities of the regional politics of Jos that will render this approach implausible, then the Church should convene its best minds on Jos affairs to craft a practical solution. When the Church begins to lead in this way, she empowers her Pastors to consider many other options within the congregation. They can encourage their members to provide assistance to families that wish to relocate to other areas of the country but may lack the means. Obviously there will be many, especially indigenes, who have never known any other home, who will be unable or unwilling to move. The Church owes these people the responsibility of helping them to properly evaluate the risk they face in the event of another attack.
Finally, it is true that even madness has a science to it. These riots must have a pattern to them. Since complaint is not a valid security strategy, the Church should immediately turn to her security experts to study the events that lead up to these massacres and come up with common sense plans to detect signs of an impending riot. This will help to keep the community at alert. To deal with other intractable issues such as jobs and schoolings, the Church should deploy the same patience and Christian ingenuity that built the Redeemed and other camps over a long period of time; after all, they say, Rome was not built in a day. It is for such a time as this that God has put business owners, and company heads in the Church. She should organize her professionals around specific objectives. Her computer geniuses can provide the essential platform for coordinating all these efforts, while her volunteer doctors and nurses collaborate on disaster response issues in anticipation of the now inevitable reoccurrence. The Church does not have a problem of resources, what she has is a failure of the will.
To achieve any of these things, the Church must overcome the mindset that suggests that Christians can unite around only overtly spiritual causes. Even if this be so, it is obvious that there is nothing more spiritual that love, compassion and mercy toward our fellow men. In scriptures, we read about how the brethren strategized to help Paul the Apostle escape from Damascus through a window under King Aretas, and the massive fundraising that took place to help the brethren in Jerusalem during one of the post-ascension famines in the city. The Lord warned His disciples as He sent them out on evangelism to be as harmless as doves, and as wise as serpent. If they persecute them in one area, they were to move to another. In addition, we can recall how Moses sent out the 12 spies prior to a battle. This crisis offers the Church in Nigeria the opportunity to redefine itself. May the Lord grant the leadership the will and wisdom to seize the occasion. Amen.
Donne wrote, “Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take my own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.” Mordecai put it another way,” Do you think”, he warned, “that because you are in the king's house you alone of all the Jews will escape?” They both make the point that in some way or the other, the tragedy of some affects all. This is especially true of the Christian community of faith in Nigeria. This sword that has been unsheathed in Jos will one day point toward Abuja and Lagos. Let there be no mistake about this, the killings will happen again. This coordinated attack on Southerners and Christians by fanatical Muslim sects will repeat itself, and the reprisal killing of innocent Muslims by frustrated southerners will certainly happen again as well. It is time for the leadership of the Church to come up with a more creative plan than simply burying the dead and hoping for a better future. Now is the time to find ways to anticipate the riots and mitigate their effects, if there is no way to stop them.
We have seen these killings before; Jos in 2001, 2004, 2008, and now 2010. We also had one in Boko Haram in 2009. We saw the Igbo massacre in the sixties, Maitatsine insurrection in1980, several deadly Bauchi riots with the latest occurring just this year, and the Danish cartoon riots in Maiduguri. We also witnessed the Bodija, Ketu/Mile12, Sagamu, as well as the Onitsha riots, the last of which majority of the victims were Hausa Muslims. Clearly no single tribe or religion has a monopoly on violence; however a pattern is beginning to emerge in the North: While not all victims in these riots are Christians, Christians always make up the overwhelming bulk of casualties. While not all burnt worship places are Churches, Churches are specifically targeted. While not all victims are southerners, southerners make up most of the body count once the dust settles. At some point we have to face up to the fact that most cities in the North are no longer safe for southern Christians to live in.
The seed of extremism does not die easily once planted and, unless the Church faces up to the challenge and deals with it with the urgency it deserves she will continue to bury her children, and may eventually be supplanted. The history of Albania, that Balkan nation that was once majority Christian, but is now predominantly Muslim, should make a very interesting study for the Church in Nigeria. What today appears to be sporadic and uncoordinated series of attacks may evolve into something much more tragic. The situation in the North presents the perfect landscape for disaster: a largely illiterate population, a geopolitics that plays to the historical struggle between Islam and Christianity, a terribly distracted and divided Church across the country, and a shockingly insensitive government. The nation can close its eyes to these realities and continue to leave in blissful oblivion, or face up to them and begin to do the right things. It is often said that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.
Up until the present crisis the Nigerian Church as a body has responded to the attacks with sincere condolence and some degree of effort to gather aids for victims. In Jos, there are currently a few humanitarian initiatives in and around Air force, Rubeka Baracks and Mobile Police quarters. The Church does condolence pretty well, but condolence speaks to the past riots only without addressing the next one. The victims are our people, the sheep of our Lord’s pasture. Those new widows are our sisters; and the orphans are our children. It is our men that are being hacked down with machetes in broad day light. This is not a movie, it is real. How much aid will it take to address the needs of the orphans left by the charred bodies that we see in Newspapers? How useful will these aids be to those that will most certainly die in the next riot if something is not done. Somehow we must seek to silence these guns that rob the innocent of their lives and the terrible sound of machete on human skulls. As we seek to help the survivors on the short term, we must look to solutions that will address these incidences for the longer term. These dark moments call for a more innovative response, one that reduces the people’s exposure to this recurrent evil, and challenges the government to act on her behalf.
The Church in Nigeria is understandable frustrated and angry, especially in the North. However anger does not wear well on the Church. When she deploys anger as a response on occasions like this, she only fuels the very hatred that breeds the cruelty she seeks to quell. The non-Christians caught in the web of violence deserve the same considerations we give to our people. We must entertain no secret joys at the death of some of the very people we are called to save. The Christian community must live its creed and roundly condemn the reprisal killing of Hausa Muslims that follows these riots. Anger is not a befitting response for a community in danger. As our people are being killed off, we must begin to think of practical ways to protect them.
The Church needs to pray, but first, she needs to examine herself. Frankly she needs to repent. The Lord will not listen to the platitudes of a self-indulgent body, nor will He heed the pleas of a backslidden Church. Unless the Nigerian Church begins to take steps toward repentance and reformation I see little hope. As long as the leadership is fixated on ephemeral things it can not overcome the challenges posed by fundamentalist Islam. The Lord has long endured the Church’s misplaced priorities. He sees her little fiefdoms on plush street corners, and knows how she neglects His missionaries. He sees the languishing poor amidst her even as she directs resources toward meaningless expansionist projects. Jesus listens in at her prayer meetings and hears the selfish stuffs His people throw up to the sky. From pulpit to the pew, today’s Church bears little resemblance to that left behind by those missionaries who settled in Jos a long time ago. Peter the Apostle said it best in I Peter 4:17 where he warned that Judgment must begin from the house of the Lord.
After repentance, the Nigerian Church must begin a sustained and concerted effort at prayer. She must treat this threat as an existential struggle which she can only win with divine help. This prayer must be different from the ones she is used to offering because our Churches have historically prayed a lot but much of her prayer has been to consume upon her own lusts. She prays aloud but the Lord is little impressed with her simulated emotion. She prays for hours on end hoping that if she stayed at it long enough the Lord might change His mind, therefore projecting her capricious nature unto an immutable God; however the God of all the earth plays no such games. She must become mindful of the content and motive of her prayers. If the cry is for the Lord’s Kingdom to come and her desire is to see God’s will done then she will be answered. She must pray that the light of the knowledge of the glory of God which shines in the face of Jesus Christ comes upon the most extreme of fanatics and their enablers in spite of the cruelty since the Lord Jesus does not want the death of any sinner.
Next the leadership of the Nigerian Church should re-evaluate their response to these crises. Those rather tepid press releases have obviously achieved nothing. The many high-power delegations to Government Houses have not stopped the killings so far. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) needs to get more innovative. After the latest crisis, the Plateaus State Christian Elders Consultative Forum condemned the attacks issuing a veiled threat saying, “...we call on our Muslim brothers and sisters to see this as the last of such provocation on the Christian in the state. Enough is enough!” Unfortunately fanaticism never responds to threats. We can do better by the brothers and sisters in Jos. This is a unique opportunity to unite around a common cause, and emerge a closer and better community. The times call for inspired leadership at all levels, starting from CAN, to each head of household within the Christian Community.
Next, the Church must put her money where her prayers are. It is time to love in deed, not just in words. She needs a campaign to organize member Churches around the welfare of the brotherhood, rather than around programs and structures. This will be very tough since pulpits these days are mostly controlled by people with ulterior motives. Each denomination however can attempt a review of its branches in the troubled spots of the country and strategize to relocate them to safer areas within the cities. For example, since the Nasarawa Jos North area of Jos township has become a virtual death trap during riots, alternative sites should be sought in relatively safer areas of Jos South such as areas around Rukuba Barracks, Jarawa, Apata, Busa Buji, and Maternity, all of which have recorded fewer casualties in past riots. This might require significant investment by the Church but it will be well worth every life that can potentially be saved during the next riot. If there are reasons within the realities of the regional politics of Jos that will render this approach implausible, then the Church should convene its best minds on Jos affairs to craft a practical solution. When the Church begins to lead in this way, she empowers her Pastors to consider many other options within the congregation. They can encourage their members to provide assistance to families that wish to relocate to other areas of the country but may lack the means. Obviously there will be many, especially indigenes, who have never known any other home, who will be unable or unwilling to move. The Church owes these people the responsibility of helping them to properly evaluate the risk they face in the event of another attack.
Finally, it is true that even madness has a science to it. These riots must have a pattern to them. Since complaint is not a valid security strategy, the Church should immediately turn to her security experts to study the events that lead up to these massacres and come up with common sense plans to detect signs of an impending riot. This will help to keep the community at alert. To deal with other intractable issues such as jobs and schoolings, the Church should deploy the same patience and Christian ingenuity that built the Redeemed and other camps over a long period of time; after all, they say, Rome was not built in a day. It is for such a time as this that God has put business owners, and company heads in the Church. She should organize her professionals around specific objectives. Her computer geniuses can provide the essential platform for coordinating all these efforts, while her volunteer doctors and nurses collaborate on disaster response issues in anticipation of the now inevitable reoccurrence. The Church does not have a problem of resources, what she has is a failure of the will.
To achieve any of these things, the Church must overcome the mindset that suggests that Christians can unite around only overtly spiritual causes. Even if this be so, it is obvious that there is nothing more spiritual that love, compassion and mercy toward our fellow men. In scriptures, we read about how the brethren strategized to help Paul the Apostle escape from Damascus through a window under King Aretas, and the massive fundraising that took place to help the brethren in Jerusalem during one of the post-ascension famines in the city. The Lord warned His disciples as He sent them out on evangelism to be as harmless as doves, and as wise as serpent. If they persecute them in one area, they were to move to another. In addition, we can recall how Moses sent out the 12 spies prior to a battle. This crisis offers the Church in Nigeria the opportunity to redefine itself. May the Lord grant the leadership the will and wisdom to seize the occasion. Amen.
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