On this Christmas Day, as church bells toll and prayers ascend in homes across our nation, the poignant words of a 1959 Christmas message echo through the decades with the weight of a prophecy unheeded. The late Sir Ahmadu Bello, Premier of the Northern Region, declared in his Christmas message of 25th December 1959 to a diverse populace:
“We are people of many different races, tribes and religions, who are knit together by common history, common interests and common ideals. Our diversity may be great but the things that unite us are stronger than the things that divide us.”
This was not mere seasonal rhetoric; it was the explicit, foundational ethic intended to guide a complex region. It was our compass.
That compass pointed towards a destiny where citizenship was rooted not in creed or tribe, but in shared brotherhood before God, mutual respect, and collective labour under the simple, powerful motto of the time: “Work and Worship.” The policy was “religious tolerance”; the assurance was that “everyone should have absolute liberty to practice his beliefs.” For a period, however imperfect, this vision provided a framework for relative peace and purposeful coexistence. We are not unmindful of historical challenges in relationships between people of different faiths in Northern Nigeria, but the tolerance of that era never approached the scale of division that later became our burden.
Reading the works of scholars like John N. Paden, Murray Last, Anthony Kirk-Greene, D.J.M. Muffett, E.P.T. Crampton, Jean Herskovits, and Sylvester Whitaker helps one understand how the region’s viability and diversity were once its bastion. These complexities could have been the kernel of our development—a path to cohesion and progress. But regrettably, these opportunities have been wasted, and the region now moves toward the erosion of the very qualities that were once its strength.
Today, with sober hearts, we must confront the historical juncture where we chose to shun that compass. From the late 1970s, a degenerative process began. Political calculations, economic discontent, and emerging sectarian ideologies started to eclipse the philosophy of common brotherhood. Sir Ahmadu Bello had foreseen this peril years earlier. In his address to the Minorities Commission on 5th February 1958, he issued a sober warning against fragmentation driven by political self-interest:
“If, as a result of agitation for the fragmentation of this great region, fostered and encouraged as it is so much by persons seeking their own political interests, the unity of the North is impaired or damaged, then I fear greatly that we shall step, not through the gates of the future into the broad prospect of prosperity which can lie before us, but back into the past, into tribalism, religious intolerance and violence. May God prevent it.”
Tragically, it was not prevented due to several factors. The unifying fabric began to fray, thread by thread, as the things that divide us were increasingly weaponized for short-term gain.
The 1980s introduced ruptures in communal trust that were once unthinkable. This was not mere disagreement; it was a violent unmooring from a settled principle of tolerance. The ferocious ethno-religious conflicts of the 1990s cemented this new, terrifying reality. Streets that once witnessed shared celebrations became theatres of suspicion and bloodshed—a direct negation of Sir Ahmadu Bello’s greeting to “all our people who are Christians” and his call to “forget the difference in our religion.”
The dawn of the 21st century did not bring repentance or a return to first principles. Instead, it ushered in an even more monstrous reality: the era of protracted terrorism and rampant banditry. These forces did not merely attack individuals or communities; they systematically sought to obliterate the very idea of a pluralistic, cohesive North.
They completed the work earlier crises began, tearing the social and economic landscape into fragments of fear and fortified enclaves—from the bloody outbreaks in Kaduna in February 2000, to the Jos violence of September 2001, to the rise of terror in Maiduguri in July 2009, and the scourge of banditry that emerged in Zamfara around 2011, and spread across the region.
We now inhabit the bleak outcome of that long abandonment. The indices of human development in Northern Nigeria tell a story of staggering reversal. Where “Work and Worship” was to be our creed, we now face mass unemployment, crippling educational decay, and pervasive poverty. The social contract is broken. The assurance of safety and liberty to practice one’s faith is now a daily prayer, not a guaranteed right. We exist in a state of profound uncertainty.
The cost is etched in human suffering: generations of children deprived of schooling and hope, farmers displaced from ancestral lands, traders paralyzed by insecure roads, and entire communities living under a shadow of grief. The sick, the bereaved, the displaced—their multitudes are the living testament to our failure to hold fast to a vision that placed law, order, and mutual respect above all.
This Christmas, as we exchange greetings, we must do so with historical consciousness. The message of 25th December 1959 stands as a stark mirror, reflecting not what we are, but what we were meant to be. It highlights the chasm between a past intent on building a common project and a present riven by fractures we have allowed to define us.
The path back is not simple; trust shattered over decades cannot be reconstituted by sentiment alone. It requires a courageous, deliberate return to that forsaken ethos. It demands leadership at every level—community, religious, and political—that actively revives the policy of religious tolerance not as a concession, but as the non-negotiable bedrock of society. It necessitates prioritizing the “overriding need to preserve law and order” impartially, so that all families, of all creeds, can truly rely on that assurance once more.
Sir Ahmadu Bello concluded his message by urging a dedication “to the great tasks which lie before us.” Our greatest task now is the arduous work of reconciliation and rebuilding. Ultimately, we should blame no one but ourselves, for we are the architects of our doom and must become the architects of our redemption.
Aruwan is a postgraduate student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.