A political pressure group, Niger Delta Youth Coalition (NDYC),
has called for legislation that would enthrone political zoning systems and
power rotation as part of the county’s law.
National Coordinator of the group, Mr Emmanuel Ogba, made the
call on Saturday in Port Harcourt.
He urged the National Assembly to strive towards making
legislations aimed at legalising political zoning of offices in the country
especially for the office of the President and Commander- in-Chief.
Ogba also called on the youth and politicians in the Northern
part of the country to begin preparations towards galvanising support for a
Southern President come 2023.
He expressed the opinion that if the constitution was amended to
accommodate political zoning of offices that crisis and desperation that
usually characterised presidential elections in the country would reduce.
“By entrenching zoning in the nation’s constitution,
presidential election will be less expensive and the height of desperation that
is always witnessed during presidential elections will have been drastically
reduced,” he said.
The coordinator also revealed that some political parties, like
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have had zoning in its internal agreement
adding that the measure had to a large extent boosted the party’s internal
democracy.
According to him, the PDP zoning module in the last general
election to a large extent helped reduce internal political crises that in time
past bedeviled the party .
He appealed to members of the PDP, particularly those from the
northern part of the country, to always embrace zoning irrespective of
political interests.
Reacting to a recent statement credited to Prof. Ango
Abdulahi accusing former President Goodluck Jonathan of discarding the zoning
system, Ogba argued that such criterion should not be allowed to truncate the
zoning formula.
“After the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo,
NDYC played a major role by advocating for a power shift to the north which was
eventually actualised.
“By 2023 when President Muhammadu Buhari would be serving out
his second term of four years, we feel that the right thing is to call on
particularly the youth from the north and influential politicians to support
the South produce the next President of Nigeria,” he said.(NAN)
WASHINGTON — Persecuted Iranian Christian Dabrina Bet Tamraz
vividly remembers the day that her family’s church was shut down.
The day was Monday,
March 30, 2009, when her family home received a phone call from the government
demanding that her father, Victor Bet Tamraz — the pastor of an Assyrian
Pentecostal congregation in Tehran — meet at his church.
The family arrived at
the church and were greeted by lots of cars and big men. The pastor was given
the choice by a government official to either “give up the keys” to the church
or ensure that the church only allows Assyrian speaking members.
Speaking at a Family
Research Council panel discussion on religious freedom in Iran Wednesday
afternoon, Tamraz explained that the family and church members asked to be
given a few hours to pray about what their decision will be.
After a couple of
hours, Tamraz said her father walked out of the church and handed the keys to
an official from the intelligence service.
“[My father] said,
‘Thank you very much. You have done us a great favor. We don’t know how to
thank you. Please close down the church,’” Tamraz recalled. “He looks at my dad
and said, ‘Are you crazy? Why are you saying thank you?’”
Tamraz said that
during the prayer time in the church, the congregation heard from God that if
they allow the authorities to close down the church, He will “open the gates of
Heaven.”
Marziyeh Amirizadeh (L) and Maryam Rostampour.
“My father said,
‘Thank you, because I can’t wait for God to open the gates of Heaven for people
to shout Hallelujah on the streets,’” Tamraz said.
Today, Tamraz’s
father, mother, and brother are among dozens of Christians facing jail time,
abuse and torture in the Islamic Republic of Iran simply because of their faith
in Jesus Christ.
Tamraz’s father is in the process of appealing a 10-year prison
sentence he received in 2017. He was arrested in 2014 during a Christmas
gathering and was held for 65 days in solitary confinement. Tamraz’s father was
accused of acting against national security by conducting house church meetings
and evangelizing.
While Tamraz’s mother,
Shamiram Isavi, is appealing a five-year prison sentence, Tamraz’s brother,
Ramiel Bet Tamraz, turned himself in last month to serve the time remaining on
a five-month prison sentence he received after his 2016 arrest at a picnic gathering.
“In 2019, at least
five, six times [my parents] were told to go to the court for their court
hearing only to go there and to hear that their case has been canceled or
postponed for various reasons,” Tamraz detailed. “The latest [excuse] was the
court was ‘too crowded.’ It’s been two-and-a-half years that my parents have
been dealing with court cases and trials and hearings.”
Tamraz said her
parents’ next appeal hearing is scheduled for late February.
Tamraz herself was
arrested and detained in a men’s detention center in 2009. However, she was
able to escape Iran after her release. She is now based in Switzerland where
she's engaging in an international campaign pressing for the release of her
parents.
Tamraz was among
several persecuted believers from across the globe who met with President Donald Trump during
the 2019 U.S. State Department Ministerial on International Religious
Freedom.
“Vice President [Mike]
Pence as well as Secretary [Mike] Pompeo in statements many times have asked
for my parents' release,” Tamraz told The Christian Post. “They have asked in
written and verbal statements. We’ve had requests and tweets asking for the
release of my family.”
Tamraz explained that
the crackdown on Christianity in Iran goes much deeper than her parents’
case.
Governed by Islamic
law, Iran ranks as the
ninth worst country in the world for Christian persecution by Open Doors USA as
the regime has relentlessly persecuted Muslim converts to Christianity.
Although Assyrian and
Armenian Christians are said to be recognized minorities in Iran, Tamraz said
Assyrian and Armenian churches face severe limitations on their ability to
practice their faiths.
“Today, there is not a
free church. There is no free evangelical church, nor free Pentecostal,” she
said. “The only churches that are allowed to function are orthodox or Catholic
churches with restrictions. They are not allowed to have books in Farsi. They
are not even allowed to, nowadays, print books in our own language. Any
Christian literature or Bible even in our own language is not permitted. They
are not even allowed to speak to a Farsi person near the church.”
Furthermore, Tamraz
explained that the Iranian Intelligence Service closely monitors Christian
activity.
“Together with the
Revolutionary Guard, they are arresting all attendees. They raid Christian
gatherings at home, restaurants, everywhere that they meet,” Tamraz said. “They
arrest them and confiscate their belongings, their houses. Most of these
Christians are subjected to intensive and often abusive interrogations. They
are often tortured physically and mentally.”
Tamraz said her family
knows all too well what it feels like to be monitored by the government.
“We have had cars
following us for years. It was normal,” she recalled. “I left Iran 2010, 2011 [and]
it took me nine or eight years to stop looking back or look in the mirror to
see if there is a car following me or not. Growing up, I thought that was very
normal. Now that I am in a normal country, I now know what normal looks like.”
Tamraz said that her
family has had to “be careful for our entire life.”
“We have been
monitored, our house has been broken in. My father was regularly arrested and
interrogated,” she said. “Sometimes it was just before the Sunday service
began. We always had to be prepared to preach in case my dad got arrested. That
became normal but it was part of our life growing up.”
According to the human
rights monitoring group Article 18, at least 25
Christians were arrested in Iran in 2019 while at least 13 Christians received
sentences that ranged from four months and five years for allegedly acting
against national security. According to Tamraz, dozens of other Christians that
were sentenced in previous years are still waiting for their court
hearings.
“Most of these
Christians have been arrested, sentenced and charged with charges mainly acting
against national security. They lack due process in the trials,” Tamraz said.
“The case of my parents … is case in point.”
“On the 24th of
February in a few weeks, [my parents] will face their final court hearing, if
it takes place,” she continued. “We do really pray that their sentence will be
dropped and they can practice their faith in peace and dignity and in freedom
as they ought to.”
Also speaking at the
FRC panel discussion were Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh, two women
born into Muslim families who led two house churches and evangelized to
Muslims.
The two were arrested in 2009 and spent 259 days in Iran’s notorious
Evin Prison. Although they were sentenced to death, Rostampour and Amirizadeh
were released from prison thanks to immense international pressure.
Rostampour and
Amirizadeh left Iran in 2010.
“We know first-hand
how difficult it is for those who attend house churches because they risk their
lives to attend house churches,” Amirizadeh said. “Any time if the government
finds out, they can raid the gathering, arrest people, torture them and
confiscate their property.”
She assured that “it
can happen to any of them.”
“That is why they have
to be very cautious about their communications,” she explained. “They
can’t worship God loudly. We have to stay very quiet because you never know who
is your neighbor and it can happen at any time.”
Despite the persecution,
the panelists agreed that the underground church in Iran is one of the fastest-growing church
movements in the world.
According to Open
Doors USA, there are an estimated 800,000 Christians in Iran, almost double the
persecution watchdog’s estimate of 450,000 in
2016.
“Underground churches
are growing in Iran and many people are coming to Christ,” Amirizadeh assured.
“Now people are seeing the true face of Islam and they are very open to
Christianity and the message of salvation. People are experiencing the love of
Jesus through Christianity.”
The Senate on Wednesday, February 5, 2020, voted to
acquit Donald Trump in the impeachment trial stemming from the Ukraine scandal.
On the first article of impeachment—which alleged that the president had abused
his power—Republican Mitt Romney joined all 45 Democrats and two independents
in voting to convict Trump, but that was far short of the two-thirds majority
needed to remove the president from office.
On the second article of
impeachment, which alleged obstruction of Congress, all 53 Republicans voted to
acquit the president; every Democrat and both independents voted to convict.
House Democrats—joined by one
Republican-turned-independent—had accused Trump of improperly pressuring
Ukraine to launch an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. A
congressional inquiry into Trump’s conduct ensued, sparked by an anonymous
whistleblower complaint regarding a mysterious hold on military
aid to Ukraine. Over the course of severalhigh-profileHousehearings,
career government officials gave dramatic testimony about Trump’s efforts
to coerce the Ukrainians into launching investigations designed to help the US
president politically.
On
December 18, the House passed two
articles of impeachment against Trump, leading to a trial in the Senate.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said at the outset that he wanted a
speedy trial and speedy acquittal; he ultimately got both. Republicans
successfully quashed a push from Democrats to subpoena several key witnesses,
including former national security adviser John Bolton and White House chief of
staff Mick Mulvaney—both of whom appeared to allege at
various points that Trump had tied the Ukrainian military aid to his desired
investigations.
Bolton’s testimony was the one Democrats craved most. A manuscript
he wrote about his time in the Trump administration reportedly included several
passages undermining the
narrative on which Trump and his allies had based the
president’s defense strategy.
His eyewitness account could have been a smoking
gun. Instead, the GOP Senate majority largely stuck by Trump—first by blocking
witness testimony, and then by ensuring that he would not become the first
American president to be removed from office.
On the latter issue, Romney proved to be the one exception. In
a dramatic floor
speech before Wednesday’s vote, he described his vote as “the
most difficult decision I have ever faced.”
“I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who
will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be
vehemently denounced,” he said. “Does anyone seriously believe I would consent
to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath
before God demanded it of me?”
Romney’s speech won praise
from Senate Democrats—Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called it
“one of the most important speeches I have ever had the good fortune to hear in
person”—but Republicans quickly turned on Romney, who just eight years ago was
the party’s nominee for president.
“Mitt Romney is forever bitter that he will never be POTUS,”
Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted after
the vote. “He was too weak to beat the Democrats then so he’s joining them now.
He’s now officially a member of the resistance & should be expelled from
the GOP.”
Romney’s niece, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna
McDaniel, said in a statement that this was “not the first time I have
disagreed with Mitt, and I imagine it will not be the last.”
Echoing the view of the official party apparatus, she added, “The
bottom line is President Trump did nothing wrong, and the Republican Party is
more united than ever behind him.”
Not all Republicans necessarily agreed with
that assessment. Two possible swing votes, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and
Susan Collins (R-Maine), voted against removing Trump, but agreed with Romney
that the president’s conduct was improper.
“The president’s behavior was
shameful and wrong,” Murkowski said Monday.
“His personal interests do not take precedence over those of this great
nation.” Collins, while acknowledging that Trump’s behavior toward Ukraine was
“flawed,” said she
did not believe the House managers’ case justified “the extreme step of
immediate removal from office.”
Senior Political Adviser to Delta State Governor, Rt. Hon. Funkekeme Solomon (in white) in a group photograph with the non-indigenes of Igbo extraction in Delta.
The
Delta State Government has promised to partner with non-indigenes that are
resident in the state to enhance the existing peace and grow the economy of the
state.
The Senior Political Adviser to the Governor of Delta State,
Rt. Hon. Solomon Funkekeme, gave the assurance Tuesday, February 4th,
2020 when a delegation of Igbo extraction of the State Chapter of Non-Indigenes
Association paid him a courtesy visit in his office.
Rt Hon. Funkekeme said that as residents, non-indigenes were
critical stakeholders that had contributed to the growth and development of the
state.
He acknowledged the support and contributions of the
non-indigenes particularly the Igbo extraction before and during the 2019
general elections, stressing that the state government would continue to
patronize them in reciprocity.
The senior political adviser frowned at the recent
development where the 2019 Christmas gifts that the state government intended
for the association were allegedly diverted by persons purporting to represent
the group, pointing out that his office was currently investigating the issue.
Funkekeme called for calm among the group promising that
under his watch such ugly incident would not recur.
Earlier in their separate remarks, the Coordinators of Delta
North and Central Chapters of Non-Indigenes, Chiefs Emordi Ogwu and Tony Okoro
Jnr who doubles as the President Igbo Political Union, condemned the activities
of Chief Mike Eze whom they accused of diverting the Christmas gifts meant for
the association.
The entire group thereafter endorsed Chief Joseph Ikhena, JP,
who is the State Chairman of Non-Indigene group as well as member of Delta
State Advisory and Peace Building Council to always represent the association
in all matters in the state.
A philanthropist, and Delta State born Prince Ned
Nwoko, says he will fund researchers in five universities in the country in a
bid to develop vaccine for eradicating malaria in Africa.
Nwoko, who made this known in Abuja in an interview
with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said that the funding would come through his
foundation.
He said the search for malaria vaccine would
complement the proposed fumigation of African countries for a mosquito free
continent.
“There are different things we are working on and
one of them is the research into finding a vaccine for malaria.
“This is where the strength of what my foundation is
doing lies. We have a team of doctors and we have the advisers put together
already.
“We are going to fund scientists, researchers in
five universities with a specific instruction – discover vaccine for malaria;
that is the long term solution. When there is vaccine that is working, that is
the end of malaria.
“There are vaccines for other ailment like chicken
pox, small pox, polio, why not malaria. So, we need to get vaccine research
going and we are doing that now,” Nwoko said.
According to Nwoko, fumigation of Africa which is
the first step of his malaria free continent campaign will be done at different
times in all the countries of Africa.
He explained that the clean up of the environment
and homes by the residents and the government at various levels would help
achieve good result.
“This is not a project that will happen within one
year.
“We are going to fumigate country by country, once a
country keys into it, we take it from there and do what has to be done.
“Fumigation is not just aerial work but homes. The
unique thing about what we are doing is that we want the fumigation to be done
simultaneously.
“There is no need doing fumigation in Abuja and you
don’t do it in Nasarawa, or you don’t do in Kaduna state because mosquitoes
will just migrate and multiply and all the efforts are wasted.
“So, we are looking at permanently cleaning up the
environment and homes; it is for everybody and don’t forget that sanitation is
very important,” Nwoko added.
NAN reports that the Ned Nwoko malaria project was
launched in Abuja in December 2019. (NAN)
Former Vice president, Atiku Abubakar
has called on the government of the United States of America not to punish Nigerians
for the inefficiency of the current administration in Nigeria.
Atiku, who was reacting to the policy of the government
of the United States of America to place Nigeria on its travel ban list,
because of the failure of the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to share
information and to address issues of terrorism, urged the President Donald
Trump administration to take into account the pro-American sentiments of the
Nigerian public and the solidarity previous Nigerian administrations have had
with the United States.
He stated: “The current Nigerian administration may have its
deficiencies and deep faults, but the Nigeria people ought not to be punished
for their inefficiencies.
“ Once again, I call on President Trump to consider adopting
measures that individually target those in government who have failed in their
duties, rather than target the entire Nigerian population.”
Below is full text of the statement by Atiku
US Travel Ban on Nigeria: Punish Those Responsible, Not the
Nigerian People
I received with sadness the policy of the government of the
United States of America to place Nigeria on its travel ban list.
While I understand the reasons given by the Trump administration
(the failure of the Muhammadu Buhari led administration to share information
and to address issues of terrorism), the ban does not take into account the
pro-American sentiments of the Nigerian public and the solidarity previous
Nigerian administrations have had with the United States.
I urge the government of President Donald Trump to consider the
history of US-Nigerian relationships. Nigeria was one of the few African
nations that joined the US led coalition during Operation Desert Storm in
1990-1991, when the United States championed the liberation of Kuwait.
The Trump administration may also consider the pivotal role
Nigeria, in partnership with the US, played in bringing peace to Liberia, an
American sphere of influence, that now enjoys democracy because Nigerian blood
and money paved the way for peace in that nation.
Nigeria has also consistently voted in support of the United
States and her allies at the United Nations and other multi-lateral world
bodies. This is even as we are perhaps the biggest trading partner that the
United States has in Africa, even where we had alternatives.
Nigerians love the United States and have been a major force for
the positive development of that great nation: 77 per cent of all Black doctors
in the United States are Nigerians. Nigerians are also the most educated
immigrant community in America BAR NONE. Surely, the US stands to benefit if it
allows open borders with a country like Nigeria that is able to provide
skilled, hardworking and dedicated personnel in a two-way traffic.
The current Nigerian administration may have its deficiencies
and deep faults, but the Nigeria people ought not to be punished for their
inefficiencies.
Once again, I call on President Trump to consider adopting
measures that individually target those in government who have failed in their
duties, rather than target the entire Nigerian population.
Bernard-Henri Lévy speaks to Fulani men in Nigeria. PHOTO:GILLES HERTZOG
Fulani raiders ‘are Islamic extremists of a new stripe,
more or less linked with Boko Haram,’ but present throughout Nigeria.
ByBernard-Henri Lévy
Dec. 20, 2019 5:16 pm ET
Lagos, Nigeria
A slow-motion war is
under way in Africa’s most populous country. It’s a massacre of Christians,
massive in scale and horrific in brutality. And the world has hardly noticed.
A Nigerian Pentecostal Christian, director of a nongovernmental
organization that works for mutual understanding between Nigeria’s Christians
and Muslims, alerted me to it. “Have you heard of the Fulani?” he asked at our
first meeting, in Paris, speaking the flawless, melodious English of the
Nigerian elite. The Fulani are an ethnic group, generally described as
shepherds from mostly Muslim Northern Nigeria, forced by climate change to move
with their herds toward the more temperate Christian South. They number 14
million to 15 million in a nation of 191 million.
Among them is a
violent element. “They are Islamic extremists of a new stripe,” the NGO
director said, “more or less linked with Boko Haram,” the sect that became
infamous for the 2014 kidnapping of 276 Christian girls in the state of Borno.
“I beg you,” he said, “come and see for yourself.” Knowing of Boko Haram but
nothing of the Fulani, I accept.
The 2019 Global Terrorism Index estimates that
Fulani extremists have become deadlier than Boko Haram and accounted for the
majority of the country’s 2,040 documented terrorist fatalities in 2018. To
learn more about them, I travel to Godogodo, in the center of the country,
where I meet a beautiful woman named Jumai Victor, 28. On July 15, she says,
Fulani extremists stormed into her village on long-saddle motorcycles, three to
a bike, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” They torched houses and killed her four
children before her eyes.
When her turn came and they noticed she was
pregnant, a discussion ensued. Some didn’t want to see her belly slit, so they
compromised by cutting up and amputating her left arm with a machete. She
speaks quickly and emotionlessly, staring into space as if she lost her face
along with her arm. The village chief, translating for her, chokes up. Tears
stream down his cheeks when she finishes her account.
I venture north to Adnan, where Lyndia David, 34,
tells her story of survival. On the morning of March 15, rumors reached her
village that Fulani raiders were nearby. She was dressing for church as her
husband prepared to join a group of men who’d stand watch. He urged her to take
refuge at her sister’s home in another village.
Her first night there, sentinels woke her with a
whistle. She left the house to find flames spreading around her. Fulani
surrounded her. Then she heard a voice: “Come this way, you can get through!”
She did, and her putative savior leapt out of the underbrush, cut three fingers
off her right hand, carved the nape of her neck with his machete, shot her,
doused her body with gasoline, and lit it. She somehow survived. A few weeks
later she returned to her village and learned that the raiders had leveled it
the same night. Her husband was among the 72 they murdered.
The Christian Middle Belt is a land of blooming
prairies that once delighted English colonizers. On the outskirts of Jos,
capital of Plateau state, I visit the ruins of a burned-down church. I spot
another, intact. A man emerges to yell at me in English that I don’t belong
there. Stalling, I learn that he is Turkish, a member of a “religious mutual
assistance group” that is opening madrassas for the daughters of Fulani.
That day I crisscross the Middle Belt. Roads are
crumbled, bridges collapsed; destroyed houses cast broken shadows over tree
stumps and trails of black ash and blood. Maize rots in the abandoned fields.
The local Christians have been killed or are too terrorized to come out and
harvest it. In the distance are clusters of white smudges—the Fulani herds
grazing on the lush grass. When we approach, the armed shepherds wave us off.
The Anglican bishop of Jos, Benjamin Kwashi, has had
his livestock stolen three times. During the third raid he was dragged into his
room, a gun to his head. He dropped to his knees and prayed at the top of his
voice until the thrumming of a helicopter drove his assailants off.
Bishop Kwashi describes the Fulani extremists’
pattern: They usually arrive at night. They are barefoot, so you can’t hear
them coming unless they’re on motorcycle. Sometimes a dog sounds the alert,
sometimes a sentinel. Then a terrifying stampede, whirling clouds of dust,
cries of encouragement from the invaders. Before villagers can take shelter or
flee, the invaders are upon them in their houses, swinging machetes, burning,
pillaging, raping. They don’t kill everyone. At some point they stop, recite a
verse from the Quran, round up the livestock and retreat. They need survivors
to spread fear from village to village, to bear witness that the Fulani raiders
fear nothing but Allah and are capable of anything.
The heads of 17 Christian communities have come to
the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital, to meet me in a nondescript
compound. Some have traveled for days in packed buses or minivans. Each arrives
accompanied by a victim or two.
Here they are, an exhausted yet earnestly hopeful
group of some 40 women and men, keenly aware of the moment’s gravity. One
carries a USB key, another a handwritten account, a third a folder full of
photos, captioned and dated. I accept these records, overwhelmed by the weight
of the bearers’ hope that the world will recognize the horrors they
experienced.
Taking the floor in turn, the survivors confirm the
modus operandi Bishop Kwashi described, each adding an awful detail. The
mutilated cadavers of women. A mute man commanded to deny his faith, then cut
up with a machete until he screams. A girl strangled with the chain of her
crucifix.
Westerners here depict the Fulani extremists as an
extended, rampant Boko Haram. An American humanitarian says the Fulani recruit
volunteers to serve internships in Borno State, where Boko Haram is active.
Another says Boko Haram “instructors” have been spotted in Bauchi, another
northeastern state, where they are teaching elite Fulani militants to handle
more-sophisticated weapons that will replace their machetes. Yet whereas Boko
Haram are confined to perhaps 5% of Nigerian territory, the Fulani terrorists
operate across the country.
Villagers west of Jos show the weapons they use to
defend themselves: bows, slings, daggers, sticks, leather whips, spears. Even
these meager arms have to be concealed. When the army comes through after the
attacks, soldiers tell the villagers their paltry weapons are illegal and
confiscate them.
Several times I note the proximity of a military
base that might have been expected to protect civilians. But the soldiers
didn’t come; or, if they did, it was only after the battle; or they claimed not
to have received the texted SOS calls in time, or not to have had orders to
respond, or to have been delayed on an impassable road.
“What do you expect?” our driver asks as we take off
in a convoy for his burned-down church. “The army is in league with the Fulani.
They go hand in hand.” After one attack, “we even found a dog tag and a
uniform.”
“It’s hardly surprising,” says Dalyop Salomon
Mwantiri, one of the few lawyers in the region who dare to represent victims.
“The general staff of the Nigerian army is a Fulani. The whole bureaucracy is
Fulani.”
So is President Muhammadu Buhari. In April 2016 Mr.
Buhari ordered security forces to “secure all communities under attack by
herdsmen.” In July 2019 a spokesman for the president said in a statement: “No
one has the right to ask anyone or group to depart from any part of the
country, whether North, South, East or West.”
Most Christians I
meet express disgust at the vague language suggesting culpability on both sides.
Their stories tend to validate claims of the government’s complicity. In Riyom
district, three displaced Nigerians and a soldier were gunned down this June as
they attempted to return home. The villagers know the assailants. Police
identified them. Everyone knows they took refuge in a nearby village. But there
they are under the protection of the ardos, a local emir. No arrests occurred.
Village chief Sunday Abdu recounts another example,
a 2017 attack on Nkiedonwhro. This time the military came to warn villagers of
a threat. They ordered the women and children to take shelter in a school. But
after the civilians complied, a soldier fired a shot in the air. A second shot
sounded in the distance, seemingly in response. Minutes later, after the soldiers
had departed, the assailants appeared, went directly to the classroom, and
fired into the cowering group, killing 27.
I also meet some Fulani—the first time by chance.
Traveling by road near a river bed, we come on a checkpoint consisting of a
rope stretched across the road, a hut and two armed men. “No passage,” says
one, wearing a jacket on which are sewn badges in Arabic and Turkish. “This is
Fulani land, the holy land of Usman dan Fodio, our king—and you whites can’t
come in.” The conquests of dan Fodio (1754-1817) led to the establishment of
the Sokoto Caliphate over the Fula and Hausa lands.
The second encounter is on the outskirts of Abuja.
Driving toward the countryside, we reach a village unlike the others we’ve seen
in the Christian zone. There’s a ditch, and behind it a hedge of bushes and
pilings. The place seems closed off from the world. From huts emerge a swarm of
children and their mothers, the women covered from head to foot.
It’s a village of Fulani nomads who carried out a
tiny, localized Fulanization after the Christians cleared out. “What are you
doing here?” demands an adolescent boy wearing a T-shirt adorned with a
swastika. “Are you taking advantage of the fact that it’s Friday, and we’re in
the mosque, to come spy on our women? The Quran forbids that!” When I ask if
wearing a swastika isn’t also contrary to the Quran, he looks puzzled, then
launches into a feverish tirade. He says he knows he’s wearing “a German
insignia,” but he believes that “all men are brothers,” except for the “bad
souls” who “hate Muslims.”
Later I encounter Fulani near Lagos, Nigeria’s
largest city, which is in the south on the Gulf of Guinea. North of the city is
an open-air market where Fulani sell their livestock. I am with three young
Christians, survivors of a Middle Belt massacre who live in a camp for
displaced persons. They pretend to be cousins buying an animal for a family
feast. As they negotiate over a white-horned pygmy goat, I look for Fulani
willing to talk.
Most have come from Jigawa state, on the border with
Niger, crossing the country south in trucks to bring their stock here. Although
I learn little about their trip, they eagerly express their joy in being here,
on the border of this contemptible promised land, where they expect to “dip the
Quran in the sea.”
There are “too many Christians in Lagos,” says
Abadallah, who looks to be in his 40s. “The Christians are dogs and children of
dogs. You say Christians. To us they are traitors. They adopted the religion of
the whites. There is no place here for friends of the whites, who are impure.”
A postcard vendor joins the group and offers me portraits of Osama bin Laden
and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He agrees the Christians will
eventually leave and Nigeria will be “free.”
Some professional disinformers will try to reduce
the violence here to one of the “interethnic wars” that inflame Africa. They’ll
likely find, here and there, acts of reprisal against the Fula and Hausa. But
as my trip concludes, I have the terrible feeling of being carried back to
Rwanda in the 1990s, to Darfur and South Sudan in the 2000s.
Will the West let history repeat itself in Nigeria?
Will we wait, as usual, until the disaster is done before taking notice? Will
we stand by as international Islamic extremism opens a new front across this
vast land, where the children of Abraham have coexisted for so long?
Mr. Lévy is author of “The Empire and the Five Kings: America’s
Abdication and the Fate of the World” (Henry Holt, 2019). This article was
translated from French by Steven B. Kennedy.
