What Has Religion Got To Do With It 3

University days at the University of Ibadan were, of course, most accommodating of all religious and ethnic persuasions. As a matter of fact, if any organization attempted to be over-zealous or overreach itself, there were many organisations without affiliation or sympathy for any primordial sentiments on the campus to neutralize such conflicts. I recall the widespread shock that attended an attempt in the mid-eighties by two students organisations representing the two dominant religions on the campus of the University of Ibadan….
The Muslim students had complained that the location of the huge cross depicting the crucifixion of Jesus, which belong to the Chapel of Resurrection church, was discomforting to them. They claimed that the cross usually obstructed their views of the East where they are mandated to face while praying. They wanted the cross relocated. However, the Christian community countered that, well, the cross had been there before the mosque was built and so it was the Muslims that should move their praying centre.
Now this was a conflict never heard of in such a liberal community of academics. The anger of the rest of the university community was so huge that it eventually drowned the contentions of the two aggressors. This neutral position was instrumental to a quick resolution of the brewing crisis. In fact, it influenced the character of a panel that was quickly set up by the University authority to intervene in the crisis. The crisis was nipped.
A similar crisis had become a regular occurrence in higher institutions in other parts of the country. At times, something as trivial a matter as the mode of dressing by female students had sent a university community on fire in such parts. However, over time, religious differences have become more sharply emphasised in the academic communities of Nigeria, even in the South West. But none of the conflicts had assumed the status of a conflagration to cause the type of mayhem that had been witnessed in other parts of the country.
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While taking part the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme in Kafanchan, in the Je'maa Local Government Council area of southern Kaduna State in 1987, perhaps the most damning of such a religious conflict in an academic environment occurred. The conflict was recorded to have taken its inspiration from the 1985 Maitatsine Riots in some parts of the north, where a Muslim sect unleashed mayhem on those who profess to other faiths, including Muslims of a different persuasion.
On this day, in cosmopolitan Kafanchan, which by virtue of its being a Railway town was populated by people from different parts of the country, the College of Education campus was bristling with activities marking the Students Week. In the courtyard of the school, there had been mounted a carnival of performances. Two of the key events of the week was a congregation of the Christian students association and the presentation of the play "The Gods Are Not to Blame" written by Prof. Ola Rotimi and directed by the head of the English department of the school, Mr. Joab Bonat, with assistance by me.
On the day the riot broke out, the play was billed to be staged. At about 2 pm, the cast and crew of the play, all students of the English department with a sprinkle of those taking elective courses in the department. Just as a member of the crew mounted a stool to fix an electric bulb in the center of the social hall at the extreme end of the school, a group of students in long robes walked in. They demanded to speak with the head of the department. He was not around, they were told. But his assistant, Mr. Anikulapo, the youth corps member was. One of the students mouthed certain statements about the corps member being an infidel. The hall fell into a shock. However, the aggression was suppressed. Some of the drama crew demanded the mission of the intruders. It was a demand that two of the cast members, who were Muslim girls and members of Muslim Students Association, be withdrawn from the play. According to one of the students, drama performance is idolatry and no genuine believer should be engaged in the vocation.
Particularly irksome to the intruders was the fact that the female students were part of a particular scene in the play which mandated that the women are dressed in a wrapper tied around their waist while leaving their upper part bare in accordance with Yoruba maidens' dress mode. The targeted girls were the first to raise protestation. It was their affair, shouted the more outspoken of the two, Mairo. One of the transgressors charged at her and attempted to slap her. He was restrained. But his comrades soon seized the two girls by the wrist and dragged them out of the hall. Of course, this act instigated a pandemonium as other members of cast attempted to challenge the intruders. There was much argument and fisticuffs and the scene of the latest morbid drama had gradually shifted towards the courtyard where a congregation had been seated and were in the midst of preachment by a young clergy.
Perhaps it was the tension imported from the social hall, for in no time, another argument had begun, all of a sudden, where the congregation was seated. There were shouts of obscenities and angry words. In no time, chairs and other items of seating were flying in the air. Many of the students had dangerous weapons such as daggers and broken bottles in their hands and many students already bore wounds as smell of fresh blood filled the air. At the other corner of the school, the little Mosque neighboured by the library was in flames. The campus had turned to a battlefield and there were wounded bodies sprawled all over the place.
Fleeing towards the town where the Corpers' Lodge was located, I could observe that some houses, especially belonging to people from other parts of the country were already on fire; and a popular businessman in the town, said to be the leader of one of the ethnic groups from other parts of the country, had been felled by an arrow shot into his head. He was reportedly attacked by one of those he had engaged for more than five years as a maiguard (security guard.)
The businessman had been known to be the main financier of the Muslim community in Kafanchan, having built mosques and served many years as patron of the Muslim Students Society of the College of Education. to which in 1987 one of his sons was serving as an officer. Yet those who burnt his property and killed him were alleged to be members of the same student society! This would indicate that much of the killings that occurred during the Kafanchan riot were not necessarily based on ethnic differences but purely the inexplicable thirst for blood by Religious Profiteers.
The news of his death only fuelled the riot. The so-called foreigners in Kafanchan launched a reprisal attack on the community of the Hausas and not even the palace of the Emir was spared the violence. Notably, the Emir had been in disputation with the indigenes of Kafanchan and suburbs, otherwise called the Kaje people over the alleged perennial imposition of a monarch on them by the Emirate in Zauzzau. The riot was thus a mere vehicle for expression of certain political angst and discontentment with the status quo.
This was the first time that the extent of religious dichotomy in Nigeria first dawned on me and it might have helped to erode substantially my confidence in the capability of modern man and especially Nigerians to safely wade through the murky waters of religious contentions and overcome the machinations of Religious merchants who are growing daily.
This fear is perhaps complicated by the advent of globalization and its emphasis on competition between the various strata of society, races of the world and economic classes.
Again Ms. Irene has noted: "Most of today’s tensions and conflicts are bound up with complex issues, with concepts of ethnicity, religion, identity, nationalism and globalisation. And the latest of these terrorism".
For as noted by James V. Spickard "Why is there a simultaneous growth of both religious divisiveness and quasi-religious unity? … Increased globalization and the growth of an international division of labour have fostered both trends. Such structural characteristics of our global late-modern social order have made plausible key themes of the human rights discourse, specially its universalism. The same characteristics have spurred religious and ethnic particularism as an anti-systemic counter-trend".
In fact the questions that many people have asked is that if Globalisation is that major platform where every component or group of component of the world go to negotiate the\ bases of their interaction and contract with other stakeholders, what is the identity that Africa or the Africans would be taking there? Is it that identity that is rooted in this conflictual religious ideologies or cultural dislocations ? Or an identity of polytheism that belies the conception of homogeneity that the West has always foisted on its cultural experiences?
The answer is not clear even in my mind.
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Ten years after the Kafanchan riot, in 1997, I was opportuned to work on an anti-conflict theatre project of the International Committee of The Red Cross, ICRC in collaboration with the Nigerian Red Cross,NRC. Under the theme A Vote For Relevance, the project was designated the Red Cross Theatre Project and it was designed top produce a multi-lingual and multi-format theatre package that would campaign against the rising wave of religious and ethnic conflicts in Nigeria as well as in other parts of the world.
The drama package to which I was Assistant Director/Producer was titled Askari and was written and directed by Ben Tomoloju. The package was to tour at least two-third of Nigeria’s 36 states with three versions of the play produced in three centres — West, East and the North. Each of the Centres was to compose its own cast and crew and conduct its own rehearsals to stress the cultural peculiarities of each centre. But there was provision for the overall supervision of each centre and its production by the national crew led by Tomoloju assisted by me.
In all there were 22 performances in 20 states of Nigeria.
The project of course, had a hitch-free proceedings in the South West and safe for inadequate facilities in the East recorded success. However, the experience at the North Centre was another eye-opener for me and it only reinforced my conviction that Religious Conflicts often arise simply because certain human selfish instincts and mercantilist spirit come in to play in decision taking process by leaders in most human endeavours.
In the composition of the cast there were certain extra-artistic factors that were forced on the production by public officials who had been drafted to give the project political backings by the host state governments. They insisted that the lead actor to play Askari had to be not only an indigene of any of the northern states but practicing Muslim.
All appeals to them that theatre lays emphasis on talents, skill, competence and merit was rejected. They contended that a Christian actor who is from Christian-dominated Southern Kaduna was not suitable to play the role as according to them, he was a kaffir and could draw the anger of the local population in the ten northern states that would see the play.
Insistence by the national Crew to impose meritocracy and insist on professional judgement only aggravated the conflict as they threatened to distrupt the show and mount public protest. They were indeed adamant and held the production up for at least three weeks before the National Crew succumbed to the blackmail. A certain percentage of the 10 performances in the centre was allocated to the untrained but imposed actor. These were to be in core northern states with infamous records for religious volatility.
Needless to say that the performance of the actor was chaos. Interestingly however what drew the ire of the various audiences peopled by the youths and students, even in the so-called core northern states, was the inability of the actor to carry the role and speak loud and intelligibly enough for the comfort of the audience.
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Again the Religious Entrepreneurs had won. They were guided neither by the genuine interest of Islam nor the will of the Northern people whose needs they professed to protect.
This same fraud is well entrenched in the Nigeria national polity and has been responsible for the inability of the country to attain its full potentials politically and economically. Merit has always been slaughtered on the altar of such retrogressive considerations as Federal Character, State of Origin and Quota System.
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The second phase of the Red Cross Project had had to be cancelled by the ICRC based on the various obstacles placed on the path of the project by such primordial sentiments as experienced at the North Centre. This experience in recorded in A Vote For Relevance, a booklet on the project co-authored by Ben Tomoloju and Jahman Anukulapo.
And eight years after the Askari experience, Tomoloju faced a similar obstacle in the course of preparation of a theatre project for the on-going Eighth All African Games, Abuja 2003.
He had been billed by the Wole Soyinka-led Creative Task Force set up to produce the Ceremonies of the games, to produce a play on the legends of the heroine Queen Amina, a northern matriarch of anti-female oppression.
In the course of researching into the legend, a Professor of language who had worked on the material and wrote a script began a campaign which was to the effect that Tomoloju being a Christian, and from the South, was not qualified to handle the production. It took the adamant posture of Prof. Soyinka and the COJA officials to ensure that the production was handled as originally conceived.
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CULTURAL JOURNALIST
I started work formally as a Journalist in 1987 shortly after Youth Service. My special interest has been in Cultural Affairs and I particularly loved the festivals.
My experience has been that aside of Sports which always as in many other societies break down the barriers between all men, even if only temporarily, Culture remains the most potent weapon to counter conflicts of all dimensions. In cultural expressions all differences dissolve as a dance like music, painting, architecture, drama is only an expression of man’s innermost sense of aesthetics. And the expression appeals to the positive segment of a man’s emotions.
Having reported and participated in the many editions of the yearly, NAFEST otherwise called Feast of Unity, I have come to the conclusion that for the Nigerian nation, to quicken its pace towards sitting peace, needs to invest much interest, energy and resources in its cultural materials and ensure frequent expressions of same. There may be over 400 ethnic nationalities (and may be as so many religious sects)in Nigeria, they all as had been proven, share so many cultural ideas and attributes that are easily identifiable even if they all met at a single forum.
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Indeed, it is not as if the Nigerian political elite is blinded to the place of culture in creating a less-conflict prone society, it is just that there is a pall of lack of political will and honesty to do that which is right for the common good. And this tendency has been witnessed in the approach of consecutive governments to the various religious conflagrations that the nation has witnessed.
As a matter of fact, the 2002 editions of the National Festival of Arts Culture had focused on the Culture of Peace as a contribution of the Culture intelligentsia to the discourse on finding a stratagem for resolution of the frequent religious conflicts in the country.
Among others the Communique of the conference had observed
oThat elite have distorted various forms of cultural processes that make for peace in the polity and;
o That causes of conflict in the Nigerian state include non-physical visit between peoples of different backgrounds, ignorance, linguistic barriers, intolerance, corruption, non accountability, insecurity, injustice, sensational and sectional journalism, poverty, hunger, dysfunctional educational system, manipulation of the youth by the elite in the prevailing political, economic and moral environment.
The conference thus recommended
continued and improved funding of cultural sector to empower it to discharge its responsibilities and render quality service as a broker of peace in the nation.
inclusion of culture studies in all levels of formal educational system.
use of time-tested cultural imperatives and paradigms in ameliorating, diffusing and resolving conflict situations and tensions in the nation.
Empowerment of the culture sector, artists, craftsmen and other professionals in the arts by inaugurating and launching the National Endowment Funds for the arts and culture.
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My proposal, even if it sounds simplistic, is that Culture and the Arts given a well-defined operative environment and honest administration and foundation, remain the key to solving many of the conflicts of today and that was the essence of Ms Nasa’s postulation that for culture workers and those working in the sociological fields, designing a model for resolution of the various conflicts including religious must place emphasis on respect for the individual cultural norms and practices of the people.
We must stress that Europe and the West, the civilizations from which Africa taps its current political and ideological orientations have shown that developmental objectives must take off from the cultural foundation.
This is where their national aspirations derive from and that is why aside from their diplomatic missions, they have insisted in maintaining strong cultural presence in Many parts of the world. That is the mission of the Goethe Institutes, British Councils and the United States Information Services among others.
Unfortunately, the African nations which really need these cultural paradigms are the least interested in harnessing their cultural resources and intellectual potentials as well as services of their intelligentsia to tackle the many contradictions of their existence including religious contentions.
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CONCLUSION
Due to the continued deterioration in the economy and social infrastructure of the country, many more Nigerians are seeking solace in Christian and Muslim organizations. With swollen membership, these organizations have gained visibility and are exerting pressure to play increasingly crucial roles in the society, for good or for bad. Managing these will be crucial too.
It is necessary to constantly remind ourselves of the various submissions on the precariousness of Religious Conflicts and as well the extent to which our current world is prone to incessant conflagrations fuelled by differences in convictions and faiths.
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Contended a religious scholar: It will serve us all better if we realise that truth is dialectical in nature. When extremes are emphasised, divisions occur. Consensus rather than authority or arbitrary majority coercion is the best atmosphere in which understanding is facilitated, but such dialogue usually slows and temporises group action. The same basic truth issues tend to be raised century after century.
The greatest degree of unity and cooperation is achieved when ideals, purposes, and goals are emphasised rather than theological agreement or polity conformity. Theological balance along with broad freedom of opinion and action is most conducive to constructive relationships. The conflicts of evolutionary religion are most effectively transcended by epochal revelation.
And Pickard continues, "If this battle between universalism and particularism – the theological battle of our age – is as much social as intellectual, then democratic governance of pluralistic societies can only succeed by paying attention to such underlying social correlates.
And we conclude thus:
In addition to Promotion of dialogue, the state must ensure that the space of social interaction – the vast field of cultural experiences… where everyman drops his burden of religious and racial convictions is protected and made inviolable.
References
* G.O. Gbadamosi, The Growth of Islam Among The Yoruba 1841-1908, (London: Longman, 1978.
*The Holy Qur’an, Chapter 49 verse 13.
*Bolaji Idowu, Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief, (London: Longman 1962).
*. James Pickard, Ph.D. (Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Redlands, Redlands, California) "Human Rights, Religious Conflict, and Globalization: Ultimate Values in a New World Order"