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David Oyedepo did not start preaching anti- Muslim hate today, neither is this kind of incitement alien to our two major religions. The problem is David Oyedepo is an important voice within Nigeria's Christendom. David Oyedepo represents the mainstream rather than the periphery.

That's the difference between Christian and Muslim leaderships in Nigeria. You rarely find such incitements within mainstream Muslim leadership. Such views are usually relegated to the periphery, to the narrow confines of local Muslim spaces. This is not to exonerate the Muslim leadership from all blames, but on the whole, the Nigerian Muslim leadership, represented by the Sultan led NSCIA is relatively passive even though its Muslim crowd is inherently militant. On the other hand, it is an inherently militant Christian leadership that is overseeing a relatively passive Christian crowd.

It is one of Nigeria's puzzling contradictions. That's why you find the Christian leadership protesting over non-issues like Islamic banking and hijab-wearing, and that's why you find the Muslim crowd reacting violently against provocations committed outside Nigeria. Perhaps, God intends to save Nigeria from religious civil war by creating a balancing pair for each group. Imagine pairing the combustive Orisetjafor-led CAN with an equally combustive Sultan-led NSCIA during the polarizing years of Goodluck Jonathan?

The Sultan and Nigeria's mainstream Muslim leadership have been fairly consistent in condemning violence against Christians, be it borne of religious, political or ethnic motives. But the Christian leadership in Nigeria very rarely acknowledge violence against Muslims, pretending it never even exist, and promoting the dangerous narrative of Christian victimhood that frames every conflict around the good Christian - bad muslim binary.

In 2008, hundreds of Fulanis were killed and their bodies dumped inside a well in a village near Kuru in Plateau state. It took an Aljazeera reporter to discover that appalling tragedy. Not a single word of condemnation by the Christian leadership. Weeks later, reprisals came in the form of Fulani attack against the predominantly Christian berom tribe in Dogo Na Hauwa, and that tragedy was accorded international coverage by all the major international press. The message here is simple: some lives are more human than others. Years before that, Obasanjo declared a state of emergency in Plateau state after seeing the appalling ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the Hausa-Fulani in Yelwan Shendam with the full support of the Plateau state government, where he ran into an altercation with the state CAN chairman who queried Obasanjo for showing sympathy over 'Muslim' losses.

This brings me to Southern Kaduna where efforts are being made by the Christian leadership to portray the crisis as a religious cleansing even though Muslim and Hausa-Fulani communities in the North-West have suffered more from the rampaging Fulani militias and rural bandits. This can be easily verified from the Nigeria security tracker run by the CFR, the global terrorism database and other security related databases. Even if we accept the crisis in Southern Kaduna to be religious, it is difficult to establish a case of exclusive Christian victimhood as cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals have created victims on both sides of the divide. It is therefore disingenuous of the Nigerian Christian leadership to reduce tragedies like the one happening in Southern Kaduna to a Muslim- Christian contest. It will not solve the problem nor end the suffering of the communities affected. It will only fuel it and sustain a vicious cycle of conflict and suffering.

Therefore, not every conflict in the north is religous or ethnic or ends with Christian as victims and Muslims as aggressors or vice versa. Narratives such as these are mutually-rejecting and otherizing. They only perpetuate suffering and foreclose the chance of genuine dialogue. It is time we see those tragedies as what they are, tragedies which no Nigerian deserves to suffer as victim and no perpetrator deserves to go scot free.

Demmzy15:
Wallahi this is a front page worthy material, Lalasticlala Seun. Please just take a look

well said

Demmzy15:
Wallahi this is a front page worthy material, Lalasticlala Seun. Please just take a look

All he just needs to do is sprinkle some "Tonto Dikeh" in it

Brilliant piece as usual Abu sulaim