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"…. of the sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do…..”(1 Chronicles 12:32)

The Body of Christ in Nigeria is faced with the problematic of what is to be done, considering the systematic annihilation of Christian lives, either by supposed herdsmen of Fulani extraction or those described as Islamic terrorists without any intervention by the Apparatus of State. This had been the general experience of Christians in Nigeria, especially in the northern parts where their sufferings because of their faith is compounded by their Ethno-Nationality, which was and is why these atrocities are always limited to geo-political territories largely inhabited by non-Fulani and non-Muslims, thus limiting the narrative to a contrived religious conflict when it is not so.
That certain largely Christian and non-Fulani territories in the North, especially in the Middle Belt axis, had been formally and officially taken over by the Fulani through the creation of new local government areas for them is not a religious phenomenon; that the methodologies employed in these instances followed a similar pattern as being practiced in the Darfur Region of the Sudan where the African populations are being systematically destroyed by the State-supported group known as the “supporter of APC” is not a religious affair; so also the nomadic business of cattle rearing almost always leading to destruction of farmlands and murders of farmers, raping of women etc is also not a religious affair; not even when Christian preachers are routinely beheaded by “Islamists” with no consequence on the perpetrators can such be deemed a religious affair.
In all of these, the State Apparatus had always been found wanting, ignoring the atrocities while usually punishing the victims, which point to the reality that what we are faced with is not religious conflict but the utilization of a State Apparatus to perpetuate a pre-arranged political and economic and therefore cultural order for the Peoples inhabiting the Nigerian geo-political space.
The glue holding all of the different cultures, nationalities and lingual groupings together in Nigeria is the State with all of its apparatus with a mandate anchored on a Constitution aimed at protecting the various interests ostensibly for the good of all and with enough criteria for dealing with errant behavior.
There is no doubt that the Nigerian State has failed in this particular instance over a long period of time as there are enough evidence to support the lackadaisical attitude of the State towards these occurrences.
The response of the Nigerian Body of Christ have been lackluster; mainly concerned with praying for the authorities but without specifics as to what is being prayed for, save the usual exhortations of God ministering to the hearts of those in government or authority. At other times, they embark of usually fruitless peace missions alongside those leaders of the Islamic faith into areas of conflict only to be confronted with further attacks thus making nonsense of such peace efforts. Yet, some have also found it necessary to engage the State Apparatus in trying to make it alive to its responsibilities, either by serving in any of the Administrations directly or as advisers, again without any commensurate response from the State in terms of either lessening of tensions or directly neutralizing the causes of these tensions, while others are advocating self-help measures , especially if their places of worship are attacked and which are justified by the State’s non-responsiveness to its own responsibilities.
While all of these may be avenues towards efforts at resolving some of the issues, a basic ingredient is not being taken into consideration, to wit: having an understanding of the times, to know what we ought to do.
As earlier noted, unresponsiveness on the part of the State Apparatus in following through on its expected role of providing for the good of all is self-evident and that is where the approach to the problematic ought to start from.
How then did this failure of the State come about? There were Christian politicians and non-politicians active in the ways and manners by which the State itself came into being and now being run hence we cannot claim that the State is rigged against Christians. Christian leaders played various leadership roles in the emergence or sustenance of any of the administrations that have run Nigeria, civilian or military, including those who served as Heads of State professing to be Christians, yet without any impact as to the State coming alive to its responsibilities.
That means, Christians, in general, have not yet taken time to go to the root of the matter, which is, the Nigerian State(and by the way the African State) is not based on Language, which is the only Godly basis for everything.
There would be no Creation, no social relations and hence no society, without the Spoken Word, for God spoke all that was created into being just as Adam named(that is, spoke) everything created by God. Furthermore, it is written: “in the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the WORD was God. All things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made (John 1: 1-3); this WORD being Jesus Christ whose manifestation, in the beginning, came about from being Spoken. Speaking out the word is by and through Language as the means of communication.
It is further written, in another place: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, (that is, spoke), saying, “let there be light”; and there was light. (Genesis 1: 1-3). Furthermore, Genesis 11:5-9 says: “But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.”
Our Lord’s Prayer says in Mathew 6:10 “Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven” [/i]where what is done in Heaven is described in[i] Revelation 7:9-17 thus: “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen.” Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?” And I said to him, “Sir, you know.” So he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes”… all of which were previously reflected in Acts 2:5-12 as “And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?”
From all of these, the centrality of Language in Creation and all of the works of God are very clear, veering away from which will ultimately lead to extinction and continuous conflict with the nature of the society as had happened to several peoples and languages throughout history.
Yet history exist to guide us in avoiding its pitfalls, hence when a Nigerian State Apparatus came into being without this fundamental Language character, what has happened and will continue to happen ought not be surprising. We can only speculate on what could have happened to Christianity in West Africa, had Samuel Ajayi Crowther not translated the Bible into Yoruba and other African Languages.
The challenge of Restoration is now before the Body of Christ in Nigeria; for the essence of our faith is Restoration, of the individual to God and of the society into which God intended it to be for us to manifest the God-nature in us. This way, all of the contradictions embedded in social life will have a Godly foundation through which they could be resolved.
Thus, the conflicts in the northern parts of Nigeria would be resolved when the Body of Christ make it its duty to address this fundamental language problematic by intervening in the Constitutional foundation of the country from the Language perspective, which, by definition, empowers all of the Lingual groups in the Nigerian geo-political space and which will Restore our Peoples to their God-intended purposes, having been created in His own image.
It is not happenstance that Nigeria(Africa) remain the most underdeveloped section of humanity principally because we have allowed our Languages to be vernacularized and criminalized such that it plays no part in our understanding of phenomena/nature which God has given us the ability to do as it is written in Ecclesiastes 1: 13(And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man by which they may be exercised)
Theories about economic and social development abound, even if anchored on what is good for Euro-America and Nigerian Christians have become experts at some of these Theories and have actually applied some to Nigeria’s developmental efforts.
All floundered on the unresponsiveness of the Nigerian State Apparatus largely due to its separation from its Language sources since a culture of development cannot exist outside the Language of its expression; this is without prejudice to multi-lingual, multi-cultural congregations and assemblies each of whom will have to take responsibility for the cultural/lingual and therefore developmental existentialism of the congregants.
This is also not advocating some form of Christian Theocracy, but a recognition of the centrality of Language in God’s creation as it is written in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13: “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit…..” this being the Holy Spirit through whom Creation was spoken into being.
How then do Nigerian Christians become involved in resolving this issue? In 2018, the Nigerian State, through the instrumentality of the Nigerian National Assembly is embarking on yet another Constitutional Jamboree aimed principally at strengthening The Nigerian State’s stranglehold on the Peoples(Languages) of Nigeria; an amendment fraught with violence against history and human thought by denying the centrality of Language in the architectural foundation of human relations.
It is the Constitutional responsibility of Nigerian Christians to use the opportunity to legitimize the Language paradigm by ensuring that each Lingual Nation or Group has control over the outcome of the amendment exercise such that it becomes a Referendum on the Constitutional foundations of Nigeria thus forcing a renegotiation of the country by the Peoples. That is the least Nigerian Christians can do for posterity.

Christian Dialog for Change
e-mail: cdc1809@gmail.com

After taking time to read this long epistle, and the submission made that the basis of our problem is "language", which from relevant quotes in the article infers that God is the cause of our problem as he is the one that confused our language; Hence the confused bigotry between Muslims and Christians, both claiming to be children of Abraham.

... But I can't understand why this OP is suggesting Nigeria should be realigned along language lines, and we have over 250 languages. Hinting at Christian "language" as the way forward won't cut it either.

Even America, the epitome of democracy, is not constituted along language lines.

What we need is tolerance in religious, political, lingual, tribal, economic and social affairs.