Ochenna Ike (L) and others are unable to flee because of the strike

As thousands of Nigerians flee to their home regions following a spate of Islamist killings of southerners and revenge attacks on mosques and northerners, the BBC's Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar considers whether the situation has parallels to the 1967 civil war, which left some one million people dead in Africa's biggest oil producer.

Ochenna Ike is an Igbo trader from south-eastern Nigeria who had relocated to the northern city of Yola in Adamawa state, where his business has been flourishing for the last four years.

But when masked gunmen shot dead 11 people in an attack on a church in Yola last Friday, Mr Ike decided that it was time to head back home.

On the same day as the church shooting, unknown gunmen killed 12 people, mostly southerners, in Mubi town - also in Adamawa state.

"With all these," he told the BBC, shortly after loading his goods into a coach at the Yola Motor Park on his way home, "there is no option but to pack and go back to my village."

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I have been living here for 30 years. This is where I raise my family; this is my home and I have no problem with anyone”

Tony Ologbosere
Southern engineer resident in the north
Unfortunately for him, and others such as a young man and woman who wished to travel in the same vehicle, the coach was unable to move as a nationwide strike begun on Monday to protest at the removal of a fuel subsidy has affected inter-city transport across the country.

They hope to travel over the weekend, now that protests have been suspended for two days.

Following the killing of southerners and the warning from the Boko Haram Islamist sect which says it carried them out for all southerners to leave the north, there have been reports of reprisals against Muslims living in the south.

Tanimu Abu, a northerner who last week fled the southern town of Sapele in Delta state after youths attacked a mosque and Islamic schools and threatened northerners with death, considers himself lucky.

He had spent more than 10 years in the oil-rich Niger Delta working for a federal institution, he says, but had to run back home because he feared for his life.

A few days after his departure, five people were killed by unidentified youths who attacked another mosque in Benin City in neighbouring Edo state.


Some in the Nigerian media talk of a "massive exodus", but there is no evidence to show that the movement has yet reached a big scale.

The vast majority of Nigerians living in regions other than their birthplace have not run away - and apparently many have no intention of doing so.

Tony Ologbosere is an engineer of southern extraction who has been living and working in Yola for the past 30 years.

He told the BBC that he was not going anywhere, and even pleaded with those who are fleeing to rescind their decision.

"I have been living here for 30 years. This is where I raise my family; this is my home and I have no problem with anyone," he says.

'Double jeopardy'
Nigeria's 160 million people are roughly equally divided between a mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian and animist south and there is a long history of tensions between the two regions, as well as the country's many ethnic groups.

Many argue that the current movement of people is nowhere near the mass exodus witnessed in 1993 following the decision by the then-military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, a northerner, to annul the presidential election presumed to have been won by a southerner, Moshood Abiola.

Nor is it on the scale of the 1960s crisis that led to the three years of brutal civil war in the country.

Still, some prominent Nigerians, mainly southerners - including President Goodluck Jonathan and head of the Christian Association of Nigeria Ayo Oritsejafor and even Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka - are drawing parallel between this crisis and the 1967 conflict.



Muslim sites in Benin City in the south have come in for revenge attacks


"The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war that we fought," President Jonathan said, alleging that members of Boko Haram have infiltrated even his government.

Pastor Oritsejafor said his members would do "whatever it takes" to defend themselves from the pattern of killings which suggested "systematic ethnic and religious cleansing".


The major problem is that there is a huge deficit in the understanding of the situation, particularly by the government, leading to its inability to address the problem”


The strike over the fuel subsidy may help unite northerners and southerners

In a 2004 survey by the BBC, Nigeria came out as the most religious country in the world with 90% of the population believing in God, praying regularly and affirming their readiness to die on behalf of their belief.

Professor Kyari Mohammed of Modibbo Adama University in Yola admits that the current situation represents a "very dangerous trend" and has a similarity with the opening phase of the 1967 civil war.

However, he says, the key difference is that Boko Haram is a fringe group fighting both the government and mainstream Muslims in northern Nigeria.

"The major problem is that there is a huge deficit in the understanding of the situation, particularly by the government, leading to its inability to address the problem," he notes.

"For an average northerner it is a double jeopardy. He is targeted [in the north] by the Boko Haram that does not believe in his version of Islam, and in the south by the people who feel that the attack by Boko Haram is an attack by Muslims."

What helps unite the country now, he says, is the commonality of economic hardship suffered by everyone in Nigeria.

Christians and Muslims, northerners and southerners, are marching side by side in the ongoing national strike against the removal of a fuel subsidy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16544410

Only 1 vote, what is wrong with you people

A swift neutralization or liquidation of the primary sponsor behind the Boko Haram Islamic terror gang, former Nigerian military tyrant Muhamad Buhari, will result in a natural de-escalation of the bombing campaign that sore election loser continues to finance and promote.

With that cleanup exercise carried out, normalcy will resume in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa.

Lol @ brink.

Brink of what? See these guys

Jakumo:

A swift neutralization or liquidation of the primary sponsor behind the Boko Haram Islamic terror gang, former Nigerian military tyrant Muhamad Buhari, will result in a natural de-escalation of the bombing campaign that sore election loser continues to finance and promote.

With that cleanup exercise carried out, normalcy will resume in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa.

100% Gbam !!

Only a f00l will think otherwise
my vote is Yes

FROSBEL EXPOSED!!!

A double agent & e-infiltrator positioned to stir up ethno-religious dichotomy & hate.

Just go through his previous post and you will be shocked by his post profile & baiting technique.

Always escalating anything that appear to be a crack in the Nigeria wall (religion, region, tribe etc) just like our elites.


Ignore the troll and his bait

Jon.Bee:

FROSBEL EXPOSED!!!

A double agent & e-infiltrator positioned to stir up ethno-religious dichotomy & hate.

Just go through his previous post and you will be shocked by his post profile & baiting technique.

Always escalating anything that appear to be a crack in the Nigeria wall (religion, region, tribe etc) just like our elites.


Ignore the troll and his bait

Another radical Islamist appeaser.

Well I am Igbo and there is zilch you can do about it 

I have destroyed your radical ideology at the religious section, I know it hurts so much that you guys are trolling me everywhere on Nairaland. Well keep it up.

I love you guys, I want Nigeria to remain one, period.

Just because I post an article from BBC or other news sites , does not mean I support their position , DUH !!!!   

Please write to BBC and tell them you are upset with this article and leave me alone !!!

Have a nice day !!

FROSBEL is a double agent & e-infiltrator positioned to stir up ethno-religious dichotomy & hate.

Ignore the troll and his bait

hahaha


E dey pain am

Want to vote but cant find the voting button. Of course it is a resounding yes. Our concern should be to make the split peaceful and not violent but those who make peaceful split impossible will have to be ready for a violent one. It may not be immediate but it will surely come. The stone has been set rolling so folks should start gradually selling off their investments and start re-investing nearer home and gradually move their families before it is done in ahurry and they become refugees.

Ok have seen it and voted.