My response to my brethren's agitations following the Fulani herdmen's rampage.

My brethren I hold a slightly different perspective! We are reading the signals wrong. These Fulani lads are themselves victim of dehumanizing abuse by a small powerful oligarch who exploits their lack of education, religious zeal and warped vision of the world to perpetuate sinister interests.

They are the trigger happy pawns who have been sold a delusion so carefully crafted. Their minds are befuddled with quaint religious ideologies nourished and sustained by ignorance. Since religion thrives on unquestioning obedience, nothing could be more brilliant in the mind of a demagogue than to feign political exigencies in the garb of religious piety . It is Michevellain genius.

Meanwhile their own kids are holed up in posh houses in London and hold Ivy League credentials. These nomads, sirs, deserve your sympathy not your ire.

We need now to probe the vested clandestine interests that use, In deed, any crop of unemployed youths. The sad part is that generation that was handed a functional society in the late 1950s ruined it, plundered it's resources, fought a bloody war, collapse it's systems, depleted the intellectual middle-class, entrenched ethicnity through poor implementation of federal character doctrine and handed to the next generation a nearly failed enterprise shamelessly while cornering most of the wealth for personal Indulgence. They make up less than 20% of today's population.

That systemic Failure is what has continued to caused these deep fault lines. It will take a different generation to fix this. Although the geroncrats both in politics and religion continue to perpetuate themselves because they seem to have a monopoly of the wealth and Control of tools of violence.

Until we are able to win the battle of the hearts and minds, every other approach will be prosthetic at best. To penetrate the core north with education is critical. The last administration effectively built and delivered 200 schools for the Almajiris much to the consternation of the Oligarchs who prefer to have their people intellectually stymied.

The Ministry Of Education proposed a merger of the CRS and IRK studies into one subject. Some "Christians " quickly read some conspiratorial dimensions to it. This is laughable.

A combined curriculum is the finest chance some Islamic lads have to explore in a more secular setting the concerns of the other religious groups. No such inquiries are allowed in a strict Islamic school curriculum.

Religious studies try to study religious behavior and belief from outside any particular religious viewpoint. They draw upon multiple disciplines and their methodologies including anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and history of religion.

And if Christian parents fear that their Wards will be exposed to teachings of Islam, hmm. Truth has an inherent capacity to prevail over falsehood. Or are you not quite sure your position is the true one?

While it's quite easy to whip up sentiments with sensational headlines, its easy to see how we might miss the point entirely. I also listened to Pastor Bosun Emmanuel's sermon and I thought it was uncouth and outrageous. I still do.

The historical antecedents of Turkey he cited were over simplified and they carefully eclipsed the concurrent evolutions taking place both at the micro and macro cultural spheres in Turkey. It is Culture not conquest that ultimately overrides and shapes belief system. The moment the Islamic culture festered in the absence of any other seriously contending equivalent, the stronger culture over writes. The same way western culture today is surreptitiously obliterating weaker ones world over

Let me therefore ask a simple one: in Nigeria today what is the Christian culture? And I don't mean doctrines. Let me pick one aspect of that... The intellectual culture of the church ...... (wait for it)

Most of our churches now pop out universities. On one hand this helps to plug the short falls in the university system. But is that all. Just degree awarding?

It might help for our proprietors to first read John Henry Newman article in 1854 "The idea of a University" and adapt those ideas to the deeper callings of a missionary endeavour to the world.

Faith is not a head-in-the-sand escapism, it is a vital force to shaping human history, especially intellectually. Harvard University was built by men of the Christian faith who dedicated it to intellectual enquiry to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. You will find it so crested today in Harvard. Go check it out.

The church should be in the fore front of driving new innovative tools in social engineering, economic development and strategic growth. We don't set up schools as a legacy item for an overseer, we do so because of the burden to impact lives and drive change.

The church should therefore furnish an intellectual culture of enquiry, research and exploration of the deeper questions science wouldn't touch. Hence, no need for a university where a strategic institute of leadership or economic or even extraterrestrial research would do. And no need for a narrow institute where we could more productively harness the wider intellectual enterprise of a University's intelligentsia.

The key is We need to be more focused, more "deliberate" , more strategic and less reactionary. Plus, the words of Martin Luther King Jr could provide some inspiration at this time "we will meet your physical force with soul force"


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Kindly put this on frontpage. This is a balanced view of the problem at hand and should be seen by every Nigerian.

Wise saying. But then, it is he who wears the shoe that knows where is pinches. It's easy to analyse things logically in this case if you are not a victim.

Johnson Abbaly is one of my mentors