₦airaland Forum

ozy4christ:
Merit,one religion,demerit nothing,but it cant happen in naija,God just dey watch with his plasma tv.nigeria has up to 99% christians

ozy4christ:
Merit,one religion,demerit nothing,but it cant happen in naija,God just dey watch with his plasma tv.nigeria has up to 70% christians

ziccoit:
You didn't get your statistics right. Nigeria is actually 100% Christians.

akinladejo:
Have u been to EAU b4? If u ve not it means that u cant come out and preach to your neighbours. u cant do crusade. u can't practise Christianity. u must all be all and turn muslim.

caselessogbuagu:
These are countries that are Islamic in nature(this does not mean you don't have Christians in these places or other faiths):

Saudi Arabia
Qatar
UAE
Kuwait
Brunei
Iran
Lebanon
Syria(before it was torn down)
Malaysia
Indonesia
Egypt
Algeria
Morocco
Tunisia
Jordan
Etc,


Just point one that Nigeria is better than...

caselessogbuagu:
These are countries that are Islamic in nature(this does not mean you don't have Christians in these places or other faiths):

Saudi Arabia
Qatar
UAE
Kuwait
Brunei
Iran
Lebanon
Syria(before it was torn down)
Malaysia
Indonesia
Egypt
Algeria
Morocco
Tunisia
Jordan
Etc,


Just point one that Nigeria is better than...

cosby02:
Have always heard PDP, Fayose, FFK and the rest about Buhari, APC trying or would Islamise Nigeria but non of them have in their wisdom explain to Nigerians what we will face if Nigeria is finally pronounced an Islamic State. However, i dont understand why some of our so called leaders like Fayose and Co. cannot in anyway reason politics and governance beyond inciting the populace against their opponents negatively. Fayose isn't afraid of alleged BH founder islamising PDP, but afraid of Buhari Islamising Nigeria... I need to know the merit and demerit of islamising a nation and what does it actually mean to islamise a nation?

haffaze777:
Nigeria is 99.5% Christian u made a mistake up there,Op,no one can islamize or Christianize Nigeria,Nigeria is secular state,fayose know dis as well he just took is oshogbo weed hence dis trash he is spewing

GworoChewinMaga:
[size=18pt]How Northern Nigeria's Violent History Explains Boko Haram[/size]
Long before this extremist group arose, other radicals terrorized the region, British former administrator says.

By John Hare, National Geographic
PUBLISHED MARCH 14, 2015

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2015/03/14/bokoharammemoir/01bokoharam.adapt.1900.1.jpg

Muslim Kanuri horsemen ride in the independence day durbar in Kaduna, the regional capital of northern Nigeria at the time. Nigeria gained its independence from the U.K. in 1960.

In the northern Nigerian town of Gombe, I became a registered alcoholic at the age of 22.
The year was 1957, and I was starting out as a district officer (the last to be recruited by the British government for service in northern Nigeria) just three years before the country won its independence.

The only way I could enjoy a "drink" in Gombe—a sleepy mud-brick township, laid out by the British in the 1920s, where Islamic laws were in force—was to issue myself an "addict's license." That document allowed me to obtain liquor from the "pagan" city of Jos, 175 miles (280 kilometers) away.

In my administrative capacity, I also had the authority to issue addict's licenses to the 12 other expatriate Europeans who lived in Gombe. I doubt many other towns in the world can claim the distinction of having their entire expatriate community registered as alcoholics.

I lived in a circular, thatched mud house and rode to work on my horse, which I hitched to a rail outside my office.

Gombe was essentially a happy place, presided over by a benign and astute Muslim emir of the Fulani tribe and a team of enlightened councillors. Apart from the odd dispute over a woman or land, there was little violence. Gambling was frowned on, but a blind eye was turned toward the drumming and dancing that in a pre-television age carried on throughout the year, except during the month of Ramadan.
But today Gombe is on the front lines of the obscene and bloody battle waged by Boko Haram to impose an extreme interpretation of Islam on the whole of northern Nigeria.

How has it come to pass that 55 years after Nigeria's independence, peaceful towns are being terrorized, attracting suicide bombers and an invading army of fundamentalist Islamists? 

The answers lie in Nigeria's northeasternmost state, Borno—a 27,000-square-mile (70,000-square-kilometer) territory south and west of Lake Chad whose prominent inhabitants are the Muslim Kanuri tribe and where radical dissent led by brutal, fanatical men goes back well over a century.

In one burst of violence last month, Boko Haram attacked Gombe and Dadin Kowa, another sleepy town in my former administrative orbit, on the banks of the Gongola River. 

Boko Haram invaded Dadin Kowa, which translates as "tranquility for everybody," in 30-some Toyota HiLux vehicles from Borno State to the east, setting fire to houses and government offices.

In Gombe, 60 miles (95 kilometers) to the south, the Nigerian army repelled the attack and called in the air force, which strafed and bombed the militant Islamists. There were numerous casualties on both sides—possibly as many as 50—but the exact number of dead has not been reported.

I still have a strong personal link to these troubled areas. One town in Borno I knew, Kukawa, was my jumping-off point in October 2001 for a trek that took me on a 1,500-mile (2,400-kilometer), three-and-a-half-month journey by camel across the Sahara to Tripoli, in Libya. It's saddening to realize that this trek would be impossible to undertake today.

The Kanuri Empire
After my time in Gombe, I was posted to Mubi 145 miles east (233 kilometers) on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. One of my main tasks was to follow the old maps and confirm the international border between Nigeria and Cameroon just prior to independence. (See "Geography in the News: Nigeria's Boko Haram Terrorists."
The Kanuri Empire
After my time in Gombe, I was posted to Mubi 145 miles east (233 kilometers) on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. One of my main tasks was to follow the old maps and confirm the international border between Nigeria and Cameroon just prior to independence. (See "Geography in the News: Nigeria's Boko Haram Terrorists."

This involved walking 170 miles (275 kilometers) along the top of the Mandara Mountains—great bosses of granite sticking more than 3,000 feet (915 meters) into the air, strewn with rounded boulders the size of houses and stretching between Lake Chad in the far northeast of Nigeria to just beyond Yola in the south.https://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2015/03/14/bokoharammemoir/03bokoharam.jpg

Scarification on the back of this female member of the Fali tribe, in the Mandara Mountains, has been done to enhance her beauty. But scarification on the face was done to ensure that if a person were captured, his or her tribal origin would be clearly identifiable.
In precolonial times the mountains formed a central backbone in the vast Kanuri tribal empire, which extended eastward into today's Cameroon and Chad and north to the Fezzan, in southwestern Libya.
For centuries the Marghi, Hithe, Gwoza, Fali, and Matakam tribes—some of the wildest in Nigeria—had secured this mountainous fortress, fending off raids by mounted Muslim Kanuri slavers from Borno.

The tribesmen developed a deadly throwing knife, which spun through the air and sliced through the tendons of the raiders' horses

In 1900, the British and the Fulani emirs agreed to establish the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. The north was divided into provinces, one of which, Borno, was excised from the former Kanuri-inhabited Borno Empire. The agreement stated that Christian missionaries would be allowed to proselytize only among pagan tribes—not Muslims.

When I traversed the Mandara Mountains, about 30 percent of the people I encountered were Christians, 65 percent pagans, and 5 percent Muslims.

But since independence, missionizing has proceeded apace. Today nearly all the inhabitants are Christians, and they—especially the youth—are the targets of forced conversion to Islam by the followers of Boko Haram.

But even these conversions aren't entirely new. In 1964, the northern Nigerian government sent "Islamic missionaries" to forcibly circumcise and convert pagan tribesmen to the Muslim faith.
Today Boko Haram insurgents—headquartered in the town of Gwoza—are in complete control of the Mandara Mountains, where they've driven out and slaughtered tribespeople and forced others to adopt Islam.

These new killers didn't come on horseback but in armored cars, with ample supplies of sophisticated modern military equipment. The throwing knives were obsolete.

History Repeats
Boko Haram's form of violent dissent, which is particularly horrific, has an exact historical precedent 125 years ago in precisely the same part of what is now Nigeria and Cameroon.
In 1893, a renegade Islamic fanatic, Rabih Fadi Allah, invaded the region from Darfur, in western Sudan.

Rabih had fallen out with the Islamic reformer and self-proclaimed al-Mahdi, or holy man, Muhammad Ahmad, whose presence on Earth was thought to presage the end of the world and whose troops in 1885 killed the British general known as Gordon of Khartoum.

Rabih's horde of Islamic fighters swept in on horseback, beheading, looting, and enslaving in the name of Allah in a manner similar to Boko Haram today.

Nothing has been remembered more faithfully about Rabih than his violent temper, a passion that could be aroused for no apparent reason and not infrequently led to his inflicting savage beatings with his sword or killing people either by slitting their throats or cutting off their heads.

Rabih's favorite curse was Allah rektar rasak—may God cut off your head.Abubakar Shekau, the self-proclaimed leader of Boko Haram, is said to be a fearless loner, a complex and paradoxical man, part-theologian, part-gangster.

Since he assumed the insurgency's leadership in 2009, after the death of Mohammed Yusuf, the movement's founder, Boko Haram has become more radical. Abubakar Shekau has carried out even more appalling atrocities than his predecessor.

He achieved savage notoriety in a video clip that showed him laughing as he admitted having abducted more than 200 Christian schoolgirls, mainly of the Kibaku tribe, in April 2014.

"I abducted your girls," he jeered. "I will sell them in the market, by Allah. I will sell them off and marry them off."

The two men appear to be similar kinds of fanatical, psychopathic leaders with a shared appetite for enslavement and murder.

One habit of Rabih's has not as yet been imitated by Abubakar Shekau: Known as "Rabih's mark," it was his way of defining ownership of all his slaves, followers, and subject communities. The marks varied—three small cuts on either cheek, three lines at the corner of the mouth, or a notched cross on the face forming an enormous raised scar.


In 1893, Rabih destroyed the Kanuri shehu (emir) of Borno's capital in Kukawa, killing more than 3,000 people and enslaving 3,800.

Rabih established his capital in Dikwa, 80 miles southeast of Kukawa, where his arbitrary rule was conducted in a sea of blood and horror. The remains of his house can still be seen today.

The parallel with Boko Haram is compelling. Kukawa is only 23 miles (37 kilometers) from Baga and a nearby town, where this year, on January 3, Abubakar Shekau's followers are alleged to have killed 300 people or more and destroyed 3,000 houses.

Abubakar Shekau established Boko Haram's Gwoza headquarters a hundred miles (160 kilometers) south of Dikwa, killing the incumbent emir of Gwoza in the process.

Rabih was finally killed on April 22, 1900, in a battle with the French, and the illustrious Borno Empire was divided among the French, Germans, and British.

Abubakar Shekau is still at large.

Omololu007:
Nigeria is better than syria

Demmzy15:
Remove Lebanon from the list, we have many Arab christians there, they are mostly Maronites and Catholics.

cosby02:
Have always heard PDP, Fayose, FFK and the rest about Buhari, APC trying or would Islamise Nigeria but non of them have in their wisdom explain to Nigerians what we will face if Nigeria is finally pronounced an Islamic State. However, i dont understand why some of our so called leaders like Fayose and Co. cannot in anyway reason politics and governance beyond inciting the populace against their opponents negatively. Fayose isn't afraid of alleged BH founder islamising PDP, but afraid of Buhari Islamising Nigeria... I need to know the merit and demerit of islamising a nation and what does it actually mean to islamise a nation?

GworoChewinMaga:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2015/03/14/bokoharammemoir/07bokoharam.jpg

After the 1960 raid by the Matakam, the British colonial administration handed out blankets, salt, and corn to the Hithe, whose houses had been set on fire and livestock and corn stolen.

GworoChewinMaga:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2015/03/14/bokoharammemoir/05bokoharam.jpg

To repel mounted Muslim raiders from the east, the Gwoza and other fierce tribes in the Mandara Mountains invented a throwing knife that could slice the tendons of invaders' horses.

GworoChewinMaga:
Hamman Yaji, a Fulbe{fulani} , was the last slave raider of the Northern Mandaras {northeast Nigeria, parts of cameroun and present day Chad }. He was arrested by the British in 1927 and montagnards from Sukur to Dughwede give explicite accounts on his relentless raiding. His diary was published in 1995 (Vaughan et al). It is historically unclear whether it was the suspicion of Mahdism or the complains from montagnards which led to his arrest (Muller-Kosack 1999).

The diary of Hamman Yaji is unique: a precious historical source, a fascinating social document. From September 1912 until the day before his arrest in August 19, an insider voice tells us of life in the early colonial period, on the furthest margin of European authority.

Madagali, in present-day northeastern Nigeria, was a tiny principality within the Adamawa emirate, itself a province of the Sokoto caliphate: all three were conquest states, ruled by Muslim Fulani. Hamman Yaji became ruler of Madagali in 1902, appointed by the Germans the day after they had killed the previous ruler, his father. He survived the change to French rule in 1916, to British in 1922. The British deposed him in August 19, allegedly for past slaving, but probably more for his Mahdist sympathies. From September 1912 until the day before his arrest, Hamman Yaji chronicled his activities, sometimes almost daily. Entries are generally sparse, but, read carefully, and with the helpful editorial material in this book, the ensemble is remarkable. The book is dedicated to all people of the Madagali district, with the hope that their future will be one of harmony and mutual cooperation.

A worthy hope, but sitting a little uneasily here, since Hamman Yaji was a dedicated slave raider.

The recurrent litany makes chilling reading:

May 12, 1913: "...I sent my soldiers to Sukur and they destroyed thehouse of the Arnado [village head] and took a horse and seven slave girls and burnt their houses."

May 21: "I captured 20 slave girls."

June 11th: "I captured six slave girls and ten cattle, and killed three men."

June 25: "I captured 48 slave girls and 26 cattle and I killed five persons."

July 6: "I captured 30 cattle and six slave girls."

All this (and more) on a single page. Exactly what such raids involved the diary itself does not say: traditions gathered later amongst the victimized populations are ghoulish indeed, comparable with another unique document, the eye-witness account of Bagirmi slaving a little further east and 40 years earlier, recorded by the German traveler Gustav Nachtigal in the third volume of his Sahara and Sudan.

Hamman Yaji's editors suggest, a little speculatively, that a word from a British officer in March 1924 sufficed to stop the raiding. The raiding did stop, and even the most tender liberal conscience, reflecting on colonialism, may take some comfort that a line was drawn under such entries as: "I sent Fadhl al Nar with his men to raid Sukur and they captured 80 slaves, of whom I gave away 40. We killed men and women and 17 children."

The troops were evidently out of control here: women and children were too valuable to be killed. The exploitation, often sexual, of women is clear: female slaves circulated as gifts, or in exchange (three for a horse, for instance). Hamman Yaji swapped female slaves with one of his men, even with his son, who objected that "he did not want a girl, he wanted a boy slave".

Even in such circumstances, a defiant female voice is audible: "I found that my slave girl in the absence of her fellow-slaves had said that she would not prepare my food for me. Why she would not cook my food I do not know, but anyway the result was that I got no food from her and was obliged to buy it."


Or again: "I my wife Umm Asta Belel said that in respect of her being a Muslim she was tired of it, and in respect of her being a pagan it would be better for her." Some passages are enigmatic, such as: "I fixed the penalty for every slave who leaves me without cause at four slave girls and if he is a poor man 200 lashes."

Is the implication here that slaves with cause could leave? How many slaves were rich enough to be able to pay a fine of four slave girls? What where the chances of surviving 200 lashes? Slavery is by far the most prominent single theme, but there are many others, such as local politics and power structures, the local practice of Islam, and the advance of colonialism. The diary ends on a homely note: "On the same day Sarkin Lifida ruined the onions."

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/deep-insight-on-an-african-despot/162186.article

GworoChewinMaga:
A European's account of Madagali during the years of Hamman Yaji

The … [northern districts of Madagali, Cubunawa. and Mubi] taken over by this province … are the most lawless, ill-governed places I have seen in Nigeria … Slave dealing and slave raiding are rampant … chiefs of minor importance were given rifles with which they were encouraged to attack the wretched pagans [who are] hiding like frightened monkeys on inaccessible hilltops … of course, everyone goes about fully armed: spears, shields, bows and arrows, clubs, etc. (The British Resident, Yola province, in 1920, cited by Anthony Kirk-Greene 1958: 84)

GworoChewinMaga:
There is a historical perspective to this madness in the northeast with Boko Haram as can be seen with the constant slave raiding by Muslims on animist people in the NE.

The disdain for ISLAM was so ingrained in the minority tribes people in the NE that they resisted converting to Islam even at the threat of death since the Fulani raiders did not make any significant distinguishing case when raiding non hausa/fulani and kanuri settlers irrespective if they where converts to islam. This ought to explain the ethno-religious supremacy held by Kanuri/Hausa/Fulanis over minority northerners and why modern day jihadist criminals like boko haram are exclusively composed by these same ethnic groups. The indigenous people of the NE hated Islam so much no thanks to years of slave raiding by Islamists like Hamman Yaji that they converted to Christianity almost immediately when the first European missionaries arrived.

What we see in the NE with Boko Haram is nothing new but a sustained and systematic slow genocide carried out on minority ethnic groups in the north and middle belt by HAUSA/FULANI extremists jihadist criminals.

caselessogbuagu:
I said being Islamic , 'this does not mean they don't have Christian'.

MagicBishop:
Obviously you have never ever left your SW region.

Get your ass to the core north and see for yourself how Islam has made that region backward and devoid of any African culture.

ozy4christ:
Merit,one religion,demerit nothing,but it cant happen in naija,God just dey watch with his plasma tv.nigeria has up to 70% christians