By Gabriel Omonhinmin
Nigeria, being a secular state has never been in doubt. Some Nigerians are however fanatical about their faith, that they could be safely regarded as religious zealots.
According to Chief Solomon Asemota (SAN) “God has given Nigeria all it needs to grow, I am very hopeful, that this is the period for us to get out of the quagmire we have been for this long, if our religious extremists did not take undue advantage of our people’s religious beliefs to perpetrate evil.”
Nigeria has one of the largest populations of Christians in Africa and it is not surprising that there are many church denominations with thousands of congregations spread all over the country.
Nigeria also has a large number of Muslim faithful in Africa too.
According to a recent survey, the population of Christians in the country is slightly lesser than that of Muslims. In fact, Christianity which is one of the three major religions in Nigeria has about 48 per cent of the country’s total population.
While the argument as to which church in Nigeria has the highest population often goes unanswered, people tend to choose the church where they worship which of course makes their claim biased. Take, for example, Redeemed Christian Church of God, Living Faith Church Worldwide and Dunamis Gospel International, Abuja, these three Churches have one of the biggest church auditoriums in the country, this does not necessarily make them the biggest churches in Nigeria.
According to an estimate of the religious population in Nigeria in 2018, Nigeria’s major religion is Islam with a total population of 53.5 percent. Over half of the country’s population is estimated to be Muslims. Christian religion makes up around 45 percent of the total, with Roman Catholicism being the main branch with an estimated population of 10.6 percent. Other Christian bodies are estimated to be 35.3 percent. While other religious bodies, alongside traditional idol worshippers, are put at 0.6 percent.
With the above statistics, it is obvious why Nigerians must embrace religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence for it to continue to survive as one indivisible united country.
In a recent remark in Lagos, Professor Wole Soyinka said, “With the way things are currently going in our country and around us, Nigeria is gradually seceding from humanity. As a humanist, I do not want to belong to a country that is seceding from humanity.”
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On Thursday, April 7, 2022, Professor Wole Soyinka in a well-attended Media dialogue in Lagos, entitled “Forget The Past, Forget The Future; A Nation Seceding From Humanity.” Cautioned Nigerians never to allow themselves again to be divided by religious extremists, who see religion as an easy weapon to put Nigeria asunder for them to achieve their aims. He said this appeal is necessary because we are once again approaching another election year.
He, therefore, appealed to all Nigerians, Muslims, Christians, Atheist and Babalawo – Native Doctors, Traditional idol worshipers, to endeavour for once in the general interest of our country, Nigeria, never again to be allowed to be divided by regions extremists, who usually see religion as an easy weapon to put Nigeria asunder during electioneering periods like the one we are currently facing.
Professor Soyinka explained that the problem of Nigeria as we have all seen from the APC government, is not religion or ethnicity, but visionless leadership, who does not know what to do with the power they crave when they are eventually entrusted with power after several attempts.
Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) and Chief Solomon Asemota (SAN) were on hand that day, to join Professor Soyinka in the media chat.
Chief Asemota (SAN) in one of his interventions on that day, painted a graphic picture, as the Chief Prosecutor and Defendant for the Nigerian Government during the infamous religious riots led by one Muhammadu Marwa aka ‘Maitatsine’ in the 1980 religious civil disobedience in Kano, which he said could guide Nigerians never again to fall into such ugly pit-fall. He, therefore, appealed to all Nigerians never again should they allow religious extremists under any guise to use them to set the country on fire.
Chief Asemota shared some of his experiences as follows, “I used to do battle with the late Chief Gani Fawehimi and Falana. I was the Chief Prosecutor and Defendant of the Nigerian Government in the time past. Because of my experiences on the job at that time, I was able to see things differently from the likes of Falana. It was because of the theme of this dialogue “Forget The Past, Forget The Future, A Nation Seceding from Humanity, that ” I pleaded that I should be allowed to make some comments here, I am happy that Prof Wole Soyinka granted me the permission.
“I will tell stories, but just briefly. In 1982, I was the leading Counsel in Justice Aniagolu’s Inquiry in Kano. After the inquiry, the report was prepared, but before ex-President Shehu Shagari could implement the report, he was overthrown by the Military Junta led by then General Muhammadu Buhari. And what happened then, was that after assuming power as Nigerian Head of State, General Buhari succeeded in uniting all the Islamic groups that were fighting then, which resulted in the ugly Maitatsine religious uprising.
“It was after this particular incident, I believed, I may be wrong, that was when Buhari got his 15 million fanatical religious supporters across the Northern region, which he still has till this day.
But the question we ask is simple, who is going to succeed Buhari as Nigeria’s President? Is the person going to be a Northerner? If he succeeds him, will the new President be able to change some of the things we have been complaining about him? Or if he is a Southerner, who is a Muslim, will he offend? The reason why all these things are important is that, when we were still with the Colonial Masters as subjects, we all knew, we only had one system, and the system was as provided by the Colonial Masters. There was a very interesting aspect when customary law was tested against equity and natural justice. In areas where the customary law was found not fit into equity and natural justice, the customary law is not accepted.
“The present popularity is such that, I do not think, and I want to be quoted, that if a Northerner succeeds President Buhari, he will be able to solve all the problems we are presently having. Also, if a Southern Muslim succeeds him, it will be very difficult because the dichotomy in the way Nigeria is being governed has been well established. So people presently saying, the North has so many years of this or the South has so many years of that, needs to think very carefully.
Well, I am a Benin man and I was born in Benin City. But my first language was Ibo. My mother took me and got married to an Okwale man. As they were speaking Kwale, I picked it up. This was in Jos, Plateau state, and I attended St Paul’s school. I then went to St Luke’s School, which was dominated by Yorubas or foreigners then in Jos. It was there, that I learnt my Yoruba even in Jos, I also learnt how to speak the Hausa dialect fluently in Jos.
“I am completely against anybody who suggests that this country should be broken up. Please do not take it at face value when people begin to tell you, we have spent these numbers of years, they have spent these numbers of years in power. The question to be asked then, is how well did they spend it? Other questions that need answers as we approach another election year, is, must we now go and vote for someone, who killed so many of us Nigerians, when he was in power, or the one who made life very difficult for Nigerians while occupying the presidency. We should further encourage those people, by voting someone or people from their areas as our next president.
“The present situation Nigerians are facing is like the story of a Major in the Nigerian Army, who was alleged to have known, about a planned coup de’tat, as expected of an office of his rank, he quickly rushed to inform his superior officer, his Commandant about what was in the offing. Not knowing that the Commandant, he went to report the matter to was part of the coup planners. He was immediately arrested and put into detention until after the coup. He was later released to continue in the army. At another time, he again got to know about a coup to be staged, this time around, based on his past experience, he refused to make any report. He was again arrested, tried and executed, for having knowledge of the coup but refused to make a formal report. If one may ask, what type of justice is that?
“The above scenario reflects our country and it also reflects what is happening today in Nigeria. In the case of the late Sheikh Gumi, the father of the present Sheikh Gumi, I know him, because he was part of Justice Aniagolu’s Panel of Inquiry. We all can see the type of preferential treatment he was being given, for virtually doing the same thing, as his late father did at that time in a different way.
“From all indications, the Nigerian government is presently running two systems, and any country with two systems, cannot succeed. The late Sardauna of Sokoto made sure he sent people round the world, and it took everything concerning Islam into consideration before the Penal Code of Northern Nigeria was passed into law. The Penal Code is identical and he considered everything about Islam because we were under the British Colonial Masters at that time, they ensured that we still had one Nigeria and one system of governance. But today, they have changed all this.
“The boundary between North and South for God’s Sake, can any Nigerian physically show it to me where these boundaries are located? But sadly, it is so entrenched today, that even the boundary between Russia and Korea is not as firm as the one, we have, between the present North and South, even though we cannot see it. Why? Because people take advantage of bad situations and use them for their selfish gains. Nigeria is not based on a tripod plus the Yorubas and Hausa-Fulanis. I will plead, that we minority tribes should be left out of these dangerous games they are presently playing! Leave us the minority tribes out of this dangerous scheming, which makes no sense!
For example, during the First Republic, the minority of Edo extraction also had Cocoa, Palm Oil, and Rubber plantations and made contributions to the South West. But we never had a fringe of what is today known as the Cocoa House in Western Nigeria, what did we do wrong then? Absolutely Nothing! The point is that these things all must be rectified. One, when I was a former student in those good old days, the Local Government Area Council in Benin used to grant scholarships. And I had so many of my friends, who got scholarships from the then Local Government Area Council. Today, Local Government Councils are no longer functioning. These have no doubt affected our morals and whatever we do.
“If the Local Government Area Councils were functional, at my age today, instead of looking forward to becoming a Nigerian President, or Governor in my state, I will rather prefer to go and be the Chairman of my Local Government Area Council, so that I can help my community grow, so that, they can help to bury me properly whenever the time comes.”
In the Catholic church which has one of the largest Christian followers in Nigeria, two of its Cardinals, Francis Arinze and John Onaiyekan, have done a lot of work on religious tolerance, and peaceful co-existence between the Christians and Muslim communities in Nigeria.
Cardinal Arinze’s literary works such as “Sacrifice in Ibo Religion, Ibadan University Press (Ibadan Nigeria) 1970. Christian and Politics, Tabansi (Onitsha), 1982. Answering God’s Call, Chapman (London) 1983. Living Our Faith, Tabansi (Onitsha) 1983. Alone with God, Tabansi (Onitsha) 1986. Church in Dialogue Walking with Other Believers, Ignatius (San Francisco, CA), 1990 and Gospel to Society Optimal Computer Solutions (Nsukka Nigeria), 1990.
Most of these books by Cardinal Arinze are centered on how to have harmonious, frictionless free relationships between Christians, Muslims and other religions in the same space as Nigeria.
Today, Cardinal Arinze is the oldest surviving Catholic Cardinal in Nigeria. Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church is a senior member of the clergy of the Catholic Church, they are immediately behind the Pope in the order of precedence. Collectively, they constitute the College of Cardinal and are appointed for life.
Their most solemn responsibility is to elect a new pope in a conclave, almost always from among themselves (with a few historical exceptions), when the Holy See is vacant. During the period between a pope’s death or resignation and the election of his successor, the day-to-day governance of the Holy See is in the hands of the College of Cardinals. The right to participate in a conclave is limited to cardinals, who have not reached the age of 80 years by the day the vacancy occurs. In addition, cardinals collectively participate in papal consistories (which generally take place annually), in which matters of importance to the Church are considered and new Cardinals may be created. Cardinals of working age are also appointed to roles overseeing monasteries of the Roman Curia, the central administration of the Catholic Church.
Nigeria has since independence had four Cardinals in the Catholic Church. The first Catholic Cardinal from Nigeria, was Dominic Ignatius Ekandem, who died in 1995 at the age of 78 years. Followed by Francis Anizoba Arinze, who will be 90 years on November 1, 2022. He is an expert on Christian/Muslim dialogue. He spent most of his professional life in Rome, and is now retired.
Anthony Olubunmi Okogie, who will be 86 years on June 16, 2022, is also retired and was the Archbishop of Lagos Archdiocese for 39 years.
On October 24, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI appointed the then Archbishop of Abuja Archdiocese, John Onaiyekan, who is now 78 years old and five others as Cardinals.
Archbishop Onaiyekan is the youngest of the Nigerian Catholic Cardinals. He is known for his peace and reconciliation work across the bitter Christian/Muslim divide. These are men other religious leaders must emulate, for our country, Nigeria to survive, and prosper in peace and harmony.
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