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A.C.N - Aid to the Church in Need Italian Office |
Religious Freedom in
the Majority Islamic Countries |
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Nigeria Population:
103,460,000
Nigeria is a country characterised by a vast number of ethnic groups, cultures and religions. It is a meeting point between the Sudanese and Guinean cultures, lumped together unsuccessfully in the British colonial period. Still today the country is in the grip of ethnic and religious rivalries, often nurtured by the interests of the developed countries. There are two opposing blocks - the Muslims of the north and the Christians of the south. The Nigerian version of Islam is in turn a confused and chaotic patchwork, in which some of the important Sufi tariqas (brotherhoods, or confraternities) are in opposition to the associations under Sudanese influence, who in their turn are at war with those supported by Iran. The recent history of Nigeria is similar to that of many African countries. A long and interminable succession of military coups, of ethnic struggles, of attempts at installing a democracy which for the most part have failed. Nigeria has a federal type of constitution and is today ruled by a military regime which has been responsible for arbitrary arrests, violence, torture and summary execution. Because of these human rights abuses, Nigeria has been suspended from membership of the British Commonwealth since 1995. The government generally respects the liberty of worship and religious practice. The Constitution forbids the adoption of a state religion, even though Islam enjoys privileged treatment by comparison with Christianity. Nigeria’s membership of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the proposals to adopt the Sharia as the State Law have aroused much controversy. In 1987 the government imposed a veto on the intervention of religious organisations in the primary schools, although the students have the right to practise their own religion in their own places of worship. Also restricted is the possibility of distributing religious material; demonstrations in public places are forbidden, and there have been some difficulties encountered in entering the country by people suspected of proselytism. A report by KNA on February 27 1998 refers to a first contact of Nigeria with the Gospel in the 15th century, but a systematic evangelisation did not occur until the 19th century, through Anglican and Protestant missionaries. The first Catholic mission in Nigeria dates from 1868 and was established by the French, close to Lagos. During the 20th century missions, churches, and parishes were established in the south-east of the country, where Christianity slowly gained ground; however, in the north, Islam continued to rule unchallenged. Following the Biafran war of 1967-70, the regime drove out most of the foreign missionaries, but the local church survived with its own resources. Today so many young Nigerian men are entering the seminaries that it has been found necessary to impose a quota, with the result that only a few hundred seminarians have been accepted by the 11 dioceses and four major seminaries. In 1995 there were 2,200 Nigerian priests in Nigeria, - more than in any other part of Africa. With its 12 million members the Catholic Church represents a large minority - which has become a majority in the Ibo regions. Together with 25 million Anglicans and Protestants and a growing number of independent African churches totalling around 10 million members, the Christians are now almost as strong as the Muslims, who number some 50 million. Relations with the Muslims have been described by Church leaders as ‘not without tensions’, although in recent years there has been a slight improvement. In 1998, Fides described the religious balance within Nigeria as numerically divided between Muslims and Christians in almost equal numbers. There have been attacks against church buildings, and assaults on baptised Christians, but in reality relations are better than they appear to be on the surface. In the south the conversion from Islam to Christianity is a possibility, whereas in the north it is not permitted. It is in this northern part that the major conflicts have occurred; here Islam has been present since the year 1200 and the power of the emirs is today restricting the construction of Catholic schools and churches. In the south there is a greater degree of tolerance. The visit of the Holy Father to Nigeria for the beatification of Father Tansi has brought hope of a reconciliation and broken the isolation imposed by the international community. This isolation was the result of the annulling of the elections and the coup by General Abacha in 1993, together with the carrying out of the death sentence on the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and 18 other leaders of the Ogoni minority and the death penalty pronounced on the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Wole Soyinka, who today has sought refuge in the United States. The Holy Father requested the freeing of 60 political detainees and sought to reopen the dialogue with the Muslims. Bishop John Fasina of Ijebu-Ode, in an interview given to Fides sheds light on some aspects of the religious question in Nigeria. The son of a Muslim family of the Yoruba tribe, Bishop Fasina converted to Christianity at the age of 19, while his other brothers continued to practise Islam. The possibility of converting from one religion to another, Bishop Fasina explained, is not such a rare event among the Yoruba, unlike the situation in the north, where this would be impossible. The US State Department’s Report on Religious Freedom cites two cases of persecution. In March 1996, the Kwara State imposed the forced closure of Christian schools which had refused to teach Islamic teachings. But these schools had adopted this stance in response to the Islamic schools, which had refused to permit the teaching of Christian doctrine. Following the transfer of the military governor, these schools were reopened. Kwara state was also the scene of violent attacks against Christians in March 1997, when a group of soldiers beat and whipped some members of the Christian Association of Nigeria during the Palm Sunday procession in the town of Ilorin. An army captain parked his car in the middle of the road along the route of the procession and, when asked to move his car, he ordered some soldiers stationed nearby to attack the procession. Some members of the Christian Association were arrested and held in prison for two days. In 1997 at Ogwasi-Uku Father Ngozi Isidi, a diocesan priest, lost his life because of his Faith. Catholic parishes and priests are increasingly becoming the targets of thefts and armed attacks. Between December 1997 and January 1998, some 10 priests were victims of attacks. Most of these attacks took place in the north, near the archdiocese of Kaduna, that is in the centre of the Vatican missionary congregation. Archbishop Peter Jatau issued a circular calling on his priests and religious to defend themselves more vigorously. Other dioceses have likewise been the targets of thefts and attacks. Moreover, the attacks are above all directed at the collections gathered from the faithful. Some have stationed watchmen to defend their churches and parishes, but in most cases they have been disarmed and tied up. According to Fides, a priest who told his assailants he had no money on him was maltreated and seriously injured. In the archdiocese of Onitsha alone, according to KNA of February 17, 1998, no less than 22 parishes, novitiates and seminaries were attacked. In some dioceses almost every single parish has been attacked. The Catholic Church in the country has repeatedly appealed to the authorities about this matter, but so far there has not been any investigation into the facts - although there has been some progress in the field of human rights. This is underlined also by a declaration of the Nigerian bishops’ conference of September 1998 which, in addition, called for the restitution of the Catholic schools confiscated in the 1970s. The repression by the government of the Islamic fundamentalist movements, such as the Muslim Brothers, is considered by Amnesty International, in a few instances recorded in 1998, to have been an abuse of human rights and freedom of conscience. |
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