{"id":8273,"date":"2013-08-21T18:08:03","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T18:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/?p=8273"},"modified":"2013-08-21T18:08:03","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T18:08:03","slug":"do-we-really-have-ethnic-and-religious-intolerance-in-nigeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/?p=8273","title":{"rendered":"Do We Really Have Ethnic And Religious Intolerance In Nigeria?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jooe\"<\/a><\/p>\n

he importance and import of this topic compel its repetition: \u201cDoes Nigeria really have ethic and religious intolerance?\u201d
\nMany of our country men and women think or believe so.
\nIndeed those who say there is such a problem also worry that if it is not checked, it could lead to the break up of our country. On the other hand, quite a number of fellow compatriots do not share the notion that Nigeria is afflicted by the scourge of ethnic or religious intolerance.
\nThis writer should be counted among them.
\nWanton crimes of arson, robbery, vandalism and even raping that are committed by miscreants across the country tend to affect our ability to appreciate such matters dispassionately.
\nThis is more so when some crimes tend to be reported more from specific parts of our large country.
\nLet’s take a few examples.
\nThe rampaging louts that have made the North-Eastern zone of Nigeria a virtual incinerator for hundreds of innocent Nigerians, and who go by the sobriquet of Boko Haram, are breezily waved off as \u201creligious fanatics,\u201d instead of calling them criminals that they are.
\nOur country is both multi-religious and multi-ethnic in its demographic configuration.
\nAs a result, our leaders are wary in handling crimes perpetrated by hoodlums who profess to belong to a particular religious group.
\nBoko Haram criminals are promoted \u201cIslamic extremists\u201d by both government, security people and our uncritical media and are therefore \u201chandled with care,\u201d lest it be interpreted as a religious persecution if the heavy weight of the law is placed on them.
\nBecause they are treated with kid-gloves, they become bolder with their next attack on innocent defenceless citizens, often on a group of worshippers or dormitories where fatalities are bound to be high.
\nThese are blood hounds who, in their very first unprovoked attack that leads to loss of lives, ought to be tackled with all the force and power at the disposal of a civilized state.
\nThere is nothing Islamic or Christian in wasting human lives!
\nAn act of brigandage committed by a scoundrel deserves an immediate and appropriate response by the authorities to deter others or forestall a repeat by the same deviant.
\nThat was the error committed by the Federal Government right from the beginning when rascals and idlers started killing people recklessly.
\nThey were tagged \u201cIslamist fanatics\u201d or \u201cextremists\u201d even when real Islamic clerics have denied them and renounced them as Moslems.
\nA President of Nigeria is normally expected to belong to one religious persuasion or the other. So it is inexcusable for, say a Christian President to hesitate to send in the troops to a section of Nigeria being serially decimated through acts of pure criminality by people who are in the main, adherents of, say, the Moslem religion.
\nLet’s take another example from the Southern end of the country.
\nWho still remembers the infamous era when street urchins, more commonly known as \u201carea boys\u201d in Lagos regularly raided traders at Idumota and other commercial areas, chasing away the owners of shops, mainly Igbo people, and stealing their goods.
\nIt came to a ludicrous level of violence that the thieves routinely went round, at times accompanied by their pregnant wives, to collect whatever they wanted from the shops of Igbo traders who locked up their shops and kept away from the market.
\nIn the garb of \u201carea boys,\u201d the thieves broke into the shops. In rare cases of resistance by some traders, they were thoroughly beaten up and often maimed or killed. Would you call that \u201cethnic intolerance\u201d of the mainly Igbo traders by the Yorubas?
\nNo. Not at all.
\nThe thieves represented nobody but themselves. That was why, when concerned Igbo leaders decided to import \u201carea boys\u201d from Aguleri and Onitsha into Lagos, Yoruba youths led a delegation to the Oba of Lagos to complain that many corpses with tribal marks were being picked up from the Lagos waters since Ndi Igbo decided to fight back.
\nThe contention here is that an immediate action should be taken against any group of criminals who decide to molest fellow citizens.
\nNo excuses should be given by our ever present sociologists to justify an attack by Nigerians against Nigerians.
\nIt is possible that crass poverty could occasionally be blamed for some criminal acts. But which ethnic or religious group does poverty belong to? Ignorance and illiteracy are also often fingered to explain the bovine predilection to criminality by some people from a specific section of the country. Again, whose fault is it that young men and women don’t go to school inspite of the facilities around them to do so?
\nHow can we really claim that there is religious intolerance in a Nigeria where Christian technicians and artisans are in-charge of maintenance and repairs of household appliances in the palaces and bedrooms of Moslem Emirs?
\nTake a walk to any vibrant market in Kano, Onitsha, Sokoto, Lagos, Ibadan, Makurdi and elsewhere and watch our traders in real good mood. They gleefully yab themselves with such otherwise abusive nicknames as \u201como Ibo\u201d, \u201ckobokobo\u201d, \u201cnyamiri\u201d, \u201cofe mmanu\u201d and lots more.
\nThey live together, never mind the \u201cSabon Garis\u201d and \u201cAma Awusas\u201d that developed naturally in the past, not as a result of violence or deliberate policy to separate ethnic nationalities, but probably out of sheer magnetic pull of kith and kin as they slowly and steadily settled at their new abodes.
\nFinally, our leaders and other elite should perish the thought of Nigeria ever breaking up, now or in future.
\nAs former President Olusegun Obasanjo would say in his days, \u201cthere is no way Nigeria can break up peacefully.\u201d
\n There are countries in Africa with real and tangible tribal\/ethnic challenges; ask Kenyans and Ugandans; and there are countries in the Far East and Indo-Pakistan sub-continent with palpable religious differences that predictably lead to intolerance. Our country, Nigeria, to the glory of God, does not fall into any of these models.
\nIn any case, where are the geographical or political fault lines that will delineate such a break up?
\nHistory has amply reported about natural kingdoms and organized civilizations that existed in many parts of Africa, including Nigeria, before the Berlin Conference of 1880’s and the subsequent \u201cScramble for Africa\u201d by the European colonialists.
\nThe British and the French eventually welded their possessions into nation-states. Nigeria formally came into being in 1914 following the amalgamation of the otherwise disparate administrative enclaves of Northern Protectorates; Southern Protectorates and the Lagos Colony.
\nThose who glibly talk and threaten a break up of the country might as well tell us into how many particles we are going to do so.
\nWe have an obligation to build Nigeria into a formidable, great nation. The irrelevant reference to the dismantled Federation of Yugoslavia and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics in the 20th century is at best cold comfort to the proponents of a split up Nigeria. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

he importance and import of this topic compel its repetition: \u201cDoes Nigeria really have ethic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-view-point"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","elegant-magazine-featured":"","elegant-magazine-medium":"","elegant-magazine-medium-small":"","elegant-magazine-thumbnail-small":""},"author_info":{"info":["Imo Trumpeta"]},"category_info":"News Digest<\/a>","tag_info":"News Digest","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imotrumpeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}