Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: religious leaders must help end violence

Celebrated Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called on religious leaders to quell rising sectarian tensions in the country as it wrestles with a national strike and tit-for-tat violence by Islamist and Christian groups. “Christian leaders must continue to preach peace and togetherness so that Christians do not retaliate,” Adichie told The Guardian. “Muslim leaders […]

Celebrated Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called on religious leaders to quell rising sectarian tensions in the country as it wrestles with a national strike and tit-for-tat violence by Islamist and Christian groups.

“Christian leaders must continue to preach peace and togetherness so that Christians do not retaliate,” Adichie told The Guardian.

“Muslim leaders must strongly and repeatedly condemn the violence against Christians and make it clear that Boko Haram does not represent Nigerian Islam,” she said.

Her Orange prize-winning book, Half of a Yellow Sun, documented the Biafran war of 1967-1970, which killed more than a million civilians through both fighting and starvation.

Boko Haram, whose name means “western education is forbidden”,emerged in Maiduguri, in Nigeria’s north-east, in 2002. It has been blamed for terror attacks across the country.

Boko Haram operates against a wider background of sectarian strife in Nigeria, whose Muslim population is concentrated in its north. The middle belt city of Jos, where various ethnic and religious groups merge, has experienced some of the country’s worst religious violence.

In November 2008 about 700 people were killed in riots following disputed local elections which degenerated along sectarian lines.

“Of course I completely understand the rage and pain of Christian southerners whose relatives are murdered in the north, and whose shock and mourning are worsened by the weakness of the government’s response,” says Adichie. “But the vast majority of northerners are as horrified by the killings as anyone else and have nothing to do with them.”

Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, said in a speech on 8 January that “the situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil [Biafran] war”.

In the same speech, he revealed that he thought Boko Haram had sympathisers in various arms of government and the judiciary.

Responding to his comments on the war, Adichie said: “I think that is a mere rhetorical flourish. What matters to me is that our president has publicly said that Boko Haram has backers and supporters in the national assembly. If he has this knowledge, why has nothing been done to and about these supporters of terrorism?”

Adichie believes the root of Nigeria’s problems is not sectarianism, but a crisis of governance.

“Right now, all over Nigeria, from Kano in the north to Port Harcourt in the south, people are protesting the same things: the increase in fuel prices and the lack of basic government services.

“Nigerians have divisions but they are largely united in their dissatisfaction with and distrust of their government.

“The divisions we see today would, in my view, be greatly reduced if people had regular and affordable electricity, good roads, affordable transportation – all of which are political problems.” (guardian.com)