Jos crisis is taking huge toll on the church, laments Bishop of Shendam

Last year, brethren suffered persecution. It happened in Maiduguri and Jos. But you keep on preaching peace here. How long shall this sermon continue, when truly, there’s no peace? If we don’t preach, if we preach violence, it is not proper. We can go on and on talking about peace. If you slap me now […]

Last year, brethren suffered persecution. It happened in Maiduguri and Jos. But you keep on preaching peace here. How long shall this sermon continue, when truly, there’s no peace?

If we don’t preach, if we preach violence, it is not proper. We can go on and on talking about peace. If you slap me now and I slap you back, if you kill me, somehow, my children or my grand children will remember and it will never end. We’ll become like Iraq.

The man who doesn’t believe in the sanctity of life, the easiest solution for him is to kill—revenge! But I don’t have the power to take life. If I know that you were created in the image and likeness of God like myself, why should I go and kill you? Why should I kill another person if we really believe that we came from one God?

There is no religious belief that says kill this person—no! If I’m a true Muslim, I shouldn’t kill; if I’m a true Christian, I shouldn’t kill; if I’m truly a traditional person, I shouldn’t kill. I don’t have power to take life. It is those who don’t know whom God is who will kill. If you offend me, the normal teaching is let God take care of it. I shouldn’t be the one to eliminate you. Except if you threaten my life—what we call self-defence.

If you set out to burn houses, kill people in churches or destroy people’s means of livelihood—that is not what God wants us to do. Except we say tit-for-tat. You slap me here, I slap you too. You kill my brother, I kill your brother. Where will we stop? If two of us are mad, then there cannot be a solution. One must be sane enough to say, “Look, you’ve done the wrong thing.”

That’s why we say let’s live in peace. Let’s imbibe this gospel of non-violence that Jesus preached all the time. Mahatma Gandhi did not get the independence of India from the British by violence. He said he had to use non-violence. Martin Luther King said he looked up to the day that through a peaceful march, the blacks would be respected.

I’m hoping that one day, those who are doing the killings will realise that it is bad to kill, to burn houses. If I have a problem with you, killing you isn’t the solution. If we sit down and talk—where have I offended you? Where have you offended me?

Is it like Jesus’ saying that Father forgive them, they know not what they do?

Yes! Because if these people know what the sanctity of life is about, they’ll not kill. The Quran and the Bible are almost the same. We all believe we came from God and only God has the right to take life.

If you look at the people who are affected by these killings, let’s say in Plateau, most of the people don’t know anything about it. Like the bomb blast on Christmas Eve. The people affected were innocent people passing by.

As we pray and hope that God will bring change, is there anything that can be done to check this sustained attacks?

I’m praying that God will touch the hearts of those who are behind all this. We don’t know who’s doing what. And the problem we have in Nigeria is most of the times, even if we know the perpetrators, nothing is done. For instance, the governor said the other day that those who were caught with arms were locked up and the following day, nobody knew where they were. There must be somebody. And the best thing we can do to help the situation is to expose those who are/or believed are responsible for this. But Nigeria, there are people who are sacred cows. We don’t want to touch them even if we know what they are doing is bad!

How have these crises affected the church?

For example, the Christmas eve issue that happened in Plateau, it made most people not to come to church to pray. Christmas is one of the most important events we have. Here in Shendam, we had to change the time for our midnight mass to 9 o’clock because of the fear. Once something happens in Jos, those of us outside Jos are equally affected. When somebody is locked up in his house in Jos, he calls somebody here in Shendam to say, “please send me recharge card so I can get in touch with my family.” Sometimes we take foodstuffs from here [Shendam] to give people in Jos.

Every local government area in Plateau [State] has people living in Jos. Some of us specialise in burials. I have five different sermons for burying people because each time this thing happens, people bring back corpses to be buried at home. What happens in Jos affects us as a church, as citizens.

In our diocese, there are places we keep on monitoring what is happening—for example Yelwa, Wase, Kongu and Nam. These are places that if they are not careful, it can just…All it needs is for one person to start and the whole town will go on fire. There is no place in Plateau since the beginning of this month that people will say, “Let’s go to church and stay till 1 o’clock for vigil.” In some places, there were no prayers at all because of fears.

The security of this country is really very dicey. In some places, people don’t sleep. You’ll be sleeping, somebody will come and knock at the door—you think it is your neighbour. As you open the door, he fires you. In Plateau, nobody believes in the security agencies we have. You see somebody in uniform, you think he is a real military person but he is not! And government knows about this! God is the only one taking care of us—those of us who are alive. Here in Shendam, it is not the police that are protecting the people—it’s the local people.

The Bible talks about the persecution of Christians. Will this continue till the end of the ages?

I hope it will not continue. Someday, somewhere, God will take care of it. If we say Christians should take up arms and revenge, the fight will not end. And most of us in the Plateau, we’re a kind of a mixed grill. Some of our relations are Muslims, some are traditional people. So, you cannot say in this town, wipe out the Muslims. You will find out that somebody’s brother or sister is a muslim—the same father and mother. My own sister is a muslim!