500 CHRISTIANS KILLED / Gheddo: Education can save Africa from poverty and hatred

Hundreds are dead. One more slaughter in Africa, where religious, political and tribal hatreds have bloodied Nigeria this time. There must be at least 500 deaths, according to Red Cross sources, the result of ruthless aggression on Sunday night by fanatical Muslim groups against the people, mostly Christians, from the village of Dogo Nahawa, south of Jos, in the central part of the country. This is precisely where the Muslim states, that have introduced Sharia law, meet the southern region, and where the fragile balance of coexistence is likely to explode every time. But we must not fall into the error of blaming only religion. "People are manipulated by politics,” Fr. Piero Gheddo, PIME missionary, says, “which brings religious differences to extreme consequences.”

Father Gheddo, why this massacre? Is it anti-Christian, ethnic or political hatred?

These elements are all there. But to explain this violence one must take a step back. Nigeria suffers from a combination of problems that have followed from the colonial period. The British created an arbitrary unification of the north of the country, strongly Islamicized, with the predominantly Christian south. The subsequent history of the country did the rest and has sharpened the divisions that had previously not been felt.

Please explain.

While Muslims in the north have gradually taken over land and imposed themselves, also by sending many Christians away, becoming the entire population; in the south many indigenous people have converted to Christianity, either Protestant or Catholic. This territorial division created the conditions for the intensification of differences which exploded later.

How is that?

Southern Nigeria has become the most developed area, and not only because of the availability of more natural resources and raw materials. The religious factor has played a key role: the South developed while moving from Animism to Christianity, while the north with a Muslim majority has remained static. We should not forget that 70 to 80 percent of the schools in Nigeria are run by Christian missions. The mission schools have created a people who "respond" to the modern world. But this difference still does not explain the radical opposition that exists today.

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