From the World

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

INT.

Piero Gheddo

martedì 16 marzo 2010

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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What are the origins then of the hatred that fuels the massacres?

The people are manipulated by politics, which brings religious differences to extreme consequences. But the massacres are not caused by the diversity of faiths. Think of the political divide which separates the poles of the country, the interim president, Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, and the Muslim president Umaru Yar'Adua. In the central area of the country where the parties meet, as in Jos, hatred becomes generalized: political, ethnic and religious. The country is plunged into a spiral of mutual massacres, part Christian and part Muslim. Twelve states out of 36 are now based on Sharia.

What can be said of the Christian religious component?

Apart from the actions or reactions of reprisal, which are to be condemned by Christians, there is a huge error. The tragedy is that the Protestant churches have created so-called Pentecostals, who are a problem not only in Nigeria but throughout Africa. For Pentecostals, there is only the Bible. Christianity always produced a revolution in the pagan world. If the Christian seed is sown by Catholics, it creates the Church, based not only on books but on tradition and authority; that sown in a soil dominated by Protestantism more often produces pagan sects with a smattering of Christian fanaticism which fights Muslims using the same propaganda that they do. So it is in Nigeria, Algeria, Morocco.

So how is the Pentecostal faith seen by the others?

It is like an aggression against their traditions. They baptize and convert spreading religious fanaticism, with a tendency toward violence and forced conversions. This is a forceful blow against the Islamic world, which already is experiencing a dramatic conflict with modern politics, a conflict which poses many questions, to which extremism is the most simple answer.

What is the position of Catholics?

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The response which I make my own is what Msgr. Ignatius Ayau Kaigama, Archbishop of Jos, has said. He has denied that the main reason for the clashes was that a church was attacked and burned. This can be generalized. Many bishops are convinced that the conflicts are not to be attributed to religion as such but can be traced to specific causes. In this case, ethnic Hausa Muslims were arriving from the north. The reality is that the Catholic faith has a capacity for peaceful coexistence and building which the other religions do not know, except after a long and difficult maturation.

How do you explain this difference of Catholicism?

The Catholic faith promotes education. I am not speaking here of dogma, but of the critical approach that it develops in us. Not only the book, but the living word; Christ is present yesterday as today. Faith forms a new personality in those who encounter it and teaches us that conscience must always be respected. The Catholic Church is not an autonomous group that decides what to think and what to do, but it has an authority. There's the pope, there are the bishops, there is the bishops' conference. And much in Africa is changing.

What do you mean?

Some years ago in Senegal, I met the local leader of the Anglicans. "We do not intend to stay with our church in London,” he said. “Since England has admitted women to the priesthood and since they may also become bishops, we are federated with the Anglican Protestant churches in Nigeria.” In Africa many Reformed churches are moving away from Anglicanism and coming closer to the Catholic Church.

Returning to Nigeria. What is necessary to get away from the drama of these conflicts which seem endless?

We must be witnesses. And then do the work of education. It is only education that brings development and builds. It is the exact opposite of what China does, arriving in Africa with thousands of workers, doing large projects for the government, taking the raw materials and going away without leaving anything behind, without contributing any technology, without increasing any kind of literacy.