By Demola Abimboye
More than 50 religious crises were recorded in 30 years in the North and they left political, social, economic and psychological losses and pains in their trail
“Across the bridge, there is no more sorrow. Across the bridge, there is no more sin. The sun will shine across the river, and we’ll never be unhappy again.”
This was one of the best songs of Jim Reeves, the legendary late American gospel crooner. When he composed this song many decades ago, he never knew that one day it would be the popular song among residents of the southern part of Kaduna city in North Central Nigeria. But today, this is the swan song of the people there. It gives a feeling of safety to Christians and people from the southern part of the country who are the residents of Kaduna South.
This sad turn of events in Kaduna, the political capital of Northern Nigeria, would anger the founders of this city who did not envisage segregation among its residents. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the late premier of the defunct region and one of the builders of modern Kaduna, would equally turn in his grave because the beautiful capital of the current Kaduna State is now two cities in one. No thanks to past religious crises which have taken considerable toll on the town and the entire region.
Since the creation of 12 states in 1967, the northern part of Nigeria has witnessed several violent clashes between Muslims and Christians. At the Northern Peace Conference held in Kaduna in 2004, Isawa Elaigwu, president of the Jos-based Institute of Social Research, put the number of crises between 1980 and 2004 at 50. The region has recorded many other cases since then.
BEGE Ministries, a non governmental organisation which specialises in Muslim/ Christian community relations in the West African sub-region, estimates that between 1976 and today, Nigeria has lost over 100,000 of its citizens to the crises while billions of Naira worth of properties have been destroyed in the process.
Newswatch investigations across the north showed that the series of crises have taken a terrible toll on the region. Joseph Hayab, secretary, Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Kaduna State, said the biggest loss has been psychological. He said there is no longer mutual trust between Muslims and Christians in the north, and people are forced to live together in mutual suspicion, with the security being imposed by combat ready policemen. This, according to him, is not peace.
The Kano/Kaduna axis has definitely witnessed some of the worst inter-religious crises in the country. The bloodiest of such confrontations occurred in Kano in 1976, 1977, 1980-1981 and 1990. Kaduna witnessed three major riots between 1987 and 2000. The worst was the February 21 to 25, 2000 riot which resulted from the planned introduction of Sharia, the Islamic code, by the state government. In the mayhem between Christians and Muslims, over 2,000 people died, even though the police tried to downplay the casualty figure to 609. The police lost four of its men. About 1,944 houses and 746 vehicles were burnt. The police nabbed 559 suspects while two grenades, two medium-sized bombs and two military rocket launchers were recovered.
That year’s incident in Kaduna marked a radical departure from cohabitation in the city. Soon, population dislocation arose. The living pattern was drastically altered. Adherents of the two religions began to live in separate areas out of fear of outbreak of another crisis. The Kaduna River, which demarcates Kaduna North from Kaduna South, provided a natural border for this division. After the crisis, most Christians living in Kaduna North relocated to the south of the state capital across the bridge, while many Muslims who were resident in the south relocated to the north.
But with the Kaduna north harbouring most of the most modern businesses as well as infrastructural facilities, thousands of Christians daily troop across the bridge to the north to conduct their businesses. This mass exodus reverses itself towards the close of business everyday, as Christians hasten to return to the south, because they are ill at ease as long as they are across the bridge in Kaduna North. The traffic congestion daily witnessed during these two movements is so dense that the journey, which ordinarily should not take more than 15 minutes, lasts for as much as one and a half hours.