Shehu Nuhu
3 January 2009
opinion
It is not surprising that after over three years of 'stable peace' in Jos another conflict broke out, claiming hundreds of lives.
It is neither a failure on the part of the people to maintain the peace nor the failure of the inter-faith mediation council to institute a proper mechanism for conflict management; but it is rather as a result of the failure of a disarticulated political structure that was inherited right from colonialism to the present.
To this effect, religion only becomes a surrogate to the competing and unequally distributed economic, social and cultural factors. It is also as a result of the failure of the religious institutions like Jama'atul Nasrul Islam (JNI) and the Christian Associations of Nigeria (CAN). Ironically these two organizations constitute more than 90% of the population of Nigeria, yet they are not recognized by the secular constitution. This has put the Nigerian state at a disadvantage, in exploiting the resourcefulness of the teachings of these two religions as it relates to peace. This scenario has created a situation whereby the Nigerian populace see the state as a different thing and the religious institutions as another, something which creates a gap in harmonizing values, attitudes and behaviours towards the Nigerian state. That is not meant to say that the Nigerian state beliefs and the religious beliefs should be synchronized but the religious beliefs and institutions should be seen as a component that functions together with the whole (Nigerian State) to achieve a desired goal.
Looking at Rwanda, ethnicity and class difference, not religion plagued the country into war for over three decades. Rwanda just like Jos also has the so-called settlers and indigenes whereby the Hutu are the second to settle after Twa, and the Tutsi came later. But in pre-colonial Rwanda, the term Hutu and Tutsi came to be associated with economic status rather than ethnic or tribal division. A Hutu who gained in wealth could become a Tutsi and conversely a Tutsi could fall in economic stature and become a Hutu. This healthy development changed when the Belgian colonialist created sharp divisions in 1929 among the Rwandan people. In the sense that the Belgians favoured the Tutsi minority in terms of giving them access to the colonial power structure and wealth against the majority Hutus. It was later in 1959 close to the country's independence in 1962 that the Belgians switched sides and gave the Hutus leverage over the Tutsis. This was how the Rwandan problem started. In 1993, the United Nations intervened in Rwanda through the Security Council resolution 872 to curb hostilities between the government forces and the Rwandan patriotic front. Unfortunately, this did not stop the genocide in 1994 perpetrated by the Hutu powers that resulted in the death of over 80,000 people.
It is obvious that the Rwandan crisis started from mere skirmishes to full blown crisis which later developed into full scale war. This was as a result of the lack of proper mechanism for conflict prevention, management and enforcement. The hostilities in Rwanda did not stop until when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (composed of Tutsis that fled to neighbouring countries) alone fought fiercely and seized power from the Hutu government forces. The United Nations mission for Rwanda later played a decisive role in bringing Rwanda to a position of stable peace.
It is against the above background on the Rwandan conflict that one may say that the situation in Jos warrants some sort of international mediation or intervention. Here, this is not a call for the UN's arm for peace keeping but a call for third party mediator that will help in bringing an end to the nagging conflict. The regionalist may argue in favour of the interventions of regional organizations like the AU and ECOWAS. After all, these African regional organizations are acting and must act based on the provisions of the UN chatter. But then these regional organizations have their shortcoming, which has made them less effective than the UN. The UN has recorded some success in recent years with the way it has helped to track down and bring to trial past leaders who have cases of gross violations of human rights against their people to answer. Charles Taylor who brutally lorded it over Liberia is one of such former leaders who have been charged at the UN court for crimes against humanity.
It could be frustrating to proffer solutions to African political crisis due to seemingly growing powers of individual power holders against the state structure. Nevertheless, in the Nigerian situation a way forward is for the government to institutionalize agencies around Nigeria that will permanently be charged with the responsibilities of conflict prevention and management and enforcement. With the advent of information technology and globalization, there is now an increased integration of the world into one global village. What this means is less government structures and by extension better chances of eliminating institutions that make war possible. Another way forward is to restructure the security agencies and make them civilized. What we have on ground at the moment are just repressive agencies executing and implementing repressive policies against the people in order to curb opposition against the state. Any meaningful security policy should be geared towards eliminating the elements in the society that makes people commit crimes and other social vices. In this wise, the security agencies should be coordinated with other sectors of the economy in bringing real security to the Nation. More so, as part of the conflict management agencies' duties, they must be structured towards arresting counter reactions and vengeance that may occur in other areas of the country once conflict breaks out in another. We must all be committed to the idea of peace, especially here in Africa, because the presence of peace is closely tied with prosperity and development in all ramifications. This is something Nigeria and indeed Africa needs at this crucial point in time.
Shehu Nuhu writes from the Dept. of Political Science and International Studies, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
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