Father Matthew Hassan Kukah is one of Nigeria's most respected leaders of civil society, having worked consistently to bring together the country's religious, regional and ethnic groups. The Roman Catholic priest, from the northern state of Kaduna, served on a special human rights panel set up by the government a decade ago and has written a book about that experience.
AllAfrica this week spoke with Fr. Kukah about the recent bombings in Abuja, ethnic and religious tension, and next year's pivotal elections. This is the first of two parts. In part two Fr. Kukah talks about Nigeria's history, its future, and his book, "Witness to Justice: An Insider Account of Nigeria's Truth Commission."
Two car bombs exploded last week in the capital, Abuja, killing 12 people during Nigeria's 50th anniversary celebrations. What is your response?
It's a very tragic event - a very big setback for us. But I am a bit worried with how we have moved and how we have responded to the issues.
There seems to be so much obsession with trying to identify who is right and who is wrong. I think that what this calls for is whether we have the capacity really to step back and take politics out of these kinds of issues [and] should be seen as a work of crime.
The most important thing is it shows that there are fault lines that we still have to address, and I think it's important that the government investigates very seriously. But I hope that we don't end up allowing anger to cloud our better judgment. It calls for us to appreciate how close we are to the brink.
An article in Foreign Affairs magazine in the United States, "Nigeria on the Brink," has stirred up some controversy. It was written by a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, who says next year's elections pose a threat to Nigeria's stability. He says the end of a power-sharing arrangement between the Muslim north and the Christian south could lead to post-election sectarian violence, paralysis of the executive branch and even a coup. What do you make of this analysis?
I've read Campbell very carefully and I really don't have much of a problem with the framework of his analysis. I understood him to be hypothetical, and I think whichever way this thing swings there is no doubt that whether or not [President Goodluck] Jonathan wins the election one must be prepared for a response one way or the other.
Some of Campbell's critics say he has framed the situation in Nigeria too simplistically between the north and the south, between Christians and Muslims.
The term "Muslim" and so on, these terms are just workable devices; we know how imprecise they are. But, evidently, if you look at what has happened even in the last 10 years I think anybody will appreciate the fact that the north definitely has been the most combustible part of Nigeria. The critical question is: what might northern politicians do with an identity that is as powerful as religion and that is as emotional as religion?
What is most critical in my reading of what Campbell is saying is what will people do when push comes to shove. The word "north" still resonates, as contentious as it may sound. Clearly, yes, it is a means of mobilization and rallying the crowd. And if people feel they are dealt a hand that they are not happy with, it is possible they can appeal to those kinds of sentiments and those kinds of sentiments are definitely potent.
Under Nigeria's power-sharing arrangement the presidency is supposed to alternate every two terms, or every eight years, between the north and the south. That arrangement has been complicated by the death of Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, a northern Muslim, during his presidency this year. His vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, a southern Christian, has announced his candidacy, potentially leading to a southern presidency out of turn. You have said that Jonathan cannot run for president without "severe implications" for Nigeria. Can you elaborate?
There is absolutely no way that Goodluck Jonathan winning the presidency will not have implications. There is no way that his losing the presidency will not have implications. I don't read this necessarily to mean that the country will break into a civil war or whatever the case may be. I don't even agree that is what Campbell is saying.
But we have come to a very significant phase in the life of our nation.
Nobody ever thought that somebody from the Niger Delta would come to the kind of position that Goodluck Jonathan came to. And even if those thoughts were in our minds I think he was definitely far away from the minds of a lot of people.
The agitation in the Niger Delta had actually been beyond Ogoniland. The Ijaw National Congress was definitely the most visible. Now to have somebody come from there (Jonathan is an Ijaw) and to come to the center of national politics would definitely have a lot of implications. For me, the implications are not necessarily negative. I believe that if Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP (ruling People's Democratic Party) conduct themselves very well, definitely his victory would mark a significant phase in the annals of Nigerian political history - at least from the point of view of what people from minority ethnic groups can confidently aspire to. I think that definitely would send a positive signal to the rest of Nigeria.
But I think what is most critical is who suffers and who loses? If Dr. Jonathan were to conduct himself in a way or manner that creates too much anxiety in one way or another, definitely there would be implications. If he were to lose the elections and it was perceived by the Ijaws that he wasn't dealt a fair hand, one would be foolish to expect that people will simply fold their hands and go home.
It is this consciousness that should drive the way Dr. Jonathan and the PDP and the people from the Niger Delta and the rest of Nigeria conduct themselves, especially those who wish to see him win the elections.
To what degree has Nigeria reached a state of sufficient political maturity to accept a Goodluck Jonathan presidency?
If one wants to be frank it is that we haven't even gotten to a stage where we can talk about political maturity in Nigeria. First of all, the transition that took place showed very clearly then, as now, that very little of the old order has changed. The political landscape is still full of people who were part and parcel of the military arrangement.
Too many of the fundamental questions regarding the future of Nigeria remain unresolved. Namely, there are very serious issues related to the quality of life of ordinary Nigerians. There are very severe questions about where the country is headed. There has been little attempt made by the ruling classes to move qualitatively away from the issues that have marked Nigeria's history: issues related to corruption, growing inequalities, fundamental issues.
This is why people still feel so passionate about ethic and regional identities, and tragically so, precisely because governance has turned Nigeria into a distribution agency. So it matters who is in and who is out. And, in struggling to be in or out, people are going to employ all sorts of means. This is why it's not likely that people who lose elections in Nigeria will simply say, "Well, we're going to leave to fight another day."
And how about the zoning, or power-sharing arrangement between the north and the south? How does that fit in?
Zoning was not really about how to deal with the issues of the progress of Nigeria. Zoning is simply another word for the elite of the north saying, "We think that if this thing moves away from us we will be missing a big chunk of the pie." So it's not even as if in the argument about zoning you have a group of Nigerians telling you this is how best we can run this country.
I still believe that in the last 10 or so years we have not moved away from government being anything more than a criminal enterprise. People still are not very convinced about the need to use power for service. So the discussion about zoning is not about the future of Nigeria. It's about how to manage the gigantic ambitions of the various ethnic and regional blocs that characterize Nigeria.
What do you make of zoning's workability for the future and helping Nigeria mature politically?
It's really a function of how politicians conduct themselves. Dr. Jonathan still has quite a lot of opportunities. Unless we take Nigeria out of the hands of some of the members of the hegemonic ethnic and regional blocs - whether they be Yorubas or Igbos or Hausas or Hausa Fulanis or whatever they may be - somebody coming from, let me use an imprecise term, a minority background, has actually got an opportunity to use the presidency as a rallying point. But with the broken nature of Nigeria as a nation and Nigerian politics you need to talk to the sentiments of people, whether you accept them or don't accept them.
So this is why I think that both Dr. Jonathan and co-members of the PDP should have spent quite a lot of time doing more serious consultation, allaying the fears and anxieties of ordinary Nigerians, wherever they may be. I think what is missing is the necessary level of consultation that can deal very clearly and squarely with the problems and anxieties that people feel. When you have a very fundamental shift in power relations such as we have had in Nigeria, I think the onus is actually on you, the person holding the prize, to figure out how you conduct yourself.
I see a future but it is something, as St. Paul would say, to undertake with prayer and trembling because we will be extraordinarily lucky if we can turn the corner successfully. That was really what I meant in my assessment in of the election of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan - that if we were to successfully walk through this it will mark a major turning point in our life as a nation.
You're saying that next year's elections are pivotal. How can free and fair polls be assured? They have been postponed - what is the reasoning behind this?
I convened a meeting in Kaduna to discuss the Inec (Independent National Electoral Commission) timetable and it was a very interesting conversation. We all concluded that were the elections to [be held] in January there would be a problem. There were quite a lot of things - constitutional amendment, electoral act, the registration of voters and it just didn't seem those things could be dealt with. We thought there was nothing sacred about the date of January for the elections and that it would be in the interest of the actors themselves and the electoral body that we don't give people any reason to make these elections fail.
We actually recommended [the postponement]. It was quite wonderful a day or two later when the Inec chairman announced that the decision was taken.
The PDP and the president himself must, as a matter of urgency, send out a positive signal that they are prepared to fight a free and fair election, beginning with the primaries. How the primaries are conducted will also be a measure of how the [presidential] elections will be conducted. If ordinary Nigerians don't perceive that fairness and justice have been done and the right candidates have been presented before them you could end up with voter apathy. The reason why people have to try to steal elections to win is because the leaders they are trying to impose are people without credibility. But if you allow the system to run fairly and squarely and people have to choose between candidates that they feel very strongly about, those things affect people's psychological frame of mind.
But if you just have to choose between one group of bandits and another and people's choices are limited, you have now come to a point at which these guys are [saying] we will win whether you want us or don't want us, and this is how violence gets into the system. It is not as if Nigerians are necessarily programmed to violence; it is the way the political actors conduct themselves and their business.
Do you see hopeful signs about smoothing out religious, ethnic, regional tensions? Is there anything in particular that you have seen that demonstrates that these communities can work together more closely?
My reading of the situation Nigeria is we have read 90 percent of the situation wrongly. I think we are still engaged in blaming the victim. I do not believe philosophically that there is such a serious distinction between how Christians and Muslims feel. I still believe that by pushing these two identities, identities that are so emotional and so combustible we are not helping the situation. Bishops and imams are not the ones who control the police; they don't control the army; they are not the ones who are responsible for the lack of light in Nigeria. They are not the ones who are responsible for the theft that passes for governance. They are not the ones who are behaving irresponsibly and governing very badly.
I think it is the brokenness arising from the inability of the state or the incapacity of the state to really guarantee citizens of Nigeria the very basic things that other people have come to take for granted. The politicians have shown no seriousness with ending the bad ways of the past. The result then is that what passes for religious conflict is really just another name for presidents and governors unwilling to accept that to a greater extent people have been conducting themselves rather irresponsibly. As long as Nigeria remains broken in terms of a lack of infrastructure, in terms of joblessness, so long will religion continue to serve as a basis for venting the frustrations that Nigerians feel about themselves.
I live in a part of Kaduna where there is no running water, where there is no light most of the time, where the roads are inaccessible. I tell people that you don't have a road, not because you are a Muslim or Christian, you don't have water, not because you're a Muslim or a Christian, you don't have these things because these things are not on the ground. Resolving the religious question will have to move part and parcel with how well traffic changes on the other side.
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So we cannot continue to blame "Christians and Muslims" - again a very imprecise term that doesn't help in our analysis. In my view, in the villages, in many parts of Nigeria, there is no problem between Christians and Muslims. But there is a problem of how Nigeria is governed and part of the spillover of that has somehow manifested itself in what we see as tensions between Christians and Muslims. These tensions are a result of Nigerians reacting to how badly they've been governed.
Does that also apply to the middle belt where we've seen sporadic outbreaks of violence over the years?
What is going on in the middle belt is really a question of how people perceive the issues of historical injustices. These alleged injustices stretch back to the last 100 years and beyond. The critical question is: when did these identities become so important and how do all these things par up with the quality of governance that people have?
Part of the problem is the government - state and federal - have allowed a climate of impunity to reign. There are hardly any Nigerians who are in prison as a result of theft of government resources; there are hardly any Nigerians who are in prison for killing fellow Nigerians; there are hardly any Nigerians in prison for the kidnapping that has been going on.
So the critical question with Nigeria has been how do we deal with this climate of impunity. If you kill somebody on the streets of Nigeria it is not about whether you are a Christian or a Muslim. You are a murderer and you should be tried for murder. If you burn anybody's shop, or you burn anybody's house, or you burn anybody's church or mosque, rather than framing the issues in terms of religion, you're guilty of arson.
You should be tried for arson and you should be put in jail for arson, whether you are a bishop, whether you are an imam or whoever you may be.
The lack of our ability to meld the issue of citizenship properly and make it the basis for dealing with some of the issues that characterize the violence that we have is partly the region why religion has become so important.
I still believe the middle belt offers a lot of hope for how Nigeria might be governed. People look back at the role they played during the civil war. They still believe that they've not been dealt a good hand.
And if you don't deal with these issues it is then that some of these identities become very important. With Plateau State we've had about three or four commissions of inquiry. We're nowhere near hearing anything about what the presidency intends to do or what the state government intends to do with the reports, meaning, in effect, that the government shows no seriousness in terms of dealing with how these issues took place and how we might avoid a repetition of them in the future.
The Nigerian government just hopes and prays that people are going to become forgetful and turn their attention to other things and they will just wait until something stokes the fire and we will go back to start all over again.
