Moral generalizations as a solution to religious conflicts

By Abare Kallah, Sheik Isa Buba and Shanta Premawardhana

OUR common understanding of the issues of religious and ethnic conflict is inadequate, especially in complex and populated areas such as the northwest and northeast of Nigeria. Simply put, many of the stakeholders who should invest in solutions do not fully identify with the problem. Others see how their interests are affected by religious violence but see no hope of remedying it.

Companies in particular have a lot to gain or lose and must, individually or collectively, stop the slide and reverse it. To act, however, companies must be convinced that they are investing in proven solutions, not platitudes. By reporting in detail on all that is lost in religious violence, we hope to reveal how diverse and powerful these affected actors are.

To prove to these stakeholders that there is a viable path for change, we share first-hand success stories in deeply torn areas where a strategic model of interfaith peacemaking has helped people with different religious commitments. to make the changes they need to thrive as a community.

Sectors devastated by religious conflicts: In writing about religious and ethnic violence in Nigeria, we always caution readers not to oversimplify the issue at hand. It’s not just Christians vs. Muslims or farmers vs. ranchers. Boko Haram does not limit its terrorist activities to a single ethnicity, religion or community. For an extremely complex country like Nigeria, where each regional area has a specific history in terms of conflict as well as specific resources and assets, this reminder is relevant. However, the same specificity and the same reflection must also apply to the effects of this violence.

Take food security. Conflicts between farmers and pastoralists in Nigeria center on a struggle for land and water resources and have resulted in an estimated 10,000 deaths over a two-year period. By stopping the harvesting of farmers’ crops and their transport to market, these conflicts created an acute and immediate problem: hunger in the communities. Food does not go from where it is produced to where it is needed. What is less evident is how this violence contributes to food price inflation, which makes available food beyond the reach of poor Nigerians. Inflation of food prices leads to excessive dependence on imports, which undermines the national economy and self-sufficiency.

Even this last resort to imported food can be shut down when violence threatens the food supply chain. Without a reliable supply chain infrastructure, outside food producers – whose prices could be more accessible – will not enter the market. Finally, the farmers being afraid to work the land, the farmland is left fallow. With harsh climatic conditions removing invaluable topsoil, leaving the land without work can jeopardize its productivity for years to come.

The issue of food security links the agricultural sector to the health sector and the business sector; violence constituting a financial and humanitarian threat to each of them. But what about a sector like tourism? Tourism may seem like a second-rate problem to food security, but it has the potential to provide critical employment opportunities and both the funds (including significant tax revenues) and the impetus to renovate the area. transport infrastructure of a country.

In the European Union, for example, tourism generates 20 percent of all service sector jobs and one in ten non-financial businesses is in the tourism industry. Ghana and Kenya are two examples where – before the COVID-19 pandemic – relative political and social stability yielded immense benefits in terms of jobs and investment in infrastructure. However, security risks have allowed tourists to avoid Nigeria, even though its natural beauty and cultural resources are on par with these other countries.

By hampering the tourism sector, religious and ethnic violence can also rob Nigeria of its environmental future: it is often only when natural resources are viewed as a financial asset that stakeholders come together to protect them – witness the various conservation efforts in the country. Kenya, for example.

Health, food security and tourism are three examples of interdependent sectors brought to their knees by violence. Indeed, such violence produces downstream damage wherever it affects: by threatening federalism and governance, it opens the door to corruption and closes the door to foreign investment. By provoking the kidnapping and raping of children, it devastates souls, but also dismantles educational standards and destroys the country’s workforce. Because all of this destruction is linked, so must our response. Stakeholders need to start seeing themselves as part of a network of partners who can, in fact, stem this tide.

Urgent, relevant, winnable: In more than 70 villages in northeast Nigeria, an interfaith peacemaking approach has demonstrated effective gains in conflict prevention and community-led development. Instead of seeking a secular solution to religious violence and circumventing the deep religious commitments of Nigerians, this approach capitalizes on them. Interfaith Peace Teams (IPTeams) enlist local religious leaders to work together across ethnic and denominational lines to secure, support and sustain their communities. In northern Nigeria, we believe the way forward is not far from religion but through collective interfaith action.

This action is neither exterior-interior nor descending; What distinguishes interfaith peacemaking from traditional development initiatives is that it starts at the community level and targets urgent, relevant and winnable issues that community members identify.

Two examples reflect the concrete results of this model as well as the empowerment it generates. In the village of Talasse, a Boko Haram attack prompted the local bank to warn of an impending closure – a loss that would have meant more than 75 km of travel if the villagers had had to do banking. The village chief pleaded with those who had left the community to deposit enough of their money in the bank to keep it afloat, but he failed. The village IP team mobilized its Muslim and Christian stakeholders to undertake similar outreach activities themselves – and their efforts were successful. Now solvent, the bank is a vital symbol of effective interfaith action in the face of ineffective government.

More than 500 kilometers from Talasse, the village of Bagadaza faced a major infrastructure problem in the form of a broken culvert. During the dry season this was less of a problem; during the rainy season, however, the villagers knew it could be a disaster. Apparently successfully, they pressured the government to come and fix the culvert – but the government changed before any repairs were done. Deciding they couldn’t wait any longer, the IP team organized people to fundraise for the raw materials and build the culvert themselves.

This project not only meets the immediate needs of the community, but also encourages them to tackle other needs that are “urgent, relevant and winnable” (the IPTeam mantra). So many more examples can be drawn from the IPTeam approach in Nigeria and elsewhere, but each strengthens the lasting effectiveness of interfaith action.

Scaling the solution: Moral generalizations and sad feelings are valuable to a point, but the only proven solution to religious violence is the interfaith peacemaking approach. To unlock the massive and interconnected network of human capacity, talent, infrastructure and natural resources in northern Nigeria, stakeholders need only extend the model that is already working.

The Rev. Kallah is the OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership National Coordinator for Nigeria; Sheik Buba, President of the Fitiyanu Islam Mosque in Talasse in Gombe State, Nigeria; & Dr. Premawardhana, President of the OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership, based in Chicago, USA.

Vanguard News Nigeria

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