Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 679 | Wed 08 Feb 2023
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Nigeria is at a pivotal point in its history. The 2023 elections will determine whether the nation grows as an entity or disintegrates into poverty, ethnic-religious conflict, even full-blown civil war. Nigeria has a population of 220 million, around half of whom identify as Christian. The Nigerian Church is one of the world’s leading missionary-sending Churches.
Background:
RLPB 678. Nigerian Elections (1): The Candidates, 1 Feb 2023
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RLPB 679. NIGERIAN ELECTIONS (2): INSECURITY AND THE IGBO
by Elizabeth Kendal
Nigerians will go to the polls on 25 February to elect a new president amidst gross insecurity. Having established bases and secured territory, Islamic jihadist groups – in particular the ascendant Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) – spent 2022 expanding into the South and encircling the Federal Capital, Abuja. In May 2022 anti-blasphemy killings and pogroms erupted across the North [see RLPB 646 (25 May 2022)], indicating the extent of radicalisation there. Meanwhile, in the volatile, mixed Middle Belt, Fulani militants continue their campaign of ethnic-religious cleansing of Christians. Massacres, mass abductions and assassinations are perpetrated nationwide with impunity. Add to this, high levels of election-related violence are now being recorded, against candidates and polling stations [see Nigeria Election Violence Tracker]. Analysts warn that high levels of violence and insecurity could cause the elections to be fatally compromised.
The Nextier poll of 27 January has Labour’s Peter Obi – an ethnic Igbo Christian from the long-marginalised South East – leading the race with 37 percent of the vote. Obi is followed by the PDP’s Atiku Abubakar (a Fulani Muslim from the North East) with 27 percent, the APC’s Bola Tinubu (a Yoruba Muslim from the South West) with 24 percent, and the NNPP’s Rabi’u Kwankwaso (a Fulani Muslim from the North West) with six percent. The poll concludes: ‘Peter Obi has the highest net favourability amongst the top presidential candidates while Labour Party has the highest net favourability amongst the top political parties.’ Impoverished and disillusioned, Nigerians – particularly youths – are yearning for radical change. To be elected in the first round, a candidate must win a majority of the vote and more than 25 percent of the votes in at least 24 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The Nextier poll showed Obi could win 25 percent in 23 states. It seems Nigeria is headed for its first ever a runoff election: a race between Peter Obi and either Atiku Abubakar or Bola Tinubu.
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| Nextier poll 27 January 2023 |
The significance and risk of Peter Obi’s rise cannot be overstated. Nigeria has not had an Igbo president since Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first president, who served from October 1963 until he was ousted in an Igbo-led military coup in January 1966. That coup was followed on 29 July 1966 by a ‘revenge’/counter coup by Northern Hausa-Fulani Muslim soldiers who mutinied and took control of the military and the state. A tsunami of genocidal anti-Igbo pogroms swept across the North, incited by Islamic clerics. At that time an estimated 1.3 million Igbo – Nigeria’s most Christian (98 percent), most industrious and most widely dispersed tribe – lived and worked outside the South East. Of the 800,000 Igbo in the North, more 30,000 were killed. Around one million Igbo refugees poured into the South East (the Igbo homeland), triggering calls for a separate state. On 30 May 1967 the ‘Republic of Biafra’ declared independence, triggering the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafra War. Between 6 July 1967 and 15 January 1970, the war claimed the lives of some 100,000 military personnel, and up to two million predominantly Igbo Biafran civilians, hundreds of thousands of whom were deliberately starved to death in a junta-imposed food blockade. The region’s subsequent political marginalisation and neglect has only served to compound Igbo victim-hood and fuel a separatist movement known as the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Many believe that the election of Igbo president would signal that Nigeria has truly turned a corner towards healing and unity. That hope, however, is tempered by the fear that Northern Muslims will not let that happen, and history might repeat itself.
Analysts at Crisis Watch have identified several states where the risk of electoral violence is particularly high. It is widely feared that in Lagos (South West) pro-APC thugs will repeat their violence of 2019 and attack polling stations in opposition strongholds and ethnic Igbo residential areas so as to depress voter turnout there. According to The Africa Report (25 Jan), Tinubu’s ‘foot soldiers have been deployed across the state to ensure he wins by a landslide’. In Muslim Kano (North West), three of the state’s most influential former governors are pulling in three different directions. Kwankwaso (a pro-Sharia, Kano-based, Northern Fulani) is running as the candidate for the NNPP. Meanwhile, two other former governors are supporting the APC’s Tinubu (in support of the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket), and the PDP’s Atiku (in support of a pro-business Northern Fulani). The risk of violence is high, both between Muslims and against minority Christians, especially Igbo settlers/traders.
In volatile Kaduna (North Central / Middle Belt) – an ethno-religious fault-line state already in the grip of a full-blown Christian Crisis – the risk of catastrophic Muslim violence against Christian indigenes and Igbo settlers/traders is extreme. Muslims are furious that the Labour Party has chosen as its candidate for Kaduna Governor, Jonathon Asake, who hails from predominantly Christian Southern Kaduna and was, until recently, president of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union. [Gubernatorial and state legislative elections are slated for 11 March.] Asake has spoken out against the ‘silent genocide [that] is going on against Christian communities in Southern Kaduna and the whole of Nigeria’s Middle Belt … by people who are well-protected, well-armed and who get away with it’. Despite all his effort to assure Kaduna’s Muslims he would govern with fairness for all, no amount of appeasement will satisfy Muslim fundamentalists who hold to the Quranic injunction not to take Jews or Christians as guardians /leaders (see https://quran.com/5:51).
PLEASE PRAY THAT OUR SOVEREIGN GOD WILL
* protect his precious Church in all areas vulnerable to Islamic terror, Fulani expansion and election violence.
* raise up voices for peace and righteousness, that Nigerians may not be lured or incited into violence to the detriment of community and for the benefit of political and religious megalomaniacs. May a spirit of peace, and a desire for unity and neighbourliness take hold; may violence be rejected, for the sake of Nigeria, all Nigerians and Nigeria’s mission-focused but gravely imperilled Church.
* protect Peter Obi and all who identify with his campaign for a New Nigeria free of corruption and conflict. May all those who speak for justice, integrity, freedom and peace – be they pastors, journalists, academics, community leaders, neighbours – know the gracious protection and blessing of God. May the witness and example of Christians be powerful and effective.
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God… The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous… but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin (excerpts, Psalm 146).
SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
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NIGERIAN ELECTIONS (2): INSECURITY AND THE IGBO
On 25 February Nigerians will vote for a new president amidst gross insecurity. High levels of violence and insecurity could cause the elections to be fatally compromised. Labour’s Peter Obi – an ethnic Igbo from the South East and the only Christian among the four main candidates – is leading in the polls but unlikely to win in the first round, meaning Nigeria is heading for its first ever presidential runoff. Ethnic-religious tensions are soaring. Analysts anticipate that thugs in the South West and fundamentalist Muslims across the North will attack polling stations in opposition strongholds and Igbo residential areas to depress voter turnout there. Lagos, Kano and Kaduna have been identified as states where the risk of electoral violence, including to Christian indigenes and ethnic Igbo settlers/traders, is extreme. Please pray.
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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate for the persecuted Church. To support this ministry visit www.ElizabethKendal.com.
Elizabeth has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016). She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.
For more information visit: www.ElizabethKendal.com