The recent mob attacks on Shiite Islamic sect members in several Northern states exacerbate the sectarian fault lines in the region and entrench its notoriety as a source of instability. With reports of perhaps up to 16 persons killed in several towns and tension rising between two historically hostile denominations, the federal and state governments need to move fast and wisely to defuse the ticking bomb before the country is engulfed in an intractable conflict.
No country that allows religious extremism to flourish has avoided bloodletting and socio-political disruptions. Hostility between Northern youths and the Shiites operating as the Islamic Movement of Nigeria exploded into violence on October 12. According to reports, mobs of Sunni Muslim youths fell upon Shiite members in Kaduna, Katsina, Jos, Sokoto, Kano and Funtua. Reports claim the number of persons killed ranges from 12 to 16, with the IMN insisting that 20 of its members perished.
The spark was the annual Ashura procession, a ceremony undertaken by Shiites worldwide. Attacks were launched in some places during the processions, held, according to the IMN, in Kaduna, Kano, Yola, Potiskum, Suleja, Bauchi, Gombe and Lafia, among other towns. In others, the Shiites were waylaid on their way back from the processions by mobs armed with daggers, cutlasses, clubs and sticks. In Jos, Kano, Sokoto and Funtua, places of worship, motorcycles and vehicles were torched. There were also clashes between security forces – police and soldiers – and the Shiites with the Katsina police command confirming that it “repelled” an attack on its Funtua base in which three persons died. It also said it recovered Dane guns, cutlasses and sticks from the Shiites.
We strongly condemn the resort to mob action and urge Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State to follow up his tough talk against the murderers by working to ensure that the perpetrators are arrested; swiftly, and professionally prosecuted. For too long, mobs have wreaked havoc all over Northern Nigeria in the name of religion, secure in the knowledge that the states and Federal Government lack the political will to punish their criminality. Sectarian killings claimed about 2,000 lives in Kaduna in the Sharia riots of 2000; Human Rights Watch estimates that over 10,000 persons died in religious mayhem between 1999 and 2003; while Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba have become killing fields for Fulani herdsmen and religious fanatics for years. Prosecutions and convictions for these horrendous crimes are rare and the latest mobs expect to roam free as those who laid waste to Kaduna, Bauchi, Borno, Kano and Katsina in previous orgies of bloodletting since 1987 did. Hitherto, their victims had been mostly the Christian communities.
El-Rufai and President Muhammadu Buhari should make a difference by using this episode to make a statement that crime will be punished and that no one has the right to take the law into their own hands. The government should refrain from further high-handedness in dealing with the Shiites, whose leader, Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, has been unlawfully detained since December last year by Nigerian Army authorities, after an assault on the sect killed almost 400 persons, according to a tally by Amnesty International.
The IMN is no saint either. Its disdain for constituted authority played out in Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto and Plateau when it defied bans by the state governments on public processions. It should adopt the option of legal action rather than confrontation.
Perhaps more dangerous to Nigeria, however, is that through official and mob action, the country may be sucked into the increasingly violent global schism between some Sunni Islam and Shia Islam adherents. Successive federal and Northern state governments have been stoking the fire of religion. It is that attitude that emboldens extremists, religious groups and individuals, even federal legislators, who view the constitution and secular laws as irrelevant. Promoted by Saudi Arabia and Iran, rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites has recently impacted negatively worldwide. The Pew Research Centre, an American think tank, ominously named Nigeria as one of several countries that could become a battleground in this global intra-faith conflict. It has led to Saudi-Iran proxy wars in Yemen and Syria; weak governance in Lebanon, and is playing out in sporadic violence in Bahrain and inside Saudi Arabia. In Syria and Iraq, the brutal Islamic State of Syria and the Levant has launched genocide against Shiites, Christians and other faiths. In Iraq, Shiite militias have sometimes returned the compliment with horrific attacks against Sunnis.
In Pakistan, the Christian Science Monitor reported that 4,000 persons were killed in Shia-Sunni sectarian violence between 1987 and 2007. HRW added that Pakistani mobs have killed “thousands of Shiites” since 2008. Not to be outdone, Shiite gangs massacred 73 Sunnis at a village near Baghdad in August 2014; Shia militia slaughtered scores of Sunnis in January this year.
The government and religious leaders must not allow the few extremists on both sides to tip the country towards failure. The Sunni majority among the country’s Muslims should discourage the extremist fringe from violence; the Shiites and every other association should also operate strictly within the law. The Nigerian Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and of assembly and no one has the right to abridge any other’s fundamental freedoms. Crime however should be punished always.
The police should identify and arrest all the perpetrators. Swift prosecution should follow by the various state governments. Very strong penalties should be handed out to anyone, who operates outside the law. We urge the Shiites to seek legal redress for any perceived wrong, including the recent proscription of the IMN by some state governments, and avoid self-help. We repeat our call for the release of el-Zakzaky from military detention.
