Quite recently, a delegation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) paid a courtesy visit to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja. During the visit, the Catholic bishops had presented a detailed and objective assessment of Nigeria’s state of affairs to the President. According to reports, the assessment appeared not to have gone down well with the President who is said to have disagreed with the position of the Catholic bishops.
In the midst of the drama, Cardinal Onaiyekan, who was part of the delegation to Aso Rock, granted an interview to Arise News analyzing the issues discussed during the visit, drawing sufficient opprobrium from the Presidency. Since the visit, Nigerians appear to have been polarized over what was right or wrong in light of the circumstances, with many praising the bishops for their courage in telling the President what he needed to hear. Unfortunately, a host of others have chosen to religiosify the visit, giving rise to a number of issues which deserve attention.
The first issue of interest is the argument about the propriety of the visit. While some analysts have insisted that the visit was coming in the nick of time when a thorough and dispassionate analysis of the country’s state of affairs needed to be made to the President as part of efforts at alleviating the hardship of Nigerians, others, in support of the Presidency, argue that the clerics had no business dabbling in politics. First of all, those who argue that clerics have no business in politics display award-winning ignorance. They are clearly oblivious to the fact that, historically, church-state relations have always been tentative, depending mainly on the context and circumstances. For instance, in the pre-Constantine era, when the Roman Empire was hostile to Christianity, the church’s disposition to the state was separatist.
Church fathers insisted on a clear boundary between the church (spiritual kingdom) and the state (earthly kingdom) whilst still emphasizing the concept of submission to constituted authority. With the advent of the post-Constantine era, which was favorable to Christianity, the position of the church fathers shifted toward cooperation between church and state. Instead of the initially advocated separation between church and state, church fathers like Eusebius of Caesarea began to see the hitherto profane Roman Empire as an earthly reflection of the kingdom of heaven, with the Roman Emperor Constantine (who had become a Christian) as God’s vicar on earth. The church’s new cooperative disposition towards the state was to be premised on the concept of the symphony of sacerdotium and imperium, or the harmony between the priesthood and the imperial powers. However, this “harmony” was not without criticism from powerful voices like Jerome, who feared that the church’s entanglement with the state could corrupt its spiritual essence. Similarly, in biblical times, the relationship between church and state was not permanent but still depended on prevailing sociopolitical circumstances at the time.
Accordingly, relations between church and state in the biblical Old Testament were overlapping because ancient Israel was, at the time, a theocracy that supported the merger of civil and religious governance institutions. Church-state relations in the Old Testament were thus characterized by the dominance of the prophets, who held the Kings of Israel to account for both their commitment to the welfare of the people and their allegiance to God. However, church-state relations in the New Testament, which coincided mainly with the pre-Constantine Roman Empire, took a different turn. This was the era of rendering “to Caesar what belonged to Caesar, and to God, what belonged to God.” Surprisingly, it is this particular tenet of church-state relations, which was informed by the hostile political environment under which the church operated in the New Testament and pre-Constantine eras, that seems to have stuck in the minds of Nigerian politicians. Unfortunately, in relating the historical fluidity of church-state relations to the contemporary Nigerian political environment, once begins to notice the hypocrisy of Nigerian politicians and their apologists who argue for separation between church and state whenever it is convenient. This hypocrisy is particularly manifest in election periods when politicians seek the votes of Christian and other religious adherents in total disavowal of their separatist dispositions between church and state. However, when politicians are elected, and the church dares to hold them to account, especially for promises made but not fulfilled, the separation between church and state is suddenly amplified.
The second issue that appears to have arisen from the CBCN delegation’s visit to Aso Rock is the propriety (or otherwise) of the interview John Cardinal Onaiyekan granted to Arise TV, in view of the closed-door meeting the delegation held with the President. Here, two main points come into play: First, there is nothing “closed” about a closed-door meeting in which the media was allowed participation, resulting in the leakage of snippets and clips from the proceedings. In other words, if the media had already made clips from the supposed closed-door meeting available to Nigerians, Cardinal Onaiyekan should not be blamed for divulging the issues discussed during the meeting. After all, since pictures are known to speak louder than words, it follows that the greater damage was done by the media, which leaked clips of the proceedings to the public, especially the part in which the President had declared that all is fair in politics.
The second point in this regard is that the concept of “closed-door” meetings, especially on issues affecting Nigerians, should be discarded. By its very nature, a “closed-door” meeting indicates secrecy, shadiness, and lack of transparency. Worse still, it denotes exclusivity, which the average Nigerian abhors. Therefore, when Nigerian leaders choose to discuss issues affecting Nigerians in secret, so many things could happen, including the fact that Nigerians would certainly not want to believe that issues discussed behind closed doors were in their interest. Even if the issues discussed were in their interest, they would still not believe that the politicians were sincere in their discussions. After all, if they were sincere, they ought to have made such discussions open. After all, the hallmark of sincerity is transparency.
The third issue arising from the CBCN delegation’s visit to Aso Rock is the sudden revival of the age-long politics of religious rivalry between Muslims and non-Muslims (especially Christians) in Nigeria, and its associated Islamization allegations. The anti-non-Muslim revival seems to have gathered so much momentum that in the past few days, fiery hate speeches have been attributed to some prominent Muslim clerics. At the center of the controversies is Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir, who, at a mass wedding event attended by the Governors of Kano and Jigawa States, rallied support for a presidential Muslim-Muslim ticket in the 2027 general elections to guarantee what he termed as continued Muslim dominance in Nigeria’s affairs. Additionally, in a video widely circulated online, Sheikh Shafiy Adeba, a Yoruba Muslim cleric, also called for the subjugation and enslavement of non-Muslims by Muslims, insisting that it was the right of the Muslims to do so.
The first point to note here is that both Jingir and Adeba are terribly insensitive. In fact, one can only ponder the potential effect of such amazing religious insensitivity on Nigerian society, and on a growing number of adherents and other audiences whose lives and worldviews may have been shaped by the continued confidence in the acclaimed intellectual infallibility of such clerics. To be sure, the discussion between President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) and the Catholic bishops was political and economic but hardly religious. Therefore, one cannot understand the relationship between the bishops’ visit to Aso Rock and the growing anti-Christian sentiment in its aftermath. The Catholic bishops may have disagreed with PBAT on the state of the country, but any other body could have done so as well, including the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) or even the Association of African Traditional Religion in Nigeria and Overseas (AATREN). It all depends on the commitment of any such body to the welfare of their adherents and the courage to speak truth to power when it mattered most. In any case, Christians, Muslims, and animists are all Nigerians facing the same economic circumstances, which should unite rather than divide them. This is the tragedy of the Nigerian situation.
What is more laughable is Sheikh Jingir’s fantasizing about an Islamic dominance at the Presidency courtesy of a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket, as if such dominance has really happened under the current dispensation. Sheikh Jingir may not be aware that under the current dispensation, the predominantly Muslim Northern Nigeria has become more alienated from the Center than at any other time in its recorded history. The Sheikh may still not be aware that one of the most recurring allegations against the current dispensation is the Yorubanization (not necessarily the Islamization) of Nigerian affairs, which, according to critics, could be tested by taking a simple comparative statistic to determine the ratio of Yorubas to Muslims in relation to the headship of critical sectors and agencies in the regime.
The case of Sheikhh Adeba is more disconcerting. Sheikh Adeba describes non-Muslims as Kuffar (or unbelievers) while seeming to forget that conventional Nigerian Islam regards Yoruba Muslims as unbelievers in their own right. In fact, so much is the disdain for Yoruba Muslims in Nigeria that a 10-year-old Fulani Muslim is very likely to lead prayers at a gathering filled with older Yoruba Muslims. This is the pathetic situation under which Sheikhh Adeba operates, from which he has now emerged to launch his dehumanizing invectives on innocent and law-abiding non-Muslims. Sheikh Adeba should know that his rabble-rousing about Muslims killing or enslaving unbelievers can only impress innocently ignorant people who are not versed in the principles of Islam. Before advocating for the enslavement of non-Muslims, Sheikh Adeba should re-acquaint himself with the oral traditions that detail the origins of his religion, especially in relation to the household of Ibrahim (Abraham) and the position of his two sons, Ishaq (Isaac) and Isma’il (Ishmael), in the household. Before advocating for the enslavement or killing of non-Muslims, Sheikhh Adeba should make inquiries about the relationship between Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and early Christians – particularly his well-documented cordial relations with the Christian kingdom of Aksum (later Abyssinia).
Before referring to Christians and other non-Muslims as unbelievers, Sheikhh Adeba should interrogate the role of Christians like Waraqa ibn Nawfal in the history of Islam, and also do a detailed investigation into the centrality of Archangel Gabriel (Jibril) to the origins of Christianity and Islam. Like social scientists, every decent and enlightened Muslim should be aware of the tendency for ideologies to become revisionist in order to accommodate certain unassociated nuances that justify certain historical purposes. Therefore, much like the revisionism of the Marxist ideology to Marxism-Leninism and Marxisim-Leninism-Stalinism to accommodate such concepts as peasant revolution, state capitalism and vanguard parties which were not originally Marxist but proved critical to the success of the Bolshevik and Maoist revolutions, the proselytization about the killing and enslaving of non-Muslims is revisionist and deliberately placed out of context to justify the actions of fanatics who see the dastardly slaughter of non-Muslims as a way of showing unnecessary religious “supremacy.” Decent Muslims are aware that the declaration in the “verse of the sword” Surah At-Tawbah (9:5) and other related verses were directed at certain Arabian tribes in Mecca (like the Makkan idolaters) with great notoriety for violating peace treaties and harassing law-abiding Muslims. Decent Muslims are aware that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was a peace-loving individual who desired to live in harmony with his neighbours and other religions. Accordingly, his Ashtiname with the monks of Mount Sinai, and his treaties with the Christians of Najran and Aylah are some enduring testaments to the Prophet’s commitment to peace. Therefore, decent Muslims would not allow themselves to be goaded into mindless bloodletting by religious demagogues like Sheikh Adeba but would instead look upon the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as the ultimate example of a true Muslim.
The final issue to be considered when analyzing the controversy arising from the visit of the Catholic bishops to Aso Rock is that in an election period, the religiosification of purely political and economic matters is not only a distraction, but it also surrenders Nigerians to the whims and caprices of unaccountable politicians whose stock-in-trade is to divide Nigerians along ethnic and tribal lines during elections. One therefore expects the molders of public opinion, like religious clerics, to strive to unite their adherents in the struggle for a better Nigeria rather than divide the people along the fault lines of religious rivalry. This is more so because, despite the knotty sensitivity of religion in world affairs, no country has ever been completely consumed by a religious war. However, history is replete with examples of countries consumed by political and economic wars. Therefore, the ultimate task of every Nigerian is to work for a better Nigeria where the political economy of state affairs is collectively designed to support the attainment of unmitigated prosperity for the people. The struggle for religious supremacy dies a natural death in an atmosphere of economic prosperity.
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■ Christopher Uchenna Obasi is a retired military officer and a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences, Coal City University, Enugu.
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