CAritics of Christianity and Islam often note that they are both foreign religions that were grafted into African societies. Yet with regard to Christianity, there is one notable concurrence in core values: the embrace of strangers.
I still remember an experience in this regard way back to the mid-1970s. I was just out of secondary school and was seeking university admission. It would surprise today’s youth that even with an excellent WASSCE result, it wasn’t easy. There were just six or so universities, and so they were scarce commodities, so to say.
Even to get admission application forms by post was a chancy matter. So, I found myself travelling to a number of campuses just to get the forms. One of those trips was by taxi from Port Harcourt to the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University. My naïve intent was to make a round trip, but the highways then were so riddled with potholes that there were stretches where it took an hour or more to travel 10 miles.
So, by the time we got to Ife, it was late at night. I asked the driver to take me to a motel, but he didn’t think it was a good idea. There had been a spate of ritual killings, he said, and he would rather that I passed the night at his home. I was uneasy about the offer, but then I couldn’t disregard the advice of a resident of the town.
So, there I was late at night, in the home of a stranger, in a town I had never been to before. My anxiety was eased when the wife and two little children came to what passed as the parlour to greet me. The wife served me a meal of rice and stew and he thereafter provided me with a mat to sleep on. Early in the morning, before he headed for his daily routine, he drove me to a motor park and had me board the right vehicle to the university.
It is about 47 years now and I still wonder whether such hospitality could have happened anywhere else in the world. Yet it is the guiding principle of Christianity, at least as manifest during worship. There are no strangers in a church, just worshippers. They accept everybody who walks in, no questions asked, no fees paid, no membership necessary, no accreditation required.
That ideal presumes a mutual interest. People attending a church are there to fulfill some spiritual or emotional needs. In turn, their mere presence serves as validation for the church. An Igbo proverb captures this mutuality, albeit in the negative: May my visitor not cause my death, and on leaving may he not develop a hunchback.
Some visitors at Saint Francis Catholic Church last Sunday evidently didn’t subscribe to this. Rather than seek spiritual fulfillment, they sought to wipe out an entire congregation. An estimated 50 congregants were killed, of which the church has confirmed 38 as of Wednesday. Several more were severely injured and may still die.
Accounts of the attack has varied, which is understandable in circumstance of terror and mayhem. One account is that the killers embedded themselves in the congregation and started shooting at an opportune moment. Another account says that they first shot a guard at the guard to gain entrance into the church. The two versions are actually reconcilable, as the operations may have been so coordinated.
What is certain is that the operation was executed by people with considerable expertise, just as has been the case with herdsmen killings in the Middle Belt. It could be said that it is a miracle that anyone survived.
Along with the open-door policy of churches, another ideal that was exploited to commit the Owo massacre is that of free movement of people. It is an ideal of democracy that is evidently empowering those who are bent on overrunning or ruining Nigeria.
Day after day — especially night after night — convoys of young northern men are bused or trucked to unknown destinations in the South. Typically, they cannot offer a coherent and credible explanation of where they are heading to and why. Such was happening even at the height of the lockdown, when interstate travels were restricted. In a recent case in the South-West, the mysterious passengers claimed they were heading to a funeral. Might that have been a metaphorical reference to funerals they were on a mission to cause?
The Owo massacre has vindicated the growing concern that all of the South and Middle Belt is facing mortal danger from Islamist terrorists. It is an alarm that has been raised by several commentators, including IPOB propagandists and Asari Dokubo, the founder of the insurgent group the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force.
The day after the massacre, a Yoruba friend and US-based academic echoed that fear in a WhatsApp message: “I have this unsettled feeling that there are sleeper cells of BH (Boko Haram) all over the South-East and (South) West just waiting for the approval to strike.” The friend omitted the North Central, apparently because his fear is already a reality there. I didn’t get to ask why he omitted the South-South.
This is all putting ideals to test. I have heard it said that love and hate can never be friends. The same can be said of ideals and menace. Given that ideals are to be nurtured regardless of the price, it is the menace that has to go somehow.
The Supreme Head of Saint Francis, Dr Solomon Alao, addressed this challenge in a statement on Tuesday. “We hope this case will not be treated like several killings that had taken place in Benue State and other Christian-dominated settlements in the North,” the statement reads. “We shall continue to hold the Federal Government responsible until they arrest and charge the criminals to court.”
“We had said it severally that the so-called bandits and Boko Haram are being treated with kid gloves and this is the time to be decisive in dealing with them if the government still wants this country to remain one.”
Coincidentally and remarkably, the APC national convention commenced right after the massacre. And the central issue remained the same, who will become president, not whether there will be a country to preside over. Bola Tinubu, an old hand in Nigerian politics, emerged the winner after much manoeuvering.
Tinubu will be competing primarily against another old hand, Atiku Abubakar, who was earlier chosen by the PDP. The presumption is that one or the other will become Nigeria’s president come May 2023. Whether there will be a Nigeria to preside over may well depend on whether the government stops the likes of the Owo carnage.
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