By Suleiman A Suleiman
Few countries officially identify themselves by religion, but if U.S President Donald Trump makes good his military threat against Nigeria, he will simply be invading what is for all practical purposes a Christian country. Nigeria, it is easy to show, is a Christian nation because Christians hold effective power wherever it matters.
Since late September, when some American lawmakers, television hosts, and other political hustlers began a nasty and patently false campaign of “Christian genocide” against Nigeria, we have been a country under a spell of what we might call “competitive victimhood”. And when that campaign escalated to the level of an imminent American military attack, a clear violation of our sovereignty and international law, the tensions reached fever pitch, with thousands of Nigerians openly and treasonably calling for the U.S invasion of their own country.
You would expect most Nigerians to see through this sudden “show of love” for African Christians from the Americans as some kind of dry humour, but the intensity by which so many have embraced this false but still dangerous narrative has been quite revealing. That the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr once said that Sunday was the most segregated day in American life— meaning that a common religion is less important than racial difference and racism in America—did not call for the caution and deeper reflection that it should among many.
The reason is simple: Nigerians have always seen themselves as victims of other Nigerians. Since at least 1945, nearly every single shade of Nigerian identity—ethnic, regional, religious, whatever—has claimed itself a victim one way or another. Like school kids on a playground, we have only been bickering about who is the victim or bully for 80 years, even though we have all been both simultaneously, if in different ways or levels. Even individuals claim this victimhood, as in the statements we now frequently encounter in our everyday social interactions like “Nigeria has happened to her; he is a victim of Nigeria”.
By far the loudest of these narratives of victimhood are two: the idea that Southern Nigeria is a victim of Northern Nigerian political, economic and cultural domination; and the idea that Christians are but hapless victims of particularly northern Muslim aggression. Both narratives are patently false inventions, of course, but unfortunately, few ideas about Nigeria are more deeply entrenched or more widely circulated and repeated—quite uncritically—than those two, as if victimhood, rather than strength and resilience, is a collective virtue in itself.
Entrenched narratives aside, the idea that the North is the problem of Nigeria and the South is the perpetual victim of northern political and economic power grab is not any truer than the reverse; nor are Muslims, to hit the point home, any less victims of insecurity and terror than are the Christians in this country. If anything, we can say with all seriousness that Nigeria is effectively a Christian country.
Yes, a recent New York Times (NYT) story put the population of Christians in Nigeria at 90 million, an estimate that the numbers of the 2023 election made all the more evidently plausible. If this is true— as the NYT article noted, the latest census in 2006 did not identify religion—it will put the Muslim population at about 30 million or more higher. Yet, Christians are far from being anyone’s “minority” in Nigeria because other than numbers, they control all the levers of power that matter across nearly all sectors of Nigerian politics, economy, and society.
Consider, for only indicative examples, the military and the current executive make of the country, the areas where real power actually lie in Nigeria. Of the 68 security service chiefs since 1999 across Defence, Army, Navy, Air Force, Police, DSS, and the NSA, 40 of them have been Christians, with 28 Muslims. Also, it is true that Nigeria now has a Muslim President and Vice-President at the same time for the very first time, but of the 37 governors and the FCT Minister, 21 are Christian, while 16 are Muslim. Christian federal ministers outnumber their Muslim counterpart by about 28 to 20 in the cabinet of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
On the economic and other fronts, estimates are even easier and the disparity in the relations of power between adherents of Nigeria’s major religious groups could be even starker. Of the top ten Nigerian billionaires on the Forbes list, for example, only two are Muslim, even if they also take the top spots. Of the Managing Directors (MDs)/Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of the two dozen or so major banks in Nigeria, how many are Muslims? Probably less than one-third. What about in the Nigerian organized private sector as a whole? Or the religious distribution in professional cadres like lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, engineers, and so on?
In the cultural spheres like universities, media, the film industry, the organized civil society, diaspora numbers and reach, social media subscription and active use, among other possible metrics of cultural power, the Christian hold is particularly acute. How many of the senior reporters and editors in the top ten newspapers and broadcast media, respectively, are Muslim? Probably less than one third, a serious imbalance for a diverse and complex country like ours because the media does have an undyeable effect in setting agenda and entrenching particular narratives, regardless of whether true or false.
But my objective today is not to espouse yet another form of the narratives of victimhood of which we Nigerians are so fond. I am not here to lament a Christian domination of Muslims in Nigeria. My aim is not also to underplay or diminish Christian or Muslim pain from the complicated incidences of killings from terrorism, banditry or religious, ethnic, and communal conflicts in Nigeria. The death of one person, Christian or Muslim, is bad enough and most not be tolerated or taken for granted whatever kind of society we do hope to establish together or separately.
My point is to illustrate that there cannot be a genocide of Christians in Nigeria in the first place. It is impossible. “Genocide” is really not an attractive topic to research or talk about in a public piece such as this, but for all the buzz and hysteria around it these past two months, the UN-mandated legal definition of it requires proof of several elements in practice.
There must be an unequal balance of power between one group and another. There must be an express and demonstrable intent by the more powerful group to destroy the weaker group. And finally, there must be a systematic execution of this genocidal intent on the weaker group “as such”, that is, precisely because who they are. Above all, there must be an independent and institutional determination of genocide by several legal, judicial and other expert bodies.
None of this holds true in any Nigerian conflict: not in the terrorism of Boko Haram in the North East; not in the farmer-herder and religious-communal clashes in Benue and Plateau states, not in the banditry and sundry criminality much of the North West, Niger and Kwara states, nor in the secessionist killings in the South East or the so-called “militancy” in the Niger Delta region. Perhaps, those Nigerians insisting on “Christian genocide” and calling for foreign military intervention in Nigeria want what they cannot say: an actual genocide of the Muslim population.
By all means, we must talk about and find lasting solutions to the too frequent killings of innocent Nigerians— Christians and Muslims alike—in this country, but we can do that without going to bed with dubious and often reckless foreign powers to incite war on compatriots.
Suleiman A Suleiman can be reached through suleimansuleiman@dailytrust.com or 08066451983 (SMS only)