Former United States of America (USA) ambassador to Nigeria, Mr John Campbell writes on the violence and impunity that has characterised the Nigerian society for decades.
John Campbell writes about the violence and impunity that has characterised the Nigerian society for decades
Writing on the website of the Council of Foreign Relations, Campbell who is a an expert in African affairs quoted observers who have long tied Nigeria’s very high levels of ethnic and religious violence to impunity.
He reiterated that there is a history of the security services and the judiciary failing to find and punish the perpetrators of violence in Nigeria, adding that this leads to a cycle of revenge.
Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan openly acknowledged this reality when he addressed the U.S. Congress’ House Subcommittee on Africa on February 1.
Jonathan said there had been more than ten “major incidences of ethnic and religious conflagration” in Kaduna state alone since 1979.
But, only once did the authorities move to identify, try, and punish the perpetrators. This, Jonathan said, occurred after the 1992 Zangon Kataf riots, which resulted in an official death toll of three-hundred.
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The military government of Ibrahim Babangida established a special tribunal, which sentenced to death fourteen perpetrators. Babangida’s government later commuted the sentences to five years in prison.
Jonathan observed that in 2011 the radical Islamist movement Boko Haram bombed a church in Madalla, killing forty-four.
Jonathan recommended that Nigeria should establish a religious equity commission to tackle religious crisis and violence
The 2013 trial and sentencing of that perpetrator was “the first and only” instance of the prosecution of a terrorist crime against a place of worship since the 1999 restoration of civilian government after a generation of military rule.
According to Jonathan, that prosecution took place because his administration had the political will to proceed.
Jonathan recommended that Nigeria should establish a “religious equity commission” to oversee enforcement of laws in the aftermath of religious and ethnic conflicts
“The point I want to emphasize is that my administration had the political will to halt impunity in Nigeria, and that is why killings due to religious extremism was localized in the northeast with occasional killings in other zones in the north,” the former president said.
”Jonathan is surely right to focus on the relationship between high levels of violence and impunity.
”One can only wish that there had been more specific instances of his administration having demonstrated the requisite political will he claims to arrest, try, and punish the perpetrators of religious and ethnic violence when he was chief of state,” Campbell noted.
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Recenty, Nigeria’s Vice President Osinbajo opined that it is the elite manipulation of religion that has led to the various conflicts that Nigeria has experienced.
His words: ”The Nigerian elite will choose when it is convenient to use religion for advancement, or ethnicity or some other form of identification.”
Osinbajo also called for the prosecution of those indicted and arrested for religious violence, even as he canvassed for strengthening existing laws so those apprehended won’t get away easily.
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