Abuja – “In Sokoto, we do not have a problem with persecution, but we do observe restrictions on our freedom,” says Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, in northern Nigeria, in an interview with Fides.
Sokoto, the capital of the State of the same name, is a predominantly Muslim area where coexistence with the Christian minority is threatened by the violence from jihadist groups.
Despite this, Bishop Kukah offers elements of reflection that allow us to go beyond the narrative of a “clash between religions.”
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, what is the situation in your diocese?
In Sokoto, we do not have a problem with persecution. Since we live in a predominantly Muslim environment, we rather have problems with restrictions on freedom. However, these do not concern religious freedom. For example, we have no problem holding a procession with the Blessed Sacrament on the streets of Sokoto. The only areas where there are restrictions concern the teaching of the Catholic religion in public schools and permits for the construction of new places of worship. These are obstacles that arise primarily at the bureaucratic level. I believe we can resolve these issues through dialogue and negotiations. So, in general, we can say we do not have any serious problems. We have friendly relations with Muslims. I myself have good friends who are Muslims. We work closely with the state governor, who is Muslim.
What do you believe are the roots of jihadist violence in northern Nigeria?
In my opinion, there are two causes. Before the emergence of modern Nigeria in the 19th century, there was a Muslim caliphate in what is now northern Nigeria, extending over large parts of what are now Mali, Chad, Niger, and Burkina Faso. British colonialism destroyed this Islamic empire and left a legacy of resentment that persists among the local Islamic population to this day. With the British came the Christian faith. Today, ignorance of our country’s history leads many Muslims to associate Christianity with colonialism. Yet the missionaries did not come to conquer, but to help the local population, while the colonialists came with the intention of extracting resources from our land.
The second factor, related to the first, is the determination of Muslims in northern Nigeria to receive a Western-style education. This attitude is encouraged by the federal government, which since the 1960s has insisted on taking measures to ensure that every Nigerian child has access to education. Nevertheless, there are currently approximately 20 to 25 million children and young people in Nigeria who do not have access to school. Ninety percent of these children live in northern Nigeria, where many poor families fear that their children will convert to Christianity if they attend school. This is happening while the children of the Muslim elite in the north receive an excellent education; however, this elite fails to consider the general problem of providing a proper education to the entire population of the region. The problem thus arose here, where people have been instilled with many untruths about the Christian faith. This leads to sections of the Muslim population venting their anger and frustration on the Christian minority during turbulent events, for example, by setting fire to a church. This situation was exploited by “Boko Haram” to recruit fighters from among the population in the north. However, I would like to emphasize that jihadist violence has claimed more lives among Muslims than among Christians. The statistics tell us this.
In the United States, there are efforts to introduce federal legislation to impose sanctions against the Nigerian government, which is accused of failing to protect Christians. What do you think about this?
What I can say is that they are adopting a narrative that Christians are persecuted. We cannot deny this, but it must be emphasized that the worst situation occurred between 2014 and 2023 during the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, who did not respect the traditional balance between Muslims and Christians in high offices of state and, above all, placed high-ranking Muslim officers at the head of the various security apparatuses. This led the jihadists to feel that Islam was the dominant religion in the country. They felt encouraged to intensify their violent struggle. Since 2023, a noticeable change has taken place with the new President, Bola Tinubu, a Muslim married to a pastor of a Pentecostal church, as he appears much more determined to preserve democracy and to protect the human rights of all Nigerians. I am confident that we can restore peaceful coexistence among all the Country’s populations.
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