“We will give ourselves no rest until justice is done. We will fan the flames of conscience back to life at all levels of governance in this country…The Gombe case should be considered the bullet head that will open the way for a revaluation of human worth in Nigeria.”Good Friday 2008 marks the first anniversary of the gruesome murder in Gombe of Christiana Oluwasesin, in the premises of the secondary school where she was a teacher. And to date, her murderers are yet to be brought to book.
March 21 was the date and reports had it that her journey to cruel death began with accusation by a Moslem girl that Christiana ,32, had desecrated her copy of the Koran, by placing books and school bags collected from the pupils in front of the classroom just before commencing an examination she was invigilating. Immediately all the students began to shout “Allah Akbar!” meaning “God is great!” and with it a riot started.
Although some of her teacher colleagues came to her rescue by rushing her to the school principal’s office for protection, the number of rioting students had risen rapidly, became such a menacing mob that their demand that Christiana be released to them, could not be refused.
Recalling the event recently, J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine wrote that when she was released to them “…the teenagers hit her with an iron club, stripped her naked and beat her until a 12-year-old boy slit her throat with a knife. The students then soaked her body with gasoline and set her on fire.”
In his recent on-line column, “Fire in my Bones” Lee Grady continued: “Christiana was a Spirit-filled Christian who had been outspoken about her faith in Jesus. Her two young children—a 3-year-old girl and a 10-month-old boy—are now left in the care of her husband, Michael. His last memory of his wife was of her burnt remains, which had been taken to a morgue in Gombe.
“Eyewitnesses of the incident said the Muslim students actually tried to kill Christiana’s baby as well, but an unidentified woman smuggled the child off school property by concealing him under her clothes. No one ever found the copy of the Quran that was supposedly desecrated by Christiana.”
In the words of Lee Grady, “the incident sparked outrage in Nigeria, at least among believers in the southern region of the country where Christianity is dominant. People were appalled that 12- and 13-year-olds could commit such a heinous act of violence against their own teacher. It soon became obvious, after independent investigations, that Christiana’s murder was totally motivated by religious prejudice. She joined the growing list of Nigerian Christians who have been martyred in the last several years by radical Muslims.”
In the vanguard of the campaign for justice for Christiana’s murder is Pastor Ladi Thompson, of Living Waters Unlimited Ministries and Coordinator, The Macedonian Initiative, an organization that offers legal support and other types of aid to Christian victims of religious violence in northern Nigeria—where hundreds of churches have been burned by Muslim mobs. Many pastors and church members also have been killed or maimed by Muslim fanatics in the region. He is of the opinion that the Nigerian government “has not handled the incident with fairness”. He characterized the police protection offered the late Christiana while the incident lasted as “half-hearted” while government officials have not stepped in to arrest the perpetrators.
Thompson said to Lee Grady: “We will give ourselves no rest until justice is done. We will fan the flames of conscience back to life at all levels of governance in this country…The Gombe case should be considered the bullet head that will open the way for a revaluation of human worth in Nigeria.”
Lee Grady ended his piece by asking Christians all over the world to join forces with Pastor Thompson and others fighting for justice in this case not just by praying, which is important, but also to write to the Nigerian Ambassador to the USA to demand justice.
He declared: “I am linking arms with my Nigerian brothers, and I ask you to do the same this Friday. When one part of Christ’s body is suffering, we all suffer. If the radical Islamic agenda succeeds in Nigeria—where African Christianity is most vibrant—Islam could swallow a continent. We desperately need intervention from God.
“I am also asking that you contact Nigeria’s acting ambassador to the United States, Usman A. Baraya. One of our own African sisters has been martyred, yet the Nigerian government is ignoring the tragedy, hoping that the international community will eventually forget it. We cannot ignore Christiana’s senseless death. Please cry out for justice.
“If the radical Islamic agenda succeeds in Nigeria—where African Christianity is most vibrant—Islam could swallow a continent. We desperately need intervention from God.”
2 comments:
It is indeed a tradegy and rather unfortunate that we humans are only selectively nice to each other. We claim to use religion as the basis for a lot of our actions, even when the real truth is that, deep down, we know fully well that we are only using religion to have a "justification" for our evil deeds. What makes it sadder is that no single religion is particularly immuned from this charge.
It is very easy to just identify the religion that "caused" whatever problem happens to be under discussion at that moment, look at nothing else as also a possible culprit. Most of the so-called religious crisis in Nigeria are actually other-than-religious but presented as religious in disguise. When are we gonna wake up!
Illiteracy, apathy and poverty in the Northern part of Nigeria are endemic, just like corruption, abuse of office and get-rich-at-whatever-cost concepts have been institutionalized in our national life starting with the IBB administration to the OBJ's, and even now under Yar'Adua.
With this kind of scenario, we need to resist the temptation to judge crisis solely to be caused by religious reasons. There are many non-religious elements playing very significant roles behind the scenes in the crisis we observe daily. Branding such and such as purely religious is taking the easy way out and giving victory to the forces who actually want the crisis to be seen as such, to use the various incidences to achieve their own evil ends.
Instead of looking at the common denominator (what unites us) we choose to look at how we are different. Even if we don't believe in one Nigeria (sad if that is to be the case), we have no choice but to accept that we are all part of the same human family, at least. And if we are to believe the scriptures, we also have a common blood origin, of Adam and Eve. Infact that is going to far, even an animal does not deserve to be harmed for no just cause, adjudged by a competent authority.
Instead of rallying around what we all can agree on to be beneficial to us all, we rather use religion as a basis to tear each other apart. Even in politics, we support candidates because they speak our language, belong to our church or mosque, instead of looking to see the cleanless of their records, what principles they stand on to help the larger community, and so on. We continued to be deceived by the so-called religious and the so-called leaders alike. Often times, these two are in partnership, when it works for both of them, leaving the masses in hardships through blind follower-ship.
Unless we change our attitude and our outlook, there will be no hope for this generation to achieve anything meaningful, in any area, be it material or spiritual. A house divide among itself cannot stand to achieve anything.
Agreed that religion is very important, but religion without moral judgement is empty. Even non-religious people can have morality. The golden rule of do unto others...is observed by all honest and fair-minded people of all religious persuation, and even by non-religious too.
The only way we can move forward is to judge and treat ALL people based on their character and their contribution to humanity, no more, no less. If we do that people like Chritina will likely not be unjustifiably burnt. And whatever must have led to the rumour about the Qur'an could possibily not have happened in the first place. And if it did, the people would have allowed the judicial system in place to take it course. We are not some barbaric people living in the jungle of antiquity.
Mass education is one of the keys needed to nip these kind of challenges in the bud.
Prince Kabir is the webmaster of www.KebbiState.com, currently residing in Maryland, USA.
Thank you, Prince Kabir for a holistic look at the problem. That of course is the way to go. But we won't get there fast enough unless crimes, no matter their motivations, are punished. That is why murders like those of Christina should be investigated and the full weight of the law be visited upon them. Otherwise, we might be implying that crime can be justified! And if the truth be told, Nigerian history has recorded far more aggression against Christians by their moslem brothers than the other way round. If that is only an accident and factors like those you enumerated contribute significantly to the "whys" of those riots, then we may imply a religious demography of poverty and illiteracy. That, to my mind, cannot be sustained.
No, let's not obfuscate; a serious crime has been committed on the altar of protecting one faith against desecration by one whose faith differs; the question that should be uppermost in our minds is: should that crime go unpunished? Is death resulting from religious riots murder or should it be classified differently? I think not.
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