‘Of course, we do consider religion, but I would not tell them that…’. It seems that Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Nigeria’s Kaduna State from May 2015 until May 2023, is no longer hiding his biases.
Addressing a group of Muslim clerics on his penultimate day in office after his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the Kaduna State gubernatorial election, El-Rufai spoke extensively about how the APC had capitalised on religion, including by running on a Muslim-Muslim ticket, to secure electoral victory.
‘What we are able to achieve in Kaduna, we’ve now achieved on the national level,’ he added – a reference to the controversial and disputed victory of the APC in the presidential elections in February this year, also via a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
El-Rufai continued: ‘No liar will contest as a Christian and win elections ever again. Peter Obi (leader of the opposition Labour Party and a practising Catholic) tried, and you can see where he is today – we have done the medicine for that one. …This is the only way to have peace in this land.’
El-Rufai’s comments prompted widespread outrage. In an open letter to the state’s new governor Uba Sani, the Kaduna State chapter of the Nigerian Catholic Diocesan Priests Association wrote: ‘We cannot fold our hands and watch unpatriotic persons who neither live in the state nor care about it, come and set it ablaze at will.’
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) also condemned the remarks, with the association’s Kaduna State chairman Rev. John Jospeh Hayab telling a local television station: ‘If you have known El-Rufai for the past 20 years and you watched this video, you will know this is the El-Rufai you know because he hasn’t changed, El-Rufai remains a chameleon, El-Rufai just remains a pretence. El-Rufai remains the same, thinking he would outsmart people by playing games. But God has helped us that he openly said his mind.’
On 11 June, Dr Emmanuel Nuhu Kure, co-chairman of the interfaith organisation House of Kaduna Family, resigned from his position with immediate effect, alleging that El-Rufai had never acted on any of the suggestions the organisation had made, and writing: ‘I cannot in good conscience serve in a committee that will promote the disharmony, and the further disintegration of our great nation.’
Such reactions are wholly justified; El-Rufai’s comments matter because they expose the long-suspected agenda of certain well-placed individuals in Nigeria who appear more than happy to use religion as a bridge to power, regardless of the potentially dire consequences for social cohesion, and for some of the nation’s most vulnerable communities.
For example, under El-Rufai’s leadership Kaduna State has fallen into profound crisis and instability, with thousands of lives lost and tens of thousands displaced from their homes in the southern part of the state as attacks by militants primarily of Fulani ethnicity have increased exponentially.
Given that religion and ethnicity are either instrumentalised as a rallying point or are the raison d’être of these armed non-state actors, it is not difficult to imagine how such groups may have been emboldened further by El-Rufai, who is a Fulani, and his obvious favouring of a particular school of thought from one religious community over every other religion or belief group.
The El-Rufai administration was responsible for a series of violent attacks targeting the Shi’a community in Kaduna State, including the extrajudicial killings of around 700 unarmed adherents in December 2015, the arbitrary detention of their leader and his spouse, and demolitions of homes, a gravesite and a worship centre.
In the case of southern Kaduna, the administration made little effort to protect targeted communities and stem the rising violence by Fulani militia. Perpetrators were rarely, if ever, brought to justice, and there are multiple allegations of official complicity which were lent credence by frequent and concerning reports of military forces leaving vulnerable communities moments before attacks took place or arriving after they ended, and in some cases, even of military vehicles seeming to assist the attackers.
This cannot be allowed to continue under the new governorship, but at present there is little sign that Governor Sani will be any different. He was hand-picked by El-Rufai to succeed him, and belongs to the same party that oversaw a significant deterioration in human rights and security not just in Kaduna, but in multiple states across central and northern Nigeria.
If anything, terrorist groups like the Fulani militia, the notorious Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province and the al Qaeda affiliate Ansaru, will be further emboldened by El-Rufai’s comments, and indeed by the fact that the APC has taken its favouring of one religious expression all the way to the federal level.
In fact, during his administration the terrorist groups based in the northeast linked up with militia operating in Kaduna State and established a presence in forested areas from where they launch attacks and abductions for ransom. For example, the hijacking of the Abuja-Kaduna train in March 2022, in which at least eight people were killed and around 62 abducted for extortionate ransom payments, was said by some observers to be the work of Ansaru.
CSW and many others have been urging the international community to intervene for far too long. For example, this month marks three years since the publication of a report by the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief (APPG-FoRB) which raised serious concerns that the situation unfolding in the country may amount to genocide.
Despite these and other warnings and expressions of concern from the Southern Kaduna People’s Union, the Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), among others, little to no action has been taken to hold the Nigerian government to account for its repeated failures to address the violence with the seriousness it merits, with reports of attacks emerging almost on a daily basis as Christian communities continue to be targeted in Kaduna, Benue and Plateau States in particular.
If this situation is allowed to persist, Nigeria is at risk of becoming a failed state, which in turn could have significant impacts on the stability not only of West Africa, but also of the entire continent. El-Rufai and others like him may have let this bloodletting happen on their watch for their own venal reasons, but as an international community we must not do the same on ours.
By CSW’s Public Affairs Officer Ellis Heasley