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This month, the Pew
Centre in the United States released the results of a major survey they
had carried out entitled “Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity
in Sub-Saharan Africa”. They had interviewed 25,000 Africans in 19
countries. Much of what they discovered is well known to the initiated:

Africans are among the most religious people in the contemporary world;

We define ourselves as Christians or Muslims; Although we live together, we tend to know very little of the other faith;

We claim to believe
in democracy but a majority of those interviewed argued that democracy
should be based on the Bible or the Quran;

Although we say we are Christians or Muslims, over half of us engage in sacrifice to ancestors and spirits;

When we are sick, it is not a natural occurrence; some malevolent spirits sent by enemies must be responsible.

The message of course is syncretism; we mix our Islam or Christianity with age-old pagan beliefs.

The research also
points out that statistically, there is almost no conversion between
the two religions. This means Christians are not being converted to
Muslims nor are Muslims being converted to Christianity. Why then do we
have these suspicions about the supposedly devastating implications of
proselytisation of one group over the other?

Why do Christians and Muslims in Jos feel so threatened by the other?

The report made me
recall one of the unsigned texts roving around cyberspace as an alleged
letter from God to Nigerians. The text invites us to rethink our mode
of relationship and our sincerity with God. I quote extensively from
the letter:

“Beloved Nigerians
(yes, I call you beloved even though many of you are among the world’s
most unrepentant sinners), I’m going to be blunt. I am getting
impatient with what you call prayers. Many of you let out deafening
screams and shrieks in the name of praying. It’s as if you think I’m
deaf – that I won’t hear you unless you shout, punching the air like
bad boxers, and contorting your faces into strange expressions, like
unseasoned Nollywood over-actors.

In fact, if I weren’t indestructible, I would since have lost my hearing for all the noise many of you make while praying….

You have other
habits that really, really gall me. One is how you bother me, day and
night, to give you the things I’ve already granted you in prodigious
quantities. Another is your ceaseless pleading that I do for you what
you should be doing for yourselves. What great gifts haven’t I bestowed
on you Nigerians? I gave you a huge supply of rich arable land that
should make you the envy of other nations. You can grow all kinds of
food on this land – yam, cocoyam, groundnuts, rice, potatoes and more.
Yet, a few among you bask in greed and wallow in conspicuous
consumption while the majority goes hungry.

Then I buried
massive reserves of some of the most treasured natural resources in
your land, among them tin, coal, and oil – the 20th century’s black
gold. Again, you have allowed a gluttonous few among you to steal the
wealth that should belong to all. Look around you, how many of your
African neighbours can boast even a fraction of the resources I have
blessed you with? Each year, your politicians and rulers pocket
hundreds of billions of Naira that should be spent on roads. Instead of
sending them off to jail, what do you do? You garland them with empty
titles and include their names on your roll of national honour. Instead
of calling them criminals, you celebrate them. Instead of covering your
noses in their presence, many of you grovel before them. You flatter
them with the names of “Leader,” “stakeholder,” “prominent Nigerian,”
or “Mr. Fix-it.” You baptize them as chieftains when you ought to
address them properly, as thieftains.”

Pluralism and
religious conflict have become a major theme in Nigeria’s political
development over the past few decades. In our history, the development
of both Islam and Christianity has depended on their capacities to
convert believers in traditional religions. In the 1931 census, 5O% of
the Nigerian population were registered as “pagans” with the percentage
of pagans declining to 34% in 1952 and 18.2% in 1963; leaving Islam
with 47% and Christianity with 34% of the population as of 1963.

Almost nobody today defines themselves as pagans and yet our
behaviour is miles away from the love, peace, honesty and morality that
both Islam and Christianity impose on their adherents. If we are to
confront our desire for peace, democracy and development, we would
really need to interrogate the relationship between our God and us.