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“There is a limit
to what tolerance can take but you can’t overstretch understanding.
Anger and frustration shouldn’t always find an outlet in the bullet,”
preaches Idris Adam, a 26-year-old resident of Angwan Hausawa, in Tudun
Wada, Jos, the Plateau State capital.

Adam is Fulani; he
is a Muslim with many of his good friends being Christians. Like him
scores of Muslim youth in Tudun Wada, a vast community inhabited by
Christians and Muslims, have been able to shame
ethno-politico-religious detractors seeking to turn the state into a
battle ground of sorts.

The youth in Tudun
Wada have found a common ground on which friendship, mutual respect and
peace can reign on the plateau. That platform is football.

Adorned in football
jerseys of different clubs in Nigeria and outside, Muslim and Christian
youth gather everyday of the week, at the football pitch by the Federal
secretariat complex in Tudun Wada, from as early as 6.30am to mid-day.
Sweating it out together, sharing in each other’s pain and joy, they
simply forget for a while that Jos is a city divided against itself.

“Honestly, it is
the game of football that is helping to bring peace in Tudun Wada,”
says 29-year-old Michael Samuel, a midfield player popularly known as
Boyi. “Football has united the youth in this community. We have grown
up playing together, eating and drinking together. We know each other
so well that it is hard for us to hurt each other.” On December 25,
2010, about 12 hours after scores of mostly Christian men, women, and
children were killed following the Jos Christmas eve multiple bombings
affecting Gada Biu and Angwan Rukuba areas, Boyi, and two fellow
Christian footballer friends, Steven Moga and Musa Gambo, went to the
football pitch.

“There was a lot of
tension in Jos. But the three of us came together to the field because
we were concerned that if no Christian came, they (Muslims in Tudun
Wada) would feel probably we Christians are planning for them,” Boyi
said.

Their action made a
difference, as Adamu Yakubu, a Muslim in his late 40s, and the head
football coach in the area got them and the Muslim youth together,
reminded them they belong to a football family of friends, working
together, not against the other. He asked them to stay close to their
homes, be vigilant and prevent the crisis from extending into their
area.

Football as balm

“It’s through
football that we’ve got ourselves united. I keep telling them our
security is everyone’s responsibility. We don’t just allow strangers to
come into this place because we know its people from outside that are
causing problems, not the Christians and Muslims in here,” says Yakubu.

Indeed, dialogue
and understanding through football has been a key strategy adopted by
the youth in Tudun Wada since the Jos 2008 crisis to promote peace
amongst themselves.

For Bala Ibrahim, a
business man from Gombe State but born and brought up in Jos, any
determined government seeking ways to achieve peace in the state,
should invest more in getting the youth involved in sports,
particularly football, as the game has proved probably the only
unifying tie, which all Nigerians, irrespective of tribe and religion,
have in common.

“Like Boyi, I
visited him in his house on new year’s day. I drank, ate chicken,
cookies and his wife even gave me chin-chin for my wife. I am a Muslim
and he is a Christian, but he also comes to my place. Our friendship
has developed because we play football together. Football is the answer
to attaining peace,” Ibrahim says.

As the Tudun Wada
youth lined up to take a group photograph for this report, Christians
with Muslims, hands over each other’s shoulders, Adam’s words echoed a
piece of advice for other youth:

“Because of crisis,
for 11 years, we have not seen any tangible dividends of democracy.
This is the right time for us all to bury the hatchet and gain what
democracy has to offer,” said Adam, who hopes to study law some day.