The Nigerian government appears to be taking a hard line on religious opposition — though not against the usual suspects. Even as the Boko Haram insurgency persists in the north, peaceful demonstrations by the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) sparked a recent round of state repression.
In late October, protests in and around the capital left at least 45 IMN members dead and more than another 100 wounded after Nigerian security forces used automatic weapons to disperse the crowds. Government officials claim they were responding to the protesters’ assault on a military convoy. IMN rejects this account and insists its members were engaged in peaceful demonstrations calling for the release of their ailing leader, Ibrahim Zakzaky, from prison.… Seguir leyendo »
In 2006 I worked as an intern for a pharmacist at a state-run hospital in Asaba, a town on the banks of the Niger River, which loosely divides southern Nigeria into east and west. The cases we attended to usually involved pregnancies, tropical illnesses, and an alarming number of domestic assaults. Then one day we received a flood of men and boys with machete wounds to their heads and limbs. They were migrants from northern Nigeria who had come south, as many do, to work as traders and laborers in Onitsha, the sprawling market town across the river from Asaba.
They were mostly Muslims, victims of a wave of sectarian violence that swept Nigeria after a Danish newspaper published cartoons deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.… Seguir leyendo »
It is not every day that one dines with the Sultan of Sokoto -- a direct descendant of Usman dan Fodio, who was declared "Commander of the Faithful" in 1804 and founded a caliphate that reached from what is now Burkina Faso to Cameroon.
His Eminence Alhaji Muhammad Sa'adu Abubakar III is a thoroughly modern man of military bearing -- and perhaps the most influential religious figure you have never heard of. The sultan is spiritual leader to 70 million Nigerian Muslims. At home, he points out, a dinner at a restaurant is "quite impossible," because he would be mobbed by coreligionists.… Seguir leyendo »
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