The Financial Times featured an article by Joe Bavier on April 27 2011, reporting a live broadcast by peace activists James Wuye, a Christian pastor, and Muhammed Ashafa, a Muslim imam, whose weekly live broadcasts are designed to build bridges. Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye feature in the DVDs The Imam and the Pastor and An African Answer, produced by IofC.
Tough love prescribed for Nigeria’s wounds
by Joe Bavier in Zonkwa, Nigeria
Published: 27 April 2011
At a rudimentary television studio in the religiously segregated Nigerian city of Kaduna, peace activists James Wuye, a Christian pastor, and Muhammed Ashafa, a Muslim imam, are on the air for their weekly live broadcast designed to build bridges. Today’s show is all about tough love.
“How can a neighbour go to a neighbour’s house and set fire because one man was elected and another wasn’t. Shame on you, Nigeria! Shame on you, youth! Shame on you, certain religious leaders! Shame on you, politicians! God is angry with Nigeria!” said Mr Wuye, the pastor.
Nearly a month of polls in Nigeria come to an end on Thursday with two delayed governors’ elections. International and domestic observers have for the most part given the elections their stamp of approval, lauding them as the most free and transparent in the chequered history of the country’s young democracy. But despite technical progress, Africa’s most populous nation has failed to shake off a long legacy of political and sectarian violence. Amid a freshly exposed rift between its Muslim- dominated north and Christian south, the nation must once again learn to live together.
A few hours south of Kaduna in the heart of the country’s religiously mixed Middle Belt region, the streets of Zonkwa look like a war zone. House after house has been gutted by fire. Rubble and glass litter the streets. Toppled power lines lie on a row of burnt-out cars. Smoke still rises from smouldering grain stocks in a looted shop a full week after they were set alight.
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