In recent days, the Washington Post ran a bizarre editorial optimistic about the future of democracy in Nigeria, based on its recent national and local elections. As there are a few rerun gubernatorial elections this week, the hopes of people looking for honest elections and any sort of stability for Nigerians — especially in the north — seem all but shattered.
Please consider this interview with Bishop Stephen Dami Mamza, the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Yola in Adamawa State in Northeast Nigeria. He’s both widely respected and under increasing threat as he leads his people during a violent and uncertain time.
As a general rule, if the West could at least not do more damage to people under persecution and corruption, that would be a good place to start. But international voices somewhat regularly pretend violence against Christians has to do with climate change. And our State Department has taken Nigeria off its list of countries of concern (for two years in a row now), which is seen as nothing short of betrayal by the likes of Bishop Stephen, as he’s known.
The interview was conducted by Stephen Rasche, who is a senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute, and who has recently spent time in the Yola diocese.
Rasche: What were the hopes in Nigeria leading up to the presidential elections on February 25th?
Mamza: Over the past several years most Nigerians had completely given up on the leadership of the present administration. Basic security had disappeared in so many areas. Highways and even trains and airports were not safe. Violence came from many directions — Boko Haram, ISWAP, so-called bandits, and working together with these groups in many areas were armed herdsmen. And to most Nigerians it appeared that the administration either did not care or was incapable of addressing this violence. And while this violence often had a religious element, which mainly targeted Christians, they were not the only people to suffer. So the feeling all across Nigeria was that people were ready to clear out the present administration and bring some stability back to the country. At first there was hope in this.
Secondly, INEC (the Independent National Election Commission) had been preparing for the past four years to implement a new national system of voting using bio-metric voting cards and instant, transparent uploading of election results from polling centers. INEC had widely assured the people that this system would be fully implemented for the national elections and that it would be a new era of fair and transparent elections for Nigeria. This also gave the country, especially our young people, a sense of hope that this time their voice might actually have meaning.
In what way is all this connected to the ongoing persecution and violence against Christians?
Again, the utter lawlessness of the country, especially throughout much of the north, had left so many people unprotected, and this affected the Christians most of all. And so much of this violence is clearly motivated by religion. In particular, the violence against Christians from armed herders has grown in the last four years with complete impunity from the present administration.
And I would really like to highlight this word “impunity” to the U.S. government, which removed Nigeria from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) last year. The Christians of Nigeria have still yet to hear an answer from the U.S. State Department as to how they have determined that the present administration in Nigeria has not created a climate of impunity concerning violence against Christians.
Were the hopes you have just mentioned for the presidential elections realized at all?
In fact, these hopes were not realized in any way. Instead, I can say they were mostly destroyed. It became clear very early in the vote-counting process that the new electronic voting system was not just failing massively, but evidence appeared to show that much of this failure may have been intentional in order to force the use of manual vote counting, which could be easily manipulated.
What was the reaction from the people as the results began to come out?
As I said, for so many of them, especially the young voters, their hopes were destroyed. They felt they had been used and lied to about the possibility of fair and transparent elections, and they felt now that the whole process was being manipulated and corrupted once again. The two main opposition parties, the LP and PDP, almost immediately denounced the process and did not accept the results. Both of them have filed their formal petitions this week contesting the results and so it will now go to the courts.
Despite the situation as you have explained it, the West – including the U.S., UK and the EU – quickly recognized the results declared by INEC and sent congratulatory messages to President-elect Tinubu. Can you comment on this?
Among the official observers to the election, including foreign embassies and members of the international community, it became clear to everyone very early on that the process had crashed or been sabotaged, and there were very serious problems in the vote counting. Certainly the foreign observers saw and understood this. And yet we saw these same countries immediately recognizing the results as if there was no concern at all. Coming with the history of the CPC withdrawal, which still remains unexplained, it becomes very difficult to understand what actually is the policy of the United States and the West towards Nigeria. There are many in Nigeria right now who believe that this quick recognition of the election results provided a green light to the worst elements of Nigerian politics to return to the old patterns of violence, intimidation, and corruption, which we unfortunately saw two weeks later in the gubernatorial elections.
The results of the presidential election are now being contested in court by both of the leading opposition parties, the Labour Party under the Catholic Peter Obi, and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) under the Muslim Atiku Abubakar. How important is this process to Nigeria and its Christians?
I think many Nigerians, especially the young, feel that this court review is the last chance to give the people a government that can be accepted as legitimate. If the people see that the court has done its job transparently, independently, and fairly, then there is still hope for a path to move forward. But there is great fear about what will happen if the court review is not viewed as having been a transparent, fair, and just process. We are seeing the young people of Nigeria moving so close to permanent despair and hopelessness concerning the government. With the large population of young people we have in Nigeria, and it is certainly over 100 million, this is a very, very dangerous situation.
What is the most important thing the West can do now to help prevent further instability regarding the presidential election?
The West can make it clear that they are paying close attention to what happens in the review of the election in the courts. I can say that this is truly critical.
Now this past weekend, on March 11, a second round of elections was held nationwide to elect governors and members of the Senate. What happened there?
How can I say that this was worse than the presidential election, but it was. The difference is that in the first election, it was the vote-counting process that massively failed. But in the recent elections we saw a return to the old days: violence, intimidation, vote buying, ballot stealing, all of it. It is as if the worst elements of Nigerian politics saw what had happened in the presidential election and decided they were free to act as they always had and do so with impunity.
There’s still more of the interview here.
There’s a lot going on in the world and in our lives, but can we at least not look away — and lie — about what’s happening to the people of Nigeria? And call Christian persecution by its name when it is happening?