Churches attacked in Nigeria ahead of April election

Police fired gunshots and tear gas this week to disperse a tense crowd that gathered near the site of a leading opposition candidate’s election rally in the volatile Nigerian city of Jos. There were an unknown number of casualties.

Tensions have flared in the country ahead of the April 9th vote, with a number of political meetings targeted with bomb attacks.

Monday’s violence followed two attempted bomb attacks on Christian Churches in Jos at the weekend – one of which failed to detonate, and the other killing the three attackers.

“The worrying thing is that the violence has now escalated to the regular use of bombing –or so it seems,” says Dr. Khataza Gondwe, Team Leader for Africa and the Middle East at Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Plateau State has been wracked by episodes of sectarian violence since 2001. The latest spate of violence erupted on 18 January 2010, when around 200 armed Fulani Muslim youths claiming to be undertaking repairs on a house attacked church goers, churches and Christian homes.

Dr. Gondwe says that the violence against Christians is politically motivated:

“What they want to do is to take certain political and other positions that, constitutionally, are reserved for people who can trace their ancestry to a given state. This is a constitutional thing that applies to every state in the federal republic,” she told Vatican Radio. “However, in Plateau State the Fulani seem to want to have the advantages of what you would call an indigenous tribe because they feel they’ve been there long term. And when this isn’t happening, the violence starts.”

Listen to Dr. Khataza Gondwe’s full interview with Kelsea Brennan-Wessels: