What would have been the role of CAN and other Christian groups in a meeting in which the theme of Kerry’s public speech was about peace, stability, and religious tolerance?
One consensus among anthropologists and sociologists is that culture infuses everything that humans do, regardless of what part of the planet they reside. In other words, everyone carries some cultural assumptions in whatever he/she does all the time. Even people with multiple cultures, especially those raised in multiple cultural settings,feel compelled select assumptions that resonate with each of the cultures he/she has to negotiate from time to time and from context to context. From this perspective, it should not be surprising that many Nigerian groups, in particular the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) read some aspects of Nigerian culture(s) into the recent visit of John Kerry, the American Secretary of State to Abuja and Sokoto. Soon after the narrative initiated by CAN broke, it understandably went viral on the internet and grew in perception and misperception from one citizen journalist to the other.
Had Kerry listened to the multitude of African studies experts in his country before leaving home, he would have some idea of the complexity of the culture of visiting and greeting in Nigera. He would have been told that visiting and greeting are close to a vocation. Politicians of all stripes stream in and out of the homes of presidents, governors, and newly appointed political officers to greet such people. Even former presidents find excuses for not visiting incumbent president or governor of their states as much as they should. Wives and husbands living in the house take pages of newspapers or television time to greet each other for all sorts of reason and even non-human entities such as corporations send their top men and women to visit and greet people in important positions. Individuals and groups that had complained about Kerry’s failure to greet them are members of this African country’s culture of visiting and greeting.
The main grouse of critics of Kerry’s visit is that he visited Sokoto to see the Sultan who doubles as the supreme monarch of Sokoto and leader of Nigerian Muslim community. Angrily, the Forum for United Nigerians Against Divisive Elements (FUNADE) asked if Kerry was invited by the Sultan and accused Kerry of stoking the ember of de-secularisation of Nigerian polity and Islamisation of the society. Some of Kerry’s critics asked him to convince them about his sectarian neutrality, particularly why he had failed to discuss the matter of killing of Christians by Muslims and of farmers by Fulani herdsmen while also telling him to stop interfering in Nigeria’s internal affairs.
Aren’t all the demands being made on Kerry recurrent features of the country’s political culture? For example, CAN complained that Kerry by visiting only the Sultan in a country evenly divided between Christians and Muslims came to endorse the Sultan’s view of the Nigerian State as a multi-religious state in contradistinction to the nation’s Constitution on the secularity of the Nigerian State. The distinction being made by CAN between secularity of the Nigerian state and the multi-religiosity of the Nigerian society cannot be faulted easily. But what worried CAN and FUNADE is what seems to be Kerry’s acceptance (demonstrated in his visit to the leader of the Islamic community in Nigeria) of the Sultan’s view of Nigeria as something akin to a theocratic state of the Islamic variant.
Given the political, especially diplomatic culture of most Western countries, Kerry must have consulted his country’s cultural officers and former ambassadors about the nuances of Nigeria’s culture(s) before coming, but even after such consultation, it must have been clear to Kerry’s team that an essentially security-related trip to Nigeria should not require worrying about who to visit or whisper to about security problems facing the country from Boko Haram terrorism. There should be nothing wrong in Kerry’s visit to justify his castigation, more so if his visit, as indicated in his objectives for coming to Nigeria, pertains to discussing with relevant ‘stakeholders’ the following: counterterrorism efforts, the Nigerian economy, fight against corruption, and human rights issues. Should Kerry’s talking points have been principally about military and economic intelligence, the American Secretary of State should have been given the benefit of the doubt to take as much caution as he needed in choosing who to talk to or with on any of the issues on his plate.
Intelligence, especially since the end of the Cold War, has been what International Relations experts call the most potent soft power in a fast-globalising ethos of the 21st century. Intelligence cooperation is something that is acceptable in relations with other countries, especially friendly ones like the United States and Nigeria. Intelligence is not only about early warning to friendly nations about threats to their cherished values, it is also a major event-shaping mechanism. This view of intelligence was well captured by Gerald Templer when he defined intelligence as “ not an end in itself but an essential aid to policy-making and military planning and should ideally provide timely warning of events which we would wish to anticipate as intelligence background for policy decisions.” Almost incontrovertibly, in our current post-Westphalian context of sovereignty, intelligence is no longer solely about security of rulers and states in territorial terms but also of shoring up sovereignty through protection of human beings and their human rights. What if Kerry had come with intelligence relevant to how to fight Boko Haram and corruption more successfully than we have done so far, would it be wise to expect Kerry to turn a highly coded message that should have been whispered to just a few ears into an auditorium or stadium announcement?
Furthermore, the insistence of Kerry not to address the media after the meeting with President Buhari and the non-inclusion of journalists in the room in which the American top diplomat exchanged ideas with the president provide decipherable codes about the need for confidentiality that should not be divulged to the public until the message had been properly apprehended by Kerry’s hosts, receivers of the message he brought from President Obama. Isn’t it conceivable that Kerry’s visit to the Sultan and northern governors must have included sharing properly fire-walled information with the head of the Islamic community and 16 Muslim governors about Boko Haram, given the fact that Boko Haram is largely confined to the North East, one-third of the North and also of the Nigerian Islamic community? What would have been the role of CAN and other Christian groups in a meeting in which the theme of Kerry’s public speech was about peace, stability, and religious tolerance? (emphasis added). Should it not have been obvious to Kerry and Obama that Nigeria’s Christendom is noticeably sensitive to religious plurality and also tolerant about other religions, particularly Islam by co-existing in a country that is a member of Organisation of Islamic community (OIC)?
The caustic response by CAN to Kerry’s visit to the Sultan, the leader of the nation’s Islamic community, does not reflect the confidence characteristic of Nigerian Christendom since the evolution of Nigeria as a nation-state and certainly not of the tolerance of other faiths in the country.If anything, criticisms of Kerry’s by spokespersons for CAN could have been read as insecurity or paranoia that usually arises from inferiority complex. To many Christians that are not in political leadership of CAN and other Christian groups, it is obvious that the Sultan of Sokoto is much more of a ‘stakeholder’ than CAN leaders or any of the other Obas, Obongs, and Obis in the South of the country on matters sensitive to fighting Boko Haram, a terrorist group affiliated with some form of Islam.
The need to know is undoubtedly an indispensable aspect of democracy, but most times, it is the need to understand that is important to leaders when they need to share intelligence across national borders. As Boko Haram’s terrorism has proved, religion of any kind is at risk if there is no peace. Critics of Kerry’s visit should have just wished him a safe trip back home for coming to discuss issues that are germane to Nigeria’s security and economic survival with the President and other ‘stakeholders’ in establishment and sustenance of peace in a country that has been hobbled by Boko Haram’s radical Islamism, extremism, and terrorism.
