A war of attrition and, alas, religious abrasion rocks Abuja as Goodluck Jonathan is inaugurated president for a second term and Nigeria totters on the edge of full-fledged sectarian strife, rues Gamal Nkrumah Fortune may favour Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's capacity to deliver his promise to uproot religious antagonism and animosity in Nigeria. Significantly, the newly inaugurated Nigerian president sought to change the terms of the religious discourse in his country by shifting it from politics to social and economic concerns. It is perilous for any politician in Nigeria to speak openly about religion, but the Nigerian president was right to try and draw the sting from the contentious question of confessional conflict during his inaugural speech this week even if it will take more than one speech to do so. The emphasis on religion, and in particular political Islam, is problematic in Nigeria where roughly 60 per cent of the country's inhabitants are Muslim, and concentrated geographically in the northern and least developed regions of the sprawling West African nation. Even as the inauguration ceremony of President Jonathan in the Nigerian capital Abuja was underway, a blast, presumably detonated by militant Islamists, killed 20 innocent bystanders in a military barracks in Bauchi, a northern Nigerian provincial city and a bastion of the militant Islamists. The city is the capital of the predominantly Muslim Bauchi, one of Nigeria's 36 states, and not far from the national capital. Bauchi is a stronghold of Boko Haram ("Western Education is Sacrilege" in the Hausa language) and Hausa is the lingua franca of Muslims in northern Nigeria and West Africa. Several militant Islamist groups, including Boko Haram, claimed responsibility for the blast. Bauchi is also one of 12 northern Nigerian states that promulgated Islamic Sharia law. At a time of economic difficulty, religious discourse and cries for social justice have reached a crescendo. The blast rocked the Shadawanka Barracks in Bauchi soon after the president's inauguration in Abuja, clearly targeting government forces. Bauchi, a bastion of militant Islamists, has been the scene of recurrent clashes. Several African leaders and international dignitaries were present, as Nigeria is the political heavyweight of Africa south of the Sahara. Bauchi state police chief Mohamed Indabawa warned that the militant Islamists will be hotly pursued, even though he insisted that everything was under control. While it was legitimate for successive Nigerian governments to worry about sectarian strife, the goals and policies chosen to achieve religious harmony are not beyond reproach. More should be done. "Telecommunications operators blocked service in Abuja yesterday and the government took many other measures to prevent this but it is unfortunate that this still happened," conceded Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency Yushau Shuaib. "The agency moved quickly, otherwise this would have been even worse," Shuaib declared. The ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) of President Jonathan was ecstatic with his election victory even though he knew that he has a difficult task ahead as president of all Nigerians. In this latest sectarian flare-up, let us be clear, the militant Islamists are mostly to blame. A Christian president is an abomination. Instead of refusing to engage, or being tempted to match the militant Islamists' intransigence, Nigeria's newly inaugurated President Goodluck Jonathan should win popular support -- Muslim and Christian -- for a plan that will contain the sectarian conflict. What is sorely needed is not an opening salvo for his new term in office, but a nuts-and-bolts plan to obliterate the obnoxious problem once and for all. Both sides, Muslims and Christians, will look for a way around this, without yielding to the other. Is Nigerian President Jonathan a cornered crusader or the indescribable King Kong, bête noire, of Nigeria's Muslims? He is neither. He certainly does not wish to be seen as a crusader of any sorts. Nigeria is a hard nut to crack. Political tensions put economic gains at risk. The April presidential and parliamentary polls were marred by violence. The Christians of Nigeria were perceived as having gained the upper hand with the election of a Christian president even as Jonathan played down the Christian card. On the other side of the political divide, opponents anticipate revenge. Jonathan's Muslim detractors are unhappy with the turn of events. Their irresponsible brinkmanship is fanning the flames of hatred and religious zealotry. Finding the right way to deal with the prickly question of religion is no easy task. Pundits and political commentators accuse Nigeria's largest and most influential political parties of unscrupulously using religious calculations to further their political agendas. Jonathan and his supporters may take comfort in one thing: the ruling party is not viewed as exclusively Christian, but as representing a wide spectrum of the Nigerian cultural and religious scene. Bauchi was one of the most explosive scenes of rioting after the April elections. The Muslim aristocrat of northern Nigeria and a former head of state Mohamed Buhari and the presidential candidate of the opposition Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) urged his people to participate more enthusiastically in voter registration. The problem is that many Nigerians are apathetic and distrust the ostensibly democratic dispensation of their nation, Africa's most populous. The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in a desperate bid to achieve clarity and obtain sharper political image, opted earlier in the year to jettison political primaries. After all, ACN extolled itself as the alternative party of government. Three of the four main presidential candidates were Muslim: Major General Mohamed Buhari of the CPC, Ibrahim Shekarau of the All Nigeria People's Party and Nuhu Ribadu of the ACN. The Muslim vote was effectively divided between the three Muslim presidential candidates. The three, however, do not openly project themselves as Muslim leaders per se. Buhari and other Muslim leaders boycotted the inaugural celebrations -- an ominous faux pas. Nigeria's daily Vanguard reported that Eagle Square, the venue of the inauguration of the Nigerian president, was attended by all former heads of state, with the notable exception of Buhari and General Ibrahim Babangida, both of whom were conspicuously absent. The presidential poll that catapulted Jonathan to power was widely regarded as the fairest in Nigeria's tumultuous and rather checkered history. No less than 70 million Nigerians cast their vote. Still, Jonathan took office hobbled by hard-to-keep promises. Resource-rich Nigeria, after all, is a nation of 160 million people. Yet it is one of the poorest and least developed on earth. A legacy of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and corruption has rendered Nigerians poor even if its historically villainous civilian and military elite benefited. With 150 different ethnic groups and 200 linguistic groupings, Nigeria has one of the richest cultural heritages of the African continent and Africans are very much the richer for it. The country's capacity to provoke controversy and contention is only a mark of its stature. Apart from the odd puritanical curmudgeon -- Christian or Muslim -- the people of this great country are congenial and freethinking. Most Nigerians are desperately poor while Nigeria's politicians hope oil revenues keep rolling in and do nothing to reduce the country's utter dependence on oil. Nigeria, by its very nature, is not an African Utopia. Neither is it a land where time stands still. The action sequences in Nigerian politics are convincingly adrenaline-soaked. However, Nigeria is no Conradian Congolese Hades. Pandemonium it may well be, but hellishly so, it is not. Nigeria, with all its fabulous oil wealth and agricultural potential, has hardly delivered on rising living standards. Successive governments -- democratically elected civilian rulers as much as military dictatorships have failed the Nigerian masses. Nigerian politics are played out in heart-grinding drama. Such contradictions have understandably led the Nigerian populace to question their own politicians' political arrangements. Responsible, timely action to improve the living conditions of the Nigerian masses is imperative. Nigerians deserve better. The country suffered from a series of military dictatorships, and rampant corruption was the hallmark of civilian regimes. Looking on the bright side, Nigerians are survivors. Ideally to avoid the repeat of that ugly scenario, Nigerian politicians should develop a viable democracy. This magnificent magnitude of cultural diversity and mineral and energy exuberance, at a stroke makes all other African countries envious and redundant -- or at least one should assume so. But no, a certain irregularity and impropriety bedevil Nigeria and rob it of its supranational status in Africa south of the Sahara. A hotel blast in Maiduguri, capital of another Muslim majority northern state -- Bornu -- in April, days after gubernatorial elections, proved to be an ill omen. The death of former Nigerian president Umaru Yar'Adua, a Muslim northerner, plus procrastination on dealing squarely with religious questions proved to be a setback for the Nigerian democratic process. Nigerian politicians must come out with a clear- sighted solution to this crisis of religious discord. A sensible strategy for the coming years will stave off political unrest on religious grounds. But Jonathan is destined not just to contend with the problem of pacifying militants such as Boko Haram and placating the restive Muslim north. He has also to assuage his own people in the conflict-ridden oil-producing Niger Delta region of the south. Ex-military leaders in the Delta threatened to disrupt Jonathan's inauguration. They didn't. The so-called creek warlords of the Delta region under the aegis of Peace Keeping Ex-Militants Forum fulminated brimstone and fire. However, the retention of Petroleum Minister Diezani Allison-Madueke pleased the moderates. "President Goodluck Jonathan was part of the negotiation team at the conception of the amnesty deal for Niger Delta militants to surrender their arms," explained Comrade Preye Agama, National Deputy President of the Ijaw Youth Council. Agama added that "Jonathan is in a better position to meet their demands and that of the entire Delta." "We cannot afford to fail," Jonathan was quoted as saying in Nigeria's Daily Independent. Members of the Nigerian political establishment's predominantly Muslim-led opposition are feeling the smart of an electoral slap in a way he is not.
