Nigeria: Armed Violence (Rural Communities)

David Drew Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Betts; I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship. I acknowledge your guidance and will try to be brief.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) —my hon. Friend in this respect—not only for securing the debate but for his assiduous questioning. The situation in Nigeria is something that we should be concerned about and we quite rightly highlight it today.

I visited Nigeria a long time ago, in 2006, with Christian Solidarity Worldwide—it is good to see Mervyn Thomas, the CEO, in the Public Gallery—and to my knowledge, this issue is historic. We saw the antecedent of what is happening today. As part of that visit, we went to Jos and to Kano, and we saw, even then, burnt out churches and loss of life because of religious conflict. The situation is complex and is partly about the conflict between pastoralists and farmers; it just so happens that the pastoralists tend to be Islamic while the farmers are Christian. The issue dates back a long time.

During that visit, I met the then Archbishop of Jos. During a debate in the other place on 17 July, which was initiated by the noble Baroness Cox, who has taken a strong interest in what has been happening in Nigeria, no less a person than the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke to alert the House of Lords to yet another attack on the Archbishop of Jos, who is a very brave man. He and his predecessor have been through all manner of conflict and lived with it. We must recognise that it is not just people out in rural areas who are affected; in the cities too there are regular attacks, and prominent Christians are subject to all aspects of that conflict.

I have one simple point to make. Even in the days when I visited, clearly the federal structure of Nigeria meant that much of the power lay in the hands of the state governors. As much as I would say that President Goodluck Jonathan and now President Buhari could do much more—I hope that the Minister will tell us what the UK Government are doing to lobby directly—we must also recognise that the different state governors have enormous influence, even to the extent that when I was there, a long time ago, it was common to hear of some Christian governors helping Islamist extremists because it was politically advantageous to do so. My visit clearly predates much of the terror of Boko Haram, but even then some extremist groups on the ground were well organised. State governors could have done much more to deal with them using the police and, dare I say it, the army, but they refused to do so.

I hope that the Government will say what they are doing to engage with not only the federal President but the state governors, because they are the key to dealing with some of the violence on the ground. Unless we ensure that our lobbying of those people is effective, that violence will continue and get worse, and the Christians—a minority now, sadly—will be driven further and further from where they have always lived and had their livelihoods. I hope that our Government will do that and ensure that this issue is dealt with appropriately. We must stop the violence to allow people to live in peace and harmony, as they have done for generations, and to get on with their lives.