Nigerian election violence pre-planned, archbishop charges: The Church of England Newspaper, May 27, 2011 p 7.

Archbishop Nicholas Okoh

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

The post election pogroms against Christians in Northern Nigeria were part of an orchestrated campaign to discredit the country’s democratic institutions and open the door for the return of military rule, the Archbishop of Nigeria has claimed.

Archbishop Nicholas Okoh urged Nigerians not to give up on democracy in the face of violence.  “I wish to commend Nigerians for their sense of duty in turning out in large numbers, first to register, and later to cast their votes. And they did it peacefully! In the three elections already held, the people were determined to get it right,” he said.

On April 19 President Goodluck Jonathan was returned to office beating his main challenger Gen. Muhammadu Buhari by about 10 million votes.   On May 23 the Commonwealth Secretariat in London stated that last month’s general election—the third since the end of military rule— had “met the national, regional and international standards for democratic elections” and were “credible and creditable.

However, after the polls closed, more than 800 people were killed and 65,000 were driven from their homes, Human Rights Watch said on May 16.  The violence in Northern Nigeria was focused on the Christian minority the Barnabas Fund reported, noting that 194 churches had been destroyed.

However, the violence was not a spontaneous reaction to the Jonathan victory, Archbishop Okoh charged.  “I wish to say clearly that the recent killings, looting, burning, harassment of Nigerians in the North have no bearing with the largely peaceful, transparent and credible elections just conducted. It seems that the crisis had been planned to take place irrespective of the credibility and integrity of the elections and their results.”

The archbishop called on the government “not to gloss over the crisis, but to establish the root cause, the instigators, perpetrators and active participants and their motives and intensions, with a view to bringing justice upon them.”

Human Rights Watch echoed the archbishop’s call.  “The April elections were heralded as among the fairest in Nigeria’s history but they also were among the bloodiest,” the NGO said in a statement released by its West Africa office.

“The newly elected authorities should quickly build on the democratic gains from the elections by bringing to justice those who orchestrated these horrific crimes and addressing the root causes of the violence,” the NGO said.

Archbishop Okoh urged political leaders to place the needs of the country ahead of party interests.  “I wish to plead with all winners to show restraint and humility in victory. I wish to appeal to all those who lost in the elections to take it in the spirit of sportsmanship and hope for another opportunity. We call upon all winners and losers as well as the generality of Nigerians to pray for a new dawn in our nation,” the archbishop said.