Source:         www.compassdirect.org

Date:            June 29, 2007

Converts from Islam feel the hostility in sanctuary demolitions, discrimination.

by Obed Minchakpu

KALGO, Nigeria, June 29 (Compass Direct News) – For Kebbi state pastor Nuhu Mamman, to become a Christian was to have a death sentence passed on the life he knew: converting killed his past, and his future appeared moribund as family, friends and fiancée abandoned him.

Raised a Muslim, Mamman received Christ as a young man in 1969 after missionary Malam Shekaru of Garu Kurama preached to him and others. He was the first person in his village to receive Christ, he said.

“My conversion from Islam to Christianity was first thought to be a joke by my parents, but when they realized that I was a committed Christian they kept away from me,” Rev. Mamman said. “I was disowned by my family members and was told that I have lost my inheritance from the family. I became an outcast with no home or family, and no one wanted to eat with me.”

Using only the Bible, Shekaru taught Mamman and others how to read and write, Rev. Mamman told Compass in Kalgo town, where he is a pastor and secretary of the Kebbi district Church Council of the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA).

He never attended elementary school or high school. Learning to write under the tutelage of his missionary teacher, Rev. Mamman eventually gained admission to a Bible school, where he studied pastoral theology. He also obtained a bachelor’s degree in pastoral theology at the Jos ECWA Theological Seminary.

Rev. Mamman now presides over a church with over 2,000 members, 16 pastors, and 25 church planters. The church has 44 mission stations spread across Kebbi state, whose population of over 2 million is majority-Muslim.

Before his conversion, he had been engaged to marry. After he confessed Christ, he said, the family of his fiancée cancelled the engagement.

“I could not find any girl to marry,” he said. “All Muslim families in my village considered me an infidel.” 

It took Rev. Mamman 11 years to find a Christian woman, Naomi – far from his Muslim community, in distant Katsina state – to marry.

His commitment to remaining faithful to Christ has resulted in two of his brothers becoming Christians as well, he said. Otherwise, Rev. Mamman is often shunned.

“My Muslim blood relations don’t like me – they dislike and keep away from my family as if we are a plague to be avoided,” Rev. Mamman said. “They hate us because we have abandoned Islam. Our predicament has even been made worse as even Christians from other non-Muslim communities still don’t trust us. They believe that we are still Muslims despite our conversion to Christianity. This is very tough on us.”

Demolished

Rev. Mamman, from the Hausa ethnic group of Kebbi state, says persecution of Christians is widespread in the state.

“In the northern part of Kebbi state, Christians face serious difficulties,” he told Compass. “We are always being forced to transfer former Muslims who have become Christians to other parts of this country in order to shield them from persecution.”

The church works hard to protect converts to Christianity from Muslim extremist attacks. After Adamu Muhammed, a Muslim from the town of Birnin Kebbi, became a Christian in 1997, Muslim radicals sought to kill him. As they hunted for him, Rev. Mamman said, the church moved him to Jos in central Nigeria, where he became a Bible student.

In 2003, Rev. Mamman added, a Muslim named Ibrahim Jega from Jega town converted to Christianity.

“His family members and other Muslims threatened to kill him,” Rev. Mamman said. “We were forced to take him to Zuru town for safety. Another convert from Islam to Christianity, Mohammed Abara from Sabon Birni town, also had to be taken to Pisabu by us in order to save his life.”

Equally difficult is obtaining places for converts from Islam to worship.

“Even if we succeed in getting land to provide such converts with places of worship, Muslims who are in government will not allow us build such churches,” said Rev. Mamman, who was ordained an ECWA minister in 1994.

“Whenever we go to renew our land documents or even pay land rent for our church lands, Muslim government officials usually refuse to accept such payments,” he said. “But then, this is deliberate, as after a period of time they usually declare our church buildings as illegal structures, just to find reasons to demolish our places of worship.”

As one example of arbitrary demolitions of places of Christian worship in the state, Rev. Mamman cited the destruction of a church in Danbargo village by government agents.

“In Danbargo village of Shanga Local Government Area, almost all the villagers last year decided to become Christians after listening to the gospel preached to them,” he said. “We built a place of worship for these Christians, but the local government council authority of Shanga demolished this church building.”

Rev. Mamman said the local council also told the Christian villagers that if they refused to recant their belief in Christ and return to Islam, the government would seize their farms.

“Without any visible means of surviving this attack,” he said, “these Christians in Danbargo village went back to Islam.”

The Rev. Adamu Sunday Peni, vice chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Kebbi state chapter, told Compass that lack of land for building places of worship – along with forceful conversion of Christians to Islam and discrimination against Christian public workers – is among the most pressing problems Christians face.

“In Gwandu town, there are Christians in this town, but there is not a single place of worship there because Christians have been denied land to build church buildings,” said Rev. Peni, also a pastor with the United Missionary Church of Africa. “So also in Aliero town, Christians have no place to worship and are forced to travel every Sunday to Jega town for worship services.”

In 1992, said Rev. Mamman, 13 churches including an ECWA building were demolished in Birnin Kebbi on the claims by the state government that they did not comply with town planning laws.

“But this is a farce,” he said. “Government officials here who are all Muslims, have always devised means of creating false claims on churches so as to demolish them.”

Kebbi state is one of 12 states implementing sharia, or the Islamic legal system, in northern Nigeria. While officially sharia is supposed to apply only to Muslims, Rev. Mamman said it is used to forcibly convert Christians to Islam. He said Christians recently had been forced to convert to Islam in the villages of Rafin Gora, Tungan Tanko, Hayin Banki, Nakadere, and Tungan Goge.

Burned

Rev. Mamman and other converts to Christianity still face humiliation and stigma, he said.

Besides state opposition, Christians in Kebbi state also face social hostilities. The few buildings that serve as worship places are often targets of Muslim extremists, who set fire to them at will.

Islamic rioting and church burnings are not unknown in Kebbi state, the church leaders said.

With rioting in Jega town having burned churches and killed Christians in 1994, Muslim extremists again went on a rampage in 2005, Rev. Mamman told Compass.

“They burned our churches, and the ECWA church in Jega town too was burnt to ashes,” he said. “One of our members, Ayuba Mamman [no relation], was killed.”

Rev. Peni confirmed the attack on Jega Christians, the burning of their churches and the killing of four Christians there in the year 2005. He could provide only two partial names of those killed, however: Ayuba and Livinus.

Also in 2005, Rev. Mamman said, Muslim extremists in Kangiwa town burned the ECWA church there.

Marginalized

Rev. Peni said Christians suffer discrimination in the public service sector.

“In appointment into government, Christians don’t stand the chance of getting appointed,” Peni says. “There is only one Christian commissioner in the state public service, as appointments are based on whether one is a Muslim or not,” he added.

Pastor Sati Riba of Redemption Power Ministry said that in Kebbi state, only one of the state’s 12 permanent secretaries is a Christian.

Rev. Peni further noted that Christian Religious Knowledge is not taught in public schools, while Islamic Religious Knowledge is compulsory in all of them.

Kebbi state government officials declined to discuss these issues with Compass.