Beyond Intolerance: Towards a Paradigm Shift for Religious Pedagogy in Nigeria

By Stella Adamma Nneji

There is no gainsaying the fact that the problem of religious intolerance has become a worldwide problem. In todays pluralistic society, the dialogical tension between openness and identity has become a major challenge for interreligious dialogue and peaceful co-existence. This tension is expressed in the question, Can one maintain ones own religious identity without one closing oneself off from the other? This question is central to the challenges posed on how religious education can contribute to sustainable peace in Nigeria and the world over. In this book Stella Nneji critically assesses the various models of religious pedagogy (mono-religious, multi-religious and inter-religious) by asking how these models relate to the dialogical tension between openness and identity in Nigeriaa nation perceivably confronted with an enduring history of post-colonial strife, religious intolerance and violence. The contention is that the mono-religious and multi-religious models, which, while dominant in current practice and in academia, nevertheless fall short of expressing the authentic challenges and opportunities religious intolerance presents in Nigerian multi-religious/cultural context. In this connection, this book provides a clear notion of the theological foundation, principles, and framework of inter-religious education and a practical guide for authentic dialogue in a plural context. She calls for a paradigm shift for confessional religious pedagogy to a model of inter-religious learning as incorporated within the hermeneutical-communicative education. On this basis, the book proposes a new model for the role of religious education in Nigeria. This model in a critical-enculturated way, attempts to recognize the tensions of authentic religious difference, presupposing a broad spectrum of difference in the classroom in a way that also incorporates genuine religious encounters and expressions of identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984515599

Stella Adamma Nneji

Stella Adamma Nneji obtained her doctoral degree (PhD) in theology (STD) from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), Belgium. Her research focuses on the inter-religious education and dialogue, especially Christian-Muslim dialogue. She has presented some of her research findings as papers at international conferences and published articles in international journals.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Stella Adamma Nneji.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2018903321

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-9845-1561-2

                            Softcover                           978-1-9845-1560-5

                            eBook                                978-1-9845-1559-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Rev. date: 04/19/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

774922

DEDICATION

TO

THE GLORY OF GOD

and

THE MEMORY OF MY PARENTS,

MR. AND MRS. MICHAEL F. NNEJI

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

THE ISSUE OF RELIGIOUS (IN)TOLERANCE IN NIGERIA: THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

1.0. INTRODUCTION

1.1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF NIGERIA: AN OVERVIEW

a. Physical Environment

b. Languages and Culture

c. Brief Historical Facts

d. Religion

1.1.1. Contemporary Situation and Problems

1.2. RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE: THE NIGERIAN CASE

1.2.1. The Relationship between Religions in Nigeria

1.2.1.1. Exclusivism

1.2.1.2. Intolerance

1.3. CONFLICT IN NIGERIA

1.3.1. Specific Examples of Events of Religious Intolerance/Conflict

1.3.1.1. Controversies over Religion

1.4. SOME ROOT CAUSES OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS IN NIGERIA

1.4.1. Religious Pluralism in Nigeria

1.4.2. Usman dan Fodio Jihad (1804–1808)

1.4.3. Islam and Revitalization Programs

1.4.4. Sharia in Muslim Life

1.4.5. Islamic Fundamentalist in Nigeria

1.4.5.1. The Maitatsine Movement

1.4.5.2. The Nigerian Muslim Brothers (Shiites)

1.4.5.3. The Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN)

1.4.6. Christian Revivalist Groups and Their Fundamentalist Tendencies in Nigeria

1.4.6.1. The Born-Again Group of Christians

1.4.6.2. The Use of the Media and Provocation of Disputes

1.4.6.3. The Challenge of Pentecostal Revivalism in Nigeria

1.5. BASIC OBSTACLES OF RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM TO INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

1.6. THE CONCEPT OF TOLERANCE

1.6.1. Tolerance and the Truth Question: To a Qualified Tolerance

1.7. CONCLUSION

CHAPTER TWO

SITUATING THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE YOUTH IN THE NIGERIAN CONTEXT

2.0. INTRODUCTION

2.1. INDIGENOUS EDUCATION AND ITS SETTING

2.1.1. General Education in the Traditional Context

2.1.2. Religious Education in the Traditional Context

2.1.3. The Traditional Religious Context

2.1.4. The Aims and Nature of Traditional Religious Education

2.1.5. The Content of Traditional Religious Education

2.1.6. The Teaching Method of Traditional Religious Education

2.1.7. Traditional Religious Education Teachers

2.1.8. The Traditional Learner

2.1.9. Evaluation

2.2. THE ISLAMIC EDUCATION: AN OVERVIEW

2.2.1. The Practice of Islamic Education in Nigeria

2.3. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY EDUCATION

2.3.1. Arrival of the Christian Missionaries and Western Colonizers

2.3.2. The Introduction of Formal Western Education

2.3.3. Religious Education in the Christian Missionary Era

2.3.3.1. The Nature and Aims of Religious Education in the Christian Missionary Era

2.3.3.2. The Content of Christian Religious Education

2.3.3.3. The Teaching Method in Christian Religious Education

2.3.3.4. The Nature of Religious Education Teachers

2.3.3.5. The Nature of Learners

2.4. NATIONALIZATION OF SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA BY THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT: AN OVERVIEW

2.4.1. The Universal Primary Education in the Eastern Region

2.4.2. The East Central State Public Education Edict 1970 (Edict No. 2 of 1971)

2.5. THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AFTER GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF SCHOOLS

2.5.1. Religious Education in Public Schools

2.5.2. Analysis of Curriculum of Textbooks in Religious Education

2.5.3. The Aims of Religious Education

2.5.4. The Role of the Religious Education Teacher

2.5.5. Family Cooperation

2.6. CONCLUSION

CHAPTER THREE

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIONS IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

3.0. INTRODUCTION

3.1. THE MONORELIGIOUS MODEL (LEARNING IN RELIGION)

3.1.1. Preamble

3.1.2. The Aims of Religious Education in the Perspective of the Monoreligious Model

3.1.3. Normative Basis

3.1.4. Interreligious Dialogue in the Perspective of the Monoreligious Model

3.1.5. Concluding Reflections on the Mono-religious Approach

a. Static Interpretation of One’s Own Tradition

b. Lack of Recognition of Plurality

3.2. MULTIRELIGIOUS MODEL (LEARNING ABOUT RELIGION)

3.2.1. Preamble

3.2.2. The Aims of Religious Education in the Perspective of the Multireligious Model

3.2.3. Normative Basis

3.2.4. A Critique of the Multireligious Model of Interreligious Dialogue

a. Relativism Instead of Involvement

b. The Teacher/Educator Chiefly Viewed as Neutral

c. Formal instead of Qualitative Tolerance

3.3. INTERRELIGIOUS MODEL (LEARNING FROM RELIGION)

3.3.1. Preamble

3.3.2. Normative Basis

3.3.3. The Aims of Religious Education in the Perspective of the Interreligious Model

a. Changing One’s Perspectives

b. Encountering Difference / Entering Other Worlds

c. Response from One’s Own Location

d. Developing Relationships / Living Out One’s New Understanding

3.3.4. Evaluation

a. Involvement with One’s Own Tradition

b. Recognition of the Plurality

3.4. CONCLUSION

CHAPTER FOUR

NEW TASKS FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

4.0. INTRODUCTION

4.1. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN WESTERN EUROPE IN THE LAST PART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND IN THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

4.1.1. The Youth’s Search for Identity and Meaning

4.1.1.1. The Importance of Religious Education as Education for Meaning

4.1.1.2. The Importance of the Role of the Teacher in Religious Education

4.1.1.3. The Acquisition of Meaning

4.1.1.4. Exploring and Expanding Meaning

4.1.1.5. Expressing Meaning

4.1.1.6. Relational Learning

4.2. NARRATIVITY AS A METHOD AND FORM OF ADULTS’ RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

4.2.1. Narrative Identity and Social Context

4.2.2. Narrative Identity and Religious Identity

4.2.3. Main Elements That Constitute Cultural and Religious Identity of the European Union

a. European Religious Tradition, Values, and Culture

4.2.4. Personal Narratives and Contextual Reading of the Bible in Religious Education

4.3. SUMMARY OF THE SHIFT ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN WESTERN EUROPE

4.3.1. The Changes in the Actual Practice of Teaching and Learning

4.3.2. The Main Shift in Religious Education: From a Correlative Didactics to a Hermeneutical Interpretation

a. Beyond Theological Correlation Strategies

b. The Interrupted Christian Tradition

c. Multicorrelation

4.4. HERMENEUTICAL-COMMUNICATIVE MODEL AS A PARADIGM SHIFT IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

a. The Religious Educator as a Hermeneut: Witness, Specialist, and Moderator (WSM)

b. A Utopian Truth Concept

c. Religious Didactical Consequences

d. An Open Tradition Concept with Multiple Meanings

4.4.1. The Hermeneutical Approach: The Concept of Hermeneutics

4.4.2. The Aims of Religious Education in the Perspective of the Hermeneutical-Communicative Model

a. Religious Education as Self-Clarification in Communication

4.4.3. Advantages of a Hermeneutical Approach

4.6. RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE IN NIGERIA

4.6.1. The Problem of Religious Intolerance/Violence

4.6.2. The Christian Missionary Legacy

4.6.3. The Quest for Dialogue and Tolerance

4.6.4. The Quest for Forgiveness and Reconciliation

4.7. THE RELEVANCE OF IMPLEMENTATION OF A HERMENEUTICAL-COMMUNICATIVE MODEL IN THE CLASSES OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

4.7.1. The Incompatibility of a Kerygmatic Deductive Model of Religious Education and the Cultural/Religious Situation in Contemporary Nigeria

4.7.2. Do We Really Need a Hermeneutical-Communicative Model in Nigeria, and If So, Then Why Is It So Necessary?

4.7.3. Enculturation of the Implementation of the Hermeneutical-Communicative Model in the African/Nigerian Context

a. The Role of Community Living / Communal Spirit

b. The Role of Storytelling and New Place for Bible Didactics

c. The Role of Worship

d. The Role of Hospitality

4.7.4. Are There Challenges Facing the Implementation of the Hermeneutical-Communicative Model in Itself and in Nigeria? If So, What Are They? Can Anything Be Done?

a. Violent Conflict

b. Poverty

c. Ethnocentrism

d. Focus on Interpreting Reality

e. Involvement with One’s Own Tradition

4.8. CONCLUSION

GENERAL CONCLUSION

1. Overview of the Results of the Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis done in the First Chapter

2. Overview of the Results of the Theoretical Analysis Done in the Second Chapter

3. Important Findings of the Results of Our Evaluation of the Diverse Models dealing with Religious Diversity in Educational Settings

4. Results of the Analytical-Theoretical Research Done in the Fourth Chapter

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FOREWORD

The work before you holds implications of great significance for the current state of affairs in religious education. In her work in Beyond Intolerance, Sister Stella confronts the dominant Western models of religious pedagogy with the realities of her native Nigeria—a nation perceivably confronted with an enduring history of postcolonial strife, religious intolerance, and violence.

Beyond Intolerance gathers to a summit the most authoritative voices and schematics in the world of religious education, critically sketching how the nuances of her Nigerian context challenge and, at times, exhaust the expressive power of these models. Sister Stella is especially critical of the monoreligious and multireligious models, which, while dominant in current practice and in academia, nevertheless fall short of expressing the authentic challenges and opportunities religious intolerance presents in her homeland.

Inevitably, for Sister Stella, the Western colonial disposition out of which these models have sprung runs the risk of recapitulating the very intolerance that each, in its own way, purports to overcome. The monoreligious model (learning in religion) lends itself toward either to the exclusion of difference or to an inclusivism that presumes a monolith faith that blinds itself to difference and actively silences authentic religious expression of others. The multireligious model (learning about religion), often motivated by a similar attention to tolerance, presumes the possibility of a disengaged disposition toward authentic religious expression, opting for universal critique and objective rationality that, in effect, waters down the values of all particular religious perspectives in the school.

Again and again, Sister Stella rigorously details how the Nigerian context resists the attempts of the monoreligious and multireligious models to ameliorate intolerance and the dramatic and even violent effects these attempts have had on individual and communal formation in Nigerian schools. Beyond Intolerance proposes a model of interreligious learning (learning from religion) as incorporated within the so-called hermeneutical-communicative model in Nigeria. This model, preferred by Sister Stella, but in a critical-enculturated way, attempts to recognize the tensions of authentic religious difference, presupposing a broad spectrum of difference in the classroom in a way that also incorporates genuine religious encounters and expressions of identity. It is a model where openness to the other and having a genuine nonviolent religious identity are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, in the encounter and dialogue with the other, one also discovers and renews one’s own religious identity. This model makes it possible for confessional religious education to provide a crucial contribution to a more peaceful society in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Beyond Intolerance presents a serious challenge to religious pedagogy and discourse. The reader will gain immense and, at times, firsthand knowledge of the manifold ways the Nigerian context discloses new constructive meaning for our field. An original work, Beyond Intolerance leads to a new model for the role of religious education in the long term—not merely as instruction in tolerance, but as overcoming intolerance through dialogue. The great achievement of the work, therefore, lies in how the apparent crisis of religious intolerance in Nigeria speaks of a crisis much closer to home for religious educators the world over. If Nigeria is to disclose such an exemplar, as is indeed my expectation and hope, that will in no small way be due to the deep resonances Sister Stella here captures of a nation looking to educators who embody authentic religious beliefs in their opposition to intolerance and indifference—both inside and outside our schools.

Prof. Didier Pollefeyt

Full professor, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My foremost and profoundest thanks go to God, whose grace and loving hands continue to guide me and broaden my knowledge right through the course of my research, the completion of this project, and its publication to contribute my quota to a better world and religious education. I thank him especially for being there always with his grace to encourage and to support me, even in the darkest moments of my life.

I cannot thank enough my parents, brothers, and sisters, who have relentlessly continued to support and encourage me. They really deserve to be thanked in a very special way for their invaluable contribution in making me what I am today.

My unalloyed gratitude goes in a very special way to my promoter, Prof. Didier Pollefeyt, whose insights, critical reading of this book, and guidance during the conception and writing of this project have helped immensely to shape my theological mind in general and this book in particular. I am most grateful to him for painstakingly and thoroughly supervising this research. Sincere thanks are also due to Prof. Lambert Leijssen for his moral support and useful suggestions he offered me in the course of my encounters with him. His erudite advice and suggestions also guided me as I researched and came up with this project. Similarly, I must not fail to express my appreciation to Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) professors, especially those of the faculty of theology and religious studies for their erudite lectures, which have continued to shape and sharpen my theological focus. I am also grateful to Prof. Marianne Moyaert, Prof. Maha El-Kaisy, and Prof. Birute Briliute, who undertook the vital task of readers/correctors of this work and whose critical reading, insights, and corrections helped to bring this project to its present standard. I will remain continuously grateful for the financial assistance granted to me by the Vereniging Der Religieuzen Dominicanessen Vzw, in Lubbeek, which enabled me to pursue my academic aspirations.

I must remain grateful to my congregation, the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy (DMMM), for their support and granting me the permission to further my education abroad in the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. I will not forget Rev. Dr. Bartholomew C. Ugochukwu for his immense support and encouragement.

In a special way, I appreciate the support and encouragement I received from Sisters Eucharista Nwaokeji, Nicolette Okoro, Stella Onwubiko, Cleopatra Enyinnia, Thelma Iwuamadi, Tina Ohadugha, Angela Oguwike, Magdalena Ohaja, Chetachi Chikezie, Ifesinachi Ogbonna, Monique Ejim, Miriam Cornel Obi, and Annuciata Nwosu.

Also, I express my deep gratitude to Frau Anna Timinssky, who contributed greatly in making my stay in Belgium a most memorable one. I thank also Mr. Dennis Schepens for his support during my years of studies. Sincere thanks are due to Mr. Leo Chukwudi for being supportive. I am also grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Michael and Monica Justice and their children Rhiannon and Charles for their immense support. I also express my gratitude to Mrs. Helen Grandjean and Mary Briggis for their support.

To Archbishop Most Reverend John C. Wester, the Archbishop Emeritus Most Reverend Michael J. Sheehan, the Catholic center staffs of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I am currently deepening my pastoral experience, I owe a lot of gratitude for accommodating me.

The encouragement I receive from my friends and colleagues remain immeasurable. To all of you who have identified with me in life and shown me some goodness in one way or another, I also remain grateful and pray to God to reward you abundantly.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Religious pluralism, which has been with mankind since recorded history, has, in recent times, made itself very much felt in its negative impact, giving rise to problems of peaceful coexistence. Initially, great religions of mankind were on their own, without much contact with one another. This situation in which they were encapsulated within geographical bounds gave way to a new one in which these religions broke into one another like mighty tornadoes sending their rumbling echoes across the length and breadth of the earth.¹

Nigeria has its fair share of these echoes. Religious pluralism, which existed over before the birth of Nigeria as a political entity, has suddenly turned into a religious time bomb threatening to blow up the entire nation.² Religion, which should bring people together, has been misapplied by fanatics of both religions (Islam and Christianity) to hate each other, to cause mischief, and to spread evil in society. This religious war has been carried beyond the religious forum into other spheres of life in the nation so that politics, social life, and economic pursuit have all been affected. Educational institutions have long been one of the principal sites for defending religious identity and contesting religious rights in Nigeria.³

The navigation between religion and politics in Nigeria has greatly centralized the place of religion in the development of the nation. As such, government moves are closely monitored by both Christians and Muslims, and perceived favoritism of either religious group is challenged with dispatch. This political significance of religions, coupled with the growing uncompromising Muslim and Christian activism, has increasingly damaged cordiality between the adherents of the two religions, producing a growing culture of intolerance and religious violence.⁴ Religious conflicts have therefore revolved mainly around the activities and relationships between Christians and Muslims.

These struggles have contributed to Nigeria’s failure to craft a national consolidated federal identity from the quite diverse ethnic and tribal groups within the borders. Perhaps the central threat to a secular national identity had been the highly publicized and divisive religious violence between Muslims and Christians that has polarized the nation, superseded many tribal and indigenous identities, and created a mainly Muslim north and a primarily Christian south. This alarming trend threatens the fragile unity of a country patched together from numerous tribal groups and already divided along ethnic laws.

Hence, since the last two decades and more, Nigeria experienced events of tensions, violence, and killings between Christians and Muslims. On December 25, 2011, in the midst of the celebration of the birth of Jesus, there were several bomb attacks by the radical Muslim group Boko Haram on the Catholic Church and other churches across Nigeria that left more than a hundred people dead and many wounded, among them many children. These forms of religious violence that resurface time and again in the public social system in Nigeria made again clear to me that this study is not just about academic theology. These attacks on the dignity of the human person and on Christians in particular reveal also painfully the seriousness, the urgency, and the necessity of this work. It gave me also the courage to take up this subject, to work on it for years, and to develop an approach that is despite all counterevidence hopeful for the future that can contribute to effective conflict resolution.

This study, therefore, suggests a hermeneutical-communicative pedagogical model of conflict resolution for contemporary Nigerian schools that takes into consideration the worldviews of Nigerians and employs certain common teachings of indigenous religions, Christianity, and Islam. It is hoped that this theological/pedagogical approach will rightly influence Christian praxis in Nigeria and be an example to others. I believe that a relevant and decent religious education model in Nigerian schools can help young people to learn appropriate information and a thorough clarification of the different logics used when dealing with the meaning of life, values, and religions to strengthen their capacity to develop a philosophical/ethical/religious identity and to live as good citizens in a democratic society.

This is the basis for undertaking the present project on religious pedagogy. The central research question became how religious education can contribute to sustainable peace in Nigeria and the world at large. It is intended to be a contribution to the ongoing process of reconstruction and reformulation in the field of religious pedagogy. There is no gainsaying the fact that the problem of religious intolerance has become a worldwide problem. Can religious educators simply watch this situation go on unaddressed? Coming from this background, it becomes imperative to address this issue. Having been an educator myself and having experienced this problem both in Nigeria and here in the West for some years now, I am deeply motivated to study the tradition behind the teaching of religion and the attitude toward it in the present time.

This study has been developed in the context of the Nigerian plural society and cast within the postmodern ambience. Certainly, Nigeria is Africa’s most populated county. It is estimated to be inhabited by over 180 million people, distributed in some 250 ethnic, cultural, and linguistic communities, with the Hausa/Fulani, the Yoruba, and the Igbo as the major ones. In terms of religious sociology, it is a country composed of almost equal measure of Christians, Muslims, and minority African traditional religionists. If the question may be asked, is this not a good-enough context for any talk about plurality and representation of the values of diversity and difference if the various components of cultural, religious, and linguistic blocks are not to lose their identity as they continue to exist together as one nation? Inevitably, does this situation not call for theological reorientation, more invigorated and dynamic practical effort, and new ways of handling the age-old quest for peaceful coexistence?

Coming over to the West, I was unavoidably confronted with what appears to correspond to some extent with the emphasis and pattern of life in Nigerian society, but which is being presented in a new guise and context. This is the contemporary emphasis in Western society on plurality, diversity, and celebrated difference otherwise designated and presented as aspects of postmodern sensibilities.

It leaves one to wonder whether the postmodern society of the West is not retrieving or appropriating the values of traditional societies. What is the tradition behind the teaching of religious education in the Catholic Christianity and the attitude toward it in the present time? Hence, the study endeavors to provide, as part of our intellectual equipment, the clear notion of the theological foundation, principles, and framework of interreligious education and a practical guide for authentic dialogue in a plural context.

It is recognizable, therefore, that I have already made several references in the foregoing explanations, though indirectly, to what could also serve as the different aims and objectives of this book. But for the sake of clarity and systematic presentation of the work, it is pertinent to further identify and lay out the different aims. To begin with, the focus is specifically on how religious education can contribute to a more peaceful Nigeria. This topic has been chosen because I discovered that if Nigerian Christians and Muslims respond to the signs of the times, which express themselves in religion and society toward realizing true piety, they can discover strengths in their traditions to work for interreligious dialogue and coexist peacefully with each other.

In this study, I will face this challenge from my own perspective as a Christian. It is not up to me to do this exercise from the Muslim perspective, but I do hope and believe that also from that other great Abrahamic tradition that Islam is, similar perspectives can arise that would contribute to world peace through religious peace. In such a situation, for me as an educator, a search for personal identity as well as the desire and necessity to learn more about contemporary methods of religious education in Western Europe became the greatest stimulus for my studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in and for my work on this book. Therefore, the present state of religious education in Nigeria requires urgent attention and practical solutions.

This study has been informed by a fundamental argument that religious formation of youths in contexts like Nigeria need to acknowledge that the cries of young people should be the point of departure in any education toward making conscious and responsible life decisions. So holistic religious formation of youth worthy of the name in contemporary society requires a creative morality based on individual responsibility that will foster a stable communitarian ethic that equally respects autonomy and responsibility. Inasmuch as religious education ought to connect to the life and beliefs of the respective religions in multireligious and multicultural contexts, religious education should equally be shaped by the religious vision of life and their beliefs in distinctive ways. Nevertheless, the religious education envisioned in this study takes account of the tensions between the personal experiences of the individual persons and cultural influences as to empower pupils to grow beyond being trapped in a delinquent trajectory.

It goes to underscore once again the motif behind the present work and the goal it aims to achieve. The project is born out of an ardent desire to discover a good approach, if not the best method, to follow in the teaching of religious education in our contemporary postmodern society. It aims at contributing to the on-going theological search for a proper sense of direction in religious studies and to bring Christianity to dialogue with different contexts for adequate peaceful coexistence with respect to the Nigerian youth. The practical preoccupation in this search for a good method is to discover fitting structures in the people’s tradition and valuable church laws that would enhance and facilitate the effective religious education today. In this connection, I shall also create greater awareness among the Nigeria/African people regarding the value of traditional and cultural heritage in conveying the Christian message.

This study intends to develop a new paradigm in the teaching of religious education in response to the crisis of religious intolerance in Nigeria. It aims at calling for a paradigm shift in religious education to enable young Nigerians to strive for cultural tolerance and peace. I intend to focus my research on the following questions:

1. What kind of pedagogical theological models do we need to develop and use in the classes of religious education to approach properly and stimulate in adequate ways those young Nigerian people whose religious identity is strongly influenced by fundamentalist/fanatics’ mentality in regard to their self-image and self-understanding?

2. What kind of theoretical background, theological as well as educational, will offer the appropriate perspectives for decent and relevant religious education of the young generation in Nigeria, given their perception of the religious field?

3. What kind of pedagogical and theological methods and models would we need to develop for religious education in schools to help young Nigerian people develop an open mind toward others with different religious views and philosophies of life?

4. Is the proposed paradigm the hermeneutical-communicative concept of teaching religion a good answer to the question of Nigerian religious education? Is the hermeneutical-communicative approach a good answer to the religious crisis in Nigeria?

A study of this nature is of invaluable significance and importance for several reasons.

First, this study concerns religious intolerance/conflicts, a phenomenon that is known and experienced in every part of the world. Although there are times when conflicts have been profitable, for most times, conflicts are chaotic, destructive, and regressive in nature. Therefore, as Akanji rightly pointed out, everyone in society is a stakeholder in conflict issues. Parents, teachers, managers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, traditional rulers, community leaders, religious leaders, civil servants, the private sector, security agencies, young people, women, men, governments, students etc., become inevitable partners in the search for peace.⁵ Through the years, scholars have conducted several researches in their bid to provide solutions to the numerous conflicts in Nigeria, and this study is another contribution to that ongoing search.

Second, conflict is multidisciplinary; and just as several hands have been on deck to contribute to its transformation, the theological discipline also needs to join the race for the promotion of peace and stability in Nigeria. It is therefore argued in this study that a theological/religious education model for religious conflict resolution can complement other efforts already in use. It has been noted that religious conflict, as manifested between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, has become one of the most potent threats to the stability and development of the nation; and if nothing urgent is done to alter this trend, the making of the nation will remain elusive.

This study is therefore concerned about how to work out harmonious relationships between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria through a religious education approach that combines the philosophical, theological, ethical, pedagogical, and hermeneutical reflections. This differs from extant scholarly works that are characterized by the avoidance of an ethical and practical theological ethos. While these scholars have attempted to maintain neutrality in their approach to religious conflicts, the argument of this study is that a hermeneutical-communicative approach of religious education may engage the issue of religious conflict through novel ways that offer great hopes for a more reconciled living between Christians and Muslims in contemporary Nigerian society. Theological efforts have been geared toward solving problems in the lives of people; and because of the volatile nature of religious conflict in contemporary Nigeria, it becomes absolutely important to reflect hermeneutically on how to promote peace, unity, and progress.

I would like to articulate a deeper understanding of religious education in Nigerian schools that engage and educate pupils in their totality (the heart, mind, soul, and body), one that is open to multiplicity of religions and cultures through examining the complexities of the relationship between individuals, relevant groups to which the individual belongs, and the wider religious tradition.⁶ I would like to advocate for a religious education that takes plurality, tolerance, and dialogue very seriously and that can adequately help young Nigerians to confront and participate in open and constructive dialogue toward learning from their mistakes without being trapped in a delinquent trajectory (…).⁷ We want to know what factors are influencing religious identity formation of youths in Nigeria. We also would like to understand the factors that influence the Christian-Muslim antipathy and to examine the contributions that a new model of religious education articulated in the hermeneutical-communicative model⁸ can make in Nigeria in response to the Catholic Church’s initiative⁹ regarding Christian-Muslim dialogue.

The premise of this study is that a hermeneutical-communicative approach, which gives an opportunity for people of various paths of life to learn and discuss the differences of other religious and/or ideological perceptions as well as to share his/her own belief, is to be such as to provide impetus for the call of relationships between Christianity and Islam in Nigeria. It has the special task of correcting the wrong use of religion whereby religion has been turned into a source of disunity and violence. This theory and concept of religious learning not only helps to denounce indoctrination and fundamentalism, but also opens a perspective through which different religious and cultural identities and worldviews of contemporary Nigerian youth can meet, appreciate, relate, dialogue, understand, coexist, and cooperate with one another without denying their own identity and particularity. Hermeneutical-communicative religious education must answer these problems in the concrete situation of Nigeria.

As the research unfolds, it will become evident that the subject of religious interaction is really one of Nigeria’s most crucial questions since it touches directly on the fundamental issue of the stability and survival of the country itself as a united entity. Based on the analysis, it will challenge Nigerian schools to examine the overriding model of religious teaching as part of their failure to accept, to appreciate, to encounter, and to tolerate one another. The challenges vary from the understanding in matters of faith and beliefs between members of different religions in Nigeria, responses to pluralism, and multicultural and multireligious prospects and perspectives.

My proposal, therefore, sets me against those who would think that our proposed paradigm, though seen partly as a remedy to the increasing rate of religious intolerance in Nigeria, is without tensions and challenges. It is important to point out that the research work is not out to propose a new policy and regulation, but rather to examine and highlight the problem involved in relation to the socioreligious formation and development of the Nigerian youths and to propose a line of pedagogical approach for religious education.

Thus, the study addresses a subject that is theological, ethical, pedagogical, and hermeneutical, with various dimensions. It involves scholars who address the subject from theological, sociological, theoretical, and practical perspectives. Consequently, the research method is primarily a literary analysis of relevant literature. But it involves also historical, exploratory, analytic, and expository approaches. The historical approach applies to reconstructing the history of education and conflict in Nigeria. I will examine the factors that generate the problem of religious conflict in Nigeria. To give the ethical basis to our study, we will offer a search into contemporary study on the concept of tolerance.¹⁰ In the theological dimension, we will examine the study of models to approach religious diversity. The pedagogical aspect will help us to evaluate the different models to teach religion, namely, the monoreligious model, the multireligious model, and the interreligious model. We will offer an overview of the relationship between religions in religious education. The hermeneutical approach applies to the recontextualization of the hermeneutical-communicative model in the Nigerian context.

This methodology is applied in the study by using both primary and secondary sources of the available literature pertaining to the subject while taking into consideration the context and critical consciousness of our time. The analysis of the role of the Nigerian context will be examined critically to reconsider and improve the development of a religious/Christian identity and the orientations for religious education among the young in the contemporary Nigerian context.¹¹

Although there are many factors responsible for the emergence of religious intolerance and conflicts in Nigeria (such as ethnicity, politics, economy, etc.¹²), I limited my focus on this study on religion. Let me, therefore, stress that my starting point is immediately the possible contribution of religion and religious education to conflict resolution and not an analysis of all factors contributing to conflict and conflict resolution in Nigeria. I can say that in Nigeria, the religious factors strengthen all the other factors, make it more a landscape of two groups, and legitimize the other factors with religious argumentation, which are also very strong, with deep arguments.

As Ibrahim Gambari, former minister of Foreign Affairs and Nigerian permanent representative to the United Nations, rightly observes, the religious divide of Nigeria is unbalanced regionally; and he believes this has reinforced the ethnic antagonism in a political system driven by ethnicity¹³ and religion. Religion and ethnicity constitute a major threat to the survival of Nigerian democracy. However, I do not want to overstate the religious factor in this research. I also considered other factors and realized that the issue of intolerance and violence is not exclusive to religion, but that religion also uses these other factors politically, economically, socially, etc. I also want to correct in some way the underestimation of the factor of religion in peace-building theories and that today the whole world of peace ethics looks more and more to religion as a factor of violence but also as a potential factor of peace and reconciliation.¹⁴

Thus, an element of uniqueness in my approach is that it transforms religion as a factor of conflict into a factor of dialogue while religion is mostly denied or neutralized through multireligious learning, as I shall reveal in chapter 3.

Conversely, the politicization of religion and the religionization of politics¹⁵ among Muslims and Christians in Nigeria were examined in this study; and attention was given to the role of Sharia, fundamentalist Muslims, and radical Christian Pentecostalism in Nigeria’s religious conflicts. Also, classic theories of religious pedagogy were discussed in relation to religious intolerance/conflicts in Nigeria, and the conceptual framework for conflict resolution follows the approach of the hermeneutical-communicative model. By exploring the Christian, Muslim, secular, and indigenous approaches to conflict handling, the study established strengths and weaknesses that paved the way for suggesting a hermeneutical-communicative model as a practical approach for the church’s involvement in conflict resolution in Nigeria. Implementing the hermeneutical-communicative model of religious education in Nigerian schools can make a big difference and even softens the issue of religious intolerance in Nigerian schools and society at large.

This book is clearly structured in four chapters. I shall give in the first chapter an adequate overview of the problem of religious intolerance and conflict in Nigeria both from the Christian and Muslim perspectives. What are the issues to be raised? I shall investigate questions such as the following: What is conflict? What is tolerance? What are the factors that generate the problem of religious intolerance/conflict in Nigeria? How might Nigerian schools and institutions of higher learning constitute sites for generating or countering religious intolerance?¹⁶ It will be revealed that the subject of religious interaction is really one of Nigeria’s most crucial questions.

Against this background, I shall argue that there is an urgent need for the implementation of decent and relevant educational models in religious classes to enable young Nigerians to strive for cultural tolerance and peace. This will lead us to probe into the history of education in Nigeria, but from the perspective of religious education in the country, leading to a deeper understanding of the actual situation and crisis of religious education in Nigeria in the second chapter.¹⁷ I will bring it in confrontation to how religious education is thought in schools and the implication it has on the identity formation of the Nigerian child.

Historically, Nigerian religious education has been influenced by three outstanding pedagogical cultures: (1) African traditional education, (2) Arabic-Islamic education, and (3) Euro-Christian or European pedagogy via the colonialist project.¹⁸ Their contributions gave birth to the exclusivist deductive-type methodology of religious education in Nigeria schools, favored by the Christian and Islamic religions. This approach is confessional, simplistic, and ineffective in the long term, even if attractive and convenient for catechetical purposes in the short run. It appears that the raison d’être of Christian and Islamic religious education in Nigeria is to convert non-adherents to make the learning subjects faithful practitioners of their respective faiths and to become better Nigerian citizens. Faith-based schools thrive upon the presumption that people become better Nigerians and/or religionists through religious education. This presumption does not pay attention to the distinction between morality and religion. The two do not necessarily have to coincide. This approach has been classified by Michael Rosenak as normative ideational:¹⁹ an approach to religious education that focuses more on what to do to become better religionists, especially Christians or Muslims. This being Nigeria’s predominant approach to religious education overstresses norm and imposes moral rules and values. It equally favors a one-sided approach to moral education: the emphasis is simply living in conformity to already-defined divine norms.

But there is the likelihood that the exclusivist deductive-type methodology of religious education in Nigeria does not adequately help young Nigerians to confront and participate in open and constructive dialogue; otherwise, why the continuous religious violence/conflict that resurfaces time and again in the public social system in Nigeria?

In light of the foregoing remarks, this study contributes toward overcoming the polarity and dialogical tension between openness and identity,²⁰ faith praxis, and life experiences of pupils through presenting a model of religious education that is sensitive to contemporary youths’ life complexities. This calls for another theoretical analysis of the three classic approaches of religious education in a multicultural context in the third chapter to question whether the deductive approach of religious education in Nigerian schools is still relevant in pluralistic Nigeria. If the answer is negative, as I shall argue, then there arises the need to discover a better model of religious education that aims at encouraging pupils to reflect critically on the dialogical tensions and conflicting interpretations present in the classroom and shape their search for spiritual and moral identity in light of the Roman Catholic faith and tradition to discover the similarities, differences, and conflicts between their everyday experiences and faith tradition—a model that empowers pupils to learn from one another, especially from the stories that are told from outside, and enables them to understand and cope with sociocultural reality in view of reconstructing a well-defined sense of meaning for their own lives, opinions, and utterances.²¹

Therefore, chapter 3 focuses specifically on the evaluation of the diverse pedagogical models that deal with religious pluralism/diversity in an educational setting, that attempt to articulate an understanding of other religions while maintaining the integrity of Christian claims.²² Our interest in the pedagogical models has to do primarily with the question of how these three approaches relate to the dialogue between religions and the tension between identity and openness.

These models include the monoreligious model, the multireligious model, and the interreligious model. I hope to clarify the discussion on models of religious education, the methods used in teaching, and implicit and explicit pedagogies and theologies that inform the teaching process. I will show a critical nuancing of the identification of monoreligious learning with exclusivism, demonstrating that monoreligious learning can also have an inclusivistic variant. However, there have been many objections to the monoreligious model’s translation of exclusive and inclusive Christian truth claims in an educational context. I shall argue that the monoreligious model does not sufficiently recognize the dynamic character of religion, both intrapersonal and within traditions. Also, there is the critique of a lack of recognition of plurality of particular and different religious traditions within the monoreligious model. Consequently, the monoreligious model will become problematic in the pluralistic society because it gives no room for authentic dialogue since it does not consider the original, particular, or independent reality of the other. This means that, as I shall argue, the exclusivist deductive-type methodology of religious education in Nigerian schools based mainly on conversion and imposition of faith and disconnected from everyday life experiences is no longer relevant to address the issues of religious intolerance and violence in pluralistic Nigeria and the world at large.

Multireligious learning opens the religious scholarly emphasis, assuming that it is possible to obtain an objective viewpoint when looking at all religions.²³ I will maintain that the multireligious model, even though it recognizes the diversity of other religions and worldviews, is not fit to encourage authentic pluralism and qualified tolerance in an educational setting.

The interreligious model openly approaches plurality and worldviews as an opportunity for mutual enrichment and learning. Interreligious learning, therefore, consists in a double reciprocal interpretation of one’s own and the other’s religion by oneself and by the other and also tries to see and understand the perspective of the other. I will thus arrive to the claim that the interreligious model is the one that succeeds best in finding the right balance between identity and openness or how to be open to other traditions without relinquishing one’s own identity.

As a result and in the framework of this study, I favor the interreligious model because it offers more favorable conditions for teaching different religious traditions, irrespective of the tradition to which individuals subscribe. Consequently, it will give reason for my rejection of the exclusivist deductive religious education in the present complex cultural and religious situation in Nigeria.

I shall argue that to enable young Nigerians to strive for cultural tolerance and peace, there is need for a paradigm shift in religious education in contemporary Nigeria that Christian/Muslim belief wouldn’t be introduced or delivered through indoctrinative-oriented educational methods in religious classes anymore. Yet a number of issues warrant further attention in a multicultural and multireligious Nigeria. I will examine critically the role of the context to reconsider and improve the development of a religious/Christian identity and the orientations for religious education among the youth in the contemporary Nigerian context. I will also take the concepts of hermeneutics, communication, and recontextualization very seriously. Context and recontextualization play an important role when helping pupils to elaborate convictions and to own them personally. The changing social and cultural context constantly challenges the continuity of the original inspiration or revelation, and this is precisely why hermeneutics is indispensable to the daily practice of religion.²⁴

In such a vision, I will unfold such an approach as the hermeneutical-communicative model of religious education, which also incorporates interreligious learning. I will reveal the connection between the hermeneutical-communicative model and interreligious learning. This study asserts that the hermeneutical-communicative model can contribute to the religious education of pupils through engaging the multidimensional and transdisciplinary issues that pupils bring to religious classes. The hermeneutical-communicative concept of religious learning not only helps to denounce indoctrination and fundamentalism, but also opens a perspective through which different religious and cultural identities and worldviews of contemporary Nigerian youth can meet, appreciate, relate, dialogue, understand, coexist, and cooperate with one another without denying their own identity and particularity. It aims at encouraging pupils to reflect critically on the dialogical tensions between openness and identity and conflicting interpretations present in the classroom and shape their search for spiritual and moral identity in light of the Roman Catholic faith and tradition to discover the similarities, differences, and conflicts between their everyday experiences and faith tradition.

The hermeneutical-communicative pedagogy comprises two dimensions: the hermeneutical and communicative dimensions of teaching religion classes. Hermeneutics empowers pupils to learn from one another, especially from the stories that are told from outside, and enables them to understand and cope with sociocultural reality in view of reconstructing a well-defined sense of meaning for their own lives, opinions, and utterances. Hermeneutics, therefore, refers to both searching for and finding one’s own interpretations; and this finding is always a heteronymous process, whereby people receive from each other and even from God new interpretations, new ideas, and even, potentially, new life.²⁵ The communicative dimension, however, demands taking pupils along on a journey²⁶ and supporting them in their search for and reception of meaning.²⁷ Communication becomes a central element in the hermeneutical-communicative approach because it presents tradition as a plural and dynamic concept that brings about the exchange between people who do not necessarily share the same worldview.²⁸ Due to the centrality of communication for any religious education in multicultural and multireligious contexts, the hermeneutical-communicative model, like interreligious learning, favors a weak/soft pluralism²⁹ that entails partnership and irreducible alterity. The option for this pluralism gives room and respect for diversity and conflicts, but in terms of a polyphonic self in which the multiplicity of the inner voices and the outer voices of the other individual is given a listening opportunity.

In this way, the hermeneutical-communicative model challenges teachers/educators to move beyond hard pluralism that merely encourages tolerance, integration, and recognition of difference. Hard pluralism functions by recognizing plurality. Yet the recognition of plurality is absorbed into an authoritative corpus (i.e., normative body) as the dominant community, language, culture, and narrative.³⁰ The hermeneutical-communicative approach not only invites pupils and teachers as well as pupils and pupils to enter into conversation with the multiplicity of voices, views, and perspectives encountered in religious classes and contexts. It equally calls on the teachers and pupils to embrace dialogue, engagement, and commitment from a preferential option for Catholicism, for instance, in Catholic schools.³¹ Thus, pupils are challenged to dialogue, engage, and take responsibility for those beliefs and values that might lead to (moral) transformation and to critique, condemn, and resist what is contrary to this transformation³². It is worth noting that the hermeneutical-communicative approach promotes in pupils the freedom to express what they think about religion and help students form their own identity and develop their own worldview, in dialogue with the Catholic tradition and other religions and worldviews.³³

With this, I proceed to chapter 4 and the final chapter of this book. The fourth chapter is not only an adequate presentation of the hermeneutical-communicative model, but also an effort to recontextualize it for an African context. Thus, the core of my concern, the problem I want to tackle in the fourth chapter of this study and in the book, is the identification of the complexity of the religious identity of Nigerian people, especially youths, and the implementation of decent and relevant educational models in religious classes. Hence, chapter 4 intends to develop a new paradigm in the teaching of religious education in response to the crisis of religious intolerance in pluralistic Nigeria and the world at large.

In that sense, the fourth chapter evolves nearly naturally in summarizing the results of the theoretical analysis done in the first and second chapters and the results of the evaluation of the models of religious education done in chapter 3 of this study, interpreting them in view of offering a justified answer for the necessity to implement a new educational model in religious education (the hermeneutical-communicative model) in Nigeria in order to open the ways and support young Nigerians in their search for an appropriate understanding of God and religion and their pertinence in the contemporary world.

However, I am also very aware of the difficulties I will encounter when trying to introduce this model of religious pedagogy in Nigeria: violence, poverty, ethnocentrism, a lack of intellectual formation, and religious fundamentalism. Thus, I shall give a creative and critical recontextualization of the hermeneutical-communicative model in an African context. I will also reveal that irrespective of the hermeneutical-communicative model’s openness and sensitivity to the diversity and plurality of religious traditions, its premises are not without challenges.

In the general conclusion, I will summarize the results of my research and outline some questions for further research on religious identity and on implications for religious education in Nigeria.

CHAPTER ONE

THE ISSUE OF RELIGIOUS (IN)TOLERANCE IN NIGERIA: THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

1.0. INTRODUCTION

In predominantly Christian-Muslim but officially secular Nigeria, sincere interreligious interaction is indispensable for coexistence and harmony. Yet it is a truism that the way religious people, particularly Muslims and Christians, understand their faith and those of others determines their vision of the public space and attitude toward those who believe differently. Both Muslims and Christians appear to be unwilling to accommodate each other and impose their doctrines against the other. The complex experience of shared life between Christians and Muslims, which has presented itself in the serial resurgence of religious intolerance and violence, remains a threat to the image of religion as a force for good. The intolerance and impatience among students in schools and society are becoming worrisome, especially when such are rooted in religion, which touches individuals and communities.

Religious conflict in Nigeria, more than any other kind of conflict, has become highly inflammable, with great propensity for escalation. An occurrence in one part of the nation spreads easily to other parts through reprisal attacks. Religious conflict is thus not only inclined to undermine the nascent Nigerian democracy; it is also capable of precipitating total state collapse. It has led to incalculable loss of lives and immeasurable destruction of property. The consequences have been incessant unrest, distrust, suspicion, and broken and sour relationships between Muslims and Christians. Above all, it has jeopardized national cohesion and development. This alarming trend threatens the fragile unity of a country patched together from numerous tribal groups and already divided along ethnic laws.³⁴

The objective of this chapter is to expose the reader to the status quaestionis that the present research is trying to address. The present chapter, therefore, gives an adequate overview of the problem of religious intolerance in Nigeria both from a Christian and Muslim perspective. It provides the background to a discussion on the relationship between religions in Nigerian pluralistic context. I will examine the problems and difficulties that arise when it comes to the relationship between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. I am concerned with the ways in which educational institutions—whether primary, secondary, or tertiary—have been connected to the growth of religious conflicts in Nigeria over the last two decades. How might Nigerian schools and institutions of higher learning constitute sites for generating or countering religious intolerance?³⁵ What are the factors that generate the problem of religious intolerance? I believe that without considering these problems, one could hardly address the whole problem of religious intolerance in Nigerian society. As Rosalind Hackett rightly pointed out, there have in fact been a number of incidents of religiously linked violence involving Nigerian students since the 1980s. However, efforts to utilize educational resources to achieve religious harmony and national unity also exist. Educational institutions may thus be viewed as microcosmic versions of more macrocosmic sociopolitical trends. Furthermore, such institutions constitute important breeding grounds for religious ideas and movements.³⁶

Given this objective, the scope of this chapter will cover the following areas: (1) a brief history of Nigeria, (2) the problems of religious intolerance/conflicts in Nigeria, and (3) the concept of tolerance.³⁷

1.1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF NIGERIA: AN OVERVIEW

a. Physical Environment

Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, lies between latitude 3° and 14° north and longitude 3° and 15° east. Encompassing diverse environments and cultures, Nigeria is roughly a square block of territory that ranges from the fringe of the Sahara Desert in the north to the coastal swamps along the Gulf of Guinea in the south and wholly within the tropics. Nigeria is situated on the southern coast of West Africa, extending about 650 miles (1,050 kilometers) from north to south and 700 miles (1,130 kilometers) east to west and covering an area of 356,669 square miles (923,768 square kilometers).³⁸ Situated on the west coast of Africa, Nigeria is bounded on the east by Cameroon, on the west by Benin Republic, on the north by Niger and Chad Republic, and on the south by the Atlantic Ocean. In terms of physical feature, it rises gently from south to north with a tableland at the central Bauchi Plateau and has a few hills like the Kukuruku near Jos and Adamawa (northeast). Its two most important rivers, Niger and Benue, with a confluence at Lokoja, divide the country into three unequal parts (the largest being northward) and empty into the Atlantic Ocean with many tributaries, creating a delta region. Being along the equator, the climate is generally hot with two main seasons: wet and dry. The mean maximum temperatures in the dry season are 30°C in the south and 34°C in the north, and the minimum are 18°C and 22°C, respectively. It can rise up to 38°C in March and April and can fall to 13°C in December and January. The yearly annual rainfall decreases from south to north: 177 centimeters in the south, 127 centimeters in the Middle Belt, and 50 centimeters in the north. With regard to vegetation, Nigeria has swamp forest along the coast and rain forest and the savanna in the Middle Belt and north.

b. Languages and Culture

With a population somewhat more than 180 million³⁹ representing a vastly diverse populace of tribes and ethnicities, Nigerian society is a concrete example of cultural, social, religious, and ideological pluralism. Within the country’s boundaries, nearly 250 distinct languages have been identified. These linguistic groupings correspond to basic variations in culture, generally family and social customs, religious affiliations, and, above all, political organizations.⁴⁰ Nigeria’s three major ethnic groups are Igbos in the southeast,⁴¹ Yorubas in the southwest,⁴² and Hausas/Fulanis in the north.⁴³ The others include Ijaw, Kanuri, Efik,