By IfeanyiChukwu Afuba 

It was almost a case of fire on the mountain, run, run, run. The Christian genocide controversy emerged as the dominant, most discussed, most contested subject in the public space, in the past eight weeks. It beat the sensational rumours of a coup plot to the background.

Even 2027 political stories were partially eclipsed in the surge and stridency of comments. Official presidency spokespersons, civil society groups, ruling party loyalists, religious organisations, pro – state religion lobby, politicians in search of cheap popularity, defenders of religious supremacy, all came out forcefully on the contentious subject.

The heated exchanges on whether there has been genocide against Christians in Nigeria were revealing. They offered more than glimpses into the sensibility religious practice evokes in Nigeria. The face – off has once again shown how easily mismanagement of religion polarises Nigerian society. But even more revealing was the alarm triggered by the  prospect of United States/European sanctions on Nigeria.

Those who denied that organised religious killings have taken place in the country went further to accuse others who saw the matter differently of unpatriotism. This reaction speaks of a sense of panic. The outright denials of religious persecution seem primarily intended to stave off sanctions. The knee – jerk responses implicitly acknowledge the grievous consequences that would follow a religious crisis in Nigeria.

Although liberal perceptions of the dispute by some Christian voices may have blunted the prism of Christian persecution, the effect can only be temporary. Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Hassan Kukah, and President, Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, Wale Oke all took the moderated stance that the violence by non state actors ravaging the north and south of Nigeria has made victims of both Christians and Muslims. This description locates the cause of the violence in social, ethnic and governmental dimensions.

This indistinct analysis is both disagreeable to popular Christian attitude and at odds with established patterns of the attacks. Not surprisingly, cantankerous Islamist, Ishaq Akintola, hailed the exoneration of a jihadist plot by Christian voices. Interestingly, Kukah had in 2022 interpreted the violence as assault against Christians by Fulani herdsmen. The effort to avoid the term genocide is appreciated. It’s probably informed by a decision to emphasise solution rather than indictment. De-escalation however, does not change the facts, and the facts define the problem.

It should be stated clearly that incidents involving both Christian and Muslim casualties does not remove the agenda of Christian genocide. The Muslim community has not made an outcry of existential threats. Their exposure to the killings and destruction of the past two decades is different from the experience of Christians. A peculiar antagonism has been associated with the onslaught on Christians. It’s an assault not merely motivated by intolerance and disdain for Christianity but fuelled by pride in Islamic triumphalism. Accordingly, the two dissimilar encounters cannot be regarded or treated as the same narrative.

A common feature of the bloody invasion of Christian communities, sanctuaries such as Churches, rectories, seminaries has been the chant of “Allah akhba” to the bangs of violence. That battle cry is internationally recognised as jihad-oriented. The jihadist chant has regularly accompanied killer-herdsmen attacks on farming communities. These operations have been severe in Plateau and Benue States as well as parts of Niger and southern Kaduna States. Intensified strikes in Benue and Plateau States are notorious by their regularity, viciousness, scale of destruction and land seizures.

Benue and Plateau States are particularly attractive for two reasons. First, for their geographic and agricultural riches respectively. The second obsession with the two States stems from the implications of their demographics. Geo – politically classified as north central, their quest for independent identity is traced to Christian – dominated populations. Enthusiasts of an Islamic caliphate do not like this and seek to alter the demography. Continued attempts at seizure of ancestral lands is not merely to find pasture for land. The patterns of aggression fit a script of ethno – religious cleansing.  

Regional Chairman, Church of Christ in Nations, Rev Ezekiel Dachomo recently released a video of killings by suspected Fulani militants in Heipang and Fan districts of Plateau State. “I made the video for record – keeping so that future generations will be able to see how we were terrorised and persecuted. The video is also evidence that a Christian genocide is going on in the north.” Online newspaper, Daily Post, October 25, 2025, further quoted the clergy from Plateau State as saying that his life had come under threat for making the revelations.

On Benue State, we have the authoritative account of the Catholic Bishop of Makurdi Diocese, Wilfred Anagbe. “The attacks are targeted at Christian indigenous groups in Nigeria. They’re doing this systematically’ the bishop told _The_ _CatholicThing_ , February 1, 2024. As recently as September 11, 2025, Anagbe submitted: “The accurate word to describe the situation is genocide. The total elimination of the Christian population is underway. They change the names of villages to Arabic names. In the State of Benue where my diocese is located, 98 percent of the population is Christian and it has become one of the most dangerous. The attackers are foreign Muslims who destroy Churches, kill defenceless residents, and expel others (https://zenit.org).” Details of the massacres are too harrowing to reproduce.

No less harmful to the cause of a united, peaceful and just federation are the non-violent forms of Islamisation agenda. The adoption of Sharia as a legal code by some States in the north conflicts with the letters and spirit of Nigeria’s Constitution. Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution (amended) prohibits the elevation of any faith as state religion. Section 38 guarantees right to freedom of thought and religion while Section 42 prohibits discrimination against any citizen on ground of religious conviction. These provisions define Nigeria as a multi religious State.

The combined effect of these provisions is not merely the principle of State neutrality; they behove the State to ensure that all religions have equal rights and freedom to practice their faith. Neutrality is replaced with partisanship in Nigeria’s membership of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and other such faith-based associations. Nigeria’s membership constitutes oppression of the country’s population that do not subscribe to Islam. By the same token, the practice of Sharia impedes the freedom of non – adherents. A fundamental conflict exists in the freedom to change one’s religious beliefs enshrined in Section 38 and Sharia’s zero tolerance to renunciation of Islam. A Christian who chooses to sell alcohol cannot do so in a Sharia – ruled State. Nor can the propensity for human rights violations be ignored.

A sense of religious supremacy inspires persecution of other religions. And this is true of the Nigerian situation. At some point, under Nigeria’s most parochial government, the three service chiefs, chief of defence staff and inspector general of Police were all Muslims. Unapologetic, Mohammadu Buhari saw his scandalous appointments as a show of power. His provincial presidency, had by that trend of political patronage, sent out a message about religious hegemony. Such level of discrimination was sufficient to bring bigots acting religious supremacy in the streets.

In December 2024, as Christians prepared to celebrate the incarnation of Christ, an imam placed a banner in front of a mosque in Lekki, Lagos with the toxic words “Jesus is not God.” A sub note below further screamed: “He was a prophet and messenger of God.” Following public backlash, the initial banner was replaced two days later with a recast of the same revisionism. The new banner read: “Allah is the Lord of Jesus Christ.” It takes an entitlement mentality to poke these fingers of provocation in the eyes of a faith. What would happen if a Christian made such deliberate mockery of Islam in Nigeria?

For a harmless opinion that a class WhatsApp group be free of religious stuff and restricted to academics, Deborah Samuel was hunted down and lynched to death in 2022 in Sokoto. When will the suspects, captured in viral videos, be tried for murder? In 2016, Pastor Eunice Olawale was stabbed to death in Kubwa, Abuja, as she preached Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection. Who is enraged by the proclamation that Christ is God?

The surprise and worry, then, is why we’re not more careful, more sensitive, just and fair in handling religious disputes. Why do the authorities allow religious crises to fester, knowing that not addressing them complicates matters? Now that the Government appears to be engaging the problem, it should not be one of fire brigade approach. The government’s interest should move from controlling the narrative to upholding the Constitution. What has been lacking is firmness and fairness in applying the laws.

Among other measures, the agenda for religious peace should include restoration of lands usurped by invaders; punishment for murder, arson and desecration of places of worship. If all religions are treated equally and citizens’ rights are protected, there would not be petitions and outcry. International scrutiny would not arise, let alone, threat of sanctions.

Afuba is Director, Government & Politics Exchange, Awka.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Citizen Richard Odusanya

Let me begin by clarifying: I am not anti-capitalist. In its classical sense, capitalism is one
of humanity’s most remarkable inventions. Long before modern markets, people were
exchanging shells and goods as early as 8,000 BCE. This simple act of trade became the
seed of civilization’s growth. Properly harnessed, capitalism has lifted billions out of
poverty, rewarded creativity, and driven the greatest technological progress in human
history. In its purest form, it is a system of productive freedom—a beautiful engine for
human advancement.

However, what we are running today is no longer that noble system. It has mutated into
a deadly, devilish form of capitalism—one that devours rather than develops. This version
prioritizes greed over growth, speculation over service, and profit over people. It
commodifies everything, even human dignity. It thrives on inequality, exploitation, and
environmental depletion, creating a society where the rich weaponize opportunity while
the poor inherit despair.

The late John Nash, the Princeton mathematician and Nobel laureate, offered an
important insight that exposes this flaw. His theory—depicted in the film A Beautiful
Mind—proved that if each person pursues only their self-interest without regard for the
collective good, society ultimately regresses. Sustainable prosperity requires mutual
benefit, not ruthless competition.

Sadly, across sectors—from politics to banking, education to governance—we have
enthroned a warped form of capitalism that rewards corner-cutting and punishes
conscience. At this juncture, we appeal to all leaders at all levels in these and every other
sector of endeavour, to think of society against self as a precondition for the growth and
development of our dear motherland, Nigeria.

Ours is not a free market; it is a captured market, where connections trump competence and short-term profit eclipses long-term vision. Regardless of who is in government, we must understand that Nigeria is not like the societies we reference in our conversations, and Nigerians are not Europeans, Americans or Asians; we are unique in our ways, and our approach to economics and its realities must reflect our character. Our laws must be modified beyond what obtains in the East or West to change our mindset, reconfigure our brand of capitalism and release our arrested progress.

We thus assert that the call for reform must go beyond economic models to moral
renewal. We must humanise capitalism again—tie enterprise to empathy, profit to
purpose, and success to service. Until we do, what we are running is not an economy but
a machine of moral erosion, driven by brilliance but blinded by greed.

Odusanya is a Public Affairs Enthusiast and Good Governance Advocate
[email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

The Armed Forces—and indeed, the wider Nigerian society—are still reeling from the shock of power wielded not as a scalpel, but as a sledgehammer.

In a single, brutal stroke, disguised as “restructuring,” the Armed Forces are set to witness the orchestrated mass decapitation of their senior leadership, with an estimated 60 senior officers to be forced into premature retirement.

This is not reform—it is an act of profound institutional disruption that threatens to immolate the very professionalism and cohesion upon which national security depends. To dress this purge in the language of “a new direction” is a grotesque deception—a political gambit that sacrifices military stability at the altar of personal control.

Let us be clear about the immediate casualty: morale. The military covenant is built on the bedrock of trust and continuity. By abruptly uprooting scores of senior officers under opaque, politically tinged justifications, the administration has sent a corrosive message to every soldier, sailor, and airman: your service is disposable. Loyalty and competence are meaningless; your career now hangs on the whim of fickle political calculations.

How can an officer corps be expected to focus on mortal threats in the field when they must constantly look over their shoulders, waiting for the next arbitrary sledgehammer to fall on their careers? This move does not merely distract them—it tells them their sacrifice is utterly worthless.

This ambush on morale is compounded by a willful destruction of the military’s brain trust. The notion that a modern military can function without institutional memory is not just naïve—it is strategically suicidal.

The purged officers were not mere epaulettes hanging as decorations on a shoulder, nor simple titles on a flowchart; they were repositories of hard-won strategic knowledge, architects of operational relationships, and guarantors of institutional continuity. By eviscerating them en masse, a needless strategic vacuum has been created.

The forces now risk becoming leaderless, disoriented, weak, and dangerously vulnerable. Our adversaries are not blind; they see this self-inflicted disarray and are undoubtedly preparing to exploit it to the hilt. In the face of rampant banditry and insurgency, this purge is a self-defeating blunder.

Of course, the apologists for this chaos will prattle about the need for “new vigour.” But this hollow, cynical, and shortsighted slogan cannot mask the reality: it is impossible to inject vigour into a system paralyzed by shock.

A mass, abrupt attrition is the very antithesis of effective management. It is strategic chaos disguised as decisive action. The timing—reeking of political panic in the wake of coup rumours—reveals the true motive: it is not about strengthening the military, but about securing a political flank.

The regime may have just traded an imaginary instability for a guaranteed, continuous, and very real institutional crisis. It may have chosen to fight the spectre of rumoured disloyalty by ensuring that no one has any reason to remain loyal anymore.

The most damning indictment of this purge is the signal it sends. To the troops daily risking their lives in the field, it screams that their professional command structure is now fragile and politically contaminated. Their personal faith—that essential ingredient of esprit de corps—is being eroded.

To our enemies, it broadcasts an unmistakable message of weakness and internal confusion. They need not defeat a united, focused military; they simply need to wait for a distracted, demoralized one to make a fatal mistake.

The constitutional power to command the military is not a licence for its destruction. This purge is a catastrophic error in judgment that undermines morale, erodes institutional knowledge, and weakens defence capacity. The solution to security challenges cannot lie in such a self-destructive experiment.

The damage has been done. The question now is whether the humility to reverse course exists. There must be an immediate halt to this reckless campaign. A clear and honest explanation must be issued to the forces, and the arduous task of rebuilding the trust so carelessly destroyed must begin at once.

Poloma is a Nigerian author, historian, and public affairs commentator.. His most notable work, The First Regular Combatant: Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, stands as a landmark contribution to Nigerian military history. [email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Among the doctrines that underpin the legal process in Nigeria, few are as profound and pervasive as judicial independence, but no doctrine in the ecosystem of the law rivals its elusiveness. The idea is ubiquitous in the syllabus of every programme leading to the award of a degree in law, in political science or public administration. After leaving the university, the practitioner will encounter it regularly in conferences and in after-dinner speeches.

Judicial independence is more than the stuff of law faculties and after-dinner fares. It is a fundamental human right in Nigeria. Indeed, the guarantee of the right to fair trial in section 36(1) of Nigeria’s constitution requires that every court should be “constituted in such a manner as to secure its independence and impartiality.”

Judges have a notional obligation to uphold it. The Code of Conduct for Judicial Officers in Nigeria contains five mentions of the words “independent” or “independence” and obligates them to observe “a high standard of conduct so that the integrity and respect for the independence the judiciary may be preserved.”

Despite the repetitive and obligatory genuflections before its shrine, however, few people take even appearances of judicial independence seriously, and many are these days happy to advertise undisguised ridicule for it.

Take for instance what happened last week. On 29 October, a leading national newspaper ran the headline: “FIRS, Judiciary Strengthen Collaboration on Emerging Tax Laws.” It would have been easy to disregard it as the handiwork of a distracted or mis-informed reporter. The reportage, however, belied that.

The National Judicial Institute (NJI) had organized what it called “a capacity-building workshop for Justices of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, and Judges of the Federal High Court on (Nigeria’s) new tax law.” Effectively, this was a training for the most senior and most influential judges in Nigeria.

Established in 1991, the NJI is the statutory body responsible for continuing studies or judicial education by judges and magistrates in Nigeria. It is headed by an Administrator, who is a retired senior judge and operates under the governance of a board chaired by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). The Board approves all of its activities, including conferences, workshops, and trainings.

The NJI is funded by appropriations from the National Assembly, but it also can receive sponsorships sometimes for its activities. The sums had not yet been disclosed at the time of writing, but credible reports appear to indicate that the Federal Board of Inland Revenue (FIRS) substantially sponsored this latest training on the new tax laws. It is suggested, however, that the sponsorship was generous.

One of the headline speakers at that training for these most senior judges in Nigeria was the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), who happens to share the same first name as the infamous tax collector in the Christian Holy Book. To minimize the association with its Biblical forebear, the name this time is stylized to “Zacch”. In his address, Executive Chairman, Zaccheus, called “for deeper collaboration between the judiciary and tax authorities to ensure fair interpretation and enforcement.”

The call for collaboration of any sort, whether deep or shallow, between judges and anybody or institution, clearly misapprehends the mission of the judiciary or invites them to be nobbled for value. It is not immediately clear if the judges had any response for Zaccheus on this occasion. There, however, is evidence on the basis of previous conduct which offers us some clues.

This is far from a first in recent times for a senior public official to seek to corrupt the judiciary under the guise of seeking their collaboration. In his memoirs, The Accidental Public Servant, former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and immediate past Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, proudly tells the story of how as minister two decades ago, he led his staff to meet his High School senior, Lawal Hassan Gummi, who served in his time as Chief Judge of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.

Following that meeting, he gloated, “The FCT judiciary supported us strongly throughout my tenure.” The manner of the support is clear from the fact that it subsequently became nearly impossible to secure any orders against the FCT administration while those two were in office. The few cases that escaped this institutionalized nobbling did not survive to enforcement.

Two years ago, in November 2023, the incumbent Chief Judge of the Federal Capital Territory, Husseini Baba Yusuf, led the Bench of his court to the office of Nasir el-Rufai’s current successor as the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike. At the meeting, the Chief Judge reminded the Minister that “as a judiciary we are part of the government and we expect that we should be able to do things that should make government work….”

As an act of prostitution of judicial powers, it is impossible to beat this. He did not have to wait too long to make good on this institutional willingness to be at the equestrian beck and call of the FCT Minister. When the FCT High Court filled judicial vacancies on its bench in the first quarter of 2024, they dutifully allocated one out of the twelve new vacancies on offer to the FCT Minister, to which he promptly deputed his sister-in-law.

This is far from the only way in which the politicians ensure that the courts are no longer constituted or able to fulfill the basic constitutional requirement of independence.

In July 2022 apparently, as he swore in a new Chief Judge for the state, Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma, at the same time procured the State House of Assembly to amend the High Court Law. Under the new amendment, where there is no substantive Chief Judge, the power to manage and assign cases in the High Court is transferred from the most senior judge (who is supposed to act until a new Chief Judge is appointed) to the Chief Registrar of the High Court.

There are well-founded suspicions that this amendment was procured a little more recently but backdated to 2022 to make it look older than it is in order to amputate the judicial role of the recently sworn-in Acting Chief Judge, Ijeoma Ogugua, whom the governor has been entirely unenthusiastic to allow into the role. The Acting Chief Judge functions under the authority of the National Judicial Council (NJC), in whose composition the Governor has no role.

By contrast, the Chief Registrar is appointed by the State Judicial Service Commission, whose members are entirely beholden to the State Governor. In other words, by depriving the Chief Judge of the power over judicial dockets and case assignment and transferring it to the Chief Registrar, the Governor effectively makes himself the owner, controller, and manager of all cases filed in the High Court of Imo State.

This is an arrangement that makes the life of the Chief Registrar unbearable and that of the Acting Chief Judge untenable. Almost assuredly, it is also manifestly unconstitutional.

Unconstitutional is, however, not a standard that necessarily or at all bothers these peddlers of political roguery. In their books, the judges are there to be massaged in public and ransacked in private. Preachments about judicial independence are there to impress law students, pre-occupy their teachers, and distract the un-initiated. Sadly, the current leadership of the judiciary at various levels at both state and federal levels have been complicit partners in this very political ravishing of their institutional virtues.

Increasingly, doctrines of judicial independence serve only one purpose: to render the judges independent of accountability for breaching it. The value of judicial independence, rather ironically, now lies in the absence of accountability for publicly flouting it.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine