Nigeria should be divided into two separate independent nations along the Muslims-Christian dichotomy to solve the unending recurring sectarian violence in the country, Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi has said.
Gaddafi suggested this yesterday while delivering a lecture in the capital Tripoli to African student leaders, some of them from Nigeria, according to an agency, the official JANA news agency reported.
“The only thing that could put an end to the bloodshed ... is the appearance of another Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who established a state for the Muslims and another for the Christians,” he said, referring to the partition model of Pakistan, which was born in 1947 after the Muslim minority of predominantly Hindu India founded their own homeland, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
Nigeria has witnessed bouts of sectarian violence, the most recent one in Jos, where tit-for-tat attacks left hundreds of people mostly women and children dead.
“The painful situation that Nigeria is enduring resembles the situation of the Indian subcontinent before 1947, at the time of the massacres between Hindus and Muslims,” Gaddafi said in his remarks.
According to him, former Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo should lead efforts for a Christian homeland in the south with Lagos as its capital, and that a Muslim homeland in the north should have Abuja as its principal city.
It could be recalled that, last month, Gaddafi who was the immediate past leader of the African Union, called for “holy war” against Switzerland because of a recent Swiss referendum banning the construction of new mosque minarets in the country.
He therefore said that the two separate nations within Nigeria should then peacefully agree to share Nigeria’s oil and other natural wealth. He is known for unusual declarations.
But, in a swift reaction, some scholars in Nigeria condemned that call by Gaddafi to spilt Nigeria, saying that the call only exposed Gaddafi’s ignorance on the complicated composition of Nigeria.
Muslim and Christian clerics yesterday lampooned the call by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for break up of Nigeria along religious lines.
A Muslim scholar from Kaduna, Northern Nigeria Sheikh Muhammad Sanusi Khalil said it was even a mistake to contemplate dividing Nigeria along regional and religious lines, because, “the crises that resulted in the killings happen mostly in the North. It is not something between South and North; So how does Gaddafi’s call solve the problem?”
Also, a Christian scholar, Pastor James Wuye of Kaduna based Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum argued that many families in the South have members that are Christians just as in the North, members of the same family are either Muslims or Christians. He then queried, “How will you divide the country?”
But, to some ordinary Nigerians who commented on the matter believed that what Gaddafi offered could be the way out for the enormous problems faced by the country.
Ali Salihu from the north said, “I agree with what Gadaffi said. The only way to resolve the problems facing Nigerians was to break the country into two; North and South.”
Gaddafi suggested this yesterday while delivering a lecture in the capital Tripoli to African student leaders, some of them from Nigeria, according to an agency, the official JANA news agency reported.
“The only thing that could put an end to the bloodshed ... is the appearance of another Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who established a state for the Muslims and another for the Christians,” he said, referring to the partition model of Pakistan, which was born in 1947 after the Muslim minority of predominantly Hindu India founded their own homeland, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
Nigeria has witnessed bouts of sectarian violence, the most recent one in Jos, where tit-for-tat attacks left hundreds of people mostly women and children dead.
“The painful situation that Nigeria is enduring resembles the situation of the Indian subcontinent before 1947, at the time of the massacres between Hindus and Muslims,” Gaddafi said in his remarks.
According to him, former Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo should lead efforts for a Christian homeland in the south with Lagos as its capital, and that a Muslim homeland in the north should have Abuja as its principal city.
It could be recalled that, last month, Gaddafi who was the immediate past leader of the African Union, called for “holy war” against Switzerland because of a recent Swiss referendum banning the construction of new mosque minarets in the country.
He therefore said that the two separate nations within Nigeria should then peacefully agree to share Nigeria’s oil and other natural wealth. He is known for unusual declarations.
But, in a swift reaction, some scholars in Nigeria condemned that call by Gaddafi to spilt Nigeria, saying that the call only exposed Gaddafi’s ignorance on the complicated composition of Nigeria.
Muslim and Christian clerics yesterday lampooned the call by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for break up of Nigeria along religious lines.
A Muslim scholar from Kaduna, Northern Nigeria Sheikh Muhammad Sanusi Khalil said it was even a mistake to contemplate dividing Nigeria along regional and religious lines, because, “the crises that resulted in the killings happen mostly in the North. It is not something between South and North; So how does Gaddafi’s call solve the problem?”
Also, a Christian scholar, Pastor James Wuye of Kaduna based Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum argued that many families in the South have members that are Christians just as in the North, members of the same family are either Muslims or Christians. He then queried, “How will you divide the country?”
But, to some ordinary Nigerians who commented on the matter believed that what Gaddafi offered could be the way out for the enormous problems faced by the country.
Ali Salihu from the north said, “I agree with what Gadaffi said. The only way to resolve the problems facing Nigerians was to break the country into two; North and South.”
