Cheryl deBlaq

For one full year we argued on this street that there is no Christian genocide in Northern Nigeria. Within a single day, a young man released a video of paramilitary-style training where young Muslims were being groomed to chant “Mass Genocide” against Christians in the Southeast. That same week, Sheikh Yahaya Ibrahim Masussuka, one of the few scholars who consistently preached against insurgency, was assassinated. Months earlier, Ibrahim Danshagamu publicly begged the Kano government to protect him after members of the Izala movement allegedly threatened his life. That same week, he was killed in his bedroom. Today, some elders of the Izala movement stand with a young man being trained to hate his fellow human beings. On this same street, members of the same movement celebrated the assassination of Sheikh Masussuka. If the Federal Government does not immediately proscribe the Izala movement, arrest clerics promoting extremism in Northern Nigeria, and release Sheikh Abduljabbar Nasir Kabara to continue deradicalisation work, this country is heading for disaster. We will one day wake up to a fully formed Al-Qaeda-style network in Nigeria. At that point, even Somalia will look safer than Northern Nigeria.