For reasons that are not difficult to surmise, the British administration by agreement with the age-long local emirates confined or restricted the operations of Christian missions in northern Nigeria during the colonial period. Given these factors, it is easy to discern or understand the volatile nature of the inter-relationship of Islam and Christianity in northern Nigeria. There are many documented cases in which child abduction has been combined with forced marriage and conversion to Islam in the sharia states. In mainly Christian areas of Kaduna state, Christian mobs retaliated murdering Muslims and destroying many mosques. The recent profiling of Nigeria by the US government citing her for religious intolerance is symptomatic of a world-wide apprehension of the combustible nature of the religious situation in Nigeria.

Source: The Guardian January 29, 2020 03:56 UTC