Although crime is certainly a significant feature of the nascent democratic regime in Nigeria, recently re-elected President Olusegun Obasanjo?s greatest challenge is to avert a catastrophic civil war drawn along religious lines. Recent events in the Plateau State eerily echo the Nigerian crisis of 1962. It was then that a state of emergency was declared under similar circumstances that led to the collapse of the democratic government, a three-year civil war, the deaths of a million Nigerians, and ultimately resulted in a 35-year military dictatorship. The level of violence across the country is staggering. An average of some 2,000 people have been killed each year in religious/sectarian strife since the transition to a democratic regime in 1999. However, the picture appears to be getting worse. In 2003 alone, Nigerian authorities have bragged publicly that they have killed nearly 3,100 alleged armed bandits and robbers. Additionally, Christian/Muslim clashes since April 2004 have already resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,000 and hundreds of other casualties in what some describe as preliminary efforts at localized ethnic cleansing, bordering on genocide. With reports that state police and army troops either failed to react or actively disengaged from known ethnic hotspots, Obasanjo?s removal of fellow People?s Democratic Party member Joshua Dariye from the Plateau State?s governor?s office was quickly ratified by both houses of the Nigerian Parliament. Dariye was replaced by retired Lieutenant General Mohammed Chris Alli, former chief of army staff, who is now acting as Sole Administrator of the troubled province.

Alarmingly, , only machete- and knife-wielding gangs of Muslim youth responded in the form of mob violence. The growth of Christian violence across Africa such as the emerging Christian Tarok militia movement in Nigeria as well as the Lord?s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda receives only a small fraction of the press coverage vis a vis Islam-inspired violence and terrorism, yet in some regions of the continent it certainly poses the more significant threat.

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