SPIRITUALITY AND VIOLENCE

 

Spirituality and violence are two terms that find themselves very close, on the contrary; they are like two sides of a coin. In recent times, violence as always been linked to spirituality, I am not saying that spirituality can be replaced with violence, but all I am saying is that most violence in the world today is due to some spiritual difference and misunderstanding among different race of people this is not to say or suggest that human being have a violent nature but to make know the extent at which religious violence has changed man into a great beast that will go extra miles to kill so as to convert an alien from his/her religion.

Before commencing my paper or article on the gravidity of spiritual or religious violence, I will like to conceptualize the two terms, spirituality and violence. Spirituality according to Merriam- Webster’s Dictionary, means something that in ecclesiastical law belongs to the church/Mosque or a clergy, it also mean sensitivity or attachment to religious value. Spirituality can also be taken to mean the quality or state of being spiritual. While violence on the other hand according to the same dictionary is define as; exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse or an instance of violent treatment or procedure, it can also be taken to mean an intense, turbulent or furious and often destructive action or force on people. Violence can be caused from political, social or religious difference. The cause of violence that we are concern about in this article is the violence caused out of religious differences.

In the world today, there are diverse religions being practice by different people. Some of the religions that are being practiced by different people in the world today include; Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, African Traditional Religion (A.T.R), among others. In recent times, people who practice these pluralistic religions engage in violence against each other. Spirituality in the Islam settings is taken to mean living a godly life according to the doctrine and teaching of Islamic law. While according to the Christian setting spirituality is taken to mean leading a godly life in a Christ- like manner that aims at worshiping God. Knowing fully well that spirituality as to do with ones relationship with the Supreme Being or ones way of showing homage to God, it is not far from certain hence to note that people worship God or the Supreme Being in their own like manner and in their own cultural understanding. These diverse way of relating to the Supreme Being or worshiping God has lead to diverse violence that we face in the world today; as it is linked to one race or set of people trying to impose is own way of relating to the supreme being or worshiping God on another set of people. The truth is that; the sacred texts of revealed religions may be eternal and unchanging, but they are understood and applied by human beings living in time.

Consequently, in this piece of writing I will like to use two set of examples to illustrate the trend of violence in our world today. One set involves the Muslims and Christians while the other trend as to do with Christianity and Judaism. Digging deep into history, we shall find different account of violence that has erupted due to Christians and Muslim clashes; an example of such account is the recent Jos crises in Nigeria, where Muslims attack Christians faithful in Jos the northern part of Nigeria. The clash or difference between the Muslims and Christian faithful is an age long phenomena that as resorted to many bloody violence. Recently, in Nigeria, there was these crises that erupted in Jos, Nigeria; a set of Muslims known as the Bioko-Aram attacked Christians, this thus, lead to several killings, about five hundred people were reported to have been dead in that crisis. In one of his article, Chris Ngwodo writes this in effect of the religious crises in the northern part of Nigeria:

…in Northern Nigeria, religion, ethnicity and politics are intimately bound up in ways that Nigerians living south of the Niger may find difficult to understand. This is compounded by deep rooted animosities that date back two centuries. In Northern Nigeria, Islam is the religion of the politically dominant Hausa and Fulani peoples little wonder we see violence go bang from such a location.

It is the religion of the Fulani Jihadists from the far north who once plundered the Middle Belt for slaves and then subsequently dominated hundreds of ethnic minority groups in the area. Stories of wars with Hausa and Fulani Muslim invaders and of people taking refuge in the hills endure in the cultural memory of many Middle Belt tribes. For these ethnic minority groups, Christianity is the faith of emancipation, liberty and progress. In these parts, religion is as much a badge of cultural, political and social identity as it is a form of spirituality. Consequently, churches and mosques are not simply places of worship; they are talismanic symbols of identity charged with immense cultural meaning. This explains how a political fight or a marketplace altercation quickly degenerates into a religious war with churches and mosques being torched. The number of Muslims and mosques or Christians and churches in a community informs its socio-cultural character. When looking at the differences between Judaism one will not stop to wonder. Judaism is a religion practiced by the Israelites also known as Jews, they so much hold to this believe that their messiah is yet to come this is in contrast to the Christian believe who see Jesus as the messiah of the world. Christians believed not only that the Jews had misunderstood Scripture, thus justifying the Christian reinterpretation of Jewish Scripture, but that all of Jewish Scripture had to be understood as containing only partial truth. The whole truth was comprehensible only when Jewish Scripture was interpreted correctly, in what Christians called a “spiritual” rather than merely a “carnal” manner. In the 1100 period, there emerged what some historians have termed “chimeric” anti-Judaism, the conception of the Jew not only as ignorant of spiritual truth and stubbornly resistant to Christian preaching but as actively hostile to Christianity and guilty of ugly crimes against it, such as the ritual murder of Christian children and the desecration of the consecrated host of the mass. This form of anti-Judaism resulted in massacres of Jews, usually at moments of high social tension within Christian communities. One of the best documented of these massacres took place at York, Eng., in 1190.

However, one way we can cub these violence here and there is by understanding ourselves and by having numerous religious dialogue in most of the state and cities that are violence prone. Though it seems hard to achieve serenity in an ethno-religious community like Africa or the world at large it is still possible to cub out this violence erupting from religious clashes or differences.

 

Richard oluseye Anthony

University of Ibadan Nigeria.

THE CRASHING EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

By: Richard Oluseye Anthony

university of Ibadan, Nigeria

“The system is good on paper, but its implementation is bad, is it not the same system that America is using and it is providing efficient results even the constitution we use in Nigeria is been practice by other countries like USA and it is giving a good result contrary to the inefficient”, this were the words of a secondary school teacher in one public school.

The 6-3-3-4 system of education, gives every Nigeria a chance to contribute his worth to the nation’s development at the level commensurable to his mental ability. The seeming unanimous acceptance of the introduction by the highly critical Nigeria public, I assume, resulted from the potentiality of the system to ensure a streamlined admission process while ensuring that every Nigerian is educated according to the dictates of his cognitive, psychomotor and affective ability.

In practice, the system means that the child aged three to five is educated prior to his entering primary school. Primary education is a 6 year affair. Secondary education is also a 6 year period divided into two parts: junior secondary and senior secondary. The junior secondary is made up of JSS1 to JSS 3, while the senior secondary is made up of SSS 1 to SSS 3. The third tier of the system is the tertiary level which is, 4, 5 or 6 year depending on the course of study. At the end of the first six years of elementary school, the candidate or student is expected to enroll in a secondary school of his choice after he must have written and passed the national common entrance examination. The junior secondary certificate examination is taken at the end of three years of junior secondary. It is prescribed that those who passed the examination should proceed to senior secondary at the same institution or an institution of their choice. The senior secondary school examination is written at the end of SSS3. The general certificate of education (GCE) is conducted as a supplement for those students who did not have the required credit from their SSCE. Candidates who are able to have the required credits can proceed to the tertiary school of their choice. one puzzling question that one is forced to ask after looking at the well articulated and laid system of education borrowed from the Americans, Nigerian students in the tertiary school according to Professor Soji Amire, “finds it difficult to understand what they are taught and so become aggressive, ready to intimidate lecturers to extract pass marks from them.” one would further wonder if the fault is inherent in the system of education (6-3-3-4) or its implementation. Again, why is the Nigerian trained professional treated as an outcast internationally while his counterparts from other part of the continent is seen as pure or base? As Adewale Dada puts it in his article: Reinventing Education In Nigeria, “with all the pictures of poverty from India and many of our uniformed perceptions of Asians as lacking the intellectual capacity to compete in the global marketplace, it would do us reasonable justice to know that many Americans are considering the option of studying in India mostly technical courses, because of the reputation their universities have garnered over the years…” when will a Japanese, an American or a British citizen want to come to Nigeria to study a course because of the impression and expertise the course has imbued in the world as a result of how seriously and thoroughly it has been handled in Nigeria by Nigerians?

Sincerely, it will be an understatement for one to claim that the system of education being implemented in Nigeria today has lost the quality of 6-3-3-4, looking at the handful of Nigerians who, through dint of hard work, still reflect the indices of being educated. This discourse aims at unraveling the root-cause of the decay that laid a destructive siege on the system of education in Nigeria.