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Written by RANA BAYOK
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 Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon has a passion for cordial relationship between Christians and Muslims especially in the Northern part of Nigeria where adherents of the two religions have been fighting and killing each other. Fearon and his Muslim friend, Mahdi Shehu therefore decided to set up a non-governmental organization (NGO) known as the Bridge Builders Association (BBA). He is the chairman of the association which has been working towards ensuring understanding and peaceful co-existence between the two religious groups. In this interview with Correspondent, RANA BAYOK in Kaduna, Fearon, who is the head of the Kaduna Diocese of the Anglican Church, speaks on the challenges of his organization in its bids to ensure peace and understanding among Muslims and Christians in the North. Excerpts:
The Bridge Builders Association is mainly involve in peace building and ensuring understanding between Christians and Muslim especially in the North. What have been the challenges of your association in its bid to promote peace and understanding among the two religious groups?
Bridge Builders Association of Nigeria came as a child of circumstances which my colleague, Mahdi Shehu and I founded. We were working separately until we eventually brought together by God himself. Mahdi is a very committed Muslim from Katsina. He has a Diploma in Christian Theology, people don’t know this. He has studied the Bible. Both of us feel that the North is the area more prone to religious conflicts in the three geopolitical zones in the country- North, South and West. Both of us believed that our religion should help us to be better developed than we are today and we felt we needed to do something to bring this development to the north. That is our main focus and to achieve this development, we discovered that this good thing we called religion, is being manipulated. The manipulation is successful because, a lot of us in the North don’t understand our religion; neither do we understand the religion of our neighbours. The other problem is that even those who understand their religion find it so difficult to practice it. They know the values, but in order to make quick money, they don’t apply their religious values to their relationship. Because there is this big problem, we have misunderstanding here and there and then we fight, and when we fight, we destroy our property. So our major focus is to build bridges of understanding between Christians and Muslims.
Between those governing us and those of us being governed as well as to help us in the North to understand the southern people.
Unfortunately we have continued to witness religious violence in the North in spite of all your efforts. The most recent are the violence in Jos in November last year and the one in Bauchi a couple of weeks ago.
We are not the only NGO working, there are several other NGOs working in different spheres. For Mahdi and I, Jos and Bauchi are a disappointment, we are really discourage, but we will not give up. People may not know, before the November crisis in Jos, we had two workshops for young people in the Universities and other tertiary institutions on relating and respecting your neighbour. We brought in students from this same Bauchi, because we went to meet the governor of Bauchi with the British Deputy High Commissioner. We told the governor what NGO is into and he promised us that he will get his executives for us to build bridges of understanding for them. Will you now tell me that those we met in Jos don’t know their civic responsibility? This is the problem and Bridge Builders Association cannot do it alone. Those of from the north should seriously start applying our religious values to our interactions. This year alone we have had six workshops for young people, mostly students. We have brought some of them there in Kaduna . We brought 16 Muslims and 16 Christians for a workshop on living together. Out of this number, we took 14 of them to England ; we just came back last week. We went to Liverpool, Birmingham and other places. We got community leaders in those places to come and share their experiences with them regarding their relationship as Muslims and Christians, as English, Asian, African, Buddhists, etc. how they are able to weave their differences into development. I am expecting the students to write down their experiences during the trip in one or two paragraphs and submit to me. So we will not give up. You cannot stop this type of work as a result of a failure or a disappointment because it is an ongoing thing. We want to leave the northern states better than it was handed to us. So by the time we hand over to younger ones, we will want a northern state, where irrespective of your religion and your origin, you will live and develop wherever you are.
Some years back you started the Muslim/ Christian study centre for the teaching of Islam and Christianity for adherents of the two religions to promote understanding of each others religion, what happened to the centre?
It is still there. I stopped recruiting students for the centre in order to enable me does a research for my Ph. D at the Ahmadu University (ABU), Zaria . Thank God I am through with the programme. After Easter, we will resume. We have been able produce 60 students at the centre before we temporarily stopped.
Some people have attributed politics and poverty as part of the causes of religious violence in the North. Do you think so?
There are some people who say you cannot mix politics with religion. I disagree! You see, you cannot separate me Josiah, a Christian from my political involvement because my religion teaches me how to play politics. What is politics? Politics is nothing but making sure that there is fairness in the distribution of the resources that we have. I am the bishop of Kaduna Diocese of the Anglican Church by God’s grace. As the head of the Diocese, how do I minister to Christian within the Diocese? As Christian, I will minister to them the way Jesus Christ would want me to minister to them. You cannot ever separate a Muslim from his Islamic world view on politics. What I will say is that, if you are a Christian governor, govern your state according to the principles of the kingdom of God . How does Christ expect you to govern? I said earlier that politics is about fairness and equitable distribution of resources. If you are a Christian governor and you decide to favour Christians alone, you are not practicing Christianity. That is not the way of Christ. Christ came for everybody. If you are a true Christian, Christ expect you to be fair to everybody because you are not a governor for Christians only, you are the governor of all in you state. it is the same thing for the Muslims. If you now say we should remove religion from politics, we will have chaos. What we have now is even better. However I know why some people do say politics should be separated from religion. It is because our governors, our presidents and other political officer holders, including even our religious leaders do not practice governance the way their religion teaches them. It is very pathetic. We are accused some governors, I know this is sensitive but I will say it. We accused some governors of not being unfair, of not giving Christians protection in their state, the Qur’an does not allow them to do that. You know why? The Qur’an says there is no compulsion in religion. The Qur’an says if God had wanted all people to be of one religion and one race, he would have done it, but He chose not to do so that our righteousness can be tested. So any Muslim governor who fails to do justice to non Muslims in his state is not a practicing Muslim. You can quote me. It is in the Qur’an. Any Christian governor, who gives preferential treatment to the Christians and neglects non Christians in his state, is not governing according to the teachings of Christ. The Bible says do good unto all, before coming to say especially those of the household of God, because Christ loves the Muslim and the Christian.
Our problem in this country is too much knowledge of our religion without the determination to practice what our religions teaches us. But I am telling you it will not be for long because we are getting more educated and enlightened. We keep singing this song of live according to your religion and be fair to everybody because we are all created by one God. People are listening and they are beginning to say there is sense in what we are saying. The politicians will be the losers unless they become fair to every body.
No matter what people say, we are very fortunate here in Kaduna. Makarfi did. In fact when we were in the United Kingdom (UK) last week, some of the people there still mentioned what Makarfi did in Kaduna. They asked me whether the new governor is still doing the same thing. I told them yes. Governor Namadi Sambo is trying to be fair to all. He is following the foot steps of Makarfi to ensure peace and stability. We thank God for what is happening in Kaduna today. Let our Northern governors, Christians and Muslims, for God sake should practice their religions in the true sense of it. In Islam, Muslims tell us that God is going to asked us to account for four things on the Day of Judgment. How you came about these things and how you used them. They include education, wealth, authority and children. You think our governors and those holding public offices don’t know? They know these things. God is going to judge us all. I think it is in the interest of Christian leaders to study Islam, so that they can say to their Muslim brothers that there is no compulsion in religion, why are you forcing me? The Muslims too should try and know what is in the Bible because the Bible says if I go to the house of governor Namadi and I say come to Jesus, Jesus loves you and he says hey, go. The Bible says dust off your feet and go…. What we need is God’s grace so we will be able to live as true Christians and Muslims will be able to live as true Muslim. Truly, one God is going to judge us all
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