ONU JOHN ONWE 
S ometime ago in this column, I penned a disturbing feeling I had that the next World War will be fought not on any ideological misunderstanding or quest for control of world resources but on the quest by two world religions for accommodation or control of the world. Such a scenario had happened before but there was no definitive resolution of the issue.
The two world religions locked in the mortal contest are Christianity and Islam. Both are Abrahamic religion. Judaism had peaceful proselytism as it was not accompanied by, or with forceful or violent proselytism and as a result it did not enjoy a radical growth outside its Jewish native environment in Palestine and Jewish communities outside Palestine.
However, Judaism suffered stigmatisation and oppression as a result of misunderstanding and ignorance of it. Repression and oppression of Judaism is called anti-Semitism. Christianity also suffered terrible fate in its growth and spread under various world powers that misunderstood it as dangerous Jewish cult. Christianity was saved from repression and oppression by Emperor Constantine and his mother converted to Christianity.
Christianity later became a state religion and its principles shaped Roman imperial culture. Just as the Roman Empire was prospering with Christianity, Islam sprang forth in Arabian Peninsula in 7th century AD and having been forged in war of survival from its native Arabian antagonists, it adopted violent proselytization expressed in conquests and subjugations of communities which were forcibly transformed into Islamic states.
From Arabia to Persia, the Middle East to Africa and Asia, Islamic jihads burst through and swept away indigenous communities, conver ting them to Islamic states and societies. T h e spread of Islam through wars of annihilation was so magnificent that the various Islamic empires that prospered (Persian, the Othman) knocked at the gate of Vienna before it was pulled back.
Since the 7th Century AD, when Islam was born, it has struggled with Christianity over the control of the world. From the Islamic Jihads against Christian interests by Othman Empire, the world has witnessed wars, upheavals and social turmoil that subjected world peoples to humugnous violence, deaths, and destructions, and annihilation as could be seen in Egypt where the indigenous African black population was uprooted and replaced with Arabian culture.
And the upheaval has been enormous with Boko Haram and several splinter groups rising to introduce crimes of banditry and kidnappings for monetary gains
The most exemplary picture of Islamic jihad was the conquest of Constantinople when the entire population was extirpated and survivors were subjected to extreme oppression that they either left the country or perished. Religious freedom was virtually abolished and places of worship such as the Hagia Sophia Church was seized and converted to something else.
The prospect of the world returning to religious wars is so enervating to comprehend. Apart from postulated peaceful transformation of some European countries such as Britain, France to Islamic states and societies through drastic demographic change as Muslim population gets high er over Christians, whereby political and constitutional changes occur thereby willy-nilly and these countries become Islamic states and societies with British Common Law giving way to Sharia likewise France.
But the most enervating thought is the dramatic change being imagined by the quest to reorder international legal system allegedly championed by Islamic fundamentalists that seek conquest of the world through jihads. Islamic fundamentalism started with scattered self-determinist agitations in the Middle-east and the Levant.
As this self determinist religious ideology locked horn with Western Imperialism then Trumpism’s Judeo-Christian ideology happened in America. President Donald Trump considers it his mission to roll back resurgent Islamic fundamentalism by crushing it with American military might. And in collaboration with Israel, he has largely succeeded in quietening the battle fronts in Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.
The current front is Nigeria where Trump has beamed his binoculars of war against Islamism. Nigeria is a difficult case that transcends crimes of colonialism and neocolonialism, with a simmering turbulent state forever mired in socio-economic and political turmoil. The Nigerian state Britain created was made with the political formula that no leader of impeccable credentials or transformative and charismatic power can emerge.
Only a lacklustre, mediocre leaders forged by coalition of competing and diametrical ideologies can emerge to rule on weak compromises. These compromises are hoisted on religion and tribalism. Since 1960 to date, Nigeria has been ruled by coalition-bearers who pander to tribe and religion. Every problem decimating Nigeria arises from religious and ethnic distrusts. From 1980s to date, Nigeria’s existential integrity has been damaged by religious schism between Islam and Christianity.
In the 1979/1999 Constitutions, poor compromise between Christianity and Islam was entrenched in the 1999 Constitution with Sharia provided for but since 2000, Sharia with larger scope than its constitutional stipulation has been introduced in 12 Northern States. And the upheaval has been enormous with Boko Haram and several splinter groups rising to introduce crimes of banditry and kidnappings for monetary gains.
These crimes and insurgency have turned Nigeria upside down. Now Nigeria has been so damaged that it cannot protect its people, it is now grouped among failed states and treated accordingly as Trump has taken it upon himself to protect Nigerian Christians against their Muslims compatriots now turned jihadists. What will happen after President Trump assuming his successors decide not to continue protecting Nigerian Christians?
What will happen to Nigeria depends on whether Nigeria answers its foundational question that is central to every political community deciding to form a civil state poses to itself and answers it truthfully. That question is: do we agree and accept to become a nation-state of common- citizenship? Then on what principles and rules shall such a country be founded and how are those rules enforced?
These are basic questions Nigerians as constituted in Nigeria have refused to ask and to answer satisfactorily. Unless these questions are answered and the answers collated and enshrined under a constitution freely proposed and adopted by the people and enforced in a properly instituted politico-legal institution of government (legislature, executive and judiciary), Nigeria will continue to be the sickman of Africa stumbling from one upheaval to another until it splinters into several antagonistic countries.
