Not a stranger to controversies, the Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi, has reportedly suggested partitioning Nigeria into a ‘Muslim North' and a ‘Christian South'. To him, this would be the solution for what he called the recurrent ‘inter-religious' clashes between adherents of these two religions. This comes after the tragic death of hundreds of people in the city of Jos and surrounding villages in the central Plateau state of Nigeria in January and March this year. Some commentators describe these clashes - as many previous ones - as clashes between Muslims and Christians.

Gaddafi's comments have angered many people, and particularly the Nigerian authorities. The latter have reportedly rebuffed them and recalled their ambassador to Libya ‘for consultation'. The lack of a proper justification for these comments should have led us to ignore them. However, given the stature of the man (not least being the immediate former chairperson of the African Union and self-proclaimed champion of African unity), but also because some of the assumptions underpinning his comments have currency with many people, they merit a more substantial and scholarly treatment.

The first assumption in the comments is that the ‘partition' of a country experiencing ‘inter-communal' clashes is the solution for such crises. To illustrate his point, the Libyan leader cited the case of India that was split in 1947 into present-day India and Pakistan. True, India was split at the eve of independence into a predominantly Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India against the background of serious inter-religious clashes. Some ‘Indian' leaders at the time thought that partitioning the country would be the solution. But the pitfall of this example is that, first, Pakistan split further into the present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh (1971). More importantly, India still witness bloody inter-religious clashes between its own Muslim and Hindu communities and Pakistan is not free from violence perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims.

There are many other examples of attempted or actual partition of political entities in order to supposedly solve ‘inter-communal' crises, but they point to the fact that this measure has seldom been a viable long-term solution.

The second assumption underpinning Gaddafi's comments, which seems to be espoused by many people, is that recurrent clashes being witnessed in Nigeria are due to religious animosity between Muslims and Christians. Without denying the salience of religion in Nigeria, this assumption is very simplistic and somehow erroneous. It is true that parties to most of the clashes can easily be classified according to religion or ethnicity, but it is in most cases fallacious to argue that the clashes are about religion. If that was the case, then why is it that clashes break out between adherents of the same religion, be they Muslim or Christian? And how can we account for the fact that some Nigerian states that have a mixture of religious communities don't have such clashes? The fact of the matter is that most of the clashes break out on social-economic (mostly land) issues that pitch a farmer against a nomad, and then each one calls on his kith and kin. Because people from the same community generally adhere to the same religion and hail from the same ethnic group, some commentators describe the clashes as religious or ethnic.

This leads to the last and the most fallacious assumption in Gaddafi's comments, which is also espoused by many people. That is the assumption that Nigeria can be divided into a ‘Muslim North' and a ‘Christian South'. First, not all Nigerians can be moulded into these two ‘imported' religions. Before both these religions were brought to the region now called Nigeria, the inhabitants had other belief systems. And while the majority of the people have now been Islamised or Christianised, this is not true for everyone. The question here is therefore to ask where would non-Muslim and non-Christian Nigerians fit into this divide?

Secondly, granted that Nigerians could be reduced to these two religions, the ‘North' is not monolithically Muslim nor is the ‘South' singularly Christian. Of the three main ethnic families in Nigeria, the Hausa-Fulanis of the North are predominately Muslim, the Igbos of the East predominately Christian, while the Yorubas of the West are both Muslim and Christian. Should the equation thus be three rather than two? Also, apart from a very few states, the majority of Nigeria's 36 states are multi-religious and multi-ethnic, that is why, according to the previous assumption, there are clashes. So what would happen to ‘Muslim island communities' in the ‘Christian South' and ‘Christian lake communities' in the ‘Muslim North'?

Clearly, if this is how Gaddafi wants to go about building his ‘United States of Africa,' he must explain whether he intends to have a United States of Muslim Africa, and a separate one for Christian Africa. Or he must explain to us how the ‘religious clashes' that could not be solved in the Nigerian federation would be solved, at an even bigger magnitude, in the ‘United States of Africa'.

Finally, and in order not to unduly minimise the ‘intents' behind his comments, could one think of some ‘geostrategic' reasons as to why the former Chairman of the AU Commission suggested this for Nigeria? The most logical and positive one would be a genuine hope that it would solve the problems, but the fallacy of that assumption has been made evident. The other one would be destructive, such as hoping to gain in standing from a weakened Nigeria through partition. But there is no direct rivalry between Abuja and Tripoli. Also, Nigeria is a bigger strategic player in Africa than Libya is and Tripoli cannot replace Abuja in some of the areas in which it gained its strategic importance, such as active conflict resolution on the continent through the commitment of both human and material resources. It will also be a far-fetched dream for Gaddafi to wish that Nigerians would buy such an idea and go about dismantling their country. Nigeria successfully overcame the test of the 1967-70 civil (Biafra) war despite the support lent to ‘Biafra' by some foreign powers. This war posed a greater threat to Nigeria's survival than isolated if tragic clashes here and there. In the final analysis therefore, it would appear that the comments made by Gaddafi were not thought through and that there may not be any particular strategic rationale behind them.

Written by: Issaka K. Souaré, Senior Researcher, ISS, African Conflict Prevention Programme, Pretoria