Church to launch memory project to defuse violence

A Catholic policy research institute is to launch a “memory project” to try to end the violence that has claimed more than 800 lives in Nigeria’s central states, writes Abigail Frymann-Rouch.

The Kukah Centre (TKC),  founded by Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, will next month begin a project to record evidence of atrocities, identify victims, collect testimonies and facilitate conversations between warring ethnic and religious groups. Arthur-Martins Aginam, director of the Abuja-based centre, told The Tablet: “Issues of memory are one thing people in Nigeria try to shy away from … But … children, have watched their parents killed in front of them and somehow we think these people are going to grow up into normal citizens? It doesn’t work like that.”

According to the diocese of Kafanchan, which lies at the epicentre of the violence, on a border area between Christians and Muslims, more than 800 people were killed in the south of Kaduna State between 2011 and 2016. “There’s been a lot of persecution and a lot of injustice on both sides,” Dr Aginam said.