Group Decries Violence Against Clerics

The Foundation for Peace Professionals (PeacePro) has called on political, religious and traditional leaders across Northern Nigeria to confront what it described as the dangerous normalisation of violence against religious scholars in the region.

The executive director of PeacePro, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, warned that repeated killings without conclusive investigations and visible accountability would deepen public fear and embolden radicals.

Hamzat’s call followed the killing of an Islamic scholar, Sheikh Yahaya Ibrahim Masussuka and his associate, Adamu Abubakar, in Dutsin-Ma Local Government Area of Katsina State on Monday.

He urged the police and other relevant security agencies to pursue the Masussuka case with urgency and provide timely public updates without compromising the investigation.

He said the killing has revived painful memories of earlier attacks on prominent Islamic scholars, including Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmud Adam, who was shot dead while leading dawn prayers in Kano in April 2007, and Sheikh Muhammad

Auwal Albani Zaria, who was killed in an attack in Zaria in February 2014 alongside members of his family.

He said the concerns surrounding attacks on religious figures reinforce the need for credible investigations, evidence based findings and accountability.

Hamzat, said condemnations by public officials and community leaders were important, but insufficient without concrete action to prevent further killings.

“Northern Nigeria cannot afford a situation in which the killing of a religious scholar generates public outrage for a few days, followed by silence, uncertainty and the gradual acceptance of violence as normal,” Hamzat said.

He said the central concern was not merely the loss of individual lives, but also the wider consequences when people who teach, preach, challenge prevailing views or advocate peaceful coexistence fear that disagreement could expose them to lethal violence.

“When people begin to believe that a person can be killed for what he teaches, what he believes or the position he takes in a religious debate, the damage goes beyond the victim and his family. It threatens freedom of conscience, peaceful religious engagement and the ability of communities to resolve disagreements without violence,” he said.

Hamzat called on governors, traditional rulers, Islamic scholars, Christian leaders, community organisations and civil society groups across the north to build a coordinated response that would address both violent incidents and the social conditions that allow violence to be justified, celebrated or tolerated.