The north’s self-destructive religious extremism

 By Farooq A. Kperogi

Two concerning and momentous events happened this week that dramatized the depth of the penetration of the virus of religious extremism into the body politic of Muslim northern Nigeria: the viral video of uniformed young Izala first aid kids chanting a chilling song requesting AK-47s to murder Christians in their churches in Enugu and Jos and the cold-blooded murder in Katsina State of Sheikh Yahaya Ibrahim Masussuka, whose claim to fame was his relentless sermons urging Muslims to accept Christians as brothers and sisters.

The two events have no direct causal connection, but they are interlinked nonetheless. The kids who were singing unprovoked, murderous anti-Christian songs obviously didn’t murder Masussuka, who ceaselessly and fearlessly preached Muslim-Christian rapprochement, but people animated by the same theology of hate claimed responsibility for his murder.

On October 26, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot Masussuka and his friend, Adamu Abubakar, outside his home in Dutsin-Ma. The terrorist group Ansaru subsequently claimed responsibility and cited his advocacy of peaceful coexistence as a reason. It called him an “infidel,” the same label he said extremists hurled at other Muslims. Police have not established the group’s responsibility, but its declaration reveals the lethal intolerance of the worldview Masussuka confronted.

The antecedents are no less disturbing. In November 2025, the Katsina State Government acknowledged complaints from Masussuka that members of Izala had insulted and threatened him over his teachings. The quarrel was referred to the Katsina Emirate Council. Those threats do not establish who murdered him, but they show how dangerous the atmosphere around him had become. His disagreements with other clerics over the authority of certain Hadith traditions had already made him a conspicuous target of religious hostility.

In one of Masussuka’s videos that I watched, he said something profound and, in retrospect, extraordinarily prescient. After invoking a Quranic verse that recognizes even animals as communities deserving protection from gratuitous cruelty, he said most northern Nigerian Islamic sects had never had issues embracing Christians except a particular sect that calls itself Ahlus Sunnah.

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