Emergency responders nip budding violence<\/h3>\n
Called the Emergency Preparedness and Response Team (EPRT), the system is supported by 10 organizations, encompassing Muslims, Catholics, Evangelicals, women\u2019s groups, the Red Cross<\/a>, and others committed to promoting nonviolence and peacebuilding<\/a>. The monitors, typically EPRT members, use text messages to confer with each other about possible threats and rumors of attacks.<\/p>\n Tapkida cited this example from 2009: Upon learning that Muslim youths were planning an attack on Christians (because the Muslims felt they needed to strike preemptively), a Muslim member contacted her EPRT Christian counterparts, who quickly surveyed their youth groups and found no movement towards a first attack. Reassured, the Muslim member of EPRT was able to calm the Muslim youths.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the years there has been individual transformation and institutional transformation in Nigeria,\u201d Tapkida said during a summer 2013 visit to EMU, where he hopes his middle daughter, Anni, will transfer in as an undergraduate in 2014-15. (Anni is now at two-year Hesston College in Kansas.) When he first began doing peace work in Nigeria, \u201cit was a lonely position. I didn\u2019t know how deep the ocean was, I didn\u2019t even know how to swim.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, despite the growing commitment of Nigeria\u2019s mainstream religious leaders to peacebuilding, the violence has continued. Tapkida\u2019s home city of Jos is situated in the middle of the country in a region where the largely Muslim population of the north (Muslims constitute 50 percent of Nigeria\u2019s population) bumps against the south, largely inhabited by Christians (40 percent of the population).<\/p>\n As a result, Jos tends to be a flashpoint city. In November 2008, at least 200 people were killed during clashes between Muslims and Christians there, according to the BBC. Violence struck again in January 2010, when at least 149 people were killed during two days of violence between Muslims and Christians, followed by 120 more people killed the following March. At the end of 2010, the Boko Haram Islamist sect took credit for a Christmas Eve bomb attack near Jos that killed at least 80 people.<\/p>\n In May 2013, Nigeria\u2019s government declared a state of emergency in the three northern states of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa and sent in troops to combat the Boko Haram Islamist militants. That fight continues to be waged.<\/p>\n Among average Nigerians, however, Tapkida sees a desire to distance themselves from the violence of Boko Haram, which seems to be a fringe effort to fuel cycles of bloodshed between Muslims and Christians that otherwise would be waning.<\/p>\n \u201cNigerians are beginning to recognize the way religious identity is used for political manipulation,\u201d he said. Two Christian seminaries in Nigeria that rejected Tapkida\u2019s first efforts to encourage peace initiatives are now among his greatest collaborators.<\/p>\n Amid the ashes of the worst violence of 2008 in Jos, when leaders of EPRT (both Muslims and Christians) brought anger, suspicion and grief to a conference table with Tapkida, they ended up sorrowfully agreeing that the only option was for all to work harder at peace.<\/p>\n To heighten awareness and to impart conflict-transformation skills, EPRT has started forming peace clubs in high schools, trying to reach Nigerians who are in the majority \u2013 the under 25-year-olds.<\/p>\n Despite his successes, \u201cyou can get empty working in the field,\u201d said Tapkida, a former evangelical pastor who has worked in various capacities for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)<\/a> in Africa for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to gas up somewhere. Being in Harrisonburg is like being at a filling station. We feel like this is home.\u201d The youngest of Tapkida\u2019s three daughters, Melody, was born in Harrisonburg while he was enrolled in the graduate program at EMU\u2019s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding<\/a> between 1999 and 2001. Tapkida said he extensively uses the teachings from his graduate studies, \u201ccontextualizing\u201d them for Africans.<\/p>\n Tapkida \u2013 accompanied by Monica, Anni and Melody (their oldest daughter, Nen, was in Kenya doing university study) \u2013 came to Harrisonburg in July 2013 during a two-month period of respite before he transitions from his role as MCC regional peace advisor for West and Central Africa to jointly serving with his wife Monica, a former teacher, as MCC country representatives for Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n Tapkida sought the job change to give the West Africans he has mentored room to grow. He was also ready to accept a new challenge; he will be concurrently working on a doctorate in transformative leadership at Africa International University<\/a> in Nairobi, Kenya.<\/p>\n As part of his MCC responsibilities in West Africa, Tapkida traveled frequently to Chad during 2008-12. Chad is a landlocked country to the northeast of Nigeria, where in 2008 \u201cChristians felt oppressed and weakened by the political leadership,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n By Tapkida\u2019s second year of work in Chad, \u201cthe interfaith vision\u201d of Catholic, Evangelical and Muslim leaders in that country \u2013 leaders whom Tapkida had identified and introduced to conflict transformation<\/a> principles and skills \u2013 had reached the president of Chad, Idriss D\u00e9by.<\/p>\n As a gesture of goodwill, this Muslim president donated two Jeeps to Christian groups and declared Nov. 30, 2011, to be an interfaith day of prayer. The following year, he appointed one Christian and one Muslim \u2013 both drawn from the group trained in conflict transformation \u2013 to be his advisors on religious matters.<\/p>\n Tapkida said there is a high demand for peace workers in Chad, which hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing wars in neighboring countries, plus internally displaced persons from conflicts with rebel groups.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to train more trainers of trainers,\u201d said Tapkida. But he feels confident that the peace devotees remaining in that region \u2013 such as Sani Suleiman, a Muslim mentored by Tapkida, who took classes at EMU\u2019s Summer Peacebuilding Institute<\/a> in 2011 \u2013 will continue the work he is relinquishing in West Africa with his upcoming move to southern Africa.<\/p>\n Read more<\/em><\/a> on Gopar Tapkida’s earlier peacebuilding work in Nigeria, <\/em>originally published in <\/em>Peacebuilder<\/em><\/a>, Summer\/Fall 2005<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gaining partners after swimming alone at first<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>Average Nigerian wants end to cycles of violence<\/h3>\n
Returning to Harrisonburg to regenerate<\/h3>\n
Gaining the president\u2019s ear in Chad<\/h3>\n