Nigeria, April 30 -- Nigeria grapples with a deeply fractured identity; a nation in which religious cohesion in the North contrasts sharply with the ethnic divisions that often characterise the South. The unsettling silence of some prominent Christian leaders in the face of escalating violence against Christians highlights this, and someone recently pointed out to me that the Christian clerics that I praised in the past for speaking up, John Onaiyekan, David Oyedepo, and Paul Enenche, all happen to be from the Middle Belt.

This observation put the muted response from Southern Christian clerics in a particularly jarring light, especially when compared to the vocal condemnations emerging from churches in the West, and from Nigeria's own Mu...