A delegation from the World Council of Churches has called upon religious leaders in Nigeria to encourage people of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds to work together for lasting peace and harmony in communities afflicted by violence.

Following their four-day visit to the country earlier in the month, the WCC’s Living Letters team said there was an urgent need for security to be strengthened in the most volatile regions in Nigeria, namely those in the Central Plateau State, where sectarian clashes have claimed the lives of hundreds of Christians and Muslims in recent months.

The team noted a lack of trust among ethnic groups and warned that the authorities were failing to protect people in the conflict-hit areas.

It recommended that religious communities come together to appeal to the government and the security agencies to be “even-handed” in their efforts to bring peace to the Central Plateau State and neighbouring states, and to take measures to ensure that the upcoming elections were free and fair.

The visit included a meeting with the Nigeria Interreligious Council (NIREC), which was set up by Christian and Muslim leaders three years ago in a bid to quell communal violence.

The council is headed up jointly by the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Roman Catholic Archbishop John Onayekan, and spiritual leader of Muslims in Nigeria, the Sultan of Sokoto, Haji Saad Abubakar.

Archbishop Onayekan said Muslims and Christians in Nigeria were “in the same boat”, where neither felt like they were in the majority or minority.

Onayekan admitted that NIREC’s vision was not shared by many Christian and Muslim leaders at the local level.

"There are many of my priests who don't consider my optimism for dialogue and this also applies to the other side,” he said.

“My conviction is that people living in the grassroots don't have problems living together but the imams and pastors leading them sometimes send wrong signals by the kind of messages they preach."

Hajia Bilikisu Yusuf, of NIREC, criticised the Nigerian government for failing to bring adequate security to troubled areas.

“The problem we are having is failure of security and failure of leadership,” she said.

Dr Mathews George Chunakara, director of the WCC Commission on International Affairs, added: "As law and order collapse, the security of people is often threatened. Overt and covert alliances between political and religious organizations often lead to conflicts in communities.

“It is in this context that legal measures to separate politics from religion should be pursued as a matter of state policy through appropriate structural changes or statutory instruments in the country.”