September 9, 2001

A letter from the Cragos Funding Consultants for TCNN c/o P.O. Box 626 Jos, Plateau State Nigeria

Dear Friends and Family,

After one month in Nigeria, we feel it is probably time to share some of our thoughts, impressions and experiences with the large community of friends we left behind us in the United States and elsewhere. Much has happened, and we thank God for this day to worship Him. For reasons we'll explain in a moment, we are planning to spend Sunday morning here at home with John and Janet Tubbs coming for lunch later this morning.

For those who may not have heard from us up until now, we are currently serving a six-month volunteer period with the Church of the Brethren, with about four months of that time to be spent in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. We arrived here on August 8 in Abuja, the national capital, and have traveled extensively already. We returned last week from a trip to Mubi, Yola, Numan, Jalingo and Wukari, a trip of more than 2100 kilometers (about 1300 miles). We expect to travel more next week but will report on those journeys later.

We came to Nigeria at this time to assist the Theological College of Northern Nigeria (TCNN) with their fund-raising efforts, and implementation of their Long-range Development Plan. They celebrated their Fortieth Anniversary last year and successfully raised over 7,400,000 naira (about 60,000 US dollars) almost entirely within Nigeria and the thirteen cooperating denominations that support TCNN (Church of the Brethren, Methodist, Church of Christ, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Christian Reformed, Episcopalian, and Mambila Baptist, to name a few). The eleven core denominations estimate their membership at more than 4,000,000 members, mostly in Northern Nigeria, and the potential pool of Nigerian donors is even larger.

The success of this fund-raising effort last year has inspired the school to continue with such fund-raising efforts in the future. Prior to the launching of this campaign last year, there had not been any new building at TCNN since 1991. But, with the monies raised last year, four new buildings have been started, with two new single student hostels now occupied (designed for 44 students), and two other buildings approaching completion. One will house the families of two Junior Lecturers at TCNN and the other building will house sixteen Master's Degree level students. Construction costs are obviously much less here than in the US!

One Lagos-based seminary has pointed out that throughout Africa, Christian churches now report gains of 250,000 Christians and 1,000 new churches EVERY WEEK! In the same publication, they point out that less than 20 percent of Nigerian pastors have a valid diploma or degree in theology or pastoral ministries. So, while TCNN has continued to increase the number of students in their BD and Master's programs (about 290 students this year), they have fallen behind in the need for adequate facilities to accommodate the growing need for theological education in the Nigeria churches.

So, we arrived at a time of some rejoicing at the start of several new buildings, but we have also shared in some of the anguish which has accompanied over-crowded student quarters, considerable deferred maintenance, and a prolonged dispute over the top post (Provost) at the College. The College has been managing with an Acting Provost for some time now.

One of the small, but meaningful events of this past month was the communal effort by all TCNN staff and students to plant more than 750 new trees around the campus. In a symbolic sense, it really underscored the sense of vitality and growth which the school is experiencing. The attached picture shows Janet planting "her" tree, assisted by one of the TCNN lecturers.

One immediate task (among others) was to make preparations for the country-wide appeal to all of the Nigerian churches on October 7, 2001, to raise monies for TCNN. To that end, we developed a tri-fold brochure with a report of last year's fund-raising efforts, including half a dozen pictures of the new buildings, and a summary of plans for the new year. Having done all that in English, we then had it translated into Hausa, the predominate language of Northern Nigeria. With that task completed, 16,000 copies (half in English and half in Hausa) were printed and we prepared to visit eight of the denominational headquarters last week.

In somewhat typical Nigerian fashion, however, our journey did not go quite as planned. There normally is no single reason that things don't happen exactly as one might expect, but it seems to be good coping strategy to assume that some things will not happen as we might hope. In this case, we ran into a closed road which had been blocked by the police because of fighting further along it by Tiv and Fulani people. These are two of the tribes living south of Wukari, between Wukari and Makurdi. Several people had been killed and it wasn't clear when the situation would calm down, so we returned to Jalingo and went on back to Jos through Gombe and Bauchi on Thursday.

On Friday morning (the 7th) we visited TCNN and made plans to complete our visits to the last four headquarters on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this coming week. Time will tell if this plan turns out to be successful. Right now, I doubt we will be traveling.

On Friday afternoon, apparently around noon, fighting erupted in the north end of Jos. From what we know now, tensions had been rising ever since the appointment of a Muslim man to administer a government program in this predominantly Christian community of Jos. When Christians prevented the man from taking office, the Moslems in Jos threatened to riot, and finally did on Friday, their Holy Day, burning Christian churches, etc. Then the Christians retaliated, burning mosques and Moslem homes. We don't know yet how many people (and religious backgrounds) have been killed.

By Friday night, the fighting had spread to most parts of Jos and we spent a rather sleepless night Friday as we heard groups of Muslim and Christian young men roaming up and down the streets yelling, and many gunshots fired around the town. We learned Saturday that several churches and mosques had been burnt and that many people had been killed and injured. A curfew was imposed and police and military forces seemed to be arriving throughout the night, as we heard heavy trucks passing on the roads nearby.

We did travel to TCNN late Saturday morning to send and receive e-mails but, in retrospect, probably should not have gone out. We encountered five separate vigilante roadblocks along the way. But, the phone here and at the EYN guesthouse have both been out of commission, and it seemed to be the only reasonable way to get messages out, and to also touch base with people at TCNN.

We hope that our family and friends have not become unduly alarmed about our safety by reports which we know have reached the BBC and CNN. There are now many military roadblocks along that road, and we are hopeful that the worst of the fighting is past. The police and military, especially, seem to be functioning very professionally. We slept pretty well Saturday and Sunday nights.

We have been here on the compound at Boulder Hill with John and Janet Tubbs most of this time, and we have all expressed appreciation for the work of the 1996 Workcamp which built the wall around the street side of this compound. Our son, Will, was part of that workcamp. It is almost certainly a false sense of security, but we appreciated being able to stay inside a locked gate and eight-foot walls for the past few days.

We still hear a lot of gunfire, particularly in the evening and throughout the morning, but have been told by Nigerians who have been out on the streets that it is almost entirely the military and police forces firing into the air as an intimidation tactic. They want people to stay off the streets. We can attest that it works for at least some of us!

This morning (Sunday, and again Monday) we have been pleased to see some of the children on this compound and next door out playing (within their compounds) and we hear more traffic moving now than on Saturday, so we hope things are beginning to settle down. We will not plan to move around, though, until we start seeing here on our compound some of the many Nigerian visitors that routinely come to visit and they tell us what is happening outside the compound. We will wait until people from TCNN make it in here safely and can tell us about the roads between here and TCNN.

A Baptist missionary came by our compound right before Sunday lunch (their compound is just walking distance from here) and tells us there are some serious disturbances outside of Jos (near Bukuru, Vom and perhaps also near Bauchi) so it sounds like things may be quieter here in Jos right now than outside of Jos. The Baptists are in contact with the US and Canadian embassies, and will keep us posted on other events as they learn of them. It would really be nice to have an operable phone on the compound during an event like this, but we aren't completely isolated with good neighbors like the Baptist missionaries.

We do ask you to pray for Nigeria during these troubled times. Tribal and religious differences still weigh heavily on the minds of most Nigerians. We pray that respected Nigerian men and women who favor peace and reconciliation will come forward and reach out to all. There are certainly some leaders doing that already on the local Jos radio station.

We care for you all. You are in our prayers always. Remember the struggling Christian community here in the north of Nigeria. Their faithfulness is inspiring.

Tom and Janet Crago