View from The Hill: Achieving vaccine targets could be followed by a pre-election health ‘pinch point’

Michelle Grattan, University of CanberraScott Morrison has taken to likening Australia’s coming out of COVID to the Croods, a family in a children’s film, emerging from a cave. That’s when he is not urging us to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel.

Anthony Albanese’s riposte is that Scott is “not the light at the end [of the tunnel], he’s the gaslight on the hill”.

The country is probably unlucky it’s grappling with the pandemic’s third wave as a federal election looms early next year. That puts a thick patina of politics on this national crisis.

Trite comparisons, slogans, personal jibes abound, and political considerations inevitably feed into the government’s desperation to lift the pall COVID’s lockdowns and border closures are imposing on the economy and our lives.

Morrison sees the Doherty Institute modelling – with its 70% and 80% vaccination gateways – as the nation’s and his government’s way out. But, leaving aside any criticism of the modelling, there are two big problems for the PM on the road ahead.

The most talked about is the recalcitrant states. Despite his four-stage plan, Morrison can’t guarantee when the whole country might be open because that will be decided by the states.

The premiers of Western Australia and Queensland will open their borders or keep them closed according to their calculations of their states’ interests.

There’ll be some short term politics in their decisions, but that should be limited because both have recently had elections, which they won well. They don’t have to give nearly as much thought to their own political fortunes as Morrison does to his. Some observers think these Labor premiers will have an eye to what might help Anthony Albanese, but this is likely to be minor, considering the stakes.

The situation of states that are basically COVID free was summed up on Monday by Perth radio interviewer Oliver Peterson when he spoke to Morrison. “Can you see the conundrum here, … [at] 70 %, WA has to go backwards in putting restrictions like the two square metre rule, caps on venues and stadiums? Right now we’re living in a restriction-free life”.

Precisely. If, as things go forward to the required vaccination rates, Mark McGowan were to open his border as early as Morrison would like, he would be accepting that COVID would break out in WA. That would bring health and economic uncertainties he would have to manage.

That isn’t to argue WA should delay, or to maintain COVID zero can be maintained in a state forever. Rather, it’s to say that one could understand McGowan’s caution, when facing a decision that could involve a trade off between the interests of his population and Australia’s wider interests.

Recalcitrant states, however, might be the lesser of the problems facing Morrison in coming months. We know all about Doherty’s existing modelling on vaccine targets. Attention must now move to the next stage of modelling.

The institute said in its Monday’s statement: “The team of modellers from across Australia led by the Doherty Institute is now working through the implementation issues specific to the states and territories, specific populations and high risk settings.”

When we reach the vaccination targets, we are looking at what we might dub “pinch points”, and if they are not properly prepared for, the situation could be ugly.

We know when things are opened (even with some restrictions maintained and safeguards imposed) cases will increase and spread, and fast. While hospitalisations and deaths will be contained by most people having been vaccinated, there will still be severe pressure on the health system in particular.

The Australian Medical Association on Tuesday drew attention to this threat, issuing an ABC interview by its vice president Chris Moy.

Moy said: “Focusing on the Doherty numbers – great – but you’ve got to look at what’s really going to be the reality, which is the health system is going to have to bear this burden.

“Remember, next year we’re still going to be vaccinating, potentially with booster shots as well. So it’s a real perfect storm: while having to cope with what we look after now, plus COVID, plus delayed [health] care, plus having to vaccinate next year. It’s going to be a big year in health and not a smaller year,” Moy said.

“We’re a fairly long way from being able to be ready for a very large influx of infectious patients who have to be cared for, for a long period of time, and that planning needs to happen now.”

Morrison wants the country open and the economy humming by election time, with COVID off the front pages. He and Health Minister Greg Hunt are confident the hospital situation will be in hand. But, ahead of its start, they were confident about the vaccine program too.

If the “pinch point” of escalating cases – and don’t believe Morrison’s hope there wouldn’t be attention on case numbers anymore – and overloaded hospitals coincided with the approaching election, that could be a political as well as an actual nightmare.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

No vaccine ‘targets’, but Australians could still be vaccinated by end of year

Driss Ait Ouakrim, The University of Melbourne; Ameera Katar, The University of Melbourne, and Tony Blakely, The University of MelbourneThis week’s budget assumes Australians will be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of the year, despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying the government has no vaccination targets, modelling or forecasts.

Australians are eagerly watching the pace of the rollout, given this underpins a further budget assumption: international borders could re-open from mid-2022.

So are all Australians likely to be offered two COVID-19 doses by the end of the year?

Previous targets

In January, the government was aiming to vaccinate 80,000 people per week. It wanted 4 million Australians vaccinated by the end of March and the entire adult population vaccinated by October.

So far, we have only delivered 2.83 million doses.

The initial vaccination road map was derailed in part due to poor logistics, but more so due to lack of supply and sheer bad luck. Prioritising the AstraZeneca vaccine, with its local manufacturing capacity, seemed like a good bet but this was derailed by the rare — but real — possibility of blood clots.

---

Read more:
What is thrombocytopenia, the rare blood condition possibly linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine?

---

The announcement overnight of 10 million doses of Moderna mRNA vaccine this year, and 15 million next year, suggests we will see AstraZeneca quietly shuffled off stage and replaced with Moderna. However, it is unlikely to impact the current timeline.

Could we meet an end-of-year target?

In theory, yes.

Studies suggest around three-quarters of Australians are willing to have a COVID-19 vaccine. If we aim to have 75% of adults fully vaccinated with two doses this year, around 15 million Australians will need to receive 30 million doses over the next seven months.

About half of these people are 50+ or priority populations, and the other half are under 50. So that means 15 million doses before September 30 (assuming we continue using AstraZeneca), and 15 million doses from October 1, when greater stocks of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine become available in the fourth quarter of the year.

---

Read more:
I’m over 50 and can now get my COVID vaccine. Is the AstraZeneca vaccine safe? Does it work? What else do I need to know?

---

From now until September 30, we have 100 weekdays left to deliver 12.2 million vaccine doses, or 122,000 per day.

This is twice as many doses per day as we achieved in the past week. But it’s doable if we ramp up our vaccination capacity.

From October 1 to December 24, we have about 15 million doses to administer to vaccinate 75% of all remaining adults. This will mean 250,000 vaccinations per weekday, so doubling the daily number again in the “sprint”.

Again, this is doable if we get all our mass vaccination hubs well-oiled and efficient before then. And probably use weekends, too.

Where it gets more challenging is if many people 50 and over elect to wait for Pfizer or Moderna, meaning an even bigger “sprint”. That would require an extremely reliable supply of these two vaccines before Christmas, well-oiled delivery systems and mass vaccination sites to deliver in excess of 300,000 doses per weekday.

This implied goal of offering vaccines to all adults by the end of 2021 is ambitious, but not impossible.

So when could we open borders?

Australia will still not have COVID-19 resilience (or “herd immunity”, or something approaching it) by the end of 2021.

---

Read more:
We may never achieve long-term global herd immunity for COVID. But if we’re all vaccinated, we’ll be safe from the worst

---

If 25% of Australian adults are unvaccinated, plus 100% of children, some 40% to 45% of the population will remain unvaccinated, which is likely too low to achieve herd immunity.

Wholesale opening of our borders then is not possible – the virus would still spread with substantial disease and death.

To meet a mid-2022 target for substantially loosening border restrictions, we will need children to be vaccinated and further vaccination of adults hesitant in 2021.

Driss Ait Ouakrim, Research Fellow, Population Interventions Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne; Ameera Katar, Data Analyst and Research Coordinator, The University of Melbourne, and Tony Blakely, Professor of Epidemiology, Population Interventions Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

To abandon vaccination targets is to abandon the mantle of leadership

Peter Gahan, The University of Melbourne and Jesse E. Olsen, The University of MelbourneThe Australian government has abandoned its ambitious targets to have the adult population vaccinated by the end of October. It has, in fact, abandoned having any target.

We all sometimes find ourselves in tough positions and just want to call it a day. But this decision is not what we should expect from the nation’s leaders when so much is at stake. It also goes against decades of research and evidence on the importance of goal-setting.

In January Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the plan was to have four million Australians vaccinated by the end of March, and the entire adult population by the end of October. At the start of April, however, the actual number was less than 842,000. (As of April 15 the number was just over 1.4 million doses.)

Then, on April 11, in a video posted to his Facebook page at 11:35pm, Morrison announced there would be no more targets. “We are just getting on with it,” he said.

But without any target, what is the “it” we should be “getting on with”?

---

Australia’s vaccination score card as of April 4 2021. Don’t expect to see any more of these.
Australian Government/Department of Health, CC BY-SA

---

Imagine if at your next work meeting the boss echoed the prime minister’s words that “one of the things about COVID is it writes its own rules” and said something like:

This quarter, rather than set targets that can get knocked about by every to and fro, we are just getting on with it.

Will these words inspire your team to succeed?

According to leadership research, good management necessarily entails influencing others to achieve goals or objectives. This is a point made even in introductory undergraduate management textbooks.

To abandon goals or targets is, by definition, to abandon the mantle of leadership.

---

Read more:
As Australia’s vaccination bungle becomes clear, Morrison’s political pain is only just beginning

---

When goals work

Study after study has demonstrated why setting ambitious targets is important for virtually any activity — from turning a couch potato into a marathon runner, to putting an astronaut on the Moon, to building a driverless car.

Of course, just setting an ambitious goal is not enough. Done poorly, they can be discouraging and undermine performance, and even lead people to behave unethically. To work, people and organisations need to have the capabilities and resources to address unexpected twists and turns, as well as strategy to manage risks and overcome any barriers that crop up.

But so long as goals are set with these things in mind, they help achieve results, driving creativity, innovation and performance.

We already see evidence of this in COVID vaccinations overseas.

The US government’s Operation Warp Speed, the private-public partnership to develop and distribute multiple vaccines in record time, started with this goal:

to deliver tens of millions of doses of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine — with demonstrated safety and efficacy, and approved or authorised by the US Food and Drug administration for use in the US population by the end of 2020, and to have as many as 300 million doses deployed by mid-2021.

The goal was both ambitious and specific, defining the “it” that everyone should “get on with”. It formed the basis for planning that has started paying dividends after a year of death and economic destruction.

Goal setting and effective leadership

The federal government’s decision to abandon goals goes against research the Commonwealth itself commissioned just a few years ago.

In 2015, the federal Department of Employment and Workplace Relations funded the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Workplace Leadership to survey more than 3,500 Australian workplaces about how the quality of management and leadership affects productivity and innovation.

The Study of Australian Leadership, which surveyed both private and public sector organisations, found very basic management practices to be among the most important drivers of organisational performance and innovation. These basic practices include setting clear and ambitious targets, communicating them, and regularly monitoring progress.

Scott Morrison communicates via a Facebook video on April 11 that the Australian government has abandoned vaccination uptake targets.
Facebook

Leading rapid implementation

Given the evidence, any government with claims to having competent leadership should be setting and communicating a clear and ambitious goal for its vaccination roll-out.

Successful roll-outs in other countries show this should be done in consultation with local and regional governments, health professionals and key players in the public and private sectors (who must also be involved in the design and implementation of strategies and processes).

Given the federal government’s own limited capacities at the local level (public hospitals, for example, are run by the state and territory governments), its engagement with other stakeholders must be meaningful — not just lip service. It must also resist the urge to control everything.

Let there be goals

When faced with complex problems, getting agreement on ambitious goals can be extremely powerful. Nor does it need to take forever, as is often claimed. Australia’s response to the pandemic in 2020 largely shows this.

There will be challenges with meeting targets. Vaccine supplies are limited. There will be hiccups. But abandoning any sense of ambition is not the answer.

Because COVID “writes its own rules”, as Morrison has rightly pointed out, the federal government should pursue multiple alternative paths to achieving its goals. In other words, it should not put all it eggs in one basket, as it did with its plan to rely on local GPs to deliver vaccines, rather than use “vaccination hubs” as other nations have done.

---

Read more:
Australian vaccine rollout needs all hands on deck after the latest AstraZeneca news, mass vaccination hubs included

---

Abandoning vaccination targets now undermines all that has been sacrificed to be in the relatively good position the nation is now in. The economic and social costs, as well as the potential further loss of life, will mount unless the Morrison government reconsiders its misguided decision.

It must put aside concerns about the political fallout of missing targets. We cannot “get on with it” without leadership that defines the “it” to be gotten on with.

Peter Gahan, Professor of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne and Jesse E. Olsen, Senior Lecturer, Dept of Management & Marketing, Faculty of Business & Economics, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

US Targets Iranian General

More mirage than good management, MYEFO fails to hit its own targets

Danielle Wood, Grattan Institute and Kate Griffiths, Grattan Institute

The Morrison government wants next year’s election to be about economic management.

So understandably, it’s using the improved bottom line in the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) to talk up its economic credentials.

But the numbers in MYEFO show it has failed to hit many of its own targets.

Target 1: Surpluses on average over the cycle

The government’s overarching fiscal objective is to deliver budget surpluses: not just in one year but on average over the economic cycle.

MYEFO indicates the government is expecting a $5.2 billion deficit in 2018-19 (0.3% of GDP).

It will be the 11th consecutive deficit for the Commonwealth budget.

Deficits have averaged $33.2 billion (2.1% of GDP) over those 11 years.

Yes, a $4.1 billion surplus is forecast for next year, with surpluses projected to reach $19 billion (0.9% of GDP) by 2021-22.

But so big have the recent deficits been, that even if everything goes well and the fiscal position continues to improve, the budget would need to be in surplus for decades to produce a surplus on average over each year, far longer than what most economists consider a typical economic cycle.

---

Read more:
MYEFO reveals billions more in revenue, $9 billion in fresh election tax cuts

---

A related fiscal target is that budget surpluses will build to at least 1% of GDP as soon as possible.

Despite revenue windfalls from income and company taxes (discussed below), the government is still forecasting it won’t reach that 1% of GDP surplus target until 2025-26.

Policy decisions in this year’s budget and MYEFO – including income and company tax cuts, additional funding for independent and Catholic schools, and changes to the GST formula to placate Western Australia – have weakened the bottom line in 2021-22 by $10.5 billion.

Hardly the actions of a government in a hurry to deliver a sizeable surplus.

Verdict: Fail.

---

---

Target 2: Reduce the payments-to-GDP ratio

The government’s policy is also to maintain strong fiscal discipline by controlling expenditure, with a falling payments-to-GDP ratio its measure of success.

Whether it has met the target depends on the starting year. Governments payments are forecast to reach 24.9% of GDP in 2018-19, up from 23.9% in 2012-13 before the Coalition took office.

The government prefers the starting point of its first year in office 2013-14 where payments were 25.5% of GDP.

Either way, payments in 2018-19 remain above the 30-year historical average of 24.7% of GDP.

---

Read more:
Morrison’s return to surplus built on the back of higher tax – Parliamentary Budget Office

---

While the government projects that spending will fall slightly further to 24.6% of GDP by 2021-22, this relies on spending growth across the government’s major programs falling substantially compared to the previous four years – without major policy changes to help facilitate the fall.

Verdict: Debateable pass.

---

---

Target 3: Tax-to-GDP ratio below 23.9% of GDP

In last year’s budget, the government introduced a new target of capping tax collections at 23.9% of GDP.

Why 23.9%? That was the average level of tax during the final two terms of the Howard/Costello government.

While the Coalition is understandably keen to follow the lead of one of its most electorally successful governments, that was also a period where tax collections were historically high.

Tax collections are projected to reach 23.8% of GDP in 2022, on the back of stronger than forecast personal income tax and company tax receipts.

Verdict: Pass.

---

MYEFO Chart.

---

Target 4: New spending measures more than offset by reductions in spending elsewhere

Since becoming prime minister, Scott Morrison has sent mixed signals about whether his government will adhere to the longstanding budget rule that all new spending proposals be matched with budget savings.

At the MYEFO press conference, Finance Minister Matthias Cormann said it was a “matter of balancing competition priorities”.

Here’s the straight answer – the net effect of policy changes announced in MYEFO are an additional $12.2 billion in spending over four years.

In other words, the government has not offset new spending with cuts to other spending programs. The Turnbull government similarly failed to offset its new spending in 2017-18 (although it succeeded in prior years).

---

Read more:
Monday’s MYEFO will look good, but it will set the budget up for awful trouble down the track

---

There have been some reductions in spending because of improvements in the economy. The government claims these reductions offset its recent spending announcements. But genuine offsets come from policy changes, not economic good luck.

Verdict: Fail.

Target 5: Shifts due to changes in the economy banked as an improvement in budget bottom line

This objective is key to the government’s fiscal conservative credentials.

If it has some economic good luck, it commits to use the proceeds for budget repair rather than new spending or tax cuts.

This rule has been irrelevant for most of the past decade, because almost every budget had revenue collections falling short of forecast.

But the Morrison government is in the middle of a mini revenue boom – revenue collections were higher than forecast in both the 2018-19 budget and MYEFO.

Company tax collections are higher largely due to strong commodity prices. Income tax collections are up and government spending is down because of improvements in the economy.

---

Read more:
Labor would deliver bigger surpluses than the Coalition: Bowen

---

So has the government used this chance to show off its fiscal prudence?

Not exactly. It will spend around $11.8 billion of this windfall, give away another $19.3 billion in tax cuts and bank just over half of it ($35.2 billion) to the bottom line.

And in the shadow of an election, we can almost certainly expect further spending. The $9 billion in decisions taken but not announced – potentially a pre-election warchest – suggests that more tax cuts could also be on the way.

Verdict: Fail.

Our final verdict

The challenge in assessing budget management is separating good luck from good management. Governments will always seek to take credit for economic upswings that boost the bottom line.

Fiscal targets are there to keep them on the straight and narrow.

An objective assessment of the government’s performance against its own key targets suggests its good news budget is more mirage than magnificent management.

Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute and Kate Griffiths, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Growth without direction: How Australia measures up against UN targets

Rod Glover, Monash University

Australia has enjoyed 27 years of continuous economic growth, arguably more than any other developed country. Almost alone among developed economies, we managed to avoid a recession during the global financial crisis. Employment is at an all-time high, due mainly to a surge in the labour force participation of women, from 40% to 56% of all women over the past three decades.

This success was built on a contract – partly explicit, but mostly implicit – in which the bulk of the population agreed to support contentious reforms in exchange for a guarantee that they wouldn’t be left behind.

The Transforming Australia: SDG Progress Report published this week by the National Sustainable Development Council in partnership with the Monash Sustainable Development Institute finds that contract has become fragile. Although the economy is much larger than it was, since 2012 disposable income per capita has barely grown at all.

Our AAA credit rating is at risk from our reliance on foreign capital for investment (mostly borrowed), our high household debt and our narrow industry base.

---

Read more:
Australia’s UN report card: making progress, could do better on inequality and climate

---

High employment masks high inequality and entrenched disadvantage. Although the unemployment rate has fallen from 6.5% to 5.5% since the turn of the century, underemployment (where people work fewer hours than they want to) has climbed from 6.5% to 8.5%. Since the crisis the proportion of the unemployed who have been out of work more than a year has climbed from 14% to 24%. Low-skilled men, younger Australians, women with children, and Indigenous Australians find working more challenging than the headline figure suggests.

Wages growth fell to an all time low after the economic crisis and has yet to recover.

Well-connected cities and regions

As a vast country, connectivity is critical to our prosperity. By and large, we meet the need well through investment in physical infrastructure. But rapid population growth in our big cities and political considerations have made it more difficult.

Our cities and regions offer a very high quality of life, but are evolving by default rather than design. Planning isn’t guided by a consensus about the desired pattern of economic and population growth. The result is low-density cities (far lower than comparable overseas cities) meaning long commutes and social isolation for many.

---

Read more:
Our urban environment doesn’t only reflect poverty, it amplifies it

---

As house prices have surged, our household debt has climbed from 70% of GDP in 2000 to 120% of GDP today. Home ownership has become more difficult, with many only able to afford options that come with poor access to services and jobs. We are now vulnerable to falling house prices, rising interest rates and global uncertainty.

Dynamic but not diversified

Our open and flexible economy has benefited from dynamism offered by new people, new ideas and new investment. Strength in industries such as international education delivers not only a sizeable brain gain, but also new and important relationships, particularly in our rapidly growing region.

But these successes disguise our wider failure to diversify our economic base. Economic complexity (EC) measures the depth (sophistication) and breadth (diversity) of what a nation sells to the world. It is a strong predictor of economic prospects.

While the EC measure has limitations for a heavily resource-intensive and service-based economy, Australia’s low and deteriorating ranking, 86th in the world, is consistent with other indicators.

---

Read more:
No clear target in Australia’s 2030 national innovation report

---

Our high investment in physical capital contrasts sharply with our comparatively low investment in knowledge-based capital. Knowledge-based capital encompasses not only research and development, but also software and data, design, marketing and organisational capabilities.

Australia’s business investment in R&D has fallen consistently since the crisis. We rely far more heavily than other nations on indirect R&D tax incentives, leaving less room for more direct approaches.

Innovative nations stimulate both public and private sector innovation through mission-driven approaches. With a few exceptions, Australia does not. We do not attempt to leverage our strengths in fields such as health, education and water, or to meet societal needs, such as those for reduced emissions, sustainable food, better population health or less inequality.

There’s an alternative

A more robust and resilient Australia would be built on a broader base of industries and capabilities. It would address goals that were more than merely economic and adopt as a goal a smaller environmental footprint.

Getting there would require us to develop a shared vision of what we want. We are doing well overall, and badly in places, without quite knowing what we are trying to achieve.

Transforming Australia: SDG Progress Report is an initiative of the National Sustainable Development Council to assess Australia’s progress against the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Rod Glover, Professor of Practice, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Israeli Air Strike on Syrian Targets

The link below is to an article reporting on an Israeli air strike in Syria.

For more visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22409380

Nigeria: Boko Haram Targets Christians and Westerners

The link below is to an article that reports on Islamist activity against both Christians and Westerners in Nigeria.

For more visit:
http://www.euronews.com/newswires/1851294-nigerian-islamists-increasingly-turn-guns-on-the-west/

Latest Persecution News – 12 April 2012

Turkey’s Religious Freedom Record Slides

The following article reports on growing anti-Christian mood in Turkey, along with the latest persecution news there.

http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/turkey/article_1498889.html

 

Suicide Bomber Targets Churches in Kaduna, Nigeria

The following article reports on the latest attack of Boko Haram Islamic extremists on Christians in Nigeria.

http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/nigeria/article_1499111.html

 

The articles linked to above are by Compass Direct News and  relate to persecution of Christians around the world. Please keep in mind that the definition of ‘Christian’ used by Compass Direct News is inclusive of some that would not be included in a definition of Christian that I would use or would be used by other Reformed Christians. The articles do however present an
indication of persecution being faced by Christians around the world.

Pastor, Church Official Shot Dead in Nigeria

Muslim militants of Boko Haram blamed for killings in Borno state.

JOS, Nigeria, June 10 (CDN) — Muslim extremists from the Boko Haram sect on Tuesday (June 7) shot and killed a Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) pastor and his church secretary in Maiduguri, in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state.

The Rev. David Usman, 45, and church secretary Hamman Andrew were the latest casualties in an upsurge of Islamic militancy that has engulfed northern Nigeria this year, resulting in the destruction of church buildings and the killing and maiming of Christians.

The Rev. Titus Dama Pona, pastor with the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) in Maiduguri, told Compass that Pastor Usman was shot and killed by the members of the Boko Haram near an area of Maiduguri called the Railway Quarters, where the slain pastor’s church is located.

Pona said Christians in Maiduguri have become full of dread over the violence of Boko Haram, which seeks to impose sharia (Islamic law) on northern Nigeria.

“Christians have become the targets of these Muslim militants – we no longer feel free moving around the city, and most churches no longer carry out worship service for fear of becoming targets of these unprovoked attacks,” Pona said.

Officials at COCIN’s national headquarters in Jos, Plateau state, confirmed the killing of Pastor Usman. The Rev. Logan Gongchi of a COCIN congregation in Kerang, Jos, told Compass that area Christians were shocked at the news.

Gongchi said he attended Gindiri Theological College with Pastor Usman beginning in August 2003, and that both of them were ordained into pastoral ministry on Nov. 27, 2009.

“We knew him to be very gentle, an introvert, who was always silent in the class and only spoke while answering questions from our teachers,” Gongchi said. “He had a simple lifestyle and was easygoing with other students. He was very accommodating and ready at all times to withstand life’s pressures – this is in addition to being very jovial.”

Gongchi described Usman as “a pastor to the core because of his humility. I remember he once told me that he was not used to working with peasant farmers’ working tools, like the hoe. But with time he adapted to the reality of working with these tools on the farm in the school.”

Pastor Usman was excellent at counseling Christians and others while they were at the COCIN theological college, Gongchi said, adding that the pastor greatly encouraged him when he was suffering a long illness from 2005 to 2007.

“His encouraging words kept my faith alive, and the Lord saw me overcoming my ill health,” he said. “So when I heard the news about his murder, I cried.”

 

Motives

The late pastor had once complained about the activities of Boko Haram, saying that unless the Nigerian government faced up to the challenge of its attacks, the extremist group would consume the lives of innocent persons, according to Gongchi.

“Pastor Usman once commented on the activities of the Boko Haram, which he said has undermined the church not only in Maiduguri, but in Borno state,” Gongchi said. “At the time, he urged us to pray for them, as they did not know how the problem will end.”

Gongchi advised the Nigerian government to find a lasting solution to Boko Haram’s violence, which has also claimed the lives of moderate Muslim leaders and police.

The Railway Quarters area in Maiduguri housed the seat of Boko Haram until 2009, when Nigerian security agencies and the military demolished its headquarters and captured and killed the sect’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, and some of his followers.

The killing of Pastor Usman marked the second attack on his church premises by the Muslim militants. The first attack came on July 29, 2009, when Boko Haram militants burned the church building and killed some members of his congregation.

On Monday (June 6), the militants had bombed the St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, along with other areas in Maiduguri, killing three people. In all, 14 people were killed in three explosions at the church and police stations, and authorities have arrested 14 people.

The Boko Haram name is interpreted figuratively as “against Western education,” but some say it can also refer to the forbidding of the Judeo-Christian faith. They say the word “Boko” is a corruption in Hausa language for the English word “Book,” referring to the Islamic scripture’s description of Jews and Christians as “people of the Book,” while “Haram” is a Hausa word derived from Arabic meaning, “forbidding.”

Boko Haram leaders have openly declared that they want to establish an Islamic theocratic state in Nigeria, and they reject democratic institutions, which they associate with Christianity. Their bombings and suspected involvement in April’s post-election violence in Nigeria were aimed at stifling democracy, which they see as a system of government built on the foundation of Christian scripture.

Christians as well as Muslims suffered many casualties after supporters of Muslim presidential candidate Muhammudu Buhari lost the April 16 federal election to Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian. Primarily Muslim rioters claimed vote fraud, although international observers praised the polls as the fairest since 1999.

Nigeria’s population of more than 158.2 million is almost evenly divided between Christians, who make up 51.3 percent of the population and live mainly in the south, and Muslims, who account for 45 percent of the population and live mainly in the north. The percentages may be less, however, as those practicing indigenous religions may be as high as 10 percent of the total population, according to Operation World.

Report From Compass Direct News
http://www.compassdirect.org/