US embassy cable - 02ABUJA1748

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 001748 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
STATE FOR AF/PD, AF/W, AF/RA, IIP/G/AF, IIP/T/G 
USAID/W FOR AFR, G/PHN (DELAY) 
DEPARTMENT PASS TO IBB FOR VOA (ENGLISH TO AFRICA 
SERVICE, HAUSA SERVICE) 
EMBASSIES AND CONSULATES FOR PAS, POL, ECON, 
USAID 
 
 
E.O. 12598:  N/A 
TAGS: KHIV, KPAO, OIIP, SCUL, NI 
SUBJECT:  THE A-B-C-D OF AIDS -- NIGERIAN 
WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS WANT MORE ON "A," 
ABSTINENCE, AND MORE ON "B," BE FAITHFUL 
 
1.  SUMMARY:  Nigerians who focus on the HIV/AIDS 
epidemic use A-B-C-D (A-Abstain, B-Be faithful, 
C-use Condoms, OR D-you Die) as a mnemonic device 
with target audiences.  Sixty activists and 
program leaders -- Muslim and Christian -- who 
attended one of the two two-day workshops in 
Kaduna and Lagos with U.S. Speaker Rev. Eugene 
Rivers listened with rapt attention and growing 
enthusiasm to his presentations on the U.S. 
experience with faith-based programs that promote 
abstinence and fidelity.  They unanimously asked 
for more focus, more programs, and more tools to 
promote the "A" and "B" in the formula -- 
abstinence and fidelity. 
 
 
2.  Attending all of the sessions at the workshop 
in Lagos was the First Lady of Cross River State. 
A Reuters cameraman from Abidjan taped some of 
Rivers' presentations in Lagos for a possible 
segment on "Sixty Minutes."  This is a GPRA 
report.  END SUMMARY. 
 
 
3.  The PAS sections in Abuja and Lagos organized 
two-day workshops for visiting U.S. speaker 
Boston-based Rev. Eugene Rivers, pastor of the 
Azuza Christian Community and co-chair of the 
National TenPoint Coalition.  AIDS activists and 
program leaders, with a strong representation of 
pastors and imams, gathered in Kaduna on June 3-4 
and in Lagos on June 6-7.  The programs -- 
"Faith-Based Approaches to Combat HIV-AIDS: Focus 
on Abstinence and Fidelity" also provided an 
excellent introduction to the Bush 
Administration's initiatives with faith-based 
programs.  The sessions were attended by every 
invitee, with not even one no-show. 
 
 
4.  Rivers, an energetic and convictional teacher 
who alternates between the languages of the 
university classroom and the pulpit, first framed 
the HIV/AIDS epidemic in an unaccustomed way, 
avoiding polite circumlocutions.  It is a "sexual 
holocaust" that will produce 40 million orphans 
and untold social disruption across the continent 
unless radical changes in the behavior that 
communicates the disease -- he bluntly called it 
"promiscuity" -- occur, especially among African 
men who exploit the continent's women and girls. 
Newborns infected with AIDS may be a new 
"biological underclass." 
 
 
5.  In Rivers' view, the epidemic is not simply 
medical.  It is also a human rights issue: men 
who infect women are committing fatal violations 
of their human rights.  And it has a moral 
dimension because the behavior that will reverse 
the rise in HIV/AIDS incidence -- fidelity in 
marriage, abstinence before marriage -- must be 
grounded in deeper understandings of human 
sexuality, dignity, and respect.  Faith 
communities, he said, are best positioned to 
teach the underlying values that can change 
behavior. 
 
 
6.  Each audience -- mostly Muslim in Kaduna, 
mostly Christian in Lagos -- had issues to dispel 
before Rivers could get to the heart of his 
program.  In the north, the chairman of the 
Jaamat Nazrili Islam used his welcoming remarks 
to re-air the rumors that the AIDS virus had been 
developed in U.S. labs and say that it was 
necessary to understand the true origins of the 
virus before deciding on how to approach the 
epidemic.  He also said "the U.S. has never 
officially denied this."  After the PAO 
emphatically stated the denial for the record, 
explaining some of the Cold War disinformation 
that set the rumor in motion, Rivers suggested 
that dwelling on the origins of disease was a 
distraction or excuse that could only delay the 
immediate imperative -- to deal with the 
epidemic.  Delay would cost many more lives. 
 
 
7.  Other audience members said the way to end 
the epidemic was to attack its true "root causes" 
-- poverty, or the status of women, or crushing 
external debts, or lack of education, for 
instance.  Rivers agreed that all these issues 
must be addressed, but he said there was no time 
to wait for root causes to be solved.  This focus 
was a distraction or an excuse for no action. 
The immediate prospect of death for so many 
millions required immediate, direct action. 
 
 
(In Lagos, participants told Rivers that the 
current rumor circulating among young people is 
that the U.S. wants to use the AIDS epidemic to 
keep Africans from having sex.  Rivers urged all 
the participants to fight this rumor.  Young 
people who acted on it would only increase the 
risks of their own infection and death.) 
 
 
8.  Some participants voiced doubt that the 
experience of a pastor in a U.S. inner city was 
relevant to the different circumstances of 
Nigeria, but Rivers deeply impressed them with 
parallels.  Both countries confront the ubiquity 
of upfront sexuality in popular music and 
culture, the absence of fathers that can foster 
inappropriate and risky behavior in adolescent 
daughters and sons, and generational 
discontinuities that pull children away from 
traditional norms that were still strong during 
the upbringings of today's adults.  He strongly 
urged the participants to "dialog with the 
culture" and learn how to communicate with young 
people if they are to be successful. 
 
 
9.  Joining the workshop in Kaduna during a 
session on its second day was Dr. Danny McCain, 
an American faculty member in the Department of 
Religious Studies at the University of Jos.  (All 
primary and secondary students in Nigeria take 
"Christian Religious Knowledge" or "Islamic 
Religious Knowledge" as a required course.)  The 
Religious Studies department at the university 
trains teachers in these subjects for primary and 
secondary schools.  The Muslim and Christian 
faculty at the Department worked together to 
develop two exactly parallel AIDS awareness 
syllabi for high school religious studies 
classes.  The learning outcomes and lesson 
sequences are identical for both the Christian 
and Islamic syallabi; the only difference is the 
references to verses in the Bible or the Koran. 
McCain shared the faculty's commitment to 
education for abstinence and fidelity as the 
behavioral premises of the program. 
 
 
10.  Materials provided by Rivers for the 
conference were all new to the participants. 
They included the 1999 four-part series on AIDS 
in Africa that ran in the Boston Globe; the 
recent New Republic article ("Uganda v. Condoms: 
Sex Change," by Arthur Allen, issue of May 27, 
2000); and The Seymour Institute report, 
"Recommendations for Addressing the AIDS 
Holocaust in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1/2002."  The 
IRCs added more material, including the Heritage 
Foundation 5/2002 report on abstinence programs 
that research has proven effective in reducing 
sexual activity among young people. 
 
 
11.  The final sessions of the workshops were 
devoted to brainstorming.  The Nigerian 
participants proved eager to:  begin developing 
awareness campaigns and workshops; develop 
community-based non-academic approaches and 
materials; train trainers; develop effective 
communications; and put together an advocacy 
network to promote abstinence and fidelity. 
 
 
12.  In addition to the workshops, Rivers held 
media roundtables in Lagos and Abuja.  The 
National Television Authority and Federal Radio 
Corporation of Nigeria aired spots of the Kaduna 
session -- one ran seven minutes.  Reports were 
printed over the weekend in two newspapers -- The 
Guardian (establishment, Lagos) and Al-Mizan. 
The latter is a radical Islamic paper published 
in Zaria that circulates to Mosque congregations 
on Friday.  The report of the Rivers program was 
the first favorable report on the U.S. in the 
newspaper in recent memory. 
 
 
13.  At a dinner with Rivers, the Methodist 
bishop of Kaduna confessed that he has never met 
an AIDS patient, and the dinner table 
conversation about the coming crisis of millions 
of orphans in Africa was the first time he had 
considered this need for enlarged social work. 
(He said the two Methodist orphanages in Nigeria 
have a capacity of a few hundred, and it is 
already a financial challenge to maintain them. 
To his knowledge, these are the only Christian 
orphanages in the country.) 
 
 
14.  "Sixty Minutes" arranged for the Reuters 
office in Abidjan to send a cameraman to tape 
Rivers' initial workshop sessions on Thursday, 
June 6.  The cameraman did not interview Rivers, 
the participants, or any Consulate staff.  Action 
for this project at "Sixty Minutes" is Dana 
Miller. 
 
 
15.  GPRA data: 
 
 
RESULTS:  Excellent.  Participants rated the 
workshops as highly successful and left full of 
information and energy to strengthen the 
"abstinence" and "be faithful" portions of their 
own programs.  The fortuitous attendance of Dr. 
McCain allowed them to be updated on one Nigerian 
effort that is already underway.  Fresh materials 
provided by Rev. Rivers and the IRC added new 
knowledge and perspectives.  The participation of 
Muslim and Christian leaders, focusing on a 
common problem, was an additional positive 
dimension of the program. 
 
 
DATE:  June 3-7, 2002, FY 2002, third quarter. 
 
 
MPP UMBRELLA THEMES:  Health 
 
 
AUDIENCE REACHED:  Sixty HIV/AIDS activists and 
program leaders drawn from both Nigeria's north 
and south.  Attending all the sessions in Lagos 
over two days was the First Lady of Cross River 
State. 
 
 
NON-USG FUNDING:  N/A. 
 
 
QUALITY OF U.S. SUPPORT:  Excellent.  Thanks to 
William Peters of IIP for making travel 
arrangements for Rev. Rivers on short notice. 
 
 
Andrews