Libyan leader Moamer Gadhafi has said Nigeria should be partitioned between the Christian and Muslim communities to solve its sectarian violence problem.

He proposed that it should follow the partition model of Pakistan, which was born in 1947 after the Muslim minority of predominantly Hindu India founded their own homeland, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

"The only thing that could put an end to the bloodshed is the appearance of another Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who established a state for the Muslims and another for the Christians," he told African student leaders, some of them from Nigeria, the news agency JANA reported.  "The painful situation that Nigeria is enduring resembles the situation of the Indian subcontinent before 1947, at the time of the massacres between Hindus and Muslims," Gadhafi said in the remarks.

India's partition resulted in hundreds of thousands killed, thousands raped, and more than 10 million left homeless on both sides.

Gadhafi suggested that former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo should lead efforts for a Christian homeland in the south with Lagos as its capital, and that a Muslim homeland in the north should have Abuja as its principal city.

Gadhafi, until recently the head of the African Union, said the two communities should peacefully agree to share Nigeria's oil and other natural wealth.

Several hundred people were killed last week in sectarian violence in Nigeria's central Plateau State.
Plateau State, with Jos as its capital, is the de facto buffer between the predominantly Muslim north and the largely Christian and animist south.

source: AFP