The Nigerian bishops’ conference is calling for a new beginning so as to save the country from “collapse” in the wake of recent violence.

This was affirmed in a statement distributed Thursday by the Nigerian Catholic Secretariat, signed by Father Louis Odudu, the deputy secretary general.

The statement responded to a wave of violence that claimed hundreds of lives and displaced thousands in the north of the country.

The confrontation began Sunday when a fundamentalist Islamic group called “Boko Haram” staged a raid on a police station in an effort to establish a Taliban-style regime based on a strict observance of Shariah law.

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A week of brutal violence in northern Nigeria has spurred questions over whether an obscure homegrown religious fundamentalist group represents a broader threat to national security in Africa’s most populous nation.

More than 800 people were killed last week during fighting between an Islamic fundamentalist group calling itself Boko Haram, and Nigerian security forces. The clashes spread across several northern states.

A Red Cross worker in the northern city of Maiduguri, where most of the fighting occurred, said that 780 bodies had been collected in the past few days, and that at least 3,600 Maiduguri residents had been displaced. Officials in Bauchi, where the violence began, had earlier confirmed more than 50 deaths.

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In 2003, imams in northern Nigeria fomented a boycott of polio vaccinations, claiming they were a Western plot to make Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS. The result: The number of newly crippled children more than doubled the following year, and there were fears that the disease would spread into a dozen countries nearby.

Now, after another tripling of cases in 2008, a big new anti-polio push is under way in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. And this time, some Muslim clerics have made themselves part of the solution, joining community leaders, health workers and the victims themselves in waging the war.

In the dusty streets of Kano, northern Nigeria’s main city, town criers with bullhorns cut through the traffic and crowds, urging parents to take their children to one of hundreds of vaccination centers. Radio and newspapers are full of get-vaccinated ads.

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A new wave of violence has erupted in Nigeria as Muslims and Christians battled in the northern Bauchi state.

The latest incident saw Muslims attacking Christian places of worship after two mosques were set on fire. The Muslims blamed this on the local Christian population.

However, Government officials were blaming the violence on local politicians. “This is a crisis fomented by troublemakers intent on causing disaffection in the state,” state governor Yuguda said in a radio broadcast.

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You may never have heard of E. A. Adeboye, but the pastor of The Redeemed Christian Church of God is one of the most successful preachers in the world. He boasts that his church has outposts in 110 countries. He has 14,000 branches””claiming 5 million members””in his home country of Nigeria alone. There are 360 RCCG churches in Britain, and about the same number in U.S. cities like Chicago, Dallas, and Tallahassee, Fla. Adeboye says he has sent missionaries to China and such Islamic countries as Pakistan and Malaysia. His aspirations are outsize. He wants to save souls, and he wants to do so by planting churches the way Starbucks used to build coffee shops: everywhere.

“In the developing world we say we want churches to be within five minutes’ walk of every person,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “In the developed world, we say five minutes of driving.” Such a goal may seem outlandish, but Adeboye is a Pentecostal preacher: he believes in miracles. And Pentecostalism is the biggest, fastest-growing Christian movement since the Reformation.

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After two days of mob violence, an uneasy calm returned Sunday to this central Nigerian town. Women with plastic buckets ventured out in search of water and many of the dead were buried.

Troops on foot and in armored personnel carriers appeared Sunday to have quelled two days of ethnic and religious rioting that left more than 300 people dead in Jos, apparently ending the worst violence in the West African nation since 2004.

Streets stayed mostly empty, but hunger and thirst forced some residents out of their homes for the first time since the riots began Friday after a disputed election. Hundreds of women and girls, who wouldn’t be considered combatants by soldiers with orders to shoot troublemakers on sight, carried buckets and cans to public water points.

“There’s no water in the house. Our children are crying for water, and all the shops are closed. Even the last food we have, we can’t cook because we have no water,” said Hawa Ismailah, a Muslim housewife with 24 people cowering in her home.

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