Can we really fight a religious war?

Of recent, especially since the horrendous bombing of the Madalla church allegedly by Boko Haram, many commentators have made the prospect of a religious war breaking out in this country to loom larger by the day. Only the equally horrendous removal of fuel subsidy by Dr Goodluck Jonathan – arguably the most hated president Nigeria ever had – eclipsed that prospect. However, while one joined the rest of Nigerians to sound alarm, dismay and rejection of the government’s thoughtless reflex action, one was also unable to dismiss the thought of the ‘religious war’ from one’s mind. Reason: before the subsidy catastrophe befell us like a bag of damnation from the heavens, the issue of a shooting battle between Christians and Muslims in the country was conceivably a fait accompli. What with the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayodele Joseph Oritsejafor, angrily urging Christians to stop turning the other cheek and return fire for fire.

It is easy – and even excusable – for certain elements to express extreme outrage at such wanton killings in places of worship, or any other place for that matter. Only a person of extreme wickedness and inhumanity would bomb a church (or a mosque), killing worshippers – people who most probably have nothing to do with the killer’s grouse or kind of politics. When such murders occur, it is only fair to expect the action to draw extreme outrage even from sedate members of the society.

But when otherwise informed people warn of the country slipping into a religious war, one wonders just where the shootings would begin. Some even display their ignorance about the cultural composition of Nigeria. A ‘religious war’ must have clearly defined enemies whose locations must be recognisable and mutually exclusive. In Nigeria, no matter how outraged we are over the unacceptable actions of some of us, such enemy lines are not clearly identifiable.

The biggest error I always read in news reports by Western media on the Nigerian crisis is where they unavoidably claim that Nigeria is “roughly divided between a Christian south and a Muslim north.” This statement is painfully wrong because Nigeria is not divided along a north-south line when it comes to religious enclaves.

Start from my state, Katsina. One would say it is a mainly Muslim state. But that does not mean there are no Christians who are indigenes of Katsina state. They are Hausa like the rest of the Muslims in the state, or even more so. They are not ‘settlers’ but dyed-in-the-wool indigenes. As such nobody can say, on the day a ‘religious war’ breaks out in Nigeria, that they should start moving to the “Christian south.” Many of them may have probably never travelled out of their vicinity or beyond Zaria.

Same thing goes for many other “Muslim states” in north. Zamfara, Kano, Kogi, Niger, Kwara, Borno and Adamawa are other examples of states where there are indigenes who are as Christian as the man in the Niger Delta. And in Christian-dominated states like Plateau and Benue, there are Muslim indigenes who cannot be expelled till kingdom come.

If you move down south, what would you do with all those Yoruba Muslims? Some of them are obas or even the governors of their states – and they are not ‘settlers’! In some of the south-west states, Muslims are in the majority. So, just because somebody wants us to fight a religious war, should the Muslims in all the Yoruba states, as well as those in southern states like Edo (around Auchi) hire lorries and buses and pack to the “Muslim north”? Even among the more homogenous Igbo people in the south-east there are quite a few Muslims.

To stretch the argument further, what would you do about states in the north where Christians are in the majority – like Plateau, Taraba and Benue? Should the majority of the people in these states migrate to the south and start life anew, build new civilisations and try to blend with their brothers and sisters in faith there?

Recently, while reading the autobiography of the highly respected Prof. Adamu Baikie, I found the ‘religious war’ notion an increasingly bigger fallacy, concocted by largely southern commentators and their ignorant collaborators in the Western media. I saw how families not only in the north but also in the south are inextricably meshed together through intermarriages across tribes and religions. I saw how in a family there are followers of both faiths, all living together in peace and harmony. Later, in a discussion with a Yoruba friend, I realised that this meshing of creeds is even more rampant among the Yoruba, where some children of the same parents can follow different faiths – and without killing each other for it. The question, then, is that on the day of our religious Armageddon, should such siblings start massacring each other because of the blandishment of some religious bigot? Should a Muslim married to a Christian woman just kill her because a religious war has begun? Should a son professing Christianity send his aged Muslim mother in downtown Abeokuta to the great beyond because the pundits have said so?

Thus, it is simply foolhardy to believe that a war based on religious sentiments could be successfully prosecuted in Nigeria. The fabrics of our nation are so meshed into each other, not only through political alliances, business partnerships, marriages or workplaces but also through the faiths we individually profess. Of course, some idiots may bomb a mosque or a church thinking “it is the other people’s”, but at the end of the day they may unwittingly be murdering someone from their family, tribe or village. Instead of a religious war, therefore, people may fight based on tribal lines or in exclusive and clearly defined enclaves like the ones you find in Plateau or Kano.

What Nigerians need to fight is militancy, terrorism and bigotry. God, whom we all worship in spite of differences in creed, has a purpose for bringing us together as one nation. He knows why we have this unique diversity, the type you only find in multicultural societies like America. We should find strength in it and oppose those who want to forcefully take it away from us.

Published in my column on the back page of BLUEPRINT, today, January 16, 2012

Above picture is Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor

The North’s regression

Slowly and inexorably, the north is becoming like Somalia. The only small difference between us and Somalia is that whereas the latter has spent decades without a functional government, there are structures on the ground and people in the north whom we call leaders. Nevertherless, Compared to the south, the north as a political entity is fast sliding back into prehistoric times in terms of development and, indeed, worse than the colonial times in terms of home-grown violence. The situation is so bad that many a frustrated northern youngster is yearning for the British to return and recolonise the country in order to bring back the halcyon times. The solution to our problems is, of course, far from recolonisation. But if it isn’t, then, what is?

For the north, there have been four epochs in the march to (or away from) civilisation. There was the precolonial time when our forefathers engaged in internecine wars and the self-immolating practice of slavery. But then, in parts of the north, the Sokoto jihad came and put aright many things through the institutionalisation of Islamic law. Then came the Europeans, who colonised the area, imposed their crafty system of ‘indirect rule’ through which they milked the nation’s resources and pretended to be developing our people. But a word for colonialism: in spite of its self-serving ends, it put some sense into our people’s understanding of leadership and built a foundation for future progress, such as the railways, literacy and structures for democratic governance. Of course, the colonialists ultimately served themselves, at times employing brute force, while pretending to be serving the natives’ best interests. Hence the stiff resistance against it and the campaigns that uprooted it.

During the third epoch, the post-independence era, it was the natives that took over the mantle of leadership and used state resources in the service of the commonweal. In the north, proofs of their selfless service are legion even today. Even though they were called names by their opponents, we can see, in retrospect, that their dedication to serving the general populace was a thousand and one times better than that of our current leaders.

The fourth milestone is, indeed, today. This dates roughly from the end of the Nigerian civil war to the current reality. It is the worst span in the history of the region. After the violent eradication of those patriotic nation-builders and the 30-month civil war, came the various “corrective” military regimes that pretended, more than the colonialists, to be working in the interest of the nation. The truth is that, apart from the brief spasms of the Murtala and, later, the Buhari/Idiagbon regimes, they worked more for themselves. They institutionalised corruption, cronyism and nepotism. Most of them turned out to become among the richest and, by implication, the most influential people in the country. Because they benefited from a corrupt system, they sustained it and injected their bile into latter day rulers who came in civilian garbs. And because the civilians who inherited the mantle of leadership have been adequately coached in the dark arts of corruption, divisiveness and cronyism, they have carried on, marching within the system and resisting any move to change or overthrow it.

The cycle of violence the north is witnessing, including some of the worst yesterday, is a fall-out of the ruthless system foisted on the region by its selfish rulers of the military and post-military era. Many analysts have pointed at the crying poverty in the region as the primary reason for these volcanic eruptions that are causing the death of hundreds of innocent people, destroying edifices and disrupting the peace. Now what is the cause of the poverty itself? Is it not the tunnel vision – if there is vision at all – of the region’s leaders who have failed to unify the common people through their divisive politics and the misuse of the region’s resources?
The north is fast regressing in all indices of human development. Apart from poverty, illiteracy is growing; so also joblessness among the youth, with concomitant problems such as drug abuse and strange criminality (with many youngsters killing their own parents); collapse of morals and ethics, education, health care, etc. A combination of these problems has created a deep well of despondency among most youth in the region, who have lost confidence in the leadership. They are asking for a change – even away from democracy. Many are saying let’s go back to the sharia law which did well for the region under the Sokoto caliphate, not minding the cultural mix of the present times. Unsure of their success in such agitations in the face of resistance from the state’s coercive powers, many have resorted to hugely violent attacks.

What is the response of our so-called leaders to all this? They shirk their responsibility by simply passing the buck and engaging in histrionics. Appeals to conscience. Calls to prayers. Blandishments. Rhetoric. Trading blames. Peace conferences. Yesterday, all the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, Governor Aliyu of Niger state, could do was an effeminate call on President Jonathan to “urgently convene a national security summit.” We have heard that before, and it won’t work. We are tired of talk shops. Northern leaders should develop the north. Rebuild the infrastructures bequethed to them by the post-independence leaders. Provide jobs. Educate the youth. Stop all the divisive politicking. And stop all the stealing. Try these, and see if the violence and the regression will not disappear fiam – one time!

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My column in today's Blueprint

Are we glorifying gangsterism?

It can only happen in Nigeria. Two armed gangs, both outlawed, converge on two strategic locations, spewing threats against public peace. Police men look on helplessly, pleading with the men to sheath their swords, in manner of speaking, and go back home. The gangs insist on playing out their game to the end, on their own terms, insisting that it is their birthright to do what they must do. As of your laws, stuff them in your mouth and flush them down your dirty gullet.

This happens in Nigeria all the time. Because we have become used to gangsterism in every shade, we scarcely notice that some people are breaking the law with impunity.

It happened last Thursday. Two militias, as if by common acclamation, came out en masse in order to “protest” what they regarded as an abuse of their right. The first gang consisted of “former” Niger Delta militants, operating under disparate organisations jointly known as MEND. About 1,600 of them travelled upcountry in long buses and cars and were only accosted by the police at a bridge in Kogi state. The cops prevented them from reaching their destination – the nation’s capital. One of the militants’ leaders, one “General Ramseh,” had the patience to tell reporters and the police that his group was going to Abuja to ask the President why he failed to fulfill his promise to the men who agreed to stop destroying oil installations. The promise is a mouth-watering rehabilitation package for the militants who agreed to lay down their arms, come out of the creeks and receive training for a better civil life. The amnesty programme, as the package is best known, is floundering – judging from the General’s complaints – and the ‘boys’ are no longer being cared for. “While we have embraced the amnesty programme, but the federal government is frustrating it by refusing to pay us, and we don’t want to go back to the creeks or pick up arms any longer,” Ramsey told Blueprint in a story published on Friday.

Many newspapers reported about how these supposedly former fighters blocked the Lokoja-Abuja road for hours, causing a disturbing traffic gridlock, for which commuters suffered. The policemen who stopped the gang from reaching Abuja were apparently courageous, or lucky, as to be able to turn the tide of the hitherto dreaded militants back to whence they came. Not until the men of MEND, who seem to have been quietened down since Dr Jonathan assumed power, grabbed the headlines the following day. Their message has nonetheless sunk in: give the big boys more cash or else.

The second gang hit town in Lagos. Fighters of the Odu’a Peoples Congress (OPC), not less notorious or dreaded, held a big demonstration in the city. Their grouse, however, was not money – yet. Their leader, Dr Frederick Fasheun, explained that they were out to denounce the activities of the ‘north’s own’ militia, the Boko Haram. Fasheun said his gang was ready to defend the south against infiltration by the Maiduguri-based Islamic sect. The OPC’s threat was obviously a reaction to reports that BH may try to visit a devastating blow on a metropolis down south. As in the case on the Lokoja bridge, the police could only look on as the mainly Yoruba militia performed its show. No one was arrested.

In a normal country, the activities of these militias would be resisted, especially since they are not recognised by any section of the constitution. They are armed groups which the laws of the land have banned. They are becoming more dangerous by flying the ethnic and regional cards. Across time, they have been transformed by their leaders and supporters into cultural units of the communities in which they originated. A report in the Sunday Tribune yesterday even lamented that the OPC are not enjoying enough financial and moral support from the Yoruba elite. This claim, though disputable, clearly illustrates our dilemma as a nation that wishes to solve the intractable problems sectionalism (ethnic, religious and regional) has thrust on us. We are glorifying the actions of people that should otherwise be arrested and put behind bars. The Sunday Tribune report aptly summarised the problem this way: “When gun-totting youths besiege the streets in broad daylight, the action should rather be seen as a social problem that requires urgent attention. The daring display of gangsterism on the streets of Lokoja and Lagos is not merely a matter of security helplessness but a resultant effect of socio-economic problem in the country.”

These sectional gangs are indeed growing not only due to the economic problem, but also greatly due to the collapse of morality. Here is a nation where injustice and immorality fester, its leaders refusing to do much to ameliorate the difficult living conditions while illegally helping themselves to the commonweal and refusing to punish proven criminals. The youth should be helped out of militancy, of course, but that task ought to begin with the leaders. You cannot pretend to have the moral right to remove a speck from my eye while I know that there is a big log in yours.

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Published in my column in BLUEPRINT today.
Above photo: MEND members on Lokoja-Abuja road. Photo by Momoh Obansa

Bombing Jonathan's Ambition

Yesterday, Nigeria celebrated its 50th anniversary as an independent nation. Born 46 years before 1960, it was formed by the British colonialists when they amalgamated their Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. Since 1960, the country has witnessed a lot of things to be happy about, warts and all. At least, it is still one nation in spite of a debilitating 30-month civil war, military dictatorships, ethnic and religious crises that claimed thousands of lives, corruption and insecurity. Bad leadership has stunted its progress, forcing it to remain a Third World entity despite the huge human and natural resources God has endowed it with, and made it impossible for its citizens to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Life in Nigeria is short, brutish and violent.

Yesterday's bombing incident in the otherwise serene city of Abuja was another crude symbol of our backwardness as a nation and a challenge in our desire to drag ourselves out of the shackle that has held us back in the past five decades of nationhood. According to reports, two explosions, which took place a stone's throw frm Eagle Square, venue of the colourful ceremony to mark the 50th independence anniversary, killed about 16 people, injured over 10 and destroyed many cars. Like America's 9/11, it has left the nation's psyche scarred once again, resurrecting the ugly spectre of violence, divisiveness and criminality. It proved that ours is, as Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said, a wasted generation.

The question is why did the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have to carry out this attack at this time? Hours before the attack, the group had dispatched e-mails to selected media houses, threatening that they would bomb the anniversary venue. MEND spokesman Jomo Gbomo had claimed that several explosive devices had been "successfully planted" in and around the venue, warning guests to leave the area by 10:30 a.m. The warning, which some newspapers posted on the websites, was apparently ignored by the security agencies.

It is easy to surmise why MEND committed this atrocity. Obviously, they wanted to draw attention to their struggle for a share of the oil revenues frm the Niger Delta and government to address the environmental pollution in their region. In making their grievances known, however, MEND has demonstrated readiness to commit any act of terrorism, including the kidnap of expatriates and Nigerians, bombing of oil facilities and robbing innocent people.

Before his death in June, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua had bought the nation some respite frm such criminality after a futile effort, including military action, to force the militants to capitulate. Apart frm treating leaders of the uprising to red carpet reception in the presidential villa and paying stupendous bribes to the militants in order to tempt them to lay down their arms under an amnesty programme, he had created the Ministry of Niger Delta to address the genuine grievances of the ordinary people. Under the amnesty programme, former militants are being trained for a more meaningful life in the society, and they are paid salaries. Many people were angry with Yar'Adua for giving in to this cheap blackmail, arguing that instead of wasting scarce resources on criminals and bandits calling themselves freedom fighters, the government should rather tie to the stake and shoot anyone identified as a militant. But the president's gesture was hailed by others who saw in the amnesty package the most sensible road to achieving peace and tranquillity in that beleaguered region.

Amnesty is still on course. But the damage done to the nation by the so-called militants is incalculable. They, with government collaboration, have bequeathed to the nation the violent culture of kidnap-for-cash which has since become a lucrative industry for other criminals, including would-be armed robbers and assassins. The coming of President Goodluck Jonathan was supposed to assuage the feelings of the militants and end all forms of criminality. For, under our type of ethnic politics, the militants ought to have heaved a sigh of relief and recognised that at last somebody frm the creeks is now in the driver's seat. I have it on good authority that Jonathan did not stop or reduce the entitlements and other mouth-watering perquisites the militants have been enjoying since the amnesty deal began; if anything, he had even increased them.

So, why detonate bombs in Abuja at a time when the president was enjoying probably his best moment as Nigerian leader - in the presence of dignitaries frm all over the world? The president's spokesman, Ima Niboro, said the bombing was meant to scuttle the anniversary celebrations. Hence their warning that people should evacuate the venue before 10:30 a.m. That, indeed, was only the apparent reason. The real reason must have been MEND's desire to once again capture the imagination of the world after a lull forced by the amnesty deal and eventually collect huge payoffs frm the government. Should they waste innocent lives in order to achieve that? MEND are being myopic. The implication of their current action is that apart frm succeeding in refreshing the world's memory about the appalling insecurity situation in Nigeria, they have also shot themselves in the foot. The message they brought home through their cowardly act, which Mr. Niboro appropriately described as "a low, dirty and wicked act of desperation by criminals and murderers," is that no one should have confidence in the ability of President Jonathan to deliver on his promises. They are telling the world that their own "son of the soil" is incapable of solving the nation's problems, including that of environmental pollution in the delta and, by extension, oil supply frm Nigeria to the rest of the world. Creating this impression just when Jonathan is facing stiff opposition frm the North to his 2011 election bid is more damaging than the campaigns of calumny the PDP presidential candidates are waging against one another in the mass media. And to prove that MEND is crime-bound, they were the same group that promised hell and brimstone if the president is "denied" his constitutional right to vie for the top job in the ruling party.

They are telling Jonathan himself that they are blackmailers who engage in cheap tricks in order to rake in as much money as they can, and under any regime - be it one headed by a Northerner or by a South-Southerner. If that is the case, why should anyone wish to vote for the man who tries to sell his candidature on a platform of freshness, newness and peace in the creeks?

Jonathan should do all he can to retrieve his stamina by tackling yesterday's challenge with all the seriousness it deserves. It was, indeed, a litmus test for his desire to rule Nigeria as a democratically elected president, not one who merely got the position by chance. The militants have tossed a challenge on his laps, tasking him to find them if he can and show the Nigerian people that he can really hold the nation together. Already, he has the dubious record of the last deadly Jos crisis taking place under his watch, and so far no one has been punished for it. If by this latest incident - and more that might come the nation's way in the coming months - it is proved that Jonathan cannot handle this country very well, let him not ask for our votes. It'd rather be good for him to find a teaching job in a university or simply go home and enjoy his cool millions.

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Published in LEADERSHIP WEEKEND
Above photo is of Henry Okah, leader of MEND, who is based in Johannesburg. Nigerian officials have accused him of having a hand in the blasts.