Ahmadu Bello
The Northern States Governors Forum (NSGF) meeting that took place in Kaduna in September 2015 was significant in many respects because the body resolved to approach the Saudi Arabia based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to seek a “development partnership”. The governors also set up under the aegis of Committee of Attorneys-General and Commissioners of Justice of the 19 northern states a panel given the mandate to review the criminal justice system in the North.
The chairman of the NSGF Kashim Shettima of Borno state while inaugurating the panel, however, cautioned it’s members against making recommendations that would conflict with the 1999 constitution, urging the members to use their expertise and professional wealth of experience to find lasting solutions to problems that had retarded the growth of the region over the years. By early 2016 a cross section of the northern governors visited the Jeddah headquarters of the IDB in company of Tanimu Kurfi the erstwhile Chief Economic Adviser of late President Umar Musa Yar’adua for a 3 day meeting at the end of which the bank according to governor Shettima “resolved to rebuild Northern Nigeria” the details of which are still under wraps. That notwithstanding the IDB despite its no interest policy is not just a run of the mill financial organization it is an arm of global Islam with interests beyond pecuniary. And what the Muslim governors in NSGF will never admit to their few non-Muslim counterparts is that Islamic banks such as the IDB that offer Islamic banking products and services are required to establish a Shariah Supervisory Board (SSB) to ensure that the operations and activities of the banking institutions and their customers comply with Shariah principles. For instance in Malaysia, the National Shariah Advisory Council, which has been set up at Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), advises BNM on the Shariah aspects of the operations of these institutions and on their products and services. In Indonesia the Ulama Council serves a similar purpose.
The directors of IDB are expectedly smart Alecs and are fully aware that the north is a peculiar customer that is why months before the NSGF panel to review the “criminal justice system in the North” turned in its report governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai of the pivotal Kaduna state sent in a religiously sensitive executive bill to the state’s assembly preempting the NSGF panel by testing the waters of what will ultimately be a region wide legislation to prepare grounds for the coming Shariah Supervisory Board of IDB in the North. It is against this background that the recent reactions of both NSGF and Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) absolving Fulani herdsmen from the serially elusive but constantly marauding gunmen in parts of southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt deserves historical understudy.
By way of a brief historical overview in the north unlike the south religion and politics are two sides of the same regional coin. The umbilical link between the ‘Sarauta’ system and the then Native Authority structure across the north meant that from the early days of British administration the emirates were developed into units of local government based on emirs and chiefs which eventually evolved into powerful political forces. It is a well known fact that during the 1950s – The Qadiriya sect was not only the brotherhood of the ruling establishment but also the most favored by the British colonialists. Socio-politically it represented the class of emirs and chiefs, mainly Fulani. While the non-Fulani ethnic groups and the urban classes including the merchants opted for the rival Tijaniyya sect also considered subversive due to its staunch opposition to feudalism and colonialism.
By the time party politics took a firm root up to the military intervention in the mid 1960s the behemoth NPC (Northern People’s Congress) wholesomely allied itself with the Qadiriyya and the NEPU (Northern Elements Progressive Union) massively with the Tijaniyya. By the 1970s a rival trajectory of sectarian influence had emerged with the Wahhabi inspired Izala movement challenging the hegemony and innovations (Bidi’a) of the feudal oriented Qadiriyya and principally the Tijaniyya-NEPU merchant class led movement resulting into numerous clashes and crises. The former regional government and later mainly federal government civil servants, their military cohorts and academia cronies all under the umbrella of the ‘Kaduna Mafia’ soon adopted the Izala (JIBWIS) thereby reinventing the Northern Muslim intelligentsia under a singular platform until the rise of Darika. It was therefore not surprising in March 2013 when Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, a ranking cleric in the Izala sect and a son of its founding leader blatantly dismissed the Sultan of Sokoto’s call for amnesty for Boko Haram as “hypocritical”.
But for a much more detailed account of the nexus between religion and politics in the north there is probably no better reference material complete with footnotes than Iheanyi M.Enwerem’s book entitled ‘A Dangerous Awakening; The Centrality of Religion in Modern Nigerian Politics’ particularly from pages 45 to 73 – “The pre-1900 era, it must be recalled, was the period before British colonial intrusion into Nigerian space. The era was epitomized by the activities of Uthman dan Fodio. It was a theocratic world in which the entire societal structure was patterned and run in accordance with the imperative of Islam and where the Sultan of Sokoto was the embodiment of a joint religious and political leadership with autocratic power over everything and everyone within the Sokoto Caliphate. As regards non-Muslims in such an Islamic theocratic world, they would be tolerated only as long as they paid their taxes, maintained unequivocal loyalty to the Islamic leadership, and accepted their inferior status vis-a-vis their Muslim counterparts in the Caliphate. Under this structure, no socio-political, economic, or religious decisions had legitimacy without the Sultan’s approval, which explains why the ceremony inaugurating the Northern Region’s self-rule on the 15th of March, 1958, was held, not in Kaduna, the Regional capital, but in Sokoto, the traditional capital of the Islamic North. Even the date chosen for the start of self-rule was deliberate: it was the anniversary of the fall of Dan Fodio’s Hausa-Fulani Islamic State to the British.
It is as if to say that the new order, the independent State and its leadership had received the blessings of the Caliphate and its traditional political and spiritual leader, the Sultan. Uthman dan Fodio’s world was also marked by the desire to bring the entire country under Islamic vision and leadership — a task interrupted by British colonialism. The task now before the new dispensation, under Ahmadu Bello, was not only to put into place the old, but also to continue the jihad from where its march was interrupted. After all, independence, as Ahmadu Bello revealed elsewhere, was the eventual fulfillment of Britain’s frequent promises to restore the Hausa-Fulani Islamic ruling class to power. He reiterated this perception when he said: “I have never sought the political limelight or a leading position in [Nigeria]. But I could not avoid the obligation of my birth and destiny. My great-greatgrandfather built an Empire in the Western Sudan. It has fallen to my lot to play a not inconsiderable part in building a new nation. My ancestor was chosen to lead the Holy War which set up his Empire. I have been chosen by a free electorate to help build a modern State…. This, then, is the story of my life” Within the context of the foregoing remarks one can have a richer understanding of Ahmadu Bello’s politics — a commitment which he carried out at the regional, national, and international levels until his death in the unsuccessful military coup d’etat of 1966.
At the regional level, Ahmadu Bello’s primary interest was to unify the North under Islamic religious leadership. Prior to the Region’s self-rule in 1959, he had effectively employed his ‘consensus approach’ to leadership to bring Christians into his party and Government. He believed he had pacified the Christians enough or had at least neutralized whatever potential threat they may have posed. As for the various factions within his own religion, these were family affairs that, with time, would be resolved. In any case, Ahmadu Bello’s official opposition, NEPU, drew its main strength from the major faction within Islam in Northern Nigeria, and was really more interested in reforming the Native Authority system than in the abolition of the entire system on which Bello’s political base hinged. In the light of the preceding development, Bello’s specific target for the final unification of the North was to convert the ‘pagan’ enclaves in the region to Islam. He was determined to sway them away from the Christian missionaries. This move was understandable, principally because the enclaves were not only the major sources of Christian growth in the North, but could also become the seedbed of a political threat to the Islamic interest in the region if the trend were allowed to continue.
Besides, Christian missionaries had erroneously resigned themselves to the belief that these ‘pagan’ enclaves were the reserved domain for their missionary enterprise. Undoubtedly, the Christian missions were having some remarkable successes in terms of growth — a point which was soon clearly demonstrated by the outcome of the 1962/63 census figure. As Crampton’s comparative analysis of the 1952 and 1963 official census figures puts it: “According to the 1952 and 1963 Nigerian Census figures, the numbers of Muslims, Christians, and ‘Others’ [that is, ‘pagans’] in the North grew absolutely, but both the Muslims and the ‘Others’ showed a relative decline whilst the Christians grew from 2.7 to 9.7 per cent of the population” It is in this context that Ahmadu Bello embarked on his massive ‘conversion campaigns’ to win over souls for Islam. To realize this immediate objective, which, if successful, would become the groundswell for his national agenda; Ahmadu Bello founded a number of Islamic organizations. Notably are the Jamaatu Nasril Islam (JNI) — the Society for the Victory of Islam — and the Council of Mallams, both of which were supposed ‘to bring together various elements of religious leadership in the North for the purpose of discussion and general enlightenment.
Needless to say, membership in these organizations, the discussion within them, and the general enlightenment they were expected to generate, were exclusively for Muslims and for Islamic interests. Yet these societies were presented as speaking for all the people in the North! Ahmadu Bello’s politics at the international level involved the forging of politicoreligious links with Islamic countries across the world, especially in the Middle East and Asia. In particular were the Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, whose generosity to Nigerian Muslims was so great that, by 1961, the Saudi Arabian monarch was asked to visit Nigeria to strengthen the already strong relationship between the two countries.
Bello’s ‘primary interest’ in international politics, Paden tells us, ‘becomes the international Muslim community (the ultima)’, while he was mindful ‘of the need for peaceful and co-operative mutual interdependence within larger political contexts’ like his ‘continentally-based Pan-Africanism rather than one racially-based. Behind Bello’s interest in the establishment of a global Islamic umma was his desire to lead the largest Islamic state in Black Africa. His international politics were premised on its dialectical linkage with his national agenda. This is to say that he needed the gains from his international politics to achieve his national objective, which in turn would place him in a good position in international politics. In concrete terms, Ahmadu Bello needed to position Nigeria as an Islamic world power or, at least, Black Africa’s Islamic power, with himself as its unquestionable leader. He, as we have earlier observed, saw himself and his destiny in the mould of his great-great-grandfather, Uthman dan Fodio, the founder of the largest Islamic empire in the Black world.
With independence and political power in his hands, but short of adequate financial strength and qualified personnel to build up the kind of formidable home-base he needed to launch his overall objective, Ahmadu Bello had to exploit, among other things, the Islamic imperative of umma at the international level. These assertions were clearly confirmed by Ahmadu Bello himself. In his speech at the 1964 World Islamic League he pointed out to his audience that the success of Christian missionaries was a direct result of their international solidarity and mutual assistance — a good example he found lacking among Muslims. In this connection he regretted that, two years after his government had turned down a sizeable Israeli loan to Nigeria, even though all the governments of the Federation had accepted the loan, he was yet to get any assistance ‘from any of our sister Muslim countries’. Hence he pleaded: I have only given these examples to show how genuinely we in Northern Nigeria have been at times suffering and how single-handed we have been working for the cause of Islam, and which we shall continue so long as our lives last. I have earlier spoken of conversions of non-Muslims to Islam. I would like to say that this is only the beginning as there are other areas we have not yet tapped. I hope when we clean Nigeria we will go further afield in Africa. Undoubtedly, Ahmadu Bello’s objectives appeared realizable. By 1964 he had succeeded in elevating Nigeria’s stature to such a height in the Islamic world that she was identified as the ‘center of radiation for Islamic culture in the Black continent. His own international reputation had soared high ‘as the “peacemaker” in the Islamic world’. He was elected Vice-President of the World Islamic League, and his advice was sought by world leaders who saw him as an authority on Pan-African unity as well as unity and solidarity among Muslim nations. Financially, Ahmadu Bello’s objective was also realized, as many Islamic countries heeded his plea for assistance. In 1964 alone, Saudi Arabia donated one hundred thousand pounds, while donations from Kuwait and other unofficial sources probably amounted to millions of pounds.
By 1965, some commentators tell us, the Sardauna had lost interest in politics, seeing himself more as a religious leader than as a political leader. But did he really lose interest in politics or was his apparent change a strategic repositioning of himself to unleash his next political move? Some analysts probably mistook his apparent distance from politics for what it really was: ‘mental fatigue’ resulting from his exacting political office and the zeal he was known to put into it. What these analysts interpreted as Bello’s ‘change’ of interest from politics to religion could very well be his perception of politics from a different angle. For instance, after shouts of ‘Power!’, to greet his September 1964 visit to Lagos by his loyal supporters, he issued a press statement in which he chided his supporters from greeting him with the slogan, Power, urging them to greet him instead with the slogan, Peace (salama), based on the argument that: “there is no power besides Allah. Allah is power.
Man has no right to arrogate such (an attribute to himself. We are Allah’s servants and at all times must humbly submit ourselves to his will…. The NPC leader is only a servant of God” Contrary to what some commentators on Bello’s politics tell us, he remained an active political practitioner, making sure he remained, perhaps, the doyen of early post-colonial Nigerian politics. It is worth noting that he never resigned from politics, which he would have done if he was really no longer interested in politics. In any case, that Islam, by 1965, became the centre of his political life was not surprising, given the Sardauna’s background. If anything, he demonstrated successfully the emancipatory potential of religion for social transformation. This is to say that, for him, religion was a free-floating phenomenon which any class could effectively use to advance its interests. On this score and in the context of the Nigerian world, Ahmadu Bello remained the master politician, far ahead of his Western-educated political peers. This is especially true among those in the South, who, in over-reacting to Christianity’s colonial heritage, failed to explore the possibility of effectively transforming religion into an emancipatory agent rather than paying lip-service to it or using it to stir up anti-colonial sympathies. It is in this connection that Ahmadu Bello’s establishment of the JNI is primarily understood.
While it may have had all the trappings of a religious organization, JNI was, for all practical purposes, a political organ wearing a religious garb to serve a political purpose. For, we are told: The Sardauna was very sincere and determined … to use this method and mould the North together. Within the JNI forum, the Sardauna hoped to bring together traditional rulers, ulama, modem civil servants, businessmen,… politicians,… plus the masses. Most ministers were interested in this forum; all recognized the key role of the mallams. By 1965, the JNI had been nurtured enough for it to become an effective organizational tool for the realization of his next objective, the acquisition of religious power at the national level. Thus, the JNI had more or less departed from its humble beginnings to become ‘a major coordinator of private funding’ for all forms of Islamic education — or, better, Islamic propagation — ‘not only in the North, where it has its organizational base, but throughout Nigeria. In effect, by 1964-1965 the JNI had matured to embody the Sardauna’s strategy, which had always been constructed around a dialectical interaction between religion and politics. Just as his intensely religious family background catapulted him into political power, by 1964 and 1965 he had succeeded in using this power to capture religious power beyond his regional boundary.
Indeed, by this time he came ‘to be regarded as a “leader of patron” of Islam throughout Nigeria, and not just in the North.’ The crucial 1964 federal election gave Ahmadu Bello the opportunity to test, at the national level, the strength of his acquired religious power. Already he had acquired political power at the national level and his party was in firm control of the centre (the Federal Government). But his political power had to be consolidated, especially in the light of the formidable threat from his political opponents. This threat was part of the more serious fear of Southern domination of the Islamic North, due to the former’s edge over the latter in the acquisition of Western education and, consequently, the advantages that were expected to accrue from such. As far as Ahmadu Bello and the members of his party were concerned, the threat would be worse if the Christian South were also to dominate and then dictate the primary role of the centre. Hence to counter, and possibly eliminate this threat, there was need to forge Northern hegemony. His message in the North during the 1964 federal election campaign spoke for itself “The Prime Minister and the Sardauna need to go back to Lagos to deal with Zik and Awo. The Sardauna and Prime Minister are our people. The Sardauna is a very good Muslim, the descendant of the Shehu. We want your support. … If you don’t give it, there will be trouble” That Bello’s Party won a landslide victory, even though, unlike his Southern opponents, he never bothered to campaign outside the Northern Region, spoke highly of his strategy. More importantly, the victory was a confirmation of the Sardauna’s dual power (religious and political) at the national level.
Ahmadu Bello’s strategic shift from being less of a political to more of a religious leader was bound to send shivers across a religiously pluralistic country like Nigeria. It was especially serious, in view of the political stature, the background, and the religious commitment of the man involved. Shehu Shagari, a product of Ahmadu Bello’s kind of politics and later the first civilian Executive President of Nigeria, expressed people’s misgivings about his mentor’s change. According to Shagari: ‘Many of us didn’t want him to go that far… [but] nobody had the guts to tell him the truth about the Nigerian situation. Only [the late] Ribadu could tell him. Armed with a feeling of remarkable success and self-confidence, Ahmadu Bello was said to have asked, ‘What next?’ What next was the emergence of then Lt-Col. Yakubu Cinwa Gowon as Head of State over the 29th July 1966 weekend and who for the next 9 years was under the illusion he was Nigeria’s maximum ruler but as a Christian northerner he was more of a poster for “keeping Nigeria one”. Under Gowon under the pretext of a more nationalistic educational developmental strategy Missionary schools were taken over under the 1971 Public Education Edict across the then 12 states of Nigeria and that was when 8 military governors including the administrator of what was known as East Central state and majority of the Supreme Military Council were non-Muslims. Today even governor el-Rufai’s anti-preaching bill was drafted by the state’s AttorneyGeneral and Commissioner of Justice Mrs. Amina Adamu Dyeri-Sijuade and presented to the Assembly by the House Judiciary committee chair Jeremiah Kantiyok both non-Muslims.
Such is the subtlety of the Islamic agenda in Nigeria through al-Taqiyya. The concept of “al-Taqiyya” is an integral part of Islam. The word “al-Taqiyya” literally means: “Concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger, whether now or later in future, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury.” A one-word translation would be “Dissimulation.” The massive donations received by Ahmadu Bello were in his own words at the World Muslim League meeting held in Mecca in1964 used – “to convert some 60,000 non-Muslims in my region to Islam within a period of five months, i.e. from November, 1963 to March, 1964. Prior to this remarkable achievement, I have successfully been able to build several mosques in as many suitable centers as possible having regard to the resources at my disposal. These mosques have proved to be a great source of encouragement towards Islam particularly amongst the communities of areas where many people have been newly converted. Furthermore, the government of Northern Nigeria of which I am the head, has made arrangements whereby religion is taught in all government schools. Throughout the region there are over a million copies of Qur’an in schools scattered about in every corner of towns and villages. A Qur’anic Teachers Training College has been opened and an Arabic Faculty has also been opened as part of Ahmadu Bello University”. Part of the funds were also used to start the construction of a befitting headquarters office complex including a conference center for the JNI and school in Kawo at Kaduna opposite the main military barracks.
The complex was taken over by the then Northern region government and has been since been renamed General Hassan Usman Katsina House (and still under state government ownership) but part of its expansive grounds was conceded to JNI for its national headquarters building(after all they are the original landlords reasoning prevailed) while the neighboring school was taken over by the then North Central state government in 1967 as a forerunner to the Public Education Edict and still named Sardauna Memorial College (SMC). So tucked between the Government House from where the NSGF chair governor Shettima asserted that to hold Fulani herdsmen as responsible for any armed criminality recently in Agatu and Nimbo is an “insult” and SMC is the national headquarters of JNI from where the body about the same time maintained that same responsibility was “absurd” these locations are all adjacent the Kaduna city gateway with its unmistakable Islamic character. Sule Bayari is an ideologue of Fula supremacy he is also the National Secretary of Gan Fulani Development Association. Ardo Bayari with reckless abandon threatened the nation through the title of an opinion piece published in the Daily Trust edition of 6th April 2016 said that “Don’t force herdsmen into resistance”. He even had the effrontery to ominously warn the reading public on the Fulani characteristics of not having conflict situations “no rules of engagement”, they also “take no prisoners”, have “no mercy”, and possess “no fighting fatigue” because they have “no need for adequate provisions or permanent abode”. Bayari further informed that the Fulani herdsmen foresee “no end to hostilities”, have “no ignorance of terrain” and are not “deterred due to casualties” generally have “no need for tranquility” and finally harbor “no fear for consequences”.
Bayari nevertheless tried to provide a sense of balance by insisting that the Fulani are also “passionately loving, friendly, generous, jovial, humorous and accommodating” but nevertheless “cherish taking revenge”. A few days later on 9th April 2016 the Department of State Services through its spokesman Tony Opuiyo announced that mass graves of Hausa-Fulani persons allegedly kidnapped and killed by members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) had been uncovered in Umuanyi forest near Aba metropolis in Abia state. Mr.Opuiyo actually named 4 persons residents of Isuikwuato amongst the dead. By 26th April 2016 the Ukpapi Nimbo community of Uzo Uwani in Enugu state was overrun by suspected Fulani herdsmen. No doubt Ukpabi Nimbo is a long way from Aba and Isuikwuato it is however a soft target because it lies just across the state border with Kogi state in the southern fringes of the north. However Bayari’s descriptive traits of the Fulani herdsmen against the background of the no show of force despite the detailed warning of an impending attack to the entire security apparatus in Enugu State by no less than His Excellency the governor himself leaves a lot for the imagination. Today the teeming dispossessed youth in particularly the north are a major cause for alarm for PMB and most APC states can’t hazard conducting local government elections, the president can’t visit and leading Emirs are apprehensive. That is why the denial mode is actively on as can also be seen in the prevalence of child bride abductions across the north. In exploring the origins the insurgency in the North East of Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto Catholic Diocese alerts the on predominantly Muslim youth in the North that – “They are the cannon fodder that feed sects like Boko Haram and other similar millenarian movements that sprout occasionally in the North. A study by Paul Lubeck, a Professor of Sociology from the University College of Los Angeles, UCLA, entitled Islamic Protest Under Semi-Industrial Capitalism after the Kano riots in 1983 and published in 1985, gives a profound insight into the problems of these youths who are known in the study as Gardawa. His findings, though focused on Kano, can be applied to the entire Northern states. They reveal that these Gardawa are the victims and products of the contradictions of a semi-industrial economy which had not fully developed or expanded to absorb these youths. The training they were receiving in their Koranic education was for a world that was fast vanishing, while the new one could not accommodate them. Today ordinary Muslims feel overwhelmed by the tornado of changes around them. Unable to access the tools of modernization, they have remained largely outside the loop of power. Even in the inner recesses of their own major cities in the entire region almost all forms of businesses are conducted by people they consider foreigners. These are almost all Southern traders and they are almost all Christians too. Their habits of alcohol intake, partying and the adoption of a lifestyle that they have come to consider as being dysfunctional has made ordinary Muslims nervous about the future of their families and faith.
Sensing that they have become too weak to fight, people like Mallam Mohammed Yusuf , the leader of Boko Haram, took advantage of this situation by arguing that turning inwards, away from contamination, was a greater source of strength than looking outwards by means of acquiring Western education and other tools of modernization. Naturally, for over 90% of his followers with no Western education and graduates of the Islamic education system, this would have made a lot of sense. In an environment where even the few educated Muslims have no jobs, this message exposing the underbelly of the state had great appeal. Their new communities became their new family, offering security and welfare. Their community becomes an alternative state and their leader an alternative to the failed political class” Does PMB have an Islamic agenda? As far back as 2002 the current Emir of Kano then a Regional Director in UBA Plc noted in a treatise entitled ‘Buharism: Economic Theory and Political Economy’ that PMB’s entrenched supporters had done him “incalculable damage by viewing his politics through the narrow prism of ethnicity and religion”. With the benefit of hindsight PMB himself very much helped in cultivating that narrative. For instance much can be inferred from his unstatemansly encounter with governor Lam Adeshina then of Oyo state in 2000.
In the Daily Trust edition of Friday 10th 2013 the blogger Bamidele AdemolaOlateru enunciated that ‘Buhari is a damaged brand’ partly because “religion was used against him”. The lady was however economical with the truth. In Eyene Okpanachi’s paper from the Political Science department, University of Ibadan entitled ‘Ethno-Religious Identity and Conflict in Northern Nigeria’ the academic extensively quoted PMB from the pages of TELL (Lagos) September 24th 2001, p.27 putting it that – “For Muslims in Nigeria, at least twice, we were overrun by the colonialists and our way of life was drastically changed. One of the things we lost is the freedom to practice our religion as it is. But God in his infinite mercy brought this independence back to us through a democratic system of government. What remains for Muslims in Nigeria is for them to redouble their efforts, educate Muslims on the need to promote the full implementation of Sharia law and there should be nothing to be afraid of” The discerning voices particularly from Diaspora that succinctly put it to PMB that he had displayed poor judgment in dragging Nigeria into Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Military Alliance Against Terrorism (ISMAT) he dismissed such by asking “Why can’t those Christians that complained go and fight terrorism in Nigeria or fight the militancy in the South?” concluding that “It’s Nigeria that matters, not the opinion of some religious bigots”.
The president’s position is pregnant with the dangerous innuendo that those that support Nigeria’s membership of ISMAT is Muslims and those predominantly opposed it are Nigeria’s Christians. This is not only unpresidential but religious profiling unless it is part of a bigger picture. Because it is a well known fact that the international propagation of conservative Sunni Islam is the oxygen Saudi breathes which is known as Dawah Wahhabiyya and is used to spread “purified Islam” throughout the world. Reportedly tens of billions have been spent by the Saudi government and charities on mosques, schools, educational materials and scholarships worldwide to not only promote Islam but the Wahhabi interpretation of it. A broader picture is again captured by the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Matthew Hassan Kukah who noted that – “There is the issue of the annual Hajj and the external sponsorships of Da’wah groups in Nigeria by such countries as Iran, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and so on. At a time when the European Union and the traditional allies of the Christian community are saying they are living in a post-Christian era, the annual Hajj continues to offer an opportunity for ordinary Muslims to seek business and sponsors for the propagation of Islam in Nigeria. A lot of funds are readily available for the building of mosques, madrasa and Islamiyya schools, and propagation of the faith and so on. But perhaps more significant is the fact that through these pilgrimages Nigerian Muslims are coming into contact with other Muslims from elsewhere.
Many wealthy Arab states and individuals continue to sponsor men and women with different ideological convictions. This is why at times Nigeria tends to become a battleground for proxy inter and intra-sect wars within Islam. This is why these preachers have come to pose a serious threat to internal harmony even within Islam. These sponsoring countries, especially Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia, therefore import their ideological bitterness through their countries into Nigeria. This is the basis for a lot of the inter and intra-sect disagreements within the Muslim community which finally spill into the public space” It is an open secret that the IDB is an appendage of the Saudi royal family and that has opened up a proxy front within the sectarian divide of Islam in Nigeria. Senator Shehu Sani (APC, Kaduna Central) is a well known Shiite Muslim and as the senate committee chairman for Foreign and Domestic Loans he has left no one in doubt about his position on the “development partnership” between the IDB and NSGF. If the truth is to be told no amount of funds will make a fundamental difference in the socio-economic scene in the North chiefly for sectarian reasons. Wahhabism has had such a foothold that even if it amounts to a pyrrhic victory Shiasm will always sabotage it. Within the Sunnis are also deep divides which the likes of governor el-Rufai are well aware of and seek to narrow for instance in his proposed anti-preaching bill only the Darika and Izala can license Islamic clerics. During the 2011 presidential elections former President Goodluck Jonathan massively benefitted from Darika votes because there has never been any love lost between the Darika founder Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi and Izala founder late Sheikh Abubakar Gumi. PMB is an unrepentant Izala. Reportedly Bauchi declared to his flock “It was better to vote for a non Muslim than for an Izala”. How the presidential campaign managers of PDP could not repeat that feat in 2015 despite constructing Almajiri schools across swaths the North and its elite accruing so much unprecedented financial benefits and political appointments from Jonathan is indicative of the fact that the political South does not understand Islam in its northern context which limited its understanding to the isolated fact that the northern elite was just making the country “ungovernable”. The way and manner the Chibok girls’ saga played out negatively impacted Jonathan by dividing the northern Christian vote with just a third going to PDP, another third was lost through sabotaged Card-Reader machines in northern Christian strongholds with the final third lost to APC courtesy of al-Taqiyya.
One of the long term and politically strategic gains of the International Islamic Conference held recently in Abuja under the auspices of Izala is the resolution by religious leaders in attendance to support the Federal Government’s counterinsurgency efforts and the war against corruption of the Buhari administration. This translated means any constructive criticism will be viewed within the narrow prism of religion. Anyway the conference which held between March 17 and March 20, with the theme “ Security and Stability in the Face of Contemporary Challenges“, was packaged by the Muslim World League (yes, Ahmadu Bello’s very own) in conjunction with Jama’atu Izalatil Bid’ah Wa’aqamatis Sunnah (JIBWIS). Stressing the imperative of peace, the conference, in its communiqué, signed by Sheikh Abdullahi Bala-Lau and Dr Abdullahi Abdul Mohsin Al Turki, JIBWIS’s National Chairman and Secretary General Muslim World League respectively, affirms that Islam is the “armored shield for peace”. Again the translation here is that those opposed to PMB are a threat to peace with “armored peace” insinuating a forceful panacea.
. Concerned Hausas of Nigeria.
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