Between the Northern Governors and the Christian Association of Nigeria.
By
Dr. Robert Sanda,
robertsanda@yahoo.com
At the recently concluded quarterly meeting of the Northern Governors’s Forum (NGF) in Kaduna, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) had its day and presented a position paper in which the association called on the governors of the region to look into the causes of the incessant religious violence in their domains to find a solution. The Guardian newspaper, in an article on May 9, 2009, quoted the speaker for CAN as having urged the governors “to search their mind if the series of sectarian crises that ravaged the area were not a result of bad governance”. The Daily Independent newspaper, on the same day, also reported a heated argument in the wake of the presentation which culminated in a walkout by the governors of Sokoto and Kwara states, Alhaji Magatakarda Wamako and Dr. Bukola Saraki, respectively. The governors were reacting to allegation of injustice and political dominance by a certain religion and ethnicity over Christians and minorities in the region according to the CAN paper. It is understandable that the two governors, as human beings who happen to belong to the two categories to which these allegations were labelled, should feel offended. It is, however, inexcusable and unacceptable for them as political leaders of a diverse group of people with legitimate interests and as chief executives of their respective states to stage a walkout regardless of whatever view is held, or opinion expressed, by CAN or any other interest group. This act of staging a walkout by the two governors has the potential of sending the wrong message to the teeming throngs of fanatics in their domains by appearing to endorse their actions against Christians and southern Nigerians living in the North. Thankfully, the chairman of the occasion, Governor Muazu Babangida Aliyu of Niger state did the right thing as a leader and is quoted as having said “The Forum notes the presentation by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Northern chapter and resolved to carefully study the issues raised”.
Not long ago the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Chukwuma Soludo emphatically blamed the economic stagnation of the northern region on the lack of political vision and initiative on those who have the mandates of the people of the region to govern them. That indictment was notable by the absence of any attempts by any one of the governors present at the meeting to contradict him then or later on. The plea by CAN is, therefore, not anything new. Almost every judicial panel ever set up by the federal government in the aftermath of inter-ethnic blood-letting in the region has heard petitions by concerned citizens on both sides of the religious divide as well as from community leaders urging governments in the region to undertake a study of the immediate and remote causes of the recurring conflicts and find a solution. The Justice Adolphus Karibi-White, Justice Ben Okadigbo, Prince Bola Ajibola, Major-General Emmanuel Abisoye panels each have a rich collection of memoranda submitted by well-meaning Nigerians who are unhappy with the way that a region that at independence was at the fore-front of the economic and political life of this country has become a metaphor for retrogression and depravity.
CAN, like any other religious or cultural grouping in the region, had a duty to speak up to draw the attention of its leaders to what it sees as an anomaly in the system which it feels needed attention. On the other hand, those with leadership mandates have an obligation not to yield to visceral emotions but to stoically listen to whatever the governed, as here represented by the CAN leadership, had to say. This is the fundamental principle on which democracy as a system of government is built. Democracy is an all or none phenomenon; we either take it or leave it. The walkout by the governors is both insensitive and negligent as well as being an expression of poverty of leadership skills and ideology. Ahmadu Bello would handle the situation quite differently; the way governor Aliyu did. Force may have been successfully used by the leaders of the Sokoto Caliphate to subjugate ethnic minorities in northern Nigerian in the nineteenth century but under British colonial rule that method had no place and Ahmadu Bello knew it. In an independent Nigeria its people cannot sit by and let despots continue to abuse the rights of the citizens of this country. The issues raised by CAN are deeply rooted and only by openly addressing those concerns can the segment of northern leaders with pre-colonial mentality be made to see the potential for greatness in peace and unity. Some northern leaders have in the past tried to address such concerns to a mix reaction from both sides but no one can deny the modest results that these efforts yielded in places like Gombe and Kaduna states while other places like Plateau and Bauchi states continue to spiral into backwardness with wave after wave of violence. Issues like the ones raised by CAN cannot be brushed aside by serious-minded leaders who want to see development and prosperity for their people.
Because people are individually different, society has developed norms of acceptable conduct that should accommodate everybody. Religion plays a vital part in our existence as a species on this planet and most of us adhere to our religious beliefs with a passion. Extremes of religious zeal do exist and manifest in ways which do a lot of disservice to the religion. Most religious people are content with using it for their benefit but the problem is with the minority who have an urge to use religion to gain control of political ends. Sometimes leaders with no genuine patronage of religion use its fervent expression as a smoke-screen to achieve political objectives that are not possible by fair means. Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein are two examples of leaders who used religion to justify crimes against humanity through ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the brutal suppression of political dissent among Shiites and Kurds in Iraq. These events show how the basic rights of a people can be taken away to meet political goals that cannot be condoned by international treaties and the rule of law. The world was right to stand up to both dictators to bring an end to their nefarious acts.
In the aftermath of the publication of a series of cartoons in a Danish newspaper caricaturing the founder of Islam many Muslims across the world were incensed and exercised their rights to demonstrate their anger by legitimate means. In Saudi Arabia, people expressed their anger in newspapers, televisions, etc. demanding the Danish government to bring the perpetrators to justice. When the Danish government refused to take action against the journalists at the center of the publications the Saudis took the issue to a higher level by boycotting all Danish products in attempts to send home their message. There was not a single instance of public demonstrations permitted by the government of Saudi Arabia on this matter. Neither Danes nor Christians in Saudi Arabia were in any way molested over these publications. As far as the Saudis were concerned their quarrel was with the Danish journalists and their government. Period! However, the same event triggered riots and destruction of property of Christians in Nigeria. Churches, mosques, businesses and homes were set ablaze in Maiduguri, Bauchi, Enugu and Onitsha in attacks and counter-attacks. The questions is, were Saudis less zealous Muslims than their Nigerian counterparts? Obviously not! The Saudi government knew too well that if it allowed public demonstrations it will be derailed by people with ulterior motives to commit acts of violence against innocent people. I am not sure if Denmark had an embassy in Riyadh then but it is possible that if rioters failed to find it they would assail the embassies of other EU member states the way Christians were assailed in Nigeria as the illogical proxies of Denmark, a so-called Christian country. Here the Saudi Arabian government demonstrated its awareness of, and acted in defence of, its responsibility to protect all people living in its territory by a pre-emptive action. With so many religious riots in Nigeria should we expect our government to do any differently?
History and political science students in our universities are pouring over the political legacy of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and the architect of Arewa as a regional socio-political forum and the reason the NGF was meeting last week in Kaduna. I am not aware of a single instance of organized violence perpetrated against Christians as believers in northern Nigeria while Ahmadu Bello reigned as the Premier of Northern Nigeria. From where did the idea arise that northern Christians were second class citizens of the North? If some people during the first republic held that belief, they were too afraid of Ahmadu Bello to express them openly. Certainly northern Christians appreciated the sense of equality he gave them because while the military coup of Major Nzegwu was in force and soldiers were roaming the streets of Kaduna on January 16, 1966, of the five people whose love for their late leader surmounted their fear of death to come out to bury him was a Christian, the late Chief Michael Buba. Those who have inherited Ahmadu Bello’s political legacy today were all in hiding at the moment they ought to pay their last respects to him.
It is unanimously accepted by political pundits that Ahmadu Bello has been betrayed by those who inherited his political largesse. How could a man with a very modest education and a scion of an autocratic regime have seen so far into the potentials of democratic political power? How did he successfully make a complete and diametric departure from the modus operandi of governance in the Sokoto Caliphate? How did he manage to get such a disparate group as the Fulanis, Hausas, kanuris, Tiv, Jukun, Idoma, Igala, Nupe, etc. to rally behind a common political agenda? Whatever he used, he did not employ threat or attempted to coerce the people to join his bandwagon. The ancient Greeks and Romans will marvel at the ability of Ahmadu Bello to rally such a divergent conglomerate behind him. His death and the death of Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa left a vacuum that hasn’t been filled and which exposed the nakedness of the so-called monolithic northern political agenda without them. The midgets that tried to fill their shoes have simply resorted to using the antiquated tools of threat and force to keep their hold on power at the expense of improving the lot of their people. The walkout by the governors of Sokoto and Kwara from the forum at the instance of the paper by CAN calling for them to address socio-political inequalities that is at the root of the perennial civic disturbances is an affirmation of the thriving of the negligent mindset of the leaders of the region and a far cry from the ideologies of the founding fathers of the northern political interest.
The problem is not one-sided, however. There is an identity crisis that is plaguing CAN: it cannot decide whether it is primarily a religious organization or a political one. CAN and other quasi-political bodies acting as the de facto political opposition in the country seem not to identify an opportunity when one presents itself. By this singular act of walking out on them while presenting an issue that places them on a moral high ground CAN has before it an opening to launch a political offensive that has the potential to bring it to reckoning and force political leaders into a rethink. The truth is that the vast majority of Hausa-Fulanis in the north who form the political power base of the likes of governors Wamako and Saraki are fed-up with the cycle of violence that has retarded the development of the region. Muslims as well as Christians in the North want an atmosphere of peace, security and productive engagement that will lead to economic prosperity. The leaders of the North are not willing to keep account of the economic cost of each instance of violence in their domains but would rather pretend it is not hurting them. But for federal allocations some of these governors would have empty treasuries and an unruly state of affairs in their home states due to rising poverty and unemployment. By the time the almajiris have successfully driven away investors and businesses from their states they will turn to their leaders as the target of their unquenchable anger.
The ball is now in the court of CAN to re-examine its objectives and to make overtures to moderate Muslim groups in the North with a common interest to develop the region to break the cycle of misrule in the region. Missed opportunity is also what political parties from other regions fail to take advantage of when it comes to federal elections. The mere threat by CAN and other political personalities in the North to sabotage the ambitions of political aspirants who want to maintain the status quo to federal offices is enough to compel the entire northern political class to address the needs of their people in exchange for votes. As long as such threats are non-existent political leaders can do as they please with impunity.
CAN must now use the same tools Ahmadu Bello employed to gain political control over the entire region: to embark on a massive political awareness campaign across the breadth of the country to force its members to utilize their votes to force issues on politicians to address. The next step is to team up with moderate and progressive Muslim groups in the region to counter those who depend on division and violence for political power. This is the only way that leaders in the region will feel sufficiently threatened to take their proper places in the scheme of things as servants of the people and not the demi-gods they all seem to think they are. If CAN wants an end to social injustice in the North it must be prepared to do battle with the elites that feed off poverty, ignorance and falsely pretend to be serving the interest of any religion. CAN must now decide how it wants to respond to this slap: it can turn the other cheek or it can slap back. While the former is a religious obligation the latter is a political necessity. All Northerners who aspire for progress may join CAN on the canvas or stand up and fight back at the complacent and nonchalant attitudes of their leaders to material threats on their collective survival as an economic and a political entity.
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