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Opening Pandora’s Box: In Support of Jonathan Ishaku (1) |
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Saturday, 08 May 2004 |
| Related Article:New Nigerian Newspaper: Before the Hand-Over. By Jonathan Ishaku |
I read Jonathan Ishaku’s piece, New Nigerian Newspaper: Before the Hand-Over, on Gamji.com with the interest and enthusiasm of one whose exact sentiments have been expressed through a surrogate writer. Ishaku has spoken the minds of thousands, if not millions, of people from Lugardian Northern Nigeria, whose life stories have been one of perennial exclusion from the patrimony of the old North, and convenient, calculated, and politically strategic inclusion in the political processes that purportedly define the North as a geopolitical unit. I have always respected Ishaku as a forthright commentator, the highpoint of my respect for this exceptional journalist being during his days as a guest columnist (?) for Champion Newspapers—when I was in high school! Unknown to me and perhaps to his other fans was this personal, intimate footnote to his life story, his personal experience with Northern Nigeria’s Hausa-Fulani elite cultural bigotry, a bigotry whose immediate targets are not the distant Other (the Yoruba, Igbo, and Southern minorities) but the proximate, locally embedded Other—the so-called ethnic minorities of the old North.Ishaku’s story illustrates the extent to which this deeply entrenched hegemonic attitude of the politically privileged Hausa-Fulani elite of Northern Nigeria operates, and the kind of power it exerts on the individual and collective fates of those who are excluded from Hausa-centric definitions of Northern Nigeria. This cultural semiotic of superiority performs its way into very critical domains in the life of the excluded. It can alter the life trajectory of individual Northern minorities, define them, and curtail some of their ambitions.Ishaku’s career was profoundly redirected by the fateful encounter with the prejudiced Hausa-Fulani interviewers at the New Nigerian Newspapers. This is not in any way a lamentation of that watershed in the life of Ishaku, for he did go on to become an accomplished journalist, writing for newspapers which arguably surpassed the New Nigerian in circulation and intellectual depth. In fact, his tone in the write-up did not strike me as “whiny.” On the contrary, Ishaku has exhibited tremendous courage by sharing a personal story whose beauty lies precisely in the fact that the protagonist heroically overcame the infrastructure of cultural bigotry to fulfill himself professionally.Similarly, I did not get the sense that Ishaku’s story was designed for cathartic purposes, catharsis being an intimate personal affair. From my reading, it is designed for truth-telling on a grand scale. And it is in this spirit of truth-telling that I am writing this piece to reinforce and sharpen Ishaku’s contentions, which I believe are founded on one of the most touchy and volatile truths about contemporary Northern Nigeria—the obstinate refusal of the Hausa-Fulani elite to make peace with the ethnic and religious diversity of the North.Ishaku is absolutely right to point out that there is an uncanny resemblance between—not to say a paradoxical convergence of—Southern Nigerian media portrayal of and attitudes towards Northern Nigerians and the Hausa-Fulani elite’s portrayal of and attitude towards Northern, especially Christian, minorities. Those of us who are conversant with this paradox cannot but recognize the hypocrisy of continued Northern (read Hausa-Fulani) complaint about uncharitable and demeaning Southern media representations of the North. It is, I think, a hypocrisy doubly empowered by the stubborn insistence that it is the entire Lugardian North and not the mainly Hausa-Fulani politico-cultural manifestation that has, for good or ill, attracted much of the Southern derision. I am not saying that the Southern Press’ representations of the North are justified in light of the Hausa-Fulani elite’s political and cultural brinkmanship. My point is much more nuanced; I am saying that most of what the Southern Press resent in the North—and much of what is labeled “Northern”—is expressed largely by the Hausa Fulani in the collective name of the North. The Northern minorities are thus victims of an anti-Northern perception that is partly a response to a specific expression of Northern identity and interest that is realized by silencing, subsuming, and disciplining alternative, non-Hausa and non-Muslim Northern identities and interests.The Northern minorities, in other words, do not have a political or cultural stake in the North-South media and political ‘war’ for which they are being mobilized, one evidence of this mobilization being Ishaku’s invitation to the Arewa House conference that is his point of departure. It is unfair for the Hausa-Fulani elite to insist on collective victimhood in the North’s confrontation with Southern prejudice when the cultural and political formation that supposedly feeds this prejudice is exclusive to the Hausa-Fulani, and self-consciously so. And it is egregious to expect Northern minorities to participate in this “war” because it is nothing short of asking them to validate and actively participate in the process and institutions of their own political and cultural exclusion in the North—in short to ratify their imposed cultural and political death. In this respect, then, Ishaku was right to tell his listeners at Arewa House that he wants no part of this North-South media war unless the media institutions of the North are reformed to accommodate the Northern minorities in the making of “Northern” culture and politics. This envisioned cultural and political superstructure will necessarily be diverse, plural, and fragmented.It is not just in the realm of the media that Northern minorities are often called upon by self-interested Hausa-Fulani elites to fight what is often constructed quite hyperbolically as a Southern threat. The convenient conscription of non-Hausa Fulani “Northerners” to “defend Northern honor” and to secure the “North’s political interests” continues apace with the effort in the media domain. Ishaku has barely scratched the surface of what is a recurring theme of hegemonic maneuverings by the Hausa-Fulani elite. He also left out of his narrative an important element of this Hausa-Fulani definition of Northern Nigeria, one that, apart from being ahistorical, accentuates the misplaced perception of the North. In the Hausa-Fulani elite imaginary, religion trumps everything else. In their effort to define the North as Islamic and to emplace Islam as the organizing principle in Northern society, they have alienated the vast population of Northern Christians and non-Muslims whose marginal political and cultural existence has been boosted by recent movements in the North towards institutional Islam. So great is the power of Islamic identification in the North that one must even differentiate further the category of “Northern minorities,” since those who are non-Hausa but Muslim are able to navigate the Northern socio-economic field more easily than those who are non-Hausa and Christian. Thus, the economic differentiation of the North has corresponded largely to the degree to which Islam and Hausa identity have been applied as normative categories in the regionThe Hausa-Fulani elite’s insistence on religious and cultural assimilation is not only escapist, it is reminiscent of the colonial era, when the British valorized the Hausa-emirate model of administration and sought vigorously to apply that model to the non-emirate, non-Muslim peoples of Northern Nigeria, sometimes importing Hausa chiefs into non-Muslim areas to achieve this aim. For the British, coming to terms with Northern Nigeria’s religious and cultural diversity was awfully slow (forced eventually by widespread resentment of the emirate model), as is the case for the Hausa-Fulani elite of contemporary Northern Nigeria. It is hard to avoid the temptation of thinking that perhaps the on-going project of Hausanization is a reincarnation of that colonial project, with Hausa-Fulani elite cultural monomaniacs taking upon themselves the completion of that unfinished colonial business.The Late Ahmadu Bello, a believer in the concept of “One North One People” and thus to some extent a cultural and political utopian himself, was pragmatic enough to tolerate and sometimes cultivate the religious and cultural diversity of the Northern Region. Although, in fairness to his critics, he too believed in the assimilationist imperative, providing political and economic incentives for assimilation into what he saw as the Islamic ideal of Northern Nigerian identity, he is not on record as having engaged in any kind of discrimination against Northern Christian minorities in or outside his political circle. Thus, one wonders whose legacy the contemporary warriors of Hausa-Fulani Islamic hegemony are upholding.TO BE CONTINUED
Moses Ochonu, a US based Academic can be reached at ebe@nigeriavillagesquare.com
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Last Updated (
Thursday, 24 April 2008 ) |
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Posted by Robot| 12.11.2005 14:09