Category: Femi Abbas

Preamble

Laws are like spider’s webs. If anything small falls into them, they ensnare it. But large things break through and escape. By Solon, Athenian statesman and poet (638-559 B.C)

Europeans who likened law to an ass may have generalized that opinion but they are surely not far from the truth after all. Laws generally are what human beings make them through  interpretation. No law in any given society is naturally controversial. What brings about controversy is interpretation. All human laws, written or conventional, emanate from societal norms. Those norms only become laws when they are backed up by governing authorities.

In Islam, the body of the laws that govern the lives of Muslims is called Sharia. This constitutes what is known as Islamic law or culture. It is derived from the following four sources:

Qur’an, the direct words of Allah revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) through the Arch-Angel Jubril

Hadith, the divinely guided but personal expressions of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), which give interpretations to the contents of the Qur’an.

Ijma’, the consensus of opinions of the learned Muslim scholars which must conform to the first two sources above.

Qiyas, a scholarly analogy deduced from the first three sources above.

These sources are in sequence of authority. Qur’an is the first and foremost among them. No other source can supersede or equal the authority of the Qur’an. If any other source contradicts the Qur’an, that source automatically becomes null and void.

Because the Qur’an was revealed in coded language, the need to decode it for the purpose of understanding necessitated the adoption of Hadith as the second source of Islamic law. No one was as competent to give accurate interpretation of the Qur’an as the Prophet who received its revelations from Allah through Arch-Angel Jibril. The Prophet himself acquired the knowledge of interpreting the Qur’an through informal interactions with Arch-Angel Jibril who gave him tutorials as well as the informal revelations he received while sleeping which are called ‘Hadith-ul-Qudsi’

The third source is the consensus of opinion of highly informed Muslim scholars (Ijma’) based on the provisions of the Qur’an and Sunnah. It came into being as a result of scholarly understanding of the first two sources by credible Muslim clerics. This source became necessary for the harmonization of Islamic jurisprudence even if environments and circumstances would still leave room for variations in language and presentations.

The fourth and last source is analogical deduction (Qiyas) which arose from peculiar situations in which clerics might find themselves at certain times and in certain places. This source allows for logical deductions that could be derived from the first three sources without contradicting any.

In sequence of authority, therefore, it becomes clear that only in the absence of Qur’anic provision can Hadith become the supreme legal authority in Islam. And, neither ‘Ijma’ nor ‘Qiyas’ can become a point of reference where the Qur’an and Hadith are available. (Hadith is the collection of the divinely guided utterances of Prophet Muhammad while Sunnah is his exemplary conducts that Muslims are supposed to emulate).

Classification of Shari’Ah

Like any other law, Shari’ah is classifiable into civil and criminal aspects. As relevant here, adultery is within the criminal aspect of Sharia. In Islam, it is a crime which incurs a severe sanction. And the sanction is clearly prescribed in Qur’an 24 verse 2 as follows:

“The woman and the man who are guilty of adultery, give each of them one hundred lashes of the cane. Let no compassion in their case prevent you from obedience to Allah, if you truly believe in Allah and the last day; and let their punishment be witnessed by a number of believers”.

The above quoted verse is Allah’s prescribed punishment for adulterers and adulteresses as well as for fornicators (male and female). In Arabic language, there is no distinction between an adulterer and a fornicator. The word for illegitimate sexual intercourse generally is ‘zina’ which is a crime in Islam. An adulterer is called ‘zani’ while an adulteress is called ‘zaniyah’. And those are the precise words used for the two respectively in the Qur’an. The two words are equally used for fornicators.

As is general with all laws, the interpretation of this verse of the Qur’an varies from scholar to scholar and from school of thought to school of thought. While some scholars believe that the quoted verse refers to unmarried people others contend that since the word zina applies to both fornication and adultery, the verse must be in reference to the two categories of people (married and unmarried).

Proof of law

As for stoning, no specific chapter or verse of the Qur’an can be cited as evidence for its application. In other words, the Qur’an does not prescribe stoning as punishment for adulterers and adulteresses as it is in prescribing flogging.

Islamic law, as mentioned earlier, is a combination of sources. And we had been warned by Allah that:  “It is not for true believers, male or female, to have a choice (but to abide) when Allah and His Apostle decree on an issue. Whoever disobeys Allah and His Apostle has strayed far indeed”. (Q. 33, verse 36.)

There are many narrated versions of how and when stoning as punishment for adulterers and adulteresses became a law. All the available evidences advanced in favour of this law are based on Hadith and Sunnah. But when did the Prophet’s expression or action authorise stoning vis a vis the Qur’anic revelation on flogging quoted above?

Was it before or after the revelation? If it was after, could the Prophet have given a verdict that would contradict the contents of the Qur’an? If it was before, shouldn’t such Hadith or Sunnah be superseded by the Qur’anic revelation that came after it? Yet, there is the issue of homosexuality and lesbianism and the punishment prescribed for them by the Qur’an and Sunnah.

With good knowledge of Islam and thorough understanding of Islamic jurisprudence, the issue of stoning as punishment for adulterers should not, ordinarily, generate any controversy. The position of the Qur’an on this issue, as revealed by Allah, is very clear. What brought controversy into it is the interpretation of that revelation as attributed to several Hadith relayed in various versions.

Given the antecedence of the record of Hadith, any informed Muslim must be careful in using Hadith against the contents of the Qur’an especially as a legal code in Islam. Statutorily, Hadith is meant to complement the Qur’an and not vice versa. Where the former seems to conflict with the latter, the Qur’an prevails.

If any of these two major sources of Islamic law was ever controversial it could only have been the Hadith and not the Qur’an.

And, it was for this reason that Hadith was subjected to such serious scrutiny that led to scholastic separation of the wheat from the chaff in what came to be known as science of Hadith.

Documentation of Hadith

It must be remembered that the official compilation and documentation of Hadith did not take place until several decades after the demise of Prophet Muhammad. And what led to that exercise by great scholars like Al-Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Maja, Abu Daud, At-Tirmidhi, An-Nisai and a host of others was the rampant fabrication of statements attributed to the Prophet by some mischievous elements.

Unlike the Qur’anic revelations which were promptly documented officially as instructed by the Prophet himself, Hadith and Sunnah were not authorised for documentation by the Prophet. His (Prophet’s) position was that such documentation could lead to a conflict of Hadith with the contents of the Qur’an and therefore cause confusion among the Muslims. That fear was never fully allayed after all, despite the efforts of the mentioned scholars. And, today, we still have thousands of Hadith classified as ‘weak’, ‘unauthorised’ and ‘rejected’. Yet, they bear no names other than Hadith.

In such a melee, it will be foolhardy to depend exclusively on Hadith in giving a verdict as fundamental as stoning to death especially when the Qur’an is silent on it. Though I am not a Mufti, I personally believe that if Allah had intended stoning as penalty for adultery, He wouldn’t have left its pronouncement to the Prophet since Allah was categorical in respect of flogging for adulterers.

Categories of adultery

In Islam, adultery is not limited to married men and women alone. The acts of homosexuality (i.e. man to man sex) as well as lesbianism (i.e. woman to woman sex) are equally treated as adultery. And this is where the logic of stoning becomes questionable. It is through the Qur’an that we came to know of a whole city of the people of Prophet Lut (Lot) which Allah wiped out for committing homosexuality otherwise called ‘sodomy’. The Qur’an does not tell us of a similar punishment meted out to any group of adulterers in history. Yet, homosexuals and lesbians are still given the opportunity to repent with a promise of Allah’s forgiveness.

This is how the Qur’an put it: “Against those of your women who commit adultery (lesbianism), call witnesses, four in number, from among yourselves; and if they bear witness, then keep the women in confinement until death release them or Allah shall make for them a way out of it. And if two (men) of you commit it (homosexuality), then punish them both; but if they repent and show remorse, leave them alone. Verily, Allah is forgiving, compassionate. Q. 4:15-16.

Fabricated Hadith

Many versions of Hadith were relayed in respect of stoning. One of them was that a married woman once reported herself to the Prophet confessing adultery. The Prophet pretended not to hear until the woman repeated herself three times, saying she had become pregnant as a result. The Prophet thereafter asked her to come and repeat the confession after delivery. It was thought that the woman would never come back having known the implication. But surprisingly, she came back after delivery and repeated the same confession three times.

There and then, the Prophet was said to have ordered some of his disciples present to pelt her with stone. This act was carried out as the woman took to her heels. When those disciples returned to inform the Prophet that they had stoned the woman to death, he was alarmed and scolded them for carrying out such a dastardly act saying he did not send them to kill her.

One would wonder why the Prophet who was so compassionate and cautious about anything life would rush to give such a verdict without investigating the matter conclusively. For instance, nothing in the referred Hadith tells us anything concerning the woman’s sexual partner (i.e. the man who impregnated her) before the judgment was allegedly given. That is not the exemplary Prophet described by Allah in the Qur’an thus: “you have a good example in Allah’s Apostle for anyone who looks to Allah and the last day and remembers Allah always” (Q. 33: 21).

Relevant questions

Some questions can be raised in respect of the process of applying the penalty for adultery. Some of the questions are as follows: when can a man or a woman be pronounced an adulterer or adulteress? How can such a person be tried? Who should pass judgment on him or her?

To ascertain that a man or a woman has committed adultery, there must be convincing evidence. One such evidence is for the married woman to be pregnant outside the wedlock. Another is for the woman or the man to voluntarily confess to adultery. However, the sexual partner must also voluntarily admit that adultery was actually committed between both of them. The third is for other people to prove catching them in action. Anybody who came up with such allegation without proof must bring four male witnesses or eight female witnesses. Each of the witnesses must have seen the accused duo in action. This means they must have all seen the physical insertion of the male organ into the female organ. And they must be made to swear to on oath that they actually saw the act. This is to avoid any possibility of conspiracy.

Anything less than that should be considered mere suspicion which cannot warrant any penalty because adultery is not committed in the open.

If, through open evidence (like pregnancy outside wedlock) or voluntary self-confession by both sexual partners, a man or a woman is found guilty of adultery, the next step is prosecution in a Shari’ah court. In the absence of an official Shari’ah court the accused person should be tried by a judicial committee of a Mosque headed by a Mufti.

Such an accused person must have attained puberty, he or she must be sane and the act must have been committed with his or her consent.

In the case of the woman becoming pregnant, the court or the Mosque must allow her to deliver the child before any judgment is executed.

And if she alleges rape, she is automatically free if her claim is found to be true. But the best is to defer the judgment till after delivery to avoid any psychological complication that may affect the child in her womb. Such deferment will also allow for thorough investigation before judgment is given.

As for the male partner, the penalty may be carried out as soon as the judgment is delivered, if enough evidence is established against him.

That penalty as prescribed in the Qur’an is flogging which should be done publicly and witnessed by members of the community in order to serve as a deterrent to others.

However, banishment from the community for one year after flogging may be waived, according to Imam Hanafi, if the culprit repents sincerely and promises never to repeat the crime, depending on the discretion of the judge or the Mufti.

Essence of punishment

The essence of any punishment in Islam is to enable people repent and desist from evil deeds. But what is amazing about the application of Islamic punishment for adultery is that only the lowly people in the society are caught and punished for it even when it is obvious that adultery is more rampant among the makers and shakers of the society especially the law givers. Why is it that no single highly placed person has ever been caught and punished for adultery either in Nigeria or elsewhere?

Besides ‘shirk’ (associating something with Allah), no act is more annoying to Allah than miscarriage of justice, especially against the helpless people. Adultery is a very grievous crime in Islam and no true Muslim will solicit for adulterers or adulteresses. But, in applying the law against this monstrous crime, due process must be followed without any discrimination. Justice is the hallmark of Islam.

Let those who administer justice fear Allah.  Like many other Hadith fabricated and credited to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) for authenticity, the commonly quoted Hadith about stoning sounds very much fabricated because it contradicts logic and misrepresents the just personality of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

Preamble

Arabs, in spite of what may be their misdemeanour today, are highly gifted in prose and poetry. Their literary prowess is unsurpassable as they combine the heritage of the Hellenes with that of Islamic treasures. In what has become an axiom, one poet among them once succinctly but philosophically put across the following couplet for the benefit of mankind:

Human sense channelizes the course of destiny: whoever misapplies his sense and blocks that course should not blame destiny for his or her misfortune..

 

Restiveness of the world

The world is restive today not just for its bereavement of peace but also for the hopelessness which that bereavement entails. From Wellington in Australia to Helsinki in Finland; from Anchorage in America to Hiroshima in Japan; from Beijing in China to El Salado in Argentina and from Casablanca in Morocco to Antananarivo in Madagascar there is no peace and there is no hope for it. Nigeria’s share of this calamity is as enormous as that of the United States of America. Bomb blasts or massacre today, flood or hurricane tomorrow. Yet, both countries are comrades in arms.

 

When and where did we start taking wrong steps?

A Yoruba adage poses a relevant challenge when it states thus: when a kid falls down he looks forward for rescue but when an adult falls down he looks backwards to assess the cause of his fall.. That adage is worth studying by the right-thinking men who are capable of asking the right question at the right time: when and where did we start taking wrong steps?

Venturing a little back into the recent past, one will discover that the world was not anything near the current prevailing barbarism even about 50 years ago. The occurrences which piloted the world to this stage can be best described as , REBELLION OF NATURE against man. And that rebellion could only have emanated from man’s own invention. People who are more than 60 years of age will testify to the fact that this same world of ours had once been in perfect serenity with harmony and concord even as peace was generally taken for granted.

 

Problem of Man

The main problem of man is to assume that the world is meant for him alone. He hardly believes that all other creatures like soil; animals, birds, insects, vegetations, waters, air and others known and unknown also have a right to claim a space in the tapestry of the wonderful web called the world. Yes, man is made the captain of this web but that does not give him the absolute right to re-write the constitution of the world by tampering with the nature of other creatures.

 

Audacity of Man

In an audacious attempt to affirm his supremacy over all other creatures man has gone deep into the firmament of transgression. He does not only change the courses of rivers and distort the nature of vegetations he also tampers with the flow of air just as he rebrands the nature of certain animals and trees in his so-called scientific experiments adopted to further the course of his capitalist project. Thus, for many years, other creatures have tolerated the dominance of man for as long as that dominance remained positively tolerable. But when it became too negative to bear, they collaborated to rebel against the oppression of man by fighting back in a way that beat the imagination of the oppressor. Today, whether through the tsunami in Japan or the wild fire in Australia, or earthquake in Haiti and Iran or hurricane in America and Canada, or flood in Africa the ecosystem is angrily revolting not only against the transgression of man over it but also against man’s inhumanity to fellow man.

 

Greed

With his glorification of greed, man has relegated justice to the background by rendering truth irrelevant and by deifying an agent of trade called money. This has led to crowning money as the global ‘god’ which virtually everybody on earth is now worshipping directly or indirectly. Capitalism as a major weapon of Satan has become the finger of destiny with which the success or failure of everything is measured.

The world is restive today not because some people have gone berserk by choosing the satanic course of barbarism, vandalism and terrorism but because such people were created by injustice through capitalism. If the truth must be told, manipulation of world serenity for the purpose of capitalism is the root cause of restiveness in the world today. And anybody who wants to change the status quo must be ready to return to the old order by restoring justice and shedding the toga of satanic supremacy. At the inception of the world, the Almighty Allah had called it a divine trust and he had called for volunteers among His creatures to keep its custody in trust. This is contained in Qur’an chapter 33, verse 172 thus: ‘we offered the trust to the heavens, to the earth and to the mountains but they all refused to bear it as they were afraid of it. However, man, out of arrogance and ignorance undertook to keep custody of it but he has since proved to be foolishly unjust’.

 

Injustice

The injustice in the world today is not only that of man to man but also of man to nature. The search for the wealth in the belly of the soil by all means and without any consideration for the pain which the soil itself can suffer in the process is a major cause of nature’s rebellion against man. Excavation of minerals, fossils and antiquities as well as seeking for more space through the expansion of the earth by reclamation of swampy areas around oceans and seas continues to bring untold hardship to man and the ecosystem even as man persists on these activities. Earthquakes, cyclone, hurricane, flood  and tsunami which are now called natural disasters are some of the results of those activities. If the ecosystem had done to man only one percent of what man has been doing to it the world would have for long forgotten any existence of man on earth.

Yet, without minding the consequences, man continues to invent elements of destruction in form of human and material forces by ventilating the avenue for bringing the world to an abrupt end only to turn round and blame nature or human terrorism for it. This world was quite orderly and virtuous until the capitalists introduced into it the obstructions that turned it upside down and brought restiveness to the fore. For instance from time immemorial, mothers had been breastfeeding their infants and this natural upbringing had spoken in understandable language to those who can reason. It took the capitalists to introduce processed animal milk to the world which was rebranded baby formula. This was backed up with unprecedented adverts and commercial campaigns that tricked mothers into accepting it. For about two generations of almost 50 years human infants were forced to take animal milk. And by the time they all grew up to be men and women the die had been cast.

 

The world we are living today

Kindness had disappeared from the surface of the earth, dignity had vamoosed and man’s humanity for man had become flakes of history.

Children of yesterday began to behave like animals of today. Now, there are men but no husbands. There are women but no wives. There are children bearers but no parents. Couples began to live like co-tenants. There are certificates but no knowledge. Responsibility has taken flight even as children began to treat their aged parents like outcasts thereby reducing the once highly valued cultures into unnecessary luxury. Genuine workers are not adequately remunerated. Governance has become a trade that must yield profit for the rulers even as governments are trading officially in lottery and other forms of usury thereby giving the impression that in making money, only the end is capable of justifying the means.

 

Nigeria for Instance

Here in Nigeria about 97% of the oil wealth is shared among only three percent of the population while 97% of the entire populace wallow in abject poverty in their struggle for a share of the 3% wealth left for them by the governing cabal who propound obnoxious policies to create monster for themselves with which to hound perceived enemies. And as a result of such policies they have become prisoners in their own houses and environments even as they now run away from their own shadows.

All these were compounded by the introduction of yet some other terribly devastating elements like cocaine, marijuana, heroin and others of the like used by the new human species to charge themselves into untameable wildness. Thus, today, the world is at war with itself as ubiquity of drug barons, drug addicts, hired killers, bandits, armed robbers, political thugs, economic vandals and suicide bombers come to the prowl. Even religion, the once exclusive niche is not spared. More than 90% of today’s clerics across faiths are shams merely hiding under the cloak of religion to extort money from their sheepish followers and exploit them to marrow. Where are we going from here?

 

Vices to avoid

Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had admonished Muslims against all these vices some of which he described as signs of the last days. That prophesy is vividly reflected in the poem of another Arab poet who said: ‘This is the time against which we had been warned through the transmission of Ubayy Bn Ka’b and Abdullah Bn Mas’ud; a time in which the truth would be consigned to the refuse bin while falsehood and treachery would be held aloft; Were this time to linger for long, humanity would have zoomed into a situation whereby no one would cry over the death of a dear one and no joy would be expressed over the birth of a new baby”.

Now, in Nigeria, we have boxed ourselves into one corner of a ring where the ruled can no longer believe the rulers because governance is based on falsehood and rulers are perceived as sheer liars. We are in a period where betrayal rather than trust is the order of the day and those in charge of the treasury are the real thieves stealing people’s money kept in that treasury and giving a part of the loot to religious sanctuaries. Those charged with the nation’s security are the greatest threat to the same security. Or how else can we classify our so called police?

 

Colonialist Infrastructure

Ours is a nation where the infrastructure provided by the colonialists over 70 years ago cannot be maintained despite the enormous wealth at our disposal. Billions of naira is budgeted every year for electricity, road network, railway, aviation, agriculture, and other vital projects. Yet there are no such projects in place and the budgeted money is never returned to the treasury. Over 70% of what is supposed to constitute the workforce for the nation is idle. Those who had spent their vital youthful years serving the nation are left to die of hunger and wretchedness in their old age as their pension is being pocketed by some fictitious official fingers. We are in an era where the lesson to be taught to the youth is public mutual abuse by certain shameless former rulers of this country who call each other a fool. The situation in the Southwest is the worst. Here is a region where language and culture have been lost in the name of civilization. Majority of those who went through schools can no longer speak their mother tongue. Yet they are embarrassingly backward in English language to which they lost their natural language. No moral lessons on radio and television stations, no cultural values in private homes and public places. All that matters is the money that can be made and not how such money is made.

In this, what legacy can the present generation leave behind? And what heritage can the future generations expect from criminal prisoners who are met on their return from prisons by co party stalwarts with songs and dances? Whenever we hear of bomb blasts and suicide bombings nowadays we get alarmed and terribly agitated forgetting that these are the fruits of the seed which some leaders of yesteryears had planted in the soil of Nigeria. Or have we all forgotten that the very first bomb blast that killed a Nigerian (Dele Giwa) was linked to government quarters? What else is expected of the experts who carried out that dastardly act? Besides utilizing that skill for their own purpose having served their employers meritoriously, can’t they pass their expertise to some other Nigerians who might need such skill? The lamentations by some people today on the hearing of bomb blasts, is an indication that Nigerians are either forgetful or mischievous. By and large it should not be expected that prayers for which many people have called will solve any crime or negligent problem. Who are those to pray? What is their record before Allah? The panacea for criminal acts is to desist from criminal acts. Thousands of years of prayers against crimes by criminals can never bring succour to this world. Most of those perceived as men of God who will want to champion prayers to God are more covertly criminal than those actually perceived as criminals. They are rather men of Satan than men of God. Allah has strongly warned thus: Surely Allah will not change the situation of a nation or a community until they themselves have reneged from evil acts and if Allah intends punishment for a nation or a community no one can repel it except a change for the better by the nation or community in question…. Q. 13: 11.

Preamble

Arabs, in spite of what may be their misdemeanour today, are highly gifted in prose and poetry. Their literary prowess is unsurpassable as they combine the heritage of the Hellenes with that of Islamic treasures. In what has become an axiom, one poet among them once succinctly but philosophically put across the following couplet for the benefit of mankind:

Human sense channelizes the course of destiny: whoever misapplies his sense and blocks that course should not blame destiny for his or her misfortune..

 

Restiveness of the world

The world is restive today not just for its bereavement of peace but also for the hopelessness which that bereavement entails. From Wellington in Australia to Helsinki in Finland; from Anchorage in America to Hiroshima in Japan; from Beijing in China to El Salado in Argentina and from Casablanca in Morocco to Antananarivo in Madagascar there is no peace and there is no hope for it. Nigeria’s share of this calamity is as enormous as that of the United States of America. Bomb blasts or massacre today, flood or hurricane tomorrow. Yet, both countries are comrades in arms.

When and where did we start taking wrong steps?

A Yoruba adage poses a relevant challenge when it states thus: when a kid falls down he looks forward for rescue but when an adult falls down he looks backwards to assess the cause of his fall.. That adage is worth studying by the right-thinking men who are capable of asking the right question at the right time: when and where did we start taking wrong steps?

Venturing a little back into the recent past, one will discover that the world was not anything near the current prevailing barbarism even about 50 years ago. The occurrences which piloted the world to this stage can be best described as , REBELLION OF NATURE against man. And that rebellion could only have emanated from man’s own invention. People who are more than 60 years of age will testify to the fact that this same world of ours had once been in perfect serenity with harmony and concord even as peace was generally taken for granted.

 

Problem of Man

The main problem of man is to assume that the world is meant for him alone. He hardly believes that all other creatures like soil; animals, birds, insects, vegetations, waters, air and others known and unknown also have a right to claim a space in the tapestry of the wonderful web called the world. Yes, man is made the captain of this web but that does not give him the absolute right to re-write the constitution of the world by tampering with the nature of other creatures.

 

Audacity of Man

In an audacious attempt to affirm his supremacy over all other creatures man has gone deep into the firmament of transgression. He does not only change the courses of rivers and distort the nature of vegetations he also tampers with the flow of air just as he rebrands the nature of certain animals and trees in his so-called scientific experiments adopted to further the course of his capitalist project. Thus, for many years, other creatures have tolerated the dominance of man for as long as that dominance remained positively tolerable. But when it became too negative to bear, they collaborated to rebel against the oppression of man by fighting back in a way that beat the imagination of the oppressor. Today, whether through the tsunami in Japan or the wild fire in Australia, or earthquake in Haiti and Iran or hurricane in America and Canada, or flood in Africa the ecosystem is angrily revolting not only against the transgression of man over it but also against man’s inhumanity to fellow man.

 

Greed

With his glorification of greed, man has relegated justice to the background by rendering truth irrelevant and by deifying an agent of trade called money. This has led to crowning money as the global ‘god’ which virtually everybody on earth is now worshipping directly or indirectly. Capitalism as a major weapon of Satan has become the finger of destiny with which the success or failure of everything is measured.

The world is restive today not because some people have gone berserk by choosing the satanic course of barbarism, vandalism and terrorism but because such people were created by injustice through capitalism. If the truth must be told, manipulation of world serenity for the purpose of capitalism is the root cause of restiveness in the world today. And anybody who wants to change the status quo must be ready to return to the old order by restoring justice and shedding the toga of satanic supremacy. At the inception of the world, the Almighty Allah had called it a divine trust and he had called for volunteers among His creatures to keep its custody in trust. This is contained in Qur’an chapter 33, verse 172 thus: ‘we offered the trust to the heavens, to the earth and to the mountains but they all refused to bear it as they were afraid of it. However, man, out of arrogance and ignorance undertook to keep custody of it but he has since proved to be foolishly unjust’.

 

Injustice

The injustice in the world today is not only that of man to man but also of man to nature. The search for the wealth in the belly of the soil by all means and without any consideration for the pain which the soil itself can suffer in the process is a major cause of nature’s rebellion against man. Excavation of minerals, fossils and antiquities as well as seeking for more space through the expansion of the earth by reclamation of swampy areas around oceans and seas continues to bring untold hardship to man and the ecosystem even as man persists on these activities. Earthquakes, cyclone, hurricane, flood  and tsunami which are now called natural disasters are some of the results of those activities. If the ecosystem had done to man only one percent of what man has been doing to it the world would have for long forgotten any existence of man on earth.

Yet, without minding the consequences, man continues to invent elements of destruction in form of human and material forces by ventilating the avenue for bringing the world to an abrupt end only to turn round and blame nature or human terrorism for it. This world was quite orderly and virtuous until the capitalists introduced into it the obstructions that turned it upside down and brought restiveness to the fore. For instance from time immemorial, mothers had been breastfeeding their infants and this natural upbringing had spoken in understandable language to those who can reason. It took the capitalists to introduce processed animal milk to the world which was rebranded baby formula. This was backed up with unprecedented adverts and commercial campaigns that tricked mothers into accepting it. For about two generations of almost 50 years human infants were forced to take animal milk. And by the time they all grew up to be men and women the die had been cast.

 

The world we are living today

Kindness had disappeared from the surface of the earth, dignity had vamoosed and man’s humanity for man had become flakes of history.

Children of yesterday began to behave like animals of today. Now, there are men but no husbands. There are women but no wives. There are children bearers but no parents. Couples began to live like co-tenants. There are certificates but no knowledge. Responsibility has taken flight even as children began to treat their aged parents like outcasts thereby reducing the once highly valued cultures into unnecessary luxury. Genuine workers are not adequately remunerated. Governance has become a trade that must yield profit for the rulers even as governments are trading officially in lottery and other forms of usury thereby giving the impression that in making money, only the end is capable of justifying the means.

 

Nigeria for Instance

Here in Nigeria about 97% of the oil wealth is shared among only three percent of the population while 97% of the entire populace wallow in abject poverty in their struggle for a share of the 3% wealth left for them by the governing cabal who propound obnoxious policies to create monster for themselves with which to hound perceived enemies. And as a result of such policies they have become prisoners in their own houses and environments even as they now run away from their own shadows.

All these were compounded by the introduction of yet some other terribly devastating elements like cocaine, marijuana, heroin and others of the like used by the new human species to charge themselves into untameable wildness. Thus, today, the world is at war with itself as ubiquity of drug barons, drug addicts, hired killers, bandits, armed robbers, political thugs, economic vandals and suicide bombers come to the prowl. Even religion, the once exclusive niche is not spared. More than 90% of today’s clerics across faiths are shams merely hiding under the cloak of religion to extort money from their sheepish followers and exploit them to marrow. Where are we going from here?

 

Vices to avoid

Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had admonished Muslims against all these vices some of which he described as signs of the last days. That prophesy is vividly reflected in the poem of another Arab poet who said: ‘This is the time against which we had been warned through the transmission of Ubayy Bn Ka’b and Abdullah Bn Mas’ud; a time in which the truth would be consigned to the refuse bin while falsehood and treachery would be held aloft; Were this time to linger for long, humanity would have zoomed into a situation whereby no one would cry over the death of a dear one and no joy would be expressed over the birth of a new baby”.

Now, in Nigeria, we have boxed ourselves into one corner of a ring where the ruled can no longer believe the rulers because governance is based on falsehood and rulers are perceived as sheer liars. We are in a period where betrayal rather than trust is the order of the day and those in charge of the treasury are the real thieves stealing people’s money kept in that treasury and giving a part of the loot to religious sanctuaries. Those charged with the nation’s security are the greatest threat to the same security. Or how else can we classify our so called police?

 

Colonialist Infrastructure

Ours is a nation where the infrastructure provided by the colonialists over 70 years ago cannot be maintained despite the enormous wealth at our disposal. Billions of naira is budgeted every year for electricity, road network, railway, aviation, agriculture, and other vital projects. Yet there are no such projects in place and the budgeted money is never returned to the treasury. Over 70% of what is supposed to constitute the workforce for the nation is idle. Those who had spent their vital youthful years serving the nation are left to die of hunger and wretchedness in their old age as their pension is being pocketed by some fictitious official fingers. We are in an era where the lesson to be taught to the youth is public mutual abuse by certain shameless former rulers of this country who call each other a fool. The situation in the Southwest is the worst. Here is a region where language and culture have been lost in the name of civilization. Majority of those who went through schools can no longer speak their mother tongue. Yet they are embarrassingly backward in English language to which they lost their natural language. No moral lessons on radio and television stations, no cultural values in private homes and public places. All that matters is the money that can be made and not how such money is made.

In this, what legacy can the present generation leave behind? And what heritage can the future generations expect from criminal prisoners who are met on their return from prisons by co party stalwarts with songs and dances? Whenever we hear of bomb blasts and suicide bombings nowadays we get alarmed and terribly agitated forgetting that these are the fruits of the seed which some leaders of yesteryears had planted in the soil of Nigeria. Or have we all forgotten that the very first bomb blast that killed a Nigerian (Dele Giwa) was linked to government quarters? What else is expected of the experts who carried out that dastardly act? Besides utilizing that skill for their own purpose having served their employers meritoriously, can’t they pass their expertise to some other Nigerians who might need such skill? The lamentations by some people today on the hearing of bomb blasts, is an indication that Nigerians are either forgetful or mischievous. By and large it should not be expected that prayers for which many people have called will solve any crime or negligent problem. Who are those to pray? What is their record before Allah? The panacea for criminal acts is to desist from criminal acts. Thousands of years of prayers against crimes by criminals can never bring succour to this world. Most of those perceived as men of God who will want to champion prayers to God are more covertly criminal than those actually perceived as criminals. They are rather men of Satan than men of God. Allah has strongly warned thus: Surely Allah will not change the situation of a nation or a community until they themselves have reneged from evil acts and if Allah intends punishment for a nation or a community no one can repel it except a change for the better by the nation or community in question…. Q. 13: 11.

 

Whoever deviates from my instruction will live a hanging life and be resurrected a blind person in the hereafter. Q. 20:124

very aspect of human life is a question. Some are answered positively, some, negatively and some, not answered at all. But there is no unanswerable question in Islam. It is a different matter altogether if one is not pleased with the provided answer. That all-time phenomenal FAITH is known for providing answers even before questions are raised. And that is what distinguishes it from all other religions.

If Islam had just been a dogmatic religion and not a complete way of life, it would have become like other creeds in the world today. Panel beaters would have worked on it. Painters would have re-sprayed it to their tastes. Fine artists would have added drawings of beauty to it for marketability. And, then, it would have become an all-comers’ trade fetching money day and night for merchants of fortune.

But this divine religion is like a mighty ocean flowing ceaselessly towards all directions and watering all plants into life through the deltas of adjoining rivers. It will be a suicide bid, therefore, for anybody, government or nation, no matter how technologically advanced, to want to change its course.

Looking at the emergence, the spread and the triumph of Islam in the midst of vicious empires and at a time when might and nothing but might alone mattered, any right-thinking person will surely be amazed by the surviving strategy of this divine religion. How did an unlettered desert man of little means come up with an ideology that captured the world slaves and kings?

How did Prophet Muhammad (SAW) become a law giver without any training in a law school? How did he become a General without enrolling in any army? How did he become a scientist without attending any school? How did he become a doctor without undergoing any medical training? How did he become a ruler without receiving any tutelage in politics? And what can be more amazing, historically or contemporarily, than to have all these roles and more combined in a single human being who rose from such a crude background? These are not questions to be answered with crude abuses or parochial denigration.

The great revolution which the great Prophet of Islam brought into the world cannot but beat the imagination of any sensible mortal being. There were hundreds of Prophets before him. Adam, Nuh, Ibrahim, Shuayb, Lut, Musa, Isa and a host of others had all come as prophets preaching peace and harmony to mankind. But none was either a General or a scientist or a ruler.

Prophets Daud and Sulayman who were kings could though be called Generals in their own right, nevertheless, they were neither scientists nor doctors. Yet, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who combined all these rare qualities never claimed any miracle by magic wand.

What makes Islam a unique way of life is the uniqueness of Prophet Muhammad’s personality which derived from the uniqueness of the Qur’an. If the Orientalists who were accusing Prophet Muhammad (SAW) of being a war monger were not ignorant or hypocritical, they would have known that no empire or civilisation has ever emerged or survived in history without fighting wars.

How did such old empires as Mesopotamian, Greek, Assyrian, Macedonian, Persian and Roman emerge? How did the French and the Russian revolutions succeed in the early 19th and 20th centuries respectively? How did European countries become colonialist? And, even in contemporary time, how did America emerge as the world’s strongest power? Was it just by preaching human rights and democracy? The reality of today as presented by the history of the past has exposed the hypocrisy of yesteryears. Islam has transcended a stage in life when it could be intimidated or blackmailed into surrendering its legitimacy and identity to any spiritual or political charlatan.

When the West talks of democracy today, the impression it gives is that democracy is a Western invention. This is very far from the truth. Despite the lengthy and speculative Platonic theories on democracy and despite the surreptitious claim that Aristotle wrote a constitution for the City State of Athens, the West did not come in contact with democracy practically until it had a political encounter with the Muslims in Spain in the 8th century C. E.

And even with that encounter, Europe remained a mere spectator in the field of democracy until expediency brought about what was called .Magna Carter'(Great Charter) in England in 1215 C. E.

What the West calls democracy today was what Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had called interactive government, which he practiced as far back as the 7th century. At the time when he established an Islamic State based on Madinah Constitution, the first of its kind in the world, there was no single empire or nation in the entire world without a monarch. If he had not been sincerely focused on the genuineness of his mission, he would have joined the pack by crowning himself a king. But he became the first Head of State and government in the world not called a king because he did not govern like a monarch.

The idea of democracy, which the West came to adopt as its heritage, therefore, is purely Islamic in origin.

As Head of State, the Prophet never imposed any policy on the people without impute from the same people directly or indirectly except such a policy came in form of divine revelation. In other words, he was neither a monarch nor a despot. And, as a Head of State, he never saw himself as more important than any other citizen or resident in the State. That was why he was an indigent even as Head of State that his household could carry on for months without cooking any food under their roof.

In Islam, democracy is not about voting and governance alone. Rather, it is fundamentally about justice in all its ramifications according to the rule of law. It is about tending the lives of the citizens for the overall good of the nation. It is about providing the needs of the people according to the available resources in the nation. It is about protecting the interest of the weak against the oppression of the strong. It is about managing the wealth of the nation with diligent sense of accountability and utilising such wealth according to conscience. It is about securing the lives of the citizenry in terms of jobs, feeding, shelter, health and education. It is about boosting the horizon of the youths and sharpening their hope against the future. It is about guaranteeing individuals’ adequate income per capital and ensuring a standard life expectancy. Any government that claims democracy without caring about the aforementioned can only at best be oppressive and hypocritical. That was Nigeria’s lot between 1999 and 2023, the continuity of which we had fervently prayed Allah to forbid. But how far has that prayer been accepted is a matter of self-examination.

And, today, more than 20 years into the so-called unbroken democracy in Nigeria, are we celebrating or mourning? It seems only the megaphones of the government can answer that question. They are the ones who put Nigeria on a rigmarole pushing it left and right, as it suited them, without a definite destination. They had once told us that what this country needed was. REBRANDING, which they claimed was the panacea to Nigeria’s chronic disease. And by REBRANDING, they meant talking well of Nigeria abroad and covering at home the criminal corruption committed by those in government. The campaign for this new found orientation went wild thereby paving way for a junketing jamboree in the name of REBRANDING. But after funneling billions of naira to God knows where they changed the tide.

Today, the cliché called REBRANDING has become history just as the monster called corruption grows bigger and waxes stronger. It is not enough to tell school pupils to do correction in his homework. At least a good teacher must be able to point out the error in his pupils’ work before calling for  correction. Governance, like culture, has variety of colours, flavours and tastes. What is called democracy in a state may amount to despotism in another State.

In Europe today, some of the countries championing democracy around the world are basically monarchical. For instance, countries like Greece, Netherlands (Holland), Belgium, Spain, Sweden and even Britain are all monarchical. Yet these are the same countries that descended with armed forces on Iraq and Afghanistan pretending to want to ensure the entrenchment of democracy in those poor countries. If absence of democracy was the problem in Iraq and Afghanistan, what problem in the defunct Soviet Union and Yugoslavia led to their breakup? Or were they not said to be democratic? Unlike France, Germany and Italy (which are monolingual), the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia collapsed because of the heterogeneity of their tongues and cultures. This confirms the fact that Western type of democracy can only thrive on common cultural identity.

From experience, it has become evident that governance, whether democratic or monarchical, is fundamentally a function of culture. And that is why the British constitution is said to be partly written and partly conventional.

Borrowing a foreign culture to practice democracy, as done in Nigeria, is like borrowing another man’s mouth to eat. Into whose stomach will the food go?

By the way, has anybody ever tried to find out why the Arab countries are far ahead of the black African countries in growth and development despite the recent political crises in those (Arab) countries?

The answer to this question is simple: Those Arab countries are monolingual and mono-cultural irrespective of individuals’ religious or ideological differences. Their constitutions are based on the language understandable to the majority of their citizenry and those constitutions are weaved around their common culture. Above all, those constitutions are readily available even to school children who study them in the classrooms as part of the school curriculum.

For instance, based on the law by which those countries are governed, an average Arab policeman will politely warn a citizen not to commit an offence. It is only if the person goes ahead to commit the offence, despite the warning, that he will be arrested and still be warned, but not punished, if he is a first offender. The exception to that however, is when the committed offence is criminal.

In Nigeria, an average policeman of Taraba origin posted to Ogun State will rather hide somewhere and watch you commit an offence that you never knew of its existence only to pounce on you thereafter, arrest you and get you punished severely unless you have the means of greasing his palms. So will a policeman of Osun State origin does if he is posted to Kano or Cross River State. The slogan in our own country is that the claim of ignorance is no excuse before the law.

Now, the questions are: which law are we talking about? The laws contained in the constitution proclaimed by an unauthorised cabal in the name of the populace but not made available to the same populace? Who does not know that Nigerian constitution is a mere public luxury which constitutes an instrument of oppression in the hands of the ruling cabal? To an ordinary Nigerian, that constitution is the real political manacle with which the citizens are fettered to the stake of indefinite servitude.

It might be true that while alive and in power, the late President Yar’Adua proclaimed the rule of law as one of his .seven point agenda’ but where was the law which rule was being proclaimed? And who are the people to uphold such law in Nigeria today? Can our legislators and police be trusted with the law which is not available to the public when it took the same legislators several years to pass the ‘Freedom of bill into law which sought to entrench democracy?

There are 53 countries in Africa today. Only seven of them are Arab countries. The rest are what the Europeans call black countries. Of these, only about 10 have not experienced military intervention or civil war within the last half of a century. The colonial devils and their agents have succeeded in creating what the linguists call isogloss in various geo-political zones in Africa. (An isogloss is an area in which people of diverse, and not mutually understandable languages, settle down for co-existence). Semantically, such areas only connote cultural confusion. And that is what Europeans thrive on by using their African agents to enslave the black populace perpetually.

There is no single Arab country in Africa not colonised by the Europeans.

Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania were French colonies. Libya was an Italian colony. Sudan was a British colony. And Egypt, which was once an empire and a cradle of civilisation was colonized by both France and Britain at different times. But despite their colonisation and the recent political agitations in those countries, how do they maintain political sanity? Even among black African countries, how do Senegal, Kenya and Tanzania maintain their democracy for about half a century without military intervention where Nigeria became a haven for military coups?

Today, Arab countries in Africa are nations (not mere countries) and they enjoy the benefits of being nations. What is more interesting is that not all these Arab countries are Republics. Morocco, for instance, is a monarchy but she thrives effectively in her own version of monarchical democracy. Citizens of Arab countries are highly patriotic and can die fighting for the good name of their nations. They are not as agitated for self-aggrandisement as citizens ofthe black African countries because most of their social needs are met by their governments. And when there is any disagreement on policy or ideology they resort to their culture for solution.

If such a disagreement should occur in Nigeria, to which culture will our government resort; the British colonial culture or the American constitutional culture? This shows why the black Africans always resort to the use of guns in settling their internal differences to the delight of their colonial masters? With a situation like this, how can Nigeria ever dream of becoming a nation when even ordinary National Identity Cards took years of massive embezzlement to produce for citizens? Yet our rulers are calling for patriotism through RE-BRANDING by chanting slogans and by distributing T-shirts and logos as if those are what the citizens need for survival. The Amnesty International keeps crying over an average of 350 Nigerians dying of hunger daily. And our government keeps asking us to chant RE-BRANDING slogan and wear its logo to create the impression abroad that things are normal with us at home.

Who is deceiving who? What a country? What a government? By citing the example of the Arabs here, I am not advocating for Arab democracy. It is not compatible with our own culture. But having surrendered to a common destiny, we can sit down together as a people and forge a common language as a first step towards a common culture. That was how Urdu and Swahili languages emerged.

When people of different tribes and tongues are forcefully fused together without thinking of a common identity, the tendency is for multi-dimensional crises to remain with them perpetually. The only panacea however is genuine federalism which ought to have been fully adopted to enable every tribe or region conduct its own affairs according to its cultural pace. Prophet Muhammad had long warned against misplacement of trust by saying: “When trust is misplaced fundamentally, expect the end of time.” Is this not manifest in the current unprecedented corruption wrapped in deceptive campaign in Nigeria? How else can a government pursue shadow while leaving substance behind? To continue to pretend that nothing is fundamentally wrong with Nigeria democratically is like hiding behind one finger after stripping oneself naked. Hundreds of thousands of able bodied young men and women are jobless. Thousands of retired aged citizens who are qualified to pray effectively for the country are being corruptly deprived of their legitimate entitlements and our government is spending trillions of naira to sustain the ruling class in power. For how long can this continue?

Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they refrain from their iniquities. If He (Allah) decides to afflict them with tribulation, no one can ward it off.

Besides Him, there is no protector them. Q13:11. If 20 years cannot stabilize democracy, what magic can push Nigeria into the group of 20 best economies in eight years’ time as now being projected? Food for thought you may call this. Yes! Food for thought it is indeed.

‘‘…And beware of a calamity that may afflict not only the transgressors amongst you to the exclusion of others and know that Allah’s retribution can be severe.” –  Q. 8:25

Preamble

Writing a drama is like conceiving a pregnancy. For the drama to be practically actable the writer must take into consideration not only the theme, the setting, the characters and the complications that may build up spirally to the climax in such a drama. He must also think of the anti-climax of the drama as well as its possible denouement.

A Playright’s Ingenuity

Nothing shows the ingenuousness of a playwright as vividly as the crew of actors who put into action the script that gives birth to the drama in question. It is like delivering a pregnant woman of her pregnancy. If the delivery process is not carefully handled, the deliverer may end up becoming an undertaker. And that is when a drama is said to be tragic.

The World as a Paradox

The entire world today is a paradoxical theatre in which over seven billion human beings including Nigerians are watching a drama. Whether for ecstasy or dismay the viewers of the drama  may randomly roar into controversies as the drama progresses. But the main concern of each viewer is what may become of his favourite character.

In the current global drama against which we had been admonished in the Qur’an as quoted above, the concern of this columnist is the ‘colony’ called Nigeria. This is not just because the colony is my immediate constituency it is also because Nigeria is the heart of Africa. And if anything negative happens to her the whole of Africa will cease to be at rest.

 

Hidden Agenda

A clandestine script was unveiled in respect of Nigeria in 1995. Its contents revealed that this heart of Africa called Nigeria was heading for a break up by year 2015. The designers of this devilish agenda had set a timeframe of 20 years for its execution without suggesting any solution. And to portray their dream as a realizable one they kept hammering the probability of the success of that obnoxious project using some hazardous occurrences in the land as evidence.

For students of International Relations, such a prediction could not have been strange. It was part of the strategies often used by the imperialists either to re-colonize some old colonies psychologically or to scoop on and dominate their economies in a typical capitalist manner. They had done it successfully in some other countries none of which is now firmly on her feet. Vietnam, Korea, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine and lately the entire Arab nations all of which have had their bitter testes of the pillage can testify to this assertion.  It is a modern day equivalence of the 1884/1885 partition of Africa carried out in Berlin, Germany, by the European imperialists, which led to the colonization of African continent. If any of the above countries had resisted the evil project and stood their ground, perhaps the world would have been spared of the throat-cutting threat posed today by the United States and her allies against what they perceive as lesser nations.

The Cult of Capitalism

Incidentally, the US which now champions the imperialists’ cult had also been a victim of this same imperialists’ guillotine especially in the hands of Britain. Yet, the cult of capitalism which has become their common bound would not allow the duo of US and Britain which had been mutually antagonistic to dwell differently today because it is only in such connivance that the gains of their common interest can be accomplished. Unfortunately, Nigeria doesn’t seem to have learned any lesson from countries that had toed the imperialists’ path.

Rather than looking inwards for solution to our domestic problems as the US did before the two World Wars, our governments do not only look up to ‘Uncle Sam’ for solution even to a minor problem but also cry out to the President of America for help in minor hitches. It is just like the situation of a baby who has so much adapted to being spoon-fed that he would hold the ladle in his mouth even while asleep.

Today’s Nigerians

Today, Nigerians can hardly think on anything without reference to America. Whereas some progressive countries like Japan, China, India, Brazil and even the United States in their days of search for growth and development shut their doors to the world and made do with whatever they could produce internally which was why their sudden zoom into the limelight came to the world as a surprise. This has never taught Nigeria any lesson. Rather, all that matters here is empty and monotonous noise about becoming one of the biggest economies in year 2020 even when there is no concrete plan for such. No truly progressive country has ever indulged in such a senseless propaganda with success. What would have ordinarily justified such propaganda is a surprising zooming into the global economic stage as the listed countries had done. But Nigeria’s endemic corruption that has become a culture would not allow such a progressive leap.

 Propaganda

It can only take a shameless country like Nigeria with so much wealth but lacking to embark on such a hopeless propaganda. Now, how our previous  government spent about $16 billion allegedly budgeted for revamping our electricity remains a question which many generations of Nigerians may not be able to answer. Yet, the focus of some evil aggitators is to ensure the continuity of corruption for personal and ephemeral benefits. Even as of today, patriotic Nigerians have not been shown any blueprint that could qualify them for such empty slogan being echoed about year 2020 without our input or mandate.

In retrospect

In the 1980s, under the self-styled military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the slogan was ‘Housing for all or education for all or jobs for all in year 2000’. And the foremost megaphone at that time was  Professor Jerry Gana of MAMSA fame. That propaganda ended up in sheer deception. And in the 1990s, under the maximum despot called General Sani Abacha, the slogan was changed to ‘VISION 2010’. It also ended up in sheer fiasco after spending billions of naira.

Then came a former military Head of State, Chief Mathew Aremu Okikiolakan Olusegun Obasanjo who claimed to have become a democrat without any tutelage. He started his democracy with a slot of the presidency and fooled Nigerians for eight years that became a wasted period in the history of Nigeria. It was on this man that Nigeria’s premium was hopefully placed albeit aimlessly because of his military antecedent and prison experience. His own invented slogan was that of hitting the top echelon of global economy in 2020. And the slogan was continually re-echoed until his exit from government in 2007 a few years away from the target mark. As at the time of his exit, Nigeria, like now, was without electricity, drinkable water, pliable roads, national airline, functional refineries and standard education programme that could propel any possible hope in the deceptive slogan. The pilots of that hopeless odyssey included northerners and southerners as well as Muslims and Christians. But the result, as usual, was an absolute failure. Thus, today, as an OPEC member nation, Nigeria remains the only country that exports crude oil and imports refined fuel for domestic consumption. Where are will going from here? In all OPEC countries, Petrochemical industries are a major point of hope for the citizenry. In petrochemical  industries, thousands of trained youths are employed and economic growth is vivid. But this has no place in the economic dream of Nigeria even as the noisy slogan for hopeless dream sounds louder.

Rather, what our successive governments often  perceived as the problem was the backlash of their ineptitude which paved way for misrule. But none has ever thought of a possible solution.

Implications        

By relying on imperialist countries such as the US and Israel to help resolve the problem of insecurity  Nigerian government headed by Goodluck Jonathan did not only admit its incompetence to protect the citizenry it  also surrendered its authority and thereby those countries and thereby compound the existing problems of the country. After all, those invited countries were the manufacturers of the instruments of insecurity in our land. Security of a country is like the heart in human body. Handing it over to someone else is like paving way for one’s own death. No serious government will ever trivialize the existence of its nation to that extent. We all know that whoever pays the piper must surely dictate the tune. And in diplomacy, there is neither permanent friend nor permanent enemy. A government is said to be of essence and in control of affairs only if it is believed to be capable of protecting its citizenry and defending the territorial integrity of its nation. Any government that is incapable of doing this and would rather decide to throw the gates of its nation open to foreigners for whatever reason is unfit to be called a government. That was the prevailing situation for many years before the current government came on board. But despite all efforts by the current well-intentioned regime to rectify the situation, the forces of evil are bent on the continuity of their evil machinations facilitated by indemnified corruption. Where are going from here?

Partners in Crime

Globally, the tripod of the US, Britain and Israel are known for their unprovoked belligerence and implacable transgression against nations that refuse to comply with their imperialist policies. And it is probably in reference to such imperialist powers that Allah had warned mankind over a millennium and a half ago that: “…When imperialists encroach on a territory they audaciously pillage and brutally destroy it even as they subjugate the juggernauts therein to the level of servitude”. Q. 12: 22

Nigeria’s Vintage Position

The real problem that Nigeria constitutes in Africa is that of serving serve as a regional incubator of corruption and yet connives with the engineers of Africa’s problems for unrealizable solution. In a logical poetic stanza many centuries ago, an Arab poet once opined thus: “We all blame our time for our misdemeanour; when the misdemeanour blamed on our time is actually in us; We smear time with all types of iniquities and yet expect time to cleans us of any blame; Were time endowed with mouth to comment on us, it would have blamed us for generating all crimes; Certainly no hyena eats a fellow hyena; as some of us humans openly eat our fellow human beings”.

The Truth of the Matter

The truth of the matter is that the roots of the multi-dimensional problems staring Nigeria on the face today are traceable mostly to the corridors of our government. Of all the vices that constitute seemingly insuperable problems for Nigeria today particularly corruption, none originated from a source other than that of the government. Even where such corruption happens in the private sector, it will be discovered to be a derivative of the public sector either through obnoxious policies or deliberate nepotism or religious irredentism. How, on earth, can we classify the case of a notorious so-called frontline cleric who was contracted by the government to smuggle arms and ammunition into the country from South Africa in the name of political patronage in a multi ethnic and multi religious society like Nigeria? Yet, the government wanted Nigerians to accept that fraudulent act as a normal business.

Immunity Clause

The absurdity of immunity clause in Nigerian constitution is obviously an  authorization of corruption for  some  rogues who are claiming to be political or religious leaders in the country. What justification will such rogues have in prosecuting or preaching the known thieves thereafter? Those who injected immunity clause in our constitution as well as those who are in position to remove it but rather chose to retain it are together accomplices in the entrenchment and spread of corruption in the land. Such people will have no logical reason to talk of fighting corruption because they are its creator and sustainers.

Another evidence of audacious governmental corruption in Nigeria is manifest in the position of the so-called FIRST LADY. Here is a position which has no provision in the country’s constitution but which is given such prominence that classifies the occupier over and above the elected Vice-President at the federal level and Deputy Governor at the State level. This illegal position has no official budget but it is flamboyantly provided with such paraphernalia of office that compete almost favourably with that of the President or the Governor at the expense of the public. With this kind of illegal operation how can any Nigerian President or Governor morally question any corruption in which any public officer is involved? This is one of several areas in which President Muhammadu Buhari deserves commendation even if evil politicians are blind to it. And now, the judiciary which is generally acknowledged as the last bastion of ordinary people’s hope has joined the bandwagon of monumental corruption in Nigeria. Where are we going from here?

We are our own Problem

We are our own problem. We know the sources of what we call problems. But we inadvertently incubate such problems. And we know how to proffer solution to them. But, like ‘lotus eaters’ in ‘Odipuxs Rex’, we are so much drunk with illegality that it has become so difficult if not impossible for us to part with it. Thus, like the pot that calls the kettle black we continue to deceive ourselves by mischievously passing the bulk anytime the die is cast.

Admonition

Allah’s words will never look for relevance. They are forever the reference points for those who are rightly guided. Through such words, Allah warns in Qur’an 13:11 thus: “Surely, Allah does not change the situation of a nation or community until they themselves have resolved to change it through their attitude”. Acting the imperialists’ evil script as often done will do no one any good in Nigeria.