The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Abbas

  • Shariah Court only for Muslims, Ahmadiyah clarifies

    Shariah Court only for Muslims, Ahmadiyah clarifies

    The Ahmadiyah Muslim Jam’at of Nigeria has said the imbroglio in the establishment of Shariah panels in Southwest is unnecessary as the Shariah court has been in practice in the region for decades now.

    Amir of the Ahmadiyah Muslim Jam’at of Nigeria, Alhaji Alatoye AbdulAzeez, stated this at the World Press conference on Wednesday at its national headquarters in Lagos.

    Alatoye said the Shariah court, which is constitutionally allowed in Nigeria, is only meant to attend to issues and matters as they affect Muslims and not non-Muslims.

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    The Amir said the imbroglio was unnecessary as being propagated by haters of the religion. He said those promoting the issues are politically motivated, saying if not, there is no big issue in the Shariah court in the southwest as it has been in existence for decades.

    He said: “Shariah court has been in existence in the southwest for decades, and nobody forces anyone to go there. Nigeria is a secular state; the Shariah court is for Muslims, and non-Muslims are not expected to go there for their cases as it only caters to Muslim matters in relation to marriages, divorce, and other sundry domestic matters. No one can force non-Muslims to subject themselves to the Shariah court as it is only meant to listen to issues affecting Muslims. The Shariah court is in Ogun, Lagos, and some other states in the southwest.”

    “The Muslims in Southwest have been peaceful, and they adhere to the tenets of Islam; the shariah court does not deal in criminal issues as this will be tantamount to crime as there is a constitution of the country that attends to such criminal cases,” he added.

  • Lesson from history

    Lesson from history

    Preamble

    Let me start today with a Qur’anic admonition which I have frequently quoted in this column but which has consistently meant nothing to the rulers of Nigeria. It goes thus: “…Beware of a calamity that may descend not only on the perpetrators of injustice amongst you (but also on the innocent ones); and be warned that Allah’s retribution can be very severe on the unjust…” Q. 8:25.   

    History is an invisible teacher. It teaches the experience of the past to the inexperienced people of the present with a view to guarding them towards a safe future. Some people perceive history as the best teacher because it warns against the vanity of human wishes as much as it encourages the emulation of impeccable exemplariness of the past. Others call it a bad teacher because it does not practically enforce its teachings by preventing its supposed students from falling into the quagmire of life.

    From whatever angle it is observed, however, history remains the undisputable teacher of all teachers which can be described in any way by anybody depending on the side of the divide to which each observer belongs. Thus, for as long as human beings remain in existence, passing through the coast of history will never cease to serve a meal of lesson.

    Recently, Libya, a onetime Italian colony in North Africa, stood out as a bastion from where the smoke of history was oozing out into the firmament of Africa and the Middle East for misguided rulers to inhale some scents of experience from. Of all the Arab countries that recently engulfed in political turmoil, perhaps the least expected to join the fray was Libya. And that assertion would have become an axiom if the 69 year old despot of that country had heeded the warning of history coming from the neighbouring Tunisia.

    There had been a general but erroneous belief that the trend of the ongoing revolts in the Arab world started with the fall of the imperial monarch, of Iran (Muhammad Pahlavi ) who styled himself the Shah n Shah (King of Kings). Iran is though situated in the Middle East, she is not an Arab country.

    The truth is that the Arab revolts actually began two years earlier (1977) in Egypt. It was called ‘Egyptian Bread Riots’.

    The two day riots of January 18 and 19, 1977 were a spontaneous reaction by hundreds of thousands of peasants to the removal of state subsidies on foodstuffs as recommended by the World Bank and the International Monetary Funds (IMF). The then Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, had, in response to IMF’s recommendation, increased the price of a loaf of bread by just one Piaster (an equivalence of one Nigerian Kobo). The implementation of that policy was the height of insensitivity, on the part the government, to the murderous plight of the masses at that time.

    By the time the dust settled, about 79 people had been shrouded for burial while over 800 others became patients in the casualty sections of many Hospitals in the country. The riots ended only with the reversal of that obnoxious policy and the restoration of the removed subsidies. That singular incident, added to the general discontent in the land hitherto caused by the evident class dichotomy, eventually led to the assassination of President Sadat three years later.

    From thence, Egyptians became conscious that the only language understandable to their government was violent revolt. Thus, in 1986, barely six years after the death of Sadat and the assumption of office as President by Hosni Mubarak, another major riot broke out in Egypt.

    On February 25, 1986, about 17000 Egyptian conscripts of the Central Security Forces (CSF) otherwise known as Egyptian Para-military Force staged a violent protest in and around Cairo city destroying two major Hotels and targeting the property of the upper and the middle classes. The riots caused by a peddled rumour that the government had decided to increase the then two year compulsory national service to three years without any commensurate remuneration lasted three days with official casualty figure put at 107. Over 2000 people were said to be terribly wounded.

    Unlike Sadat who quickly reversed his foodstuff subsidy policy, the only lesson which Hosni Mubarak seemed to have learnt from Sadat’s experience was the use of force. Ever since, Egypt had become a delicate gun powder waiting to explode at anytime as the nation’s youths had become so restively radicalized that taming with mere appeal was impossible. If there was any surprise about the recent Egyptian revolution that ended Mubarak’s 32 year regime with ignominy therefore, it was its delay till that time.       

    With the Iranian and the Egyptian experience, one would expect the other rulers in the Middle East region as well as Africa to learn a lesson. But as a Yoruba adage goes,” a dog destined to die in perdition will never respond to the whistle of the hunter”.

    In Tunisia, the protests leading to the flight of the tyrannical President Zain El-Abidine Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia were instigated by the gruesomely symbolic suicide of one Mohammed Bouazizi on December 17, 2013. The 25 year old College graduate had used his University degree as collateral to obtain a bank loan with which he ventured into trading in grotesque having realized the futility of looking for job in a country where about 14% of the populace was unemployed. But unexpectedly, his wares were confiscated by government officials for not obtaining official permit to sell farm products. In reaction, the young man concluded that his country didn’t need him after all and he decided to commit suicide by setting himself ablaze.

    Efforts to rescue him proved abortive as he died in a Hospital a couple of days thereafter.

    Piqued by that sad incident, the public reaction to his death was unimaginably spontaneous. Violence erupted across cities and towns as already aggrieved youths trooped to the streets burning whatever could be burnt and maiming whoever could be captured among government agents. The demand was no longer for reforms but for the removal of the President. By that time, the President though tried to address some of the issues against which complaints were made his action had become too late to yield any sensible result. Thus, when the coming signals were no longer positive he knew that the die had been cast and decided to flee the country thereby ending his 24 year old regime with historic ignominy.

    The case of Bouazizi who set himself ablaze and was posthumously pronounced a martyr as well as the father of the revolution was just an atom in the complex story of longstanding discontent in Tunisia. There were many other cases of the like but three main factors can be said to be the immediate precipitates of the Tunisian revolution. These were corruption, unemployment and insensitive affluence publicly displayed by government officials.

    While all these were going on in Tunisia and Egypt, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s impression was that the Presidents in both countries were mere jellies who could hardly manage their matrimonial homes. It was far from his imagination that the surging political tsunami sweeping across the Arab world like a hurricane could come near Libya let alone consume him.

    After 42 years of unbridled despotism, Gaddafi inadvertently reopened the film of Pharaoh’s history for the modern world to behold. Like Saddam before him, he lost all that he lived for including most of his children.

    The story of the Tunisian, the Egyptian and the Libyan revolutions, cannot be relayed in isolation. There are many more of the like as Syria and Yemen soon followed suit.

    If the hanged President Saddam Hussein of Iraq had not met his doom in the hands of his imperial friends turned enemies, he would have probably met a similar waterloo in the hands of his own people just like Gaddafi.

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    In virtually all the Arab countries, education is free from the primary school to the University. There is no problem of electricity, water, roads, rail system, food and housing. The only two areas in which the people of those countries were encountering problem with their governments were unemployment and freedom to participate in governance.  And for those two reasons, an un-foretold tsunami swept the length and breadth of what is called the Arab world.

    The Moroccan Monarch, his Jordanian colleague as well as the Algerian President were only lucky to have heeded the warning tune of that tsunami in time thereby escaping its consequences. The lesson they learned from the experiences of their colleagues in the neighbouring countries served them in good stead and they survived the unprecedented calamity. Otherwise, they would have ended up like Libya’s Gaddafi or Egypt’s Mubarak.

    Here in Nigeria, which of the above named infrastructures was made available despite the enormous material resources with which the country is naturally endowed? Rather than utilize those resources to boost the general standard of living and thereby uplift the status of the country, the priority of our government in the past 16 years was to squeeze the citizenry dry through a monstrous corruption and callous removal of a non-existing subsidy on oil. And that was in addition to the spiral increase of tariff on electricity consumption in anticipation of an imaginary stability of power. At a stage, every Nigerian driving a vehicle was forced to buy new number plates that cost about N30000 in replacement of the old one on their cars. In any civilized country, such obnoxious policy would have constituted an act of barbarity. But in Nigeria, that was the government’s way of generating funds for its officials to embezzle with impunity.

    While the Tunisians became restive over 14% unemployment figure, Nigerians were proudly grappling with about 72% of unemployment rate even as the government kept drumming loudly the tune of becoming one of the 20 most economically viable countries in the world. What a grand self-deception? 

    The warning here is for the doubting ‘Thomases’ who are still in the dream land in Nigeria and the rest of Africa to open their eyes and clearly see the vanity of human wishes in the cited Arab nations. Such tendentious talks like: “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE IN NIGERIA”, as the outgoing Senate President was severally quoted as saying, only belongs to primordial men who still live in the primordial time. To avoid becoming like flies dying in the bottle of wine, men of reason had better learn from the experiences of others before some others begin to learn from their own experiences.

    Justice is fundamentally sacrosanct in the reckoning of Allah. Where you have people who are educated enough to know their right; where you have people who are conscious of their common affinity and are ready to assert it; where you have people who believe in God and His capability to impose justice where none exists, let no one think that such people can be exploited indefinitely. Those in power in Nigeria who think they can live perpetually on injustice should remember that the likes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak never thought that nemesis could afflict them one day. Their episodes are now part of history. Prophet Noah (Nuhu) never prayed for the destruction of his nation and people even after 950 years of preaching to the deaf. His prayer only came when, one day, a small child carried on the shoulder of his father asked for a stone to be thrown at him (Nuhu) just as most people in the nation had done for the past 950 years. The Prophet’s conclusion was that even the great grand children of that generation would continue atrocities in the land and remain hostile to God just like their parents. Thus, when he prayed for their destruction, it was divinely accepted with ‘automatic alacrity’.  The rest is history. Let those who refuse to learn from ancient history try to learn from the recent one. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. A word is enough for the wise.

  • Solution to bad leadership

    Solution to bad leadership

    As mentioned here sometimes ago, all the rightly guided Caliphs strove to keep the exemplary leadership of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) aloft after his demise. This was done by Abubakr, Umar bn Khattab, Uthman bn Abi Sufyan and Ali bn Abi Talib. Ali in particular did not limit it to himself. He extended it to those who served under him. For instance while appointing Malik bn Ashtar as the Governor of Egypt, he gave him the following instructions in writing and advised him to follow it to the letter in his governance in that country. Below is the instruction:

    “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Be it known to you Oh Malik, that I am sending you to a country which had experienced in the past both just and unjust rule. Men will scrutinize your actions with a searching eye even as you used to scrutinize the actions of those before you. They will speak of you even as you did speak of your predecessors. The fact is that the public speak well only of those who do well. It is they who furnish the proof of your actions. Hence, the richest treasure that you may covet should be the treasure of good deeds. Keep your desire under control and deny yourself that which you have been warned against. By such abstinence alone, you will be able to distinguish between good and bad…”

    “Develop in your heart the feeling of love for your people and let it be the source of kindness and blessing to them. Do not behave to them like a barbarian, and do not appropriate to yourself that which belongs to them…. Do not set yourself against God, for neither do you possess the strength to shield yourself against His displeasure, nor can you place yourself outside the pale of His mercy and forgiveness. Do not feel sorry over any act of forgiveness, nor rejoice over any punishment that you may deem fit to mete out to anyone…” 

    “Never take counsel of a miser, for, he will vitiate your magnanimity and frighten you with poverty around. Do not seek advice from a coward, he will weaken your resolution and dampen your morale. Do not take counsel of a greedy person, he will instill greed in you and turn you into a tyrant. Miserliness, cowardice and greed deprive man of piety and push him into unbridled desperation. The worst counselor is one who had served a tyrant before and shared his crimes. Do not appoint such a person as your adviser. He will lure you into crimes and turn you to a criminal…”

    “Great care should be exercised in revenue administration to ensure, not only the prosperity of the tax payers but also that of the masses. You should regard the proper upkeep of the land in cultivation (i.e. maintenance of national assets) as of greater importance than the collection of revenues. He who demands revenue without helping land cultivators (i.e retired workers) ruins the state…”

    “Fear God when you are dealing with the problems of the poor people.  Always consider the fact that they have no one to protect their interest. They are forlorn, indigent and helpless who have become victims of the vicissitude of time. Assign for their uplift a portion of the state exchequer (Baytul Mal) wherever they may be. Let no preoccupation slip them from your mind for no excuse whatsoever, for neglecting their rights will be acceptable to Allah…”

    “Finally, dear Malik, shun self-adoration. Do not indulge in self-assessment and self-praise nor encourage others to extol you because all these tend to undo good deeds of pious men and Satan relies most on praise and flattery. Never overrate yourself nor indulge in tall talks about the favours you have done for people. Breach of promise annoys God and man alike. Do not act in haste nor defer the execution of a good decision. Do not insist on wrong doing or slackness in rectifying the wrong already done…”

    “When people as a whole have agreed upon a thing, do not impose your own view on them just because you are in power. Remember that power is transient and you will eventually exit or be forced to exit from it one day…”.

    When the above code of leadership is compared with what obtains in Nigeria today one will surely be amazed by the wide gap between the world of a realizable dream and that of a nightmare. In Nigeria, there is no such document that can be called a code of leadership. Even the constitution which gives Nigeria its name as a country is only available to a clique of power usurpers called leaders.

    As stated in this column weeks back, leadership in any sane society is not a function of policy makers alone. Leadership does not start from the top. It is rather a matter of good home management and excellent upbringing of children. Leadership is like a pyramid which has a base and an apex. Whoever wants to assess leadership in a society must start from the base rather than the apex. It will be unreasonable to sight a major fault at the roofing of a house when the foundation of the same house is evidently faulty. Generally, children learn from their parents’ actions more than from the latter’s words.

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    In the religious sphere, most of the so-called leaders of Mosques and Churches in Nigeria have failed to rid the society of indiscipline and rottenness prompted by unbridled corruption because they have turned religion into a meal ticket. And, by so doing, they have become the real motivators of those vices. If those so-called religious leaders had genuinely and sincerely lived up to the requirements of the faiths they profess, Nigeria would have surely been a better place to live in today. But by their actions and dispositions esoterically and exoterically, the religious leaders in Nigeria have proved to be examples of the worst problem of constituted leadership. Since over 90 per cent of Nigerian population is a combination of Muslims and Christians and since the so-called leaders of Nigeria are from both religions, it is clear that the adherents of Islam and Christianity are together, the real cog in Nigeria’s wheel of progress.

    Today, over 60 years after independence, more than 99 per cent of Nigerians who are 60 years and below have never seen the book of law by which they are purportedly governed in the name of constitution. Yet, they are forced to obey such a secret law and even reprimanded for breaking it. Perhaps Nigeria is currently the only country in the world where citizens are ruled and punished by a constitution which they have never seen. That same constitution, according to the rulers is being amended and very soon, we shall be told that a new constitution is in place.

    In civilized countries, the constitution by which people are governed is a public document made available to all citizens including market women and primary school pupils in the languages they understand. In Nigeria, it is a secret document available only to the legislators, the executives and those in the judiciary. The few other people who are probably in possession of our constitution are professionals like Lawyers, Justices and a few Journalists who can hardly do without it in the discharge of their duties. Any other citizen who demands for the availability of the constitution is automatically regarded as a renegade and treated as such. In Nigeria, to be ‘Good People of a Great Nation’ you must have neither comment nor opinion about the constitution of your country. Just obey and follow the leaders’ order. That is one way of ‘REBRANDING’ Nigeria.

    Hiding under the constitution which is exclusive to them alone, Nigeria’s self-styled leaders have been able to ruin anything ruin-able in the country to pave their own way to perpetual governance. They have been able to turn what was supposed to be oil boom into oil doom for many generations of Nigerians. They have been able to destroy all other sources of the economy including agriculture and manufacturing industries to gain maximum personal benefit from oil. They have been able to demolish the pillar of the ‘MIDDLE CLASS’ which is the backbone of any modern economy and eliminate the use of coins thereby widening the gap between the rich and the poor. They have been able to deny Nigeria the much needed refineries preferring to export crude oil and import refined products to enable them reap from the fruit of such a poisonous deal. They have been able to render the national electricity moribund in order to throw Nigerian doors wide open for importation of power generators thereby making Nigeria the world’s greatest depleting country of the Ozone layer through the use generators. By the last count in March 2010, Nigeria was said to have an estimated 57 million generators even as the country remained dark and millions of able bodied youth remained unemployed.

    Not only that, these self-styled leaders have also been able to ground the country’s Airways in order to float their own individual private airlines just as they have had to paralyze the national Rail line for their private haulage businesses to flourish. And now, Nigerians can’t ply the roads anymore because the leaders’ haulage trucks have destroyed them. Then, to complete the cycle, they had to sell Nigeria Telecommunication (NITEL) to themselves in the name of privatization through what they called ‘BLIND TRUST’. And in their wild evil manipulation of the unseen constitution, they have been able to siphon billions of Dollars (public funds) into their own private bank accounts in various countries abroad while Nigerians wallow in hunger and squalor. One of the reasons why Nigerians are paying six times the amount of GSM services in other West African countries is attributable to the unequalled corruption of our rulers.    

    Thus, today, Nigeria is the only country in the world where constitution is secret and the use of coins is a taboo, courtesy of the political ‘Lotus Eaters’. And in all these, the brunt bearers are the ordinary citizens whose God-endowed resources are used to enslave them. If anything remains for this country now, it is her carcass. Yet, like vultures feeding on the carcass of a dead prey, the vampires of this land are shamelessly relentless in their struggle to continue the governance of Nigeria by fraudulent means. The summary of all these is that Nigeria has graduated from being one of the most corrupt countries in the world into adopting corruption as her alternative name. What else can one say about this so-called ‘GIANT OF AFRICA?

    In Nigeria’s first republic, the system of governance was parliamentary in which every legislative contestant was voted as a legislator and the Prime Minister emerged through an in-house electoral college while the Ministers were appointed by the Prime Minister from among the elected Parliamentarians. At that time, Nigeria, by constitution, had only a ceremonial President appointed through a political arrangement sanctioned by the constitution. Federalism, at that time, held sway with strict adherence to the principle of exclusive and concurrent lists even as Ministers and legislators paid for their accommodations and means of transportation. Genuine political leadership, democracy and true federalism were however beheaded with the termination of the first republic in January 1966 by the military vagabonds through a coup d’état. Ever since, Nigeria has remained a country without leaders. Those who have been calling themselves leaders are nothing more than slave drivers who mounted the political ladder to that height by deceptively pretending to serve the people. And their slaves are the hapless and hopeless masses of Nigeria who ignorantly or innocently gave the mandate.

    Things started to go bad for Nigerians when greed gripped the better parts of those called leaders and they veered into the realm of ‘WANT’ from that of ‘NEED’ which had characterized the first republic. Thence, they were lured into the enclave of avarice and the result is the massive corruption in which the country is now engrossed. Even a carnivorous animal like the lion will only prey on a lesser animal for its immediate feeding need and thereafter become indifferent to other lesser animals that cross its way until it becomes hungry again. Nigerian politicians on the other hand will rather amass all available things including those they never need and keep such things for their children and grand children in case of future scarcity. 

    In 2010, the federal government alone is spending about N10 billion to celebrate the 50-year-old rot called Nigeria independence despite the glaring death of hope in the land. To all these, what is the solution? The answer to this question is a return to conscience by everybody. Without conscience there can be no leadership.

    Leadership is neither about power nor about authority. People who really understand the weight of responsibility involved in leadership will not vie for it. It was after experiencing such weight that Umar bn Khattab indicated in his personal will that none of his children should be allowed to partake in the leadership of the then vast and rich Islamic state.       

    Leadership must be recognized as a transient privilege conferred on man by the Almighty Allah. Some people had that privilege yesterday but they are out of it today. What they did with it has become history. Those with the same privilege today who cling to it as if it can never slip out of their hands should remember that they will become history tomorrow which will serve either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as encouragement to perform better or both.

    “If we work marble it will perish; If we work upon brass, time will efface it; If we rear temples they will crumble into dust; But if we work upon immortal minds and instil in them just principles; We are then engraving that upon a tablets which no one can efface but will brighten to all eternity”. God save Nigeria!

  • A voice from Harvard

    A voice from Harvard

    On Monday, October 3, 2011, a voice echoed from the United States of America and reverberated throughout the intellectual spheres of many other countries across the continents. The voice was that of His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III  the Sultan of Sokoto   and President General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA). He was the guest lecturer at Harvard University where he delivered ‘The Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Annual Lecture at Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, on the invitation of the authorities of that University.

    The theme of the lecture was: “ISLAM AND PEACE BUILDING IN WEST AFRICA”.

    In the preamble to the lecture, His Eminence briefly took a look into the various indices of contemporary developments and analyzed the merits and demerits of such developments vis-a-vis human cultural values. He started as follows: …..“Today, more than ever before, we stand on the threshold of great opportunities.  Developments in various fields of human endeavor have made it easy to accumulate vast knowledge on peoples and cultures and to communicate this knowledge in ways never imagined before, with the real promise of bringing better understanding between us all.  Scientific breakthroughs have also made it possible to achieve human development at an unprecedented scale and to enhance the welfare and wellbeing of each and every one of us…

    But these opportunities also come with great dangers – and these dangers have already begun to manifest themselves in ways that leave us with much to worry about.  Bigotry and hatred are being elevated to a new pedestal and spread with relish and impunity.  Protracted conflicts, threats of war and the rise of extremism and militancy, from all sides of the socio-religious divide, have become the reality of our daily lives in many parts of the world.  Regrettably, a significant portion of the world’s population still wallow in abject poverty and neglect, thereby fuelling the vicious cycles of conflict, violence and instability that we are now all too familiar with.

    As a military officer and diplomatic representative, I have seen the devastation of war, not only in West Africa, but in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the world.  I have witnessed the desperate cries of widows and orphans and the exasperation of bewildered families desperately struggling to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives.  As the Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs; as well as the Co-Chair of the Nigerian Inter-Religious Council [NIREC], I have also seen the pain and suffering which ethnic polarization and religious misunderstanding could bring to a nation and its people; how ego and bigotry could conspire to deprive people of their rationality and good judgment and how religious leaders could set aside the teachings of their scriptures to lend a helping hand to these sectarian crises.

    But during all these, I have also seen how people of goodwill could make a world of difference; how the right word at the appropriate time could heal an old wound; how a little help to those in distress could rekindle hope in our common humanity and how people of virtue, courage and determination could set aside their fears and misgivings to work together to re-establish and strengthen the bases of mutual co-existence within their diverse communities. It is in the context of these challenges and opportunities that I wish to talk to you on the issues of peace and religious harmony tonight.  Since many people have talked and written about Religion and Conflict in our part of the world, it is only appropriate for me to address you on Islam and Peace-Building in West Africa, and particularly in my home country, Nigeria, with the real hope that in our individual and collective efforts, we can contribute our little quota towards the realization of the Jodidi vision of promoting “tolerance, understanding and goodwill among nations and the peace of the world…”

    Alluding to Sokoto Caliphate founded by Shaykh Uthman Dan Fodio in the early 19th century as a cultural and intellectual yardstick for measuring value in a meaningful society, His Eminence said: “The emergence of the Sokoto Caliphate in the early years of the nineteenth century, led by the erudite scholar, Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio, brought a drastic transformation of the Islamic scene in West Africa.  The Sokoto Caliphate was a political as well as an intellectual revolution.  Politically, it initiated an extensive process of state formation which spanned across several states in Western and Central Africa. Intellectually, the Caliphate also succeeded in putting scholars at the helm of public affairs. As true intellectuals, they had to argue their way through almost every major decision they took and had the time and foresight to record their thoughts, ideas and the justification of their actions for posterity. The Sokoto Triumvirate, namely Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio, Shaykh Abdullahi Ibn Fodio and Shaykh Muhammad Bello, authored over 300 books and pamphlets.  Other Caliphate leaders were also prolific writers.  Nana Asma’u alone wrote over 70 poems and tracts.

    But despite these impressive achievements, probably one of the Caliphate’s most enduring legacies had been in the area of values.  Classifying value into five categories and justifying each by quoting relevant authorities, His Eminence ascertained as follows:

    The first category of values raised by the Sokoto Caliphate leaders was that associated with knowledge as the basis for effective leadership.  Ignorance has no business with leadership and ignorant people shall have no business in governance.  In the emphatic words of Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio:     

    “A man without learning is like a country without inhabitants.  The finest [qualities] in a leader in particular and in people in general, are the love of learning, the desire to listen to it and holding the bearer of knowledge in great respect. If a leader is devoid of learning, he follows his whims and leads his subjects astray, like a riding beast with no halter, wandering off the path and perhaps spoiling what it passes over….“  [Bayan Wujub al-Hijra]

    The second category of values which I wish to bring to your attention is the primacy of Justice as the basis of good governance.  Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio, the leader of the Sokoto Caliphate, had always believed that “seeing to the welfare of the people is more effective than the use of force.”  According to Shaykh Uthman, “the crown of the leader is his integrity, his strong-hold is his impartiality and his wealth is [the prosperity] of his people.”  Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio was equally emphatic on how injustice compromises the integrity of governance and ultimately destroys the state. He said:

    “One of the swiftest ways of destroying a state is to give preference to one particular group over another or to show favor to one group of people rather than another and draw near those who should be kept away and keep away those who should be drawn near….  Other practices destructive to sovereignty are arrogance and conceit which take away virtues.  There are six qualities which cannot be tolerated in a leader:  lying, envy, breach of promise, sharpness of temper, miserliness and cowardice.  Another is the seclusion of the leader from his people, because when the oppressor is sure that the oppressed person will not have access to the ruler, he becomes more oppressive… A state can endure with unbelief but it cannot endure with injustice.” [Bayan Wujub al-Hijra]

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    The third category of values is that dealing with the fight against corruption especially in the management of public affairs.  Shaykh Abdullahi Ibn Fodio puts the Caliphate’s position in clear and unambiguous terms:

    “A ruler is forbidden to touch property acquired unjustly, such as through bribes obtained for appointing a judge or any other officer.  The use of such property is unanimously regarded as illegal.  It corrupts the Religion and opens the door wide to abuses and oppression of the poor.  For the officials may feel that since money was obtained from them as a reward for appointing them to office, they in turn must recover it from the common people….” [Diya’al-Hukkam]

    It is also the view of the Sokoto Caliphate leaders that those charged with authority must strive to shun corrupt practices and lead by example.  In the words of Sultan Muhammad Bello:

    “Leaders are like a spring of water and officials are like water-wheels.  If the spring is pure, the filth of the water-wheels cannot harm it.  If, on the other hand, the spring is polluted, the purity of the water-wheel will have little effect [on the purity of the water].”  [Usul al-Siyasa]

    The fourth category of values relates to the dignity of labor and indeed the responsibility of government to provide the enabling environment that would allow people to make a decent living.  In the words of Sultan Muhammad Bello:

    “……Guard yourself against poverty by lawful earning, because every poor man is afflicted by three defects:  religious weakness, feeble mindedness and loss of honor.  Worse than this is the contempt in which he is held by people. There are two assets which, as long as you safeguard them, you will remain alright:  Your earnings for your livelihood and your religion for your hereafter. The recommendable earning is better than supererogatory worship, the benefit of which is confined to the worshipper alone, whereas the benefit of the recommended earnings extends to others.” [Ahkam al-Makasib]

    The fifth and final category of values… is the uplifting of the status of women, especially through Education.  The Sokoto Caliphate leaders, as erudite scholars, lived by the percepts they preached and ensured that their wives and daughters and all others associated with them were educated to the highest standards the society could offer.  Many of these women, including Nana Asma’u, became leaders in their own right and played an active role in the political arena.  Equally and importantly, Shaykh Uthman Ibn Fodio’s pronouncements, made in the very early part of the nineteenth century, could not be more categorical:

    “One of the great calamities which have afflicted Hausaland is the practice of many of its scholars in abandoning their wives, daughters and servants in a state of ignorance.  They are left like animals without any effort to teach them.  This is a grave mistake and a prohibited innovation.  They treat them like utensils which they put to use, but when broken, get thrown into the dustbin.  What a strange behavior!  How could they leave their wives, daughters and servants in the darkness of ignorance and astray, while educating their students morning and evening.  This is just for their selfish interest and for show and ostentation….”

    The Sultan who had delivered similar lectures in Cambridge and Oxford before did not stop there. He went further to trace and analyze the challenges of insecurity as well as causes of violence and terrorism in Nigeria and suggested some solutions to those societal vices. These will be brought up in this column later in sha’a Llah.

  • Encounter with Richard Akinjide on Islam

    Encounter with Richard Akinjide on Islam

    Monologue

    It should not be strange to readers of ‘The Message’ that this column is coming up, today, with such a memorable title as presented here. A newspaper columnist, who is also a veteran Journalist, is like a human octopus that deals with issues and occurrences from n, with the readers of this column, is, essentially, one of the fundamental indices of the profession called journalism. It is also a major ingredient of the beauty of that profession.

    Chief Richard Osuolale Abimbola Akinjide, who died a decade and half years ago, was a Nigerian frontline lawyer and a politician of prominence. He was also one of the most ardent readers of ‘The Message’ column when alive.

    The encounter

    On a particular Saturday in 2010, the iconic political juggernaut and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) called me by telephone and requested me to please see him at his Idi Isin residence, near NIHORT in Ibadan. On entering his living room, a ‘hill’ of newspaper cuttings sitting on one of the stools by his side, caught my attention. The sight of that ‘hill’ was a confirmation of the fact that the man was truly an ardent newspaper reader. After exchange of pleasantries with me and offer of drink, Chief Akinjide asked me to formally introduce myself to him, which I promptly did. He then decided to play the role of a journalist by interrogating me in a cross-examination manner with which lawyers are typically renowned in a law court. And, when he started quoting copiously from the various articles in my  column, and picking out copies of those articles from the ‘hill’ of newspaper cuttings by his side, It became clear to me that the ‘hill’ was deliberately placed on that stool in readiness for my coming.

    Impression

    By Chief Akinjide’s disposition in the course of our conversation, I noted a double edged impression which he created. One of those impressions was for me while the other was for him. On my side, I noticed a very sharp, juvenile brain with a uniquely active memory in him despite his octogenarian age.

    This man, who had become a Federal Minister when I was in the elementary school, so much dazed me with his analysis of my writings that I felt he would have been one of the best newspaper columnists in Nigerian history if he had chosen journalism as a profession. He vividly reminded me of the quality of Western education which his generation acquired during the colonial rule in Nigeria. In fact, Chief Richard Akinjide was Allah’s special gift to Nigeria even if Nigeria did not appreciate that gift as much as expected. One of the pungent questions he threw to me, which warranted the writing of this article, was about my educational background. He said: “which secondary school did you attend?” And, in answering that question, I simply told him that it was MARKAZ. He asked me to repeat the answer and I proudly told him once again that it was MARKAZ. And, from his inquisitively agitated visage, I could see that he never heard that name before. There and then, he asked me to tell him the language by which that name was coined, its meaning as well as the location of the school.

    It was during my explanation that he discovered that I could speak, write and comprehend Arabic language very well.

    Akinjide’s surprise

    I told him that MARKAZ was the name of an Arabic school (madrasah) established by the late Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory, in Agege, Lagos State. And when I also told him that I was not privileged to attend a conventional secondary school because my father could not afford it, he was highly surprised. His next question was: “then, how did you come about the high standard English language with which you are writing your column?”. My explanation on how I learnt English language privately, after I left the Arabic school, sounded so much unbelievable to him that he confessed that he had thought that I attended either Oxford or Cambridge University in UK, for my degree course, perhaps after completing my secondary school education at King’s College, or St. Gregory’s College in Lagos. However, in response to that guess, I told him that I attended King’s University, Jeddah, for my degree and I read English. But he was still surprised that I obtained my first degree in English Language and Literature in the Arab World. He did not know that virtually all my lecturers at King’s University were Britons and Americans. There and then, he tactically left that angle and asked me to tell him something about Arabic language and its usefulness. But to my amazement, Chief Akinjide’s surprise became heightened when I told him that all science subjects that brought about technology and the modern civilization originated from Arabic language. For instance, I told him that such subjects like Chemistry (Kaymiyau), Physics (Fisiyau), Algebra (Aljibrau), mathematics (Ar-Riyadiyat) and several others in sciences were originally Arabic. I also told him that the very first University ever established in human history was University of Cordoba which was established by the Muslim Arabs of the second Umayyad dynasty in Spain, in the 9th century. I did not stop there. I added that it was the Muslim Arabs that invented figure zero (0) which paved way for digital system in mathematics made technology possible. That conversation lasted about three hours but from his body language, Chief Akinjide needed more information about Islam’s contribution to human civilization. He then told me that he would continue to invite me for further discussions on that subject whenever the need arose for it.

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    Another meeting

    About four weeks after that first encounter, Chief Akinjide called me again, by telephone, to his residence. I then thought of getting a witness to that intellectual conversation because of the future. I asked my brother, Dr. Wole Abbas (now a Professor and a former Head of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Ibadan, to accompany me to Chief Akinjide’s residence. I narrated to him what had transpired between us in our previous meeting. And, being an intellectual rendezvous, my brother was ready to be a witness.

    On reaching the place, the conversation began again. And for another period of over three hours, the conversation continued with the active participation of Professor Wole Abbas. At the end of that second conversation, the man asked a puzzling question thus: “where were people like you when we were rigmarolling in search of religious right path? Or don’t you know that I was born a Muslim and I was given the name Rasheed at birth? It was because I did not understand the meanings of the Arabic recitations to which I was subjected that I later decided to become a Christian”. “And, now, is it possible to combine? And, is it not too late to change? That last question clearly showed the confused situation of Chief Akinjide’s mind on religious matter. But the opportunity of another meeting with him, thereafter, did not come. From that conversation, I discovered that, unlike molst Nigerian politicians, Chief Akinjide was a serious-minded realist whose lifestyle was a template of emulation by today’s Nigerian politicians.

    Reminiscence

    The above related episode came to throw a challenge to Nigerian Muslim clerics over two conspicuous issues that jointly put a question mark on the practice of Islam in Nigeria today.  One is about the Qur’anic schools in Nigeria. The other is the Mosque affair. The two are closely interrelated.

    Informed Muslims will recall that Islam first reached some parts of what is now called Nigeria in the 11th century CE. That was over 1000 years ago when no one could have dreamt of a country to be called Nigeria. Even the colonialists who caused the emergence of Nigeria as a country were, at that time, still wallowing in total ignorance as they foraged wildly and aimlessly in the darkness of life. It took about 500 years after the arrival of Islam before Christianity came to Nigeria in the 16th century. Today, if the two religions are compared in terms of education and material progress in this country, one will be found obviously ahead of the other by far. As a matter of fact, it will seem as if Christianity preceded Islam in Nigeria by 500 years. There is a fundamental question here not yet asked let alone answered. Where did things begin to go wrong for the Muslims?

    It is only logical that a question like this is asked at this stage before any answer can be provided. From a Yoruba adage we learn that “when a kid suddenly slips and falls down he looks forward to someone who can lift him up. But when an adult slips and falls down, he looks backwards to see the cause of his fall”. After over 1000 years in Nigeria, Islam is eminently qualified to be called an adult. Thus we can jointly look back to see where things started going wrong for Islam to remain a crawling adult?

    If the past generations of Nigerian Muslims did not ask the above question, it wasn’t because they lacked intellect or foresight that could ginger them into asking such a question. Even if they asked a similar question, their political and economic hindrances would have posed as lack of wherewithal to answer it effectively. They could therefore be pardoned. The circumstances in which they embraced Islam and practiced it were quite different from those of today. That they even stood firmly by Islam in those days at all, despite the implacable persecutions they faced, was an impeccable testimony to their steadfastness in faith.

    The Difference

    Unlike Christianity which was escorted down to Nigeria by its European propagators and was strengthened by the colonialists after assuming power, Islam only migrated to Nigeria unaccompanied. That it emerged as a force to be reckoned with was only due to the grace of Allah. Nothing beyond education encouraged certain great scholars like Usman Dan Fodio and his brother, Abdullah Dan Fodio and Sultan Bello to rise up and embark on vigorous propagation of Islam which enabled that divine religion to retain its vitality till today. It should be remembered that both Usman Dan Fodio and his son (Muhammad Bello) made such complex linguistic, theological, scientific and legal studies that the one wrote 93 books while the other wrote 97 books.

    Clapperton’s Encounter with Sultan Bello

    It is on record that Hugh Clapperton, a British colonial agent, once had an interesting intellectual encounter with Sultan Muhammad Bello in 1824. After the historic intellectual encounter that took both of them through a compex web of knowledge display, Clapperton had to admit thus: “He (Muhammad Bello) continued to ask me several other theological questions, until I was obliged to confess myself not sufficiently versed in religious subtleties to resolve those knotty points”.

    And when Clapperton returned to Sokoto two years later (1826) and presented Sultan Bello with a complete copy of Arabic Euclid he (Clapperton) was shocked to learn that his host already possessed one. (Euclid is an ancient geometry book of 13 volumes named after its Greek originator).

    Literacy in Northern Nigeria

    When the Europeans first came to the territory now called Nigeria in the 16th century, the north was the only part that was literate. And, that was because Islam had reached that part of the country since the 11th century, with its Arabic literacy. The English colonialists confirmed this on their arrival in Nigeria for colonization in the 19th century. And that was why they were much more cautious in their dealings with the northerners than they were with the southerners.

    That the colonialists did not retain Arabic literacy in the north was due to the fact that they could not communicate in that sophisticated language. If they (the Europeans) had not ignored Arabic literacy, the north would not have been perceived as backward literarily today by the southerners. At least by 1919 when the South was just beginning to embrace literacy, in the Western way, the North already had about 25000 schools where students were taught various subjects through Arabic language. 

    Today, however, over 80% of Nigerian Christians are conveniently lettered either in English which is the official language of Christianity in this country or in their vernacular languages through the Roman alphabets.  That has enabled them to translate the Bible into about 21 Nigerian languages.

    But on the contrary, less than 5% of Nigerian Muslims can be said to be realistically familiar with Islam through literacy in Arabic. And, without adequate literacy in Arabic language, there can be no thorough understanding of Islam which is the total way of life for any serious Muslim.

    Today, despite the age of Islam in Nigeria and the population of the Muslims, the Qur’an has just been translated into about than five Nigerian languages. Even that was only possible because the two initiators of those translations (the late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi and Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory) were well educated in the language of the Qur’an. They were later emulated by some scholars from tribes other than  Hausa and Yoruba.

    Problems of Qura’anic Schools

    Many Nigerian Muslims who passed through the Qur’anic schools in Nigeria and care now claiming to have graduated (through celebration of Walimah) have ended up being serious embarrassments to Islam because of the shallow depth of knowledge they possess.

    The problem of Qur’anic schools in Nigeria is not just about faulty curriculum but also about anachronistic teaching methodology still being used.

    Arabic Language

    Language is the prima facie of any culture. A culture that is not entrenched in a language is only bidding its time of oblivion. Islam is a foremost culture with a foremost language. But with due apology, the attitude of some of Nigerian clerics who are teaching in Qur’anic schools has virtually changed the colour and the taste of Islam, as a culture, in Nigeria for the worse. Rather than being an attractive place of learning, most Qur’anic schools have been turned into scaring centres for our children. And, only a very few of those children are now willing to attend Qur’anic schools. The result is that no seriousness is attached to those schools in our society any longer.

    Qur’an is the encyclopedia of Islam. It is not meant for recitation alone. It is the final source of all researches in all fields of learning for those who know its value. Anybody who wants to claim authority in Islamic knowledge must, of necessity, be able to read, write and comprehend Arabic language very well.

    In Islam, Qur’an is the house in which the Muslims’ minds reside. The foundation of that house is Arabic language. Without understanding Arabic language, it is impossible to comprehend any literature written in Arabic, be it the Qur’an or Hadith. Only modernization of Arabic schools can change the situation of Al-majirai in Nigeria.

  • Ahmadu Bello’s Christmas Message

    Ahmadu Bello’s Christmas Message

    Monologue

    This is the month of December, the month of paradoxical trade fair in which lies, fabrications and falsehood are, invariably, the wares displayed for exhibition. This is the month in which ostentation displaces faith and deception replaces conscience. How and why did these become cases of concern especially in Nigeria? Please, read the related story of facts and fictions below.

    Preamble

    An axiomatic Yoruba adage came to mind, recently, when a so-called National Christian Elders’ Forum (NCEF) published a fabricated statement in the media and falsely credited it to the late Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello some years ago. The statement which was quoted verbatim from a false publication by some Biafra agitators of Igbo extraction, as a justification for their thoughtless secession bid. The adage goes thus:

    “Any slave who is desperate to forcefully usurp an estate bequeathed to an innocent orphan must fabricate a rootless history to justify his/her inordinate desperation to illegally usurp other people’s properties”. For people who can read between the lines, this adage needs no interpretation. It is self-explanatory.

    Record of History

    Here is a season in which recalling certain aspects of Nigerian history, if only to put the records straight, is a sine qua non.

    History is a living phenomenon that is common to all people around the world, in time and in space. No matter what interpretation or misinterpretation is given to it, in certain quarters, the fact remains that history is not anybody’s personal property and can, therefore, not be anybody’s enclave of monopoly.

    Memory lane

    Sir Ahmadu Bello, the first and only Premier of Northern Nigeria was not just one of the foremost political icons in Nigeria’s First Republic. He was also a patriarch of the ruling political party called Northern People’s Congress (NPC). This man of colossal status became the Premier of Northern Nigeria in 1954, the same year in which his political counterparts and arch-rivals, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, became Premiers of Eastern and Western regions respectively. The trio assumed office as Premiers, in 1954, through party-based elections. They were later joined by Chief Denis Osadebe as the fourth regional Premier in Nigeria. The latter became the Premier of Midwest region, in 1963, when that region was created. However, barely five years after Nigeria’s independence, Sir Ahmadu Bello was callously killed, as Premier, on Saturday, January 15, 1966, by some Nigerian military coup plotters whose real intent was to obliterate all traces of Islam in Nigeria. Virtually all those coup plotters were of Igbo extraction and no single one of them was a Muslim, an indication that the coup was religiously and tribally motivated.

    That devilish coup was led by one Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, an Igbo man from the present day geographical area of Nigeria, called Delta State.

    Those coup plotters had killed the Muslim leaders in government, including Premier Ahmadu Bello, Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola and several other political leaders from other tribal extractions, in that year’s sacred month of Ramadan, before they started looking for reasons to give as a justification for their heinous termination of those leaders’ lives. The three reasons that they (the coup plotters) gave after killing those leaders were corruption, tribalism and religious bigotry. It was a matter of calling a dog a bad name in order to hang it.

    Analysis of Their Reasons

    Among the four Premiers in Nigeria during the first republic, only Ahmadu Bello, was a Muslim and he could not, in any way, be evidently linked to corruption. Unlike the three other Premiers who lived opulently in expensive affluence, Ahmadu Bello was an ascetic personality who served his people diligently and patriotically without an iota of blemish. At the time of his gruesome murder, that Northern Premier had only a small residential bungalow in his home town of Rabah in Sokoto Province, which he built with a loan and nothing more has been traced to him as property till today. He had not even completed the payment of the loan he obtained for the building of that bungalow before he was murdered.

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    Who else among his peers can be said to have left such a flank behind?

    Sir Ahmadu Bello, the only Premier from the North, at that time, could also not be singularly accused of being tribally inclined because tribalism was the basis of all the existing political parties of the time. No Premier, in Nigeria, from 1954 to 1966 could be exonerated from tribalism directly or indirectly. They were all guilty of it.

    Genesis of tribal politics in Nigeria

    It can be recalled that certain tribal groups such as Ibiobio State Union (IBU), Ibo Federal Union (IFU) Egbe Omo Oduduwa (EOO) and ‘Jam’iyyar Al-Ummar Nigeriya ta Arewa’ translated as Northern Elements Progressive Association (NEPA) which later transformed into Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) were all tribal socio-cultural organizations that metamorphosed into political parties. All those parties preceded ‘Jam’iyyar Mutane Arewa’ meaning Northern People’s Congress (NPC), to which Ahmadu Bello belonged. Many other ethnic-based political parties later emerged to broaden tribalism in Nigerian politics. If anything, therefore, Ahmadu Bello was the least tribally inclined Premier of his time. If he was actually a tribalist and religious bigot as he has always been maliciously painted in Nigeria’s political history, by the Southern Nigerian media, he would not have appointed Sunday Awoniyi, a Yoruba Christian, from the present day Kogi State, as his Private Secretary. Which other Premier appointed his private secretary from another tribe or from a religion other than Christianity? And, why did his killers link him alone to tribalism and bigotry?

    His 1959 Christmas message

    Among the four Premiers in Nigeria’s first republic, only Ahmadu Bello was bold and sincere enough to allay the fear of the minority groups in his (Northern) region by making a public policy statement about his government’s stand concerning tribalism and religious bigotry. Here is an excerpt from what he said while sending a Christmas message to northern Christians at the time of Christmas in 1959:

    “…We are people of many different races, tribes and religions, who are knit together by common history, common interests and common ideals. Our diversity may be great but the things that unite us are stronger than the things that divide us. On an occasion like this, I always remind people about our firmly rooted policy on religious tolerance. Families of all creeds and colours can rely on these assurances. We have no intention of favouring one religion at the expense of another. Subject to overriding need to preserve law and order, it is our determination that everyone should have absolute liberty to practice his belief. It is befitting on this momentous day, on behalf of my ministers and myself, to send a special word of gratitude to all Christian missions”.

    “Let me conclude this with a personal message. I extend my greetings to all our people who are Christians on this great feast day. Let us forget the difference in our religion and remember the common brotherhood before God, by dedicating ourselves afresh to the great tasks which lie before us….”

    That was the Christmas message that Sir Ahmadu Bello delivered in a radio broadcast on Thursday, December 24, 1959. And, it remained intact in Nigerian historical archive until 2002, when a Yoruba agent of the Lucifer came up with a fabricated statement that is now being devilishly quoted and circulated spirally by mischievous elements in Nigeria, who have been crediting it to Sir Ahmadu Bello.

     The Fabricated version

    Decades after Sir Ahmadu Bello’s unjustifiable assassination, some evil elements in the media, in active conspiracy with certain political demagogues, who were passionately pregnant with morbid hatred for Islam, went to fabricate another ‘Christmas Message’ and credited it to the late Northern Premier as a justification for his murder. The concocted statement was purportedly culled from a non-existing newspaper called ‘The Parrot’. Below is the fabricated Christmas Message:

    “…The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather Othman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power.

     We use the minorities in the north as willing tools and the south as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future….”

    Now, should that senselessly fabricated statement said to have been made by Sir Ahmadu Bello on October 12, 1960, be quoted blindly by any sensible individual or group? How can a Christmas message by a Premier of Ahmadu Bello Status, be delivered in October, two months before Christmas? Haba! Is that not a confirmation that liars never think of the implications of their lies before they fabricate them?

    Truth and Falsehood

    “Truth has come and falsehood has vamoosed; surely, falsehood is meant to vamoose in the presence of the truth”.  Q. 17: 81 

    Comparison

    Now, looking at both (genuine and fabricated) statements quoted above very carefully, shouldn’t any sensible person be able to distinguish between truth and falsehood? The Premier’s original Christmas message, earlier quoted above, was made on the eve of Christmas on Thursday, December 24, 1959, through a radio broadcast and it was published by all newspapers in the country including the vociferous ‘West African Pilot’ owned by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the boisterous ‘Tribune’ owned by Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the clamorous ‘Daily Times’ jointly owned privately by certain prominent Nigerian individuals at that time. That original statement was equally published by many other smaller newspapers in Nigeria. All those newspapers are identifiable in Nigeria’s media history even though most of them are now defunct.

    On the other hand, the place and occasion of the fabricated statement credited to Sir Ahmadu Bello was not indicated and cannot be traced in any Nigeria’s newspaper history.

    Evidence of Fabrication

    The first time any genuinely existing newspaper ever made reference to that fabricated statement was on November 13, 2002 (42 years after it was purportedly made by Sir Ahmadu Bello. And, ‘The Tribune’ newspaper which published it on that date only claimed to have culled it from an online column published on October 24 2002 by a fraudulent Yoruba Journalist (name withheld) who entitled it ‘The Northern Agenda’. The referred online was actually named ‘Nairaland’, and it can still be found on the internet today, if googled.

    It can, therefore, be confirmed that the statement was actually fabricated, not in the 1960s but in October 2002, by the so-called online columnist who credited it to a newspaper that never existed. The objective was to give it an undeserved credibility. What a country! What a people! What a shame! This is a typical case of an obvious mischief by heartless mischief makers just to fetch ephemeral fame and illegal income.

    The belief of such fraudsters was that once such a fabricated article appears on the internet and is ignorantly quoted by some inconsequential mercenary writers, it would automatically become a document of fact. And, true to that assertion, a self-acclaimed Nigerian Christian Elders Forum’ (NCEF) has shamelessly quoted that fabricated falsehood, as usual, to justify its baseless allegation of ‘Islamization’ of Nigeria. That is Nigeria for you.

    The 1966 Coup Episode

    January 15, 1966 was a Saturday like no other one in the history of Nigeria. It was on that day that the bitter political seed which germinated and grew into the thorny political tree that is now feeding Nigerians with bitter political fruits, was planted. The evil planting of that seed marked the beginning of an agonizing voyage of destiny on which Nigerians embarked without a compass. Coming up in the sacred month of Ramadan, the day, (January 15, 1966) actually came to confirm the axiomatic thought of an Arab poet who once asserted in a couplet thus: “Nights are heavily pregnant; they give birth to wonders in the days….”

    The Major Casualties

    The real target of the heartless coup plotters in  military uniform, who struck on January 15, 1966 coup was Islam. Although they (the coupists) killed virtually all the major key players in the then Nigerian politics except those of Igbo extraction, most of the victims of that coup were Muslims and some non-Igbo Christians who were then in prisons. The Prime Minister, Alhaji Sir AbubakarTafawa Balewa and the Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh were killed in Lagos. The Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello, was killed with his wife and some other people in Kaduna, the then Headquarters of Northern Nigeria. The Premier of Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, was killed in Ibadan, the then Headquarters of the South Western Region, while some military top brass of non-Igbo extraction were killed in different military barracks across the country.

    Except for Lt. Col. Arthur Unegbe who was killed for being too close to one Brigadier-General Zakariya’ Maimalari, a top Muslim military officer from the north, and could not be trusted, no other Igbo man of note, civilian or military, was killed in that coup. As a matter of fact, if there was any feeling of the coup in Nigeria’s Eastern Region at all, it was that of victory and heroism. The top military officers who were killed in the senseless coup included: Brig. S. A. Ademulegun (South West); Brig. Zakari Maimalari (North East); Col. Kur Mohammed (North West); Lt. Col. J. Y. Pam (North Central); Col. S. A. Shodeinde (South West); Lt. Col. Largema (North Central); Lt. Col. A. G. Unegbe (South East); S/Lt. James Odu (Mid West) and a host of others.

    The False Allegations

    After the dust had settled, it became evident that virtually all the planners of that coup as well as its executors were soldiers of Igbo extraction and Christians. Thus, other Nigerians whose relatives were severely affected saw the coup not only as tribal but also as religious, the killing of some Christians like Chiefs Akintola and Okotie-Eboh notwithstanding. This was because the then Governor of Eastern Nigeria, Sir Francis Akanu Ibiam was as deeply involved in religious matters as Sir Ahmadu Bello. The one was a Vice-President of the World Council of Churches. The other was the Vice-President of the Muslim World League. If religion was therefore the reason for the coup, the two of them not one ought to have been killed for bigotry. But history entails a variety of interpretations especially in a society where conscience hardly plays any meaningful role.

    Beneficiaries

    It is historically notable that the chief beneficiary of the coup (Major-General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi) was also of Igbo extraction. Almost all the military appointments after the coup were for men of Igbo extraction. Among those appointees, only Hassan Katsina and Muhammadu Shuwa were Muslims. How else could a coup be tribal and religious? After all, as far back as 1953, a frontline Igbo politician (name withheld) had set such agenda for his tribe’s men when he reportedly said that “Ibos’ domination of Nigeria is a matter of time”.  That statement was allegedly made at a cocktail party in Lagos. If this remains the yardstick for driving democracy in Nigeria, for how long can such democracy last?

  • Obasanjo’s habitual Gaffe

    Obasanjo’s habitual Gaffe

    “Conscience is an open wound. Only the truth can heal it”. Usman Dan Fodio

    Preamble

    Nothing can be strange in the contemporary world. Whatever is happening in any part of the world today must have happened severally in the past. History is a testimony to this assertion.

    A Moment of Brouhaha

    It was another moment of mischievous brouhaha in Nigeria when the media waves throbbed with the news of a ridiculous mischief by a former Nigerian President, Chief Mathew AremuOlusegunOkikiolakanObasanjo. He was reported to have said that the current Nigerian federal government, led by President MuhammaduBuhari, was championing what he called ‘Fulanization’ of Africa and ‘Islamization’ of West Africa. Ordinarily, such an inconsequential inflammatory statementshould not have been of any concern to ‘The Message’ column. But as a watchful Islamic column, the word ‘Islamization’ which is a coinage of Nigerian Christian media could not have passed by it without critical notice. That sour tasted word shamelessly coated in monotony coming from a man who parades himself as a Statesman could only have surprised those who did not know Obasanjo closely. Here is a man who does not concern himself with anything that is not of personal interest to him. Each time he talks embarrassingly in public, his ignorant disciples only jump to the stage in his defence without knowing his hidden agenda.

    Whenever           Obasanjo is imprisoned by his own conscience, the tendency is for him to look for an escape route by all means. That is the situation in which this onetime Nigerian Army Generalfrom Ogun State, Chief Mathew Aremu Olusegun Okikiolakan Obasanjo,who once fortuitously became Nigeria’s military Head of State by sheer opportunistic providence, now finds himself. Twenty years after this man exited from office as a military Head of State, he was again propelled by the same providence from the status of a prisoner to that of an elected President. Although his two terms of eight years of rule as President added no meaningful value of reverence to Nigeria’s democracy and progress, he still keeps gallivanting around today in a vainglorious euphoria of a former President and Statesman despite his  vain octogenarian age. Because of this man’s political shenanigans, any mention of his name serves as a reminder of letter writing. He is eminently qualified as Africa’s Letter Writer-in-Chief. 

    However, what most observers of this restive but evidently jittery man seem not to notice is a conspicuous but mysterious finger   behind which he is struggling to hide in his desperation to dodge official accountability forhis period of ruling Nigeria particularly thealleged sum of $16 billion earmarked for national electricity during his regime.

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    The President then, Muhammadu Buhari, alluded to that loot when he lamented the reason for Nigeria’s non- functional electricity. That querulous lamentation has since become a spectra chasing Obasanjo’s ghost days and nights and preventing him from sleeping with both eyes closed. As a former President, he knows the implications of Buhari’s lamentation on that money and he has been running helter skelter to prevent or delay an official query on it. Thus, he would rather instigate a national war to prevent a public investigation than wait to be caught in the cobweb of a possible landmark corruption by an institution which he set up to fight that Nigeria’s most abominable epidemics. And having lost out in the political arena where his satanic ‘Third Force’ party has proved to be a woeful failure, the only remaining weapon with which to fight a preemptive waragainst the ruling government is religion. His probably believes that by instigating a religious strife he may get some troops to queue up behind him as mercenary sectarian archers. That was why he had to use a Church as avenue for making an inflammable religious statement of provocation in an attempt to ignite a furnace of religious war by alleging a baseless ‘Fulanization’ of Africa and ‘Islamization’ of West Africa as a Nigerian government agenda under Buhari regime.

    This self-crowned African foremost Statesman has not seen countries in the West African sub-region where Christians

    Before and After

    Before Obasanjo, there had been military rulers in Nigeria. We can still remember General Yakubu Gowon, General Ibrahim Babagida and General Abdul Salami Abubakar all of whom are still very much alive as statesmen. And after Obasanjo’s forceful exit from the Presidency, there has been an elected President who is still alive as an ex-officio. His name is Dr. GoodluckEbele Jonathan. None of these gentlemen has thrown dignity to the winds as Obasanjo has been doing even to the embarrassment of his family.

    The thought of ‘fulanization’ and ‘islamization’ by him as a blackmail strategy to escape the web of corruption is not only parochial it is also childishly naïve. Only disciples of the Lucifer can stupidly go to an open market with such a product with the aim of selling it for fee. Nigerians of today have grown beyond such a crawling level in reasoning.

    Mathew Kuka’s Warning

    One of Nigeria’s most vocal persons on religious matters in the country is Ref. Father Mathew Kuka. As a frontline Catholic Bishop and a strong member of Nigerian Interreligious Council (NIREC), this man who shares the same Christian name (Mathew) with Obasanjo had long foreseen the tendency in certain opportunistic Nigerian elements to use Boko Haram as a cover for their satanic atrocities and he had vehemently warned against it. 

  • The Massacre in Gaza

    The Massacre in Gaza

    “Whenever injustice becomes the law with which to govern a people, resistance must become a legitimate duty with which to quest for legitimate survival”.  Anonymous

    Preamble

    Today’s world seems to be a proverbial ark without any compass that can show its way to a particular destination. Yet, that proverbial ark keeps cruising recklessly on a storming sea without minding the repercussion of a possible capsizing.

    Unlike in the remote or even recent past, no part of the world can confidently claim safety today and go to bed with the closure of both eyes. Except for self-deception, any euphoria of  whatever can be called global peace in the contemporary world remains a property of the past.Thus, from all indications, the contemporary time is fast-tracking the pace of mankind towards the end of human existence.

    The Palestinian Crises

    While millions of Muslims, all over the world, while muslims are eagerly awaiting Ramadan into the world, the international media waves throbbed with unpleasant breaking news that immediately became an eyesore for some people and a sour taste in the mouth of others.

    The news was about an outbreak of a new orgy of violence in Gaza Strip which hurriedly reminded the world of a merciless siege on that same Strip in 2014.

    Analysis of the Crises

    As a onetime Foreign Editor and a student of International Law and Diplomacy, who studied in the Arab world and was quite familiar with the situation in the Middle East, yours sincerely had severally delivered public lectures on the conflicts in that regionwith detailed analysis of the causes and effects of those conflicts from various conceivable angles. Below is an excerpt from one of such lectures which I deliveredsome years ago in different parts of the country:

    “This is not the first time in history that partition would be adopted as solution to a contentious problem. In primordial time, King Solomon ruled between two mothers who were laying claim to a single child thus: “If you cannot give one child to each of the two women claiming to be the mother, then split the child into two and give one half to one and the second half to the other”.

    This analogy was re-enacted in 1948, almost three thousand years after that historic episode in an area disputably called Palestine and Israel at the same time. The only exception in the contemporary case is that the Wisdom of Solomon which brought solution to the historic controversy of the yore is conspicuously absent today.

    Partition of Palestine

    Like the false mother in King Solomon’s time who welcomed bisection of the controversial child, the Jews quickly accepted the partition of Palestine in 1948 because it gave them something that was not legitimately theirs.

    Partition of countries against the wish of the people living in there was not only a social aberration but also a clear evidence of injustice and man’s inhumanity to man.

    Wherever adopted as a solution, partition only brings suffering, destruction and tragedy to millions of human beings as in the case of Vietnam, Germany, Korea and now Palestine. Normalcy only returned to Vietnam after the reunification of that country following ten years of a fierce war. Although the conditions of the partition of Germany after the World War II in the 1940s appeared normal, neither that country nor those who partitioned it felt relaxed until Germany became a single country again in the early 1990s. The situation of (North and South) Korea today can be regarded as temporary because reunification of that country is just a matter of time.

    The imperial powers which imposed partition on the three countries mentioned above against the wish of their inhabitants were the same that inflicted the tragedy of partition on Palestine without any consideration for the agonizing plight of her long time inhabitants.

    Read Also: The Fly Nigeria Bill good but…

    Genesis of the Crises

    The conflict between the Palestinians and the Jews, which now dominates the Middle East crises, did not start by accident. It was well designed and orchestrated from the very beginning. In 1879 when the Zionist movement was officially launched, an Austrian Jewish lawyer and journalist, Theodor Herzl, who, incidentally, was the founder of that movement published an article in a European popular magazine. In the article he declared: “Let sovereignty be granted us (Zionists) over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage by ourselves”.

    Influence of World War I

    The outbreak of the World War I came to fertilize the soil for the germination of that tall dream. The year 1916 was disastrous for the allied forces. Casualties on the Western fronts were heavy. Anxiety rose very high. And the only seeming choice left for Britain to escape defeat in the hands of the Germans was to draw America into the war on her side. It was at that gloomy period that an Oxford educated Armenian, James Malcolm, walked in.  He was a friend of the then British Secretary of State, Sir Mark Sykes. The latter told Malcolm that the British Cabinet was looking anxiously for American intervention in the war.

    Responding, Malcolm who was well connected to the topmost echelon of the American government told Sykes that Britain was going about it the wrong way. He said: “You can win the sympathy of certain politically minded Jews everywhere and especially in the United States in one way only, and that is by offering to secure Palestine for them”.

    That was the beginning of a long journey that was to culminate in what has now become the ‘Arab/Israeli conflict’. Of course through Malcolm’s connection, the US entered the war on the side of the allied forces in 1917 and that resulted in a fate accompli for Germany.

    To fulfill her own side of the agreement, therefore, Britain made a declaration on November 2, 1917 through her Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, giving a substantial part of Palestine to Israel. That declaration has since popularized the name of that Foreign Minister as it has since been known as Balfour Declaration.

    Ever since the declaration, the Arabs have never been able to sleep with their two eyes closed. It has always been a matter of war today, ceasefire tomorrow. This is not mainly due to the condemnable usurpation of their land by the Zionists but more because of their own diabolical disunity that has been telling incessantly on Islam as a religion.

    The Fault of the Arabs

    Viewing the Middle East crises from religious angle, the general belief in many Muslim quarters is that those crises are a religious affair. And for decades, the Arabs have capitalized on that belief to whip up Islamic sentiments among non-Arab Muslims for the purpose of winning their sympathy. But looking at the matter critically, one will discover that such a belief is not only misgiven but wildly misplaced. The reason is this: long before the Israeli factor came into those crises, the Arabs had been at loggerheads among themselves for centuries in that sub-region. History is there to testify to this fact. But for the internal wrangling among them, the entire Europe would have been fully Islamized today. At least the Umayyad Dynasty which was fully run by the Arabs lasted for about 500 years in Spain where its headquarters was relocated after eviction from Damascus. Despite that great vintage, they missed the opportunity of planting Islam in the heart of Europe.

    Now, the Middle East crises cannot be pinned down to the Arab/Israeli conflict alone. They are a multifaceted conflict that requires a multidimensional solution. For instance, the State of Israel was not planted in Palestine until 1948. But Syria and Lebanon only agreed just a few years ago to exchange diplomatic mission for the first time since 1943 when the latter became independent. Why? Are both countries not Arab in language, culture and orientation? And this example can be found in virtually all the Arab countries. The truth is that the Arabs are as much a problem to Islam as they are to themselves. Ironically, the divine religion called Islam originated from them. One can imagine what they would have done to that religion if it had not emanated from them.

    Implication of Disunity

    Since the obliteration of Caliphate in 1923 which for many centuries had been the central core of Islamic operations, there has been no precise leadership for the Muslim Ummah. The implication of this is that there has been no universal competent Muslim authority that can be obeyed globally if and when a vital order is given to propel Islam statutorily. Thus every country or community operates at its level to the detriment of muslim unity.

    What is more worrisome in all these is the snobbish Arab attitude which places premium on Arabism rather than Islam as if Islam is the property of the Arabs which can be incorporated into Arabism at will.

    Except for Libya, Somalia and Sudan, no Arab country bears a name that reflects Islam. Even those three African countries only reflect Islam in their official names for political reasons.

    Arabs’ Economic Strength

    The wealth available in the Middle East is valued to be about one fifth of the entire wealth in the world. Yet the size of that sub-region in terms of land area and population is less than 2% of the world’s land mass. But unfortunately, the enormous wealth in the area is being managed and spent directly or indirectly by the West. Every Arab country has her foreign reserve in the US or other Western countries. Their administrative thinking and security strategies are from the West. Most of their investments are based in the West. Yet their most insuperable problem, that of disunity is from the West. How can they survive without the West?

    The total Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of the Arab countries was $1,195 billion in 2008. Much of this money kept in Western banks is what those Western countries use to further their own development. They also use a part of it to finance NGO projects in Africa and some other parts of the world in the name of humanitarian gesture. And most of the beneficiaries are non-Muslims.

    The Way Forward

    Never in the history of man has war been the final determinant of peace. The victor and the vanquished in any war will eventually sit around a table to talk and negotiate the terms of their coexistence.

    It happened in Asia and Europe. It happened in Africa and America. It happened in Australia and the Middle East. There is neither permanency of victory nor that of vanquishness. And that is why there is always room for communication even in a war situation.

    The war of attrition between Israel and Palestine is not in the interest of humanity no matter the sentiments. And it can never be. If these two races (Jews and Arabs) living together on the same land have fought constantly for 76 years (1948-2024) without much to count as gain, logic must dictate a change of style.

    In the last one decade alone, the Palestinian people have lost more than 500, 000 lives; over $70 billion in income opportunity; 20 million square meters of agricultural land; and over 100 million man-hours in crossing either from West Bank to Gaza or vice versa at Ramallah. Much more than that, almost 2.7 million of the 4 million residents of Gaza and West Bank have become refugees in almost inhuman camps. The opportunity cost of conflict for the Middle East from 1991-2024 is estimated to be $27 trillion. In other words had there been peace and cooperation in the Middle East since 1991, every Palestinian citizen would have been earning over $4,500 as income per capital in 2024 instead of the $1,500 now being projected. Every Israeli citizen would have been earning over $47,000 as income per capital in 2024 instead of about $24,000 now being projected.

    Because of an import-export ban imposed on Gaza by Israel in 2007, 95 per cent of Gaza’s industrial operations were suspended. And out of 35,000 people employed by 3,900 factories in June 2005, only 1,750 people remained employed by 195 factories in June 2007. The figures can be imagined today. Blockade has severely hindered health services in Gaza. Between October and December 2007 for instance, the World Health Organization confirmed the deaths of 20 patients, including 5 children due to lack of access to health care. Between 2007 and 2008, 120 people in Gaza died because they were not allowed access to medical treatment.

    The Israeli Government’s cut in the flow of fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip has also been called collective castigation of the civilian population, which is a violation of Israel’s obligations under the laws of war. Starting from February 7, 2008, the Israeli Government reduced the electricity it sells directly to Gaza.

    This also had a terrible effect on all spheres of life in the Gaza and West Bank.     

    War of Amenities

    The war between Israel and Palestine is not limited to weapons and diplomacy alone. In the Middle East generally, water is a resource of great political concern because of the desert nature of the sub-region. Thus, since Israel receives much of its water from two large aquifers which are sprawled across the Green Line, the use of this water has been contentious in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Though the major source of the common water lies in the Israeli section of the disputed land, some of the wells used to draw that water are situated within the Palestinian Authority areas. This has limited Israelis’ direct access to drinking water.

    But the argument is that Israel herself had prevented substantial volume of water from flowing to the areas occupied by the Palestinians thereby limiting the quantity of water that may be drawn from those wells.

    While Israel’s consumption of this water has decreased since it began its occupation of the West Bank, it still consumes the most of it.

    In the 1950s, Israel consumed 95 per cent of the water output of the Western Aquifer, and 82 per cent of that produced by the North eastern Aquifer.

    Although this water was drawn entirely on Israel’s own side of the pre-1967 border, the sources of the water are nevertheless from the shared groundwater basins located under both West Bank and Israel. By 1999, the percentage of water available to Israel had declined to 80 per cent. Now, with the continuation of war, neither Israel nor Palestine feels secure even as threat of further war is drummed into the infants’ ears in that area daily.

    Historically, the Jews and the Arabs are from the same father (Abraham). If one claims a return to ancestral home to justify land occupation, the other may be right to make the same claim. Thus rather than continuing fighting war which may eventually lead to total loss of the entire land, why not sit together and negotiate peace on a permanent basis? That is perhaps worthier than the shedding of innocent bl

    “Whenever injustice becomes the law with which to govern a people, resistance must become a legitimate duty with which to quest for legitimate survival”.  Anonymous

    Preamble

    Today’s world seems to be a proverbial ark without any compass that can show its way to a particular destination. Yet, that proverbial ark keeps cruising recklessly on a storming sea without minding the repercussion of a possible capsizing.

    Unlike in the remote or even recent past, no part of the world can confidently claim safety today and go to bed with the closure of both eyes. Except for self-deception, any euphoria of  whatever can be called global peace in the contemporary world remains a property of the past.Thus, from all indications, the contemporary time is fast-tracking the pace of mankind towards the end of human existence.

    The Palestinian Crises

    While millions of Muslims, all over the world, while muslims are eagerly awaiting Ramadan into the world, the international media waves throbbed with unpleasant breaking news that immediately became an eyesore for some people and a sour taste in the mouth of others.

    The news was about an outbreak of a new orgy of violence in Gaza Strip which hurriedly reminded the world of a merciless siege on that same Strip in 2014.

    Analysis of the Crises

    As a onetime Foreign Editor and a student of International Law and Diplomacy, who studied in the Arab world and was quite familiar with the situation in the Middle East, yours sincerely had severally delivered public lectures on the conflicts in that regionwith detailed analysis of the causes and effects of those conflicts from various conceivable angles. Below is an excerpt from one of such lectures which I deliveredsome years ago in different parts of the country:

    “This is not the first time in history that partition would be adopted as solution to a contentious problem. In primordial time, King Solomon ruled between two mothers who were laying claim to a single child thus: “If you cannot give one child to each of the two women claiming to be the mother, then split the child into two and give one half to one and the second half to the other”.

    This analogy was re-enacted in 1948, almost three thousand years after that historic episode in an area disputably called Palestine and Israel at the same time. The only exception in the contemporary case is that the Wisdom of Solomon which brought solution to the historic controversy of the yore is conspicuously absent today.

    Partition of Palestine

    Like the false mother in King Solomon’s time who welcomed bisection of the controversial child, the Jews quickly accepted the partition of Palestine in 1948 because it gave them something that was not legitimately theirs.

    Partition of countries against the wish of the people living in there was not only a social aberration but also a clear evidence of injustice and man’s inhumanity to man.

    Wherever adopted as a solution, partition only brings suffering, destruction and tragedy to millions of human beings as in the case of Vietnam, Germany, Korea and now Palestine. Normalcy only returned to Vietnam after the reunification of that country following ten years of a fierce war. Although the conditions of the partition of Germany after the World War II in the 1940s appeared normal, neither that country nor those who partitioned it felt relaxed until Germany became a single country again in the early 1990s. The situation of (North and South) Korea today can be regarded as temporary because reunification of that country is just a matter of time.

    The imperial powers which imposed partition on the three countries mentioned above against the wish of their inhabitants were the same that inflicted the tragedy of partition on Palestine without any consideration for the agonizing plight of her long time inhabitants.

    Genesis of the Crises

    The conflict between the Palestinians and the Jews, which now dominates the Middle East crises, did not start by accident. It was well designed and orchestrated from the very beginning. In 1879 when the Zionist movement was officially launched, an Austrian Jewish lawyer and journalist, Theodor Herzl, who, incidentally, was the founder of that movement published an article in a European popular magazine. In the article he declared: “Let sovereignty be granted us (Zionists) over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage by ourselves”.

    Influence of World War I

    The outbreak of the World War I came to fertilize the soil for the germination of that tall dream. The year 1916 was disastrous for the allied forces. Casualties on the Western fronts were heavy. Anxiety rose very high. And the only seeming choice left for Britain to escape defeat in the hands of the Germans was to draw America into the war on her side. It was at that gloomy period that an Oxford educated Armenian, James Malcolm, walked in.  He was a friend of the then British Secretary of State, Sir Mark Sykes. The latter told Malcolm that the British Cabinet was looking anxiously for American intervention in the war.

    Responding, Malcolm who was well connected to the topmost echelon of the American government told Sykes that Britain was going about it the wrong way. He said: “You can win the sympathy of certain politically minded Jews everywhere and especially in the United States in one way only, and that is by offering to secure Palestine for them”.

    That was the beginning of a long journey that was to culminate in what has now become the ‘Arab/Israeli conflict’. Of course through Malcolm’s connection, the US entered the war on the side of the allied forces in 1917 and that resulted in a fate accompli for Germany.

    To fulfill her own side of the agreement, therefore, Britain made a declaration on November 2, 1917 through her Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, giving a substantial part of Palestine to Israel. That declaration has since popularized the name of that Foreign Minister as it has since been known as Balfour Declaration.

    Ever since the declaration, the Arabs have never been able to sleep with their two eyes closed. It has always been a matter of war today, ceasefire tomorrow. This is not mainly due to the condemnable usurpation of their land by the Zionists but more because of their own diabolical disunity that has been telling incessantly on Islam as a religion.

    The Fault of the Arabs

    Viewing the Middle East crises from religious angle, the general belief in many Muslim quarters is that those crises are a religious affair. And for decades, the Arabs have capitalized on that belief to whip up Islamic sentiments among non-Arab Muslims for the purpose of winning their sympathy. But looking at the matter critically, one will discover that such a belief is not only misgiven but wildly misplaced. The reason is this: long before the Israeli factor came into those crises, the Arabs had been at loggerheads among themselves for centuries in that sub-region. History is there to testify to this fact. But for the internal wrangling among them, the entire Europe would have been fully Islamized today. At least the Umayyad Dynasty which was fully run by the Arabs lasted for about 500 years in Spain where its headquarters was relocated after eviction from Damascus. Despite that great vintage, they missed the opportunity of planting Islam in the heart of Europe.

    Now, the Middle East crises cannot be pinned down to the Arab/Israeli conflict alone. They are a multifaceted conflict that requires a multidimensional solution. For instance, the State of Israel was not planted in Palestine until 1948. But Syria and Lebanon only agreed just a few years ago to exchange diplomatic mission for the first time since 1943 when the latter became independent. Why? Are both countries not Arab in language, culture and orientation? And this example can be found in virtually all the Arab countries. The truth is that the Arabs are as much a problem to Islam as they are to themselves. Ironically, the divine religion called Islam originated from them. One can imagine what they would have done to that religion if it had not emanated from them.

    Implication of Disunity

    Since the obliteration of Caliphate in 1923 which for many centuries had been the central core of Islamic operations, there has been no precise leadership for the Muslim Ummah. The implication of this is that there has been no universal competent Muslim authority that can be obeyed globally if and when a vital order is given to propel Islam statutorily. Thus every country or community operates at its level to the detriment of muslim unity.

    What is more worrisome in all these is the snobbish Arab attitude which places premium on Arabism rather than Islam as if Islam is the property of the Arabs which can be incorporated into Arabism at will.

    Except for Libya, Somalia and Sudan, no Arab country bears a name that reflects Islam. Even those three African countries only reflect Islam in their official names for political reasons.

    Arabs’ Economic Strength

    The wealth available in the Middle East is valued to be about one fifth of the entire wealth in the world. Yet the size of that sub-region in terms of land area and population is less than 2% of the world’s land mass. But unfortunately, the enormous wealth in the area is being managed and spent directly or indirectly by the West. Every Arab country has her foreign reserve in the US or other Western countries. Their administrative thinking and security strategies are from the West. Most of their investments are based in the West. Yet their most insuperable problem, that of disunity is from the West. How can they survive without the West?

    The total Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of the Arab countries was $1,195 billion in 2008. Much of this money kept in Western banks is what those Western countries use to further their own development. They also use a part of it to finance NGO projects in Africa and some other parts of the world in the name of humanitarian gesture. And most of the beneficiaries are non-Muslims.

    The Way Forward

    Never in the history of man has war been the final determinant of peace. The victor and the vanquished in any war will eventually sit around a table to talk and negotiate the terms of their coexistence.

    It happened in Asia and Europe. It happened in Africa and America. It happened in Australia and the Middle East. There is neither permanency of victory nor that of vanquishness. And that is why there is always room for communication even in a war situation.

    The war of attrition between Israel and Palestine is not in the interest of humanity no matter the sentiments. And it can never be. If these two races (Jews and Arabs) living together on the same land have fought constantly for 76 years (1948-2024) without much to count as gain, logic must dictate a change of style.

    In the last one decade alone, the Palestinian people have lost more than 500, 000 lives; over $70 billion in income opportunity; 20 million square meters of agricultural land; and over 100 million man-hours in crossing either from West Bank to Gaza or vice versa at Ramallah. Much more than that, almost 2.7 million of the 4 million residents of Gaza and West Bank have become refugees in almost inhuman camps. The opportunity cost of conflict for the Middle East from 1991-2024 is estimated to be $27 trillion. In other words had there been peace and cooperation in the Middle East since 1991, every Palestinian citizen would have been earning over $4,500 as income per capital in 2024 instead of the $1,500 now being projected. Every Israeli citizen would have been earning over $47,000 as income per capital in 2024 instead of about $24,000 now being projected.

    Because of an import-export ban imposed on Gaza by Israel in 2007, 95 per cent of Gaza’s industrial operations were suspended. And out of 35,000 people employed by 3,900 factories in June 2005, only 1,750 people remained employed by 195 factories in June 2007. The figures can be imagined today. Blockade has severely hindered health services in Gaza. Between October and December 2007 for instance, the World Health Organization confirmed the deaths of 20 patients, including 5 children due to lack of access to health care. Between 2007 and 2008, 120 people in Gaza died because they were not allowed access to medical treatment.

    The Israeli Government’s cut in the flow of fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip has also been called collective castigation of the civilian population, which is a violation of Israel’s obligations under the laws of war. Starting from February 7, 2008, the Israeli Government reduced the electricity it sells directly to Gaza.

    This also had a terrible effect on all spheres of life in the Gaza and West Bank.     

    War of Amenities

    The war between Israel and Palestine is not limited to weapons and diplomacy alone. In the Middle East generally, water is a resource of great political concern because of the desert nature of the sub-region. Thus, since Israel receives much of its water from two large aquifers which are sprawled across the Green Line, the use of this water has been contentious in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Though the major source of the common water lies in the Israeli section of the disputed land, some of the wells used to draw that water are situated within the Palestinian Authority areas. This has limited Israelis’ direct access to drinking water.

    But the argument is that Israel herself had prevented substantial volume of water from flowing to the areas occupied by the Palestinians thereby limiting the quantity of water that may be drawn from those wells.

    While Israel’s consumption of this water has decreased since it began its occupation of the West Bank, it still consumes the most of it.

    In the 1950s, Israel consumed 95 per cent of the water output of the Western Aquifer, and 82 per cent of that produced by the North eastern Aquifer.

    Although this water was drawn entirely on Israel’s own side of the pre-1967 border, the sources of the water are nevertheless from the shared groundwater basins located under both West Bank and Israel. By 1999, the percentage of water available to Israel had declined to 80 per cent. Now, with the continuation of war, neither Israel nor Palestine feels secure even as threat of further war is drummed into the infants’ ears in that area daily.

    Historically, the Jews and the Arabs are from the same father (Abraham). If one claims a return to ancestral home to justify land occupation, the other may be right to make the same claim. Thus rather than continuing fighting war which may eventually lead to total loss of the entire land, why not sit together and negotiate peace on a permanent basis? That is perhaps worthier than the shedding of innocent bloods where better alternatives are available.

    oods where better alternatives are available.

  • The inevitable renewal agenda for NAHCON

    The inevitable renewal agenda for NAHCON

    In perfect confirmation of the Islamic perception of indecent people who lack shame and are always ready to act out their recklessness, the propagandists are again at work. They wanted to skew the information about the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria, NAHCON, such that the leadership that is just berthing is bedeviled?  In what worse manner could the immediacy and virality of online information be optimally exploited for deceit and ironically for matters relating to the deen of Islam? The alleged sleaze, so saddening, of the immediate past NAHCON leadership was rather too humongous and too recent to be easily swept under the carpet, its worth noting.

    Alhamdulilah for the reassuring divine assertion of the Almighty Allah to the effect that that after hardship shall come relief. Certainly, the wish  of every sincere Muslim in Nigeria with a fair knowledge of the situation with Hajj management is the restoration  of wisdom and even enhancement of same. Only Allah  has the capacity to make good things happen.

    It was almost a completely hopeless situation until the Federal Government finally took the renewed hope agenda to the National Hajj Commission, NAHCON after suddenly retiring the versatile hajj management czar, Ustaz Zikrullah Hassan. Till date, Polyglot Hassan is the only Chairman of NAHCON who has had a most respectable mix of experience of managing hajj successfully in both the private and public sectors.  Indeed, he managed Osun State Hajj Board without any board constituted for eight years and the pilgrims all over the state remain in awe of Ustaz till date. Beyond the Osun pilgrims, Hassan’s fellow chairmen of hajj boards in all the 36 states of the federation and Abuja also conceded leadership to him on account of visible sterling qualities

    While at NAHCON therefore, Ustaz Hassan had commenced institutionalizing structures that should endure for ages. As a thoroughbred professional (he’s a lawyer and business management expert) with strong inclination for creativity  as well as continuity where necessary, he ran 2022 and 2023 hajj operations harmoniously. Such was the glowing performance that the leadership of the hajj boards of all participating West African countries adopted him as their leader! (https://www.premiumtimesng.com/opinion/546419-the-nahcon-intervention-in-nigerias-diplomatic-profiling-by-tunde-akanni.html?tztc=1)

    Read Also: Monarch lauds Olanipekun for donating Senate building to Ekiti varsity

    Resplendent in sheer exhibitionism of a bad salesman, the succeeding regime took off on a lousy note characteristic of toddlers learning to tread with large army of idlers anxious to flaunt their pathfinding role. The path they found turned out to be the road to perdition with the detailed disservice done the ummah playing out till date.

    The choice of a professor therefore was a most fitting reinforcement to the glorious era of Ustaz Zikrullah Hassan which ended abruptly just when the preparation for 2024 Hajj started gathering momentum. 

    Why should Professor Saleh Usman Pakistan not glorify professorship further by replicating the performance of the brother Professor at the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Is-haq Oloyede described by their shared principal, President Bola Tinubu, as an uncommon scholar and an icon of integrity? Like Oloyede of JAMB, Pakistan’s academic affiliation is Arabic and Islamic Studies. Pakistan’s fortune is probably stronger with the presence on the NAHCON board, a heavily credentialed scholar and two-time vice chancellor of impeccable integrity, Prof Mahfouz Adedimeji, ably representing the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA.

    What will Pakistan do wrong by emulating his contemporary’s good qualities to earn himself and families, earthly applause as well as Allah’s favours confidently and most importantly present Islam in the best mould to the world?

    Transparency matters a lot.  As is the case with Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, of JAMB,  operators in the Hajj sector are quick to tell anyone interested that the preparations for the next Hajj commences almost immediately the one just concluded was over. Annually, JAMB is never contented with keeping mum over its trials and triumphs.    It presents the scorecard of her performance  to the world for proper understanding. The world can therefore comment competently on JAMB matters even as some comments are informed and some others may not be necessary at all being unfounded and completely irrelevant.

    Transparency pays all stakeholders and enables all to aspire to act right and promptly too. It signals accountability and attracts a lot of respect to those officials who are compliant. The ummah in Nigeria is anxious to see NAHCON rise gloriously back to the path of honour.

    As a public trust, the commission should endeavour to earn the confidence of pilgrims from all parts of the country in ways most harmonious. The President has unmistakably demonstrated the importance of this most convincingly.  What with the recent ‘transplanting’ of whole council team of the Federal University Oye Ekiti to Federal University, Lokoja and that of Lokoja to Oye Ekiti? The idea was to ensure a pan-Nigerian outlook for the leadership of the two universities, the press statement announcing the change stated.

    The Saleh Usman leadership should be able to build on the sincere growth and developmental efforts of Ustaz Hassan especially now that Hassan stands vindicated in spite of blackmailers campaign against him like they are already up in hostility against Saleh Usman even before seeing him settle.

     Though not a media professional, Hassan appreciated the need for a code of practice for journos that may be enlisted to cover hajj for NAHCON. For the first time in 2023, the code was introduced. The code may need to be updated and perfected but will surely help substantially in the coverage of hajj beyond sheer casual stringing.  This is particularly necessary because of the need for authenticated information on the sacred exercise as different from any social, political or ceremonial facet of human life.  This may therefore call for a thorough and coordinated orientation for all journos from across all state boards and even the private tour operators. Thankfully, there is ample technology to make this happen if NAHCON endorses this.

    The scholar that Saleh Usman is should even up the stake as someone familiar with research and development especially as applicable to the trend of radicalisation of the communication sector changing by the day with possibilities bourgeoning.  Documentation of hajj should enjoy trendy technological skills including livestreaming such that the media team should be made to realise that the new leadership will encourage team members to update skills as NAHCON may only patronize only the trendy ones. No media organisation should be made to believe that NAHCON cannot make any choice different from them as had been the practice over the years.

     The logic that Prof Saleh Usman should reckon with is that this is the same way digital media innovations have been multiplying and manifesting novel capacities to endear themselves to users fanning up stiff competitions with newer possibilities.

    Prof Saleh Usman hardly needs be told that hajj, with little or no subsidy as may be the case this year, calls for high grade prudence but this could even be done with more honour if NAHCON can simply adopt the stipulations of the protocols of Open Government Parnership, OGP, long signed by President Buhari, which will signal to the world that indeed this new leadership signals a very clear departure from that of the corruption ridden and grossly incompetent immediate past leadership.

    With Prof Saleh Usman’s pedigree, one may simply conclude that NAHCON will head for greater performance. 

    But how soon will this be? He has my best wishes.

    Akanni, PhD, associate professor of journalism at LASU, is a veteran hajj reporter. 

  • Islamic solution to leadership problem

    Islamic solution to leadership problem

    Monologue

    Like in any other week, the competition for attention by emerging issues, for this column this week is extraordinarily intense. The choice of one of those issues by any columnist must thus become a problem capable of causing confusion. The case of yours sincerely cannot be an exception. That is a confirmation that the dilemma of any worthy columnist is not a dearth of ideas but a deluge of them. For instance, which national or international contemporary issue in today’s world does not deserve attention of ‘The Message’ column now? Is it the sudden demise of the former Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi in a suspicious circumstance or the implacable tension between Trump’s American government and the Islamic Republic of Iran or the severe persecution of Muslims in China and Myanmar or the seemingly endemic plight of the Kashmiri people who, as Muslims, are being forcefully subjected to Hindu rule in India or the callous murder of an American based Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in cold blood in Istanbul or  the         frightening menace of banditry and kidnapping across Nigeria or even the incessantly ravaging atrocities of certain voluntary agents of Satan called Boko Haram? Looking at all these issues and many more, not mentioned here, the tendency is to conclude that the modern world is fast approaching its end. Yet, the role of leadership in making success of most of these issues cannot be underestimated. Without leaders, there are no nations.

    Preamble

    The title of today’s article in this column is not originally a coinage of ‘THE MESSAGE’. It is rather the theme of a public Ramadan lecture organised by Mustapha Akanbi Foundation (MAF) in Ilorin to which yours sincerely was invited as the guest lecturer on August 29, 2010.

    Who is Mustapha Akanbi?          

    The name Mustapha Akanbi cannot be strange to any educated Nigerian of contemporary time. That was a household name in Nigeria and beyond especially for those who are familiar with the Independent Corrupt Practices (and other related offences) Commission (ICPC). The first Chairman of that Commission was Justice Mustapha Akanbi, an erstwhile President of the Federal Court of Appeal of Nigeria. For the entire 35 years of his service in the judiciary, all that can be called his property was just a modest three bedroom bungalow in which he lived in Ilorin till his demise recently. 

    The MAF Foundation

    Established in September 2006 shortly after its founder (Justice Mustapha Akanbi) voluntarily resigned as the Chairman of ICPC despite the overwhelming pressure on him to continue his service, MAF is a non-governmental and non-partisan organisation dedicated to the uplift of mankind and to the enthronement of justice, equity and fair play as well as the promotion of the quintessential virtues of honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability in all human activities.

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    The Foundation is committed to being in the vanguard of revolutionary changes aimed at reforming and transforming our society from being a body of self-serving individuals to a nation that places high premium on selfless service for the common good of all. MAF Foundation, therefore, has, as its focus, the building and sustenance of a great nation founded on sound ethical values and good governance capable of holding its own in the comity of nations. It is in line with its focus that the Foundation chose the theme of today’s article and invited yours sincerely as the guest lecturer.

    At the occasion which was held in the month of Ramadan, I alluded briefly to the significance of Ramadan in the life of an average Muslim.

    Point of Reverence

    This is a period of relevant reference in Nigeria. This is a time when history displays its duty as the teacher of man. The current trend of dirty banters in the country is both a reminder and a point of reference for men and women of decent pedigree and impeccable dignity. This is a time when disciplined parents and patriotic citizens are identifiable. This is the time in Nigeria’s contemporary history when human wheat can be separated from human chaff. This is the time of distinguishing between shame and shamelessness on the one hand and decency and indecency on the other. This is the time when lovers and haters of Nigeria can be known. It is the above mentioned issues that make this article a point of reference. And the reference is the lecture that yours sincerely delivered at the MAF Foundation in 2010.

    The lecture

    As a preamble, I told my audience that thinking of leadership in terms of those who are privileged to govern the country alone can never solve the problem of bad leadership in Nigeria. Leadership does not start from the top. It is rather a matter of good home management and excellent upbringing of children. Leadership is like a pyramid which has a base and an apex. Whoever wants to assess leadership in a society must start from the base rather than the apex. It will be unreasonable to start sighting major faults at the roof of a house when the foundation of the same house is evidently faulty. Generally, children learn from their parents’ actions much more than from the latter’s preaching.

    Any parent who starts the upbringing of his or her children with lavish celebration of birthday without teaching such children the act of legitimate money making early in life has initiated such children into the cult of reckless spending spree. The tendency for such children when they grow up is to look for money to spend from any source including pilfering, stealing, kidnapping and ritual killing for money. What will be virtuous to such children is to get money to spend. It will never matter to them how they come about such money. And that is the root of corruption in a society like Nigeria where parents assist their children to cheat in examinations or to get admitted into higher institutions with fraudulent pre-requisites.

    Leadership in Islam

    In Islam, leadership is so sacrosanct that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) never relented in warning all leaders and aspirants to leadership about the delicate nature of ruling the people. In his farewell sermon in 631 CE, he reminded the Muslim Ummah that leadership is a great responsibility entrusted to an individual by the society as ordained by the Almighty Allah. The Prophet also admonished the people on their responsibility to both the state and leadership quoting Qur’an 4, Verse 59 thus:

    “Oh you, who believe, Obey Allah, obey the Messenger (of Allah) and those charged with authority among you. If you differ in anything amongst yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger if you do believe in Allah and the last day. That is best and most suitable for final determination”. Quran 4 verse 59.

    However, he did not stop there. He went further to explain that obedience to those charged with authority is conditioned by their (those in authority’s) own obedience to God in their deeds as well as the rule of law that governs them.

     In one of his statements, he said there is no obedience or loyalty to any human being, ruler or otherwise, who is not himself, obedient to God and the rule of law. He concluded that: “Whoever entrusts a man to a public office, where, in his society, there is a better man than this trustee, has betrayed the trust of God and His Messenger as well as the people of that society”.Hadith.

    The Prophet’s Exemplary Leadership

    The exemplary leadership of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and his great teachings were scrupulously followed by the Caliphs who succeeded him in office. When, shortly after the Prophet’s demise, Abubakr was elected as the first Caliph, his primary objective was to continue the pious administration which the Prophet left behind. He took the mantle of leadership with which he was saddled as a responsibility to Allah.

    In his acceptance speech as new Head of State, he addressed the people as follows: “Oh people behold me charged with the cares of government. Yet, I am not the best of you. In carrying out this great responsibility, I need your advice and assistance. If you find me doing well, please support me. If I make mistake, counsel me.

    To tell the truth to a person commissioned to rule is faithful allegiance. So long I obey God and act according to law, obey me. But if I neglect the law of God and His Prophet, I have no more right to your obedience. The strong among you shall have no right over the weak on the basis of his strength. Neither shall there be any room for sycophancy, nepotism or undue favouritism. Authority, power and sovereignty belong to Allah alone in whose hand is dominion over all things….”

    Comment

    From the foregoing, and contrary to what is happening today, especially in Nigeria, it is clear that leadership is a privilege rather than anybody’s right. It is a public trust which should not be betrayed under any circumstance. It is a responsibility to be carried out, not just with human face but also with human heart. It is a covenant between God and rulers on the one hand and rulers and the ruled on the other. It is a measure of conscience, piety and discipline. No one who is bereft of these traits should be entrusted with leadership.

    Other Caliphs after Abubakr followed suit and lived ascetic lives despite their access to unlimited state resources. Ali Bn Abi-Talib, in particular, did not limit those qualities to himself. He extended them to his appointed Governors.

    While appointing Malik bn Ashtar as the Governor of Egypt he gave him certain instructions in writing and admonished him to follow those instructions to the letter in his governance in that country. Those instructions were not about the executive arm of governance alone. They also touched legislation and judiciary morally and legally.

    Parable of Governance

    Governance in Islam is like pregnancy in the womb of an expectant mother. The duration of such pregnancy is naturally defined barring any anomaly or aberration. Its delivery depends on the safety of its carrier and the circumstances of her wellbeing. And, after delivery, the baby is claimed, not by the carrier of the pregnancy but by the impregnator.

    There is no pregnancy without semen firmly planted in the womb of a woman. And the semen planter is a man who will eventually be called the father of the baby. For this reason, children bear the names of their fathers rather than those of their mothers as surnames.

    By analogy, one can compare governance to a pregnant woman who could not have become pregnant without an impregnator. The impregnator in this case is the populace that gave those in government the mandate to rule them. And just as the product of the womb (the child) belongs to the impregnator as a matter of legitimacy so should dividend of governance be the property of the governed populace. A child who bears his mother’s name as surname is nothing but a bastard. 

    After life, security, law and justice, nothing else is held as sacrosanct in Islam as governance which can be compared to a magnificent shade under which people are supposed to take cover during torrential rains or burning sun. In a democratic setting, such a shade is owned by the citizenry. Those who claim to be its custodians are just servants holding it in trust for the people.

    Democracy in Islam

    In Islam, democracy is not about voting and power alone. It is fundamentally about justice in all its ramifications according to the rule of law. It is about tending the lives of others 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. 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 for the future. It is about guaranteeing adequate income per capital and ensuring a standard life expectancy. Any government that claims democracy without all the aforementioned is oppressive and hypocritical. That was Nigeria’s lot from the beginning of the Fourth democracy in 1999 till now, the continuity of which we fervently prayed Allah to forbid.

    Governance, like culture, has a variety of colours, flavours and tastes. What is called democracy in a State may amount to despotism in another State. Governance, whether democratic or monarchical, is fundamentally a function of culture. That is why a country like Britain claims to operate politically on a constitution that is partly written and partly conventional. Borrowing a foreign culture to practice democracy through a constitution written in a foreign language is like borrowing another man’s mouth to eat. Into whose stomach will the food go?

    If those entrusted with authority and power with which to care for the masses are the ones stealing public funds with audacity and reliability on ethnic or religious inclination, what moral right do they have to govern? Nigeria has now reached a stage where justice, the last hope of the common man, is for sale even as the citizenry continue to be impoverished. For a country that hopes to progress, to where does this lead?

    Justice Mustapha Akanbi was an exemplary judge with an exemplary template in delivery and administration of justice with the fear of Allah. He lived a clean life and groomed some others to follow suit with the expectation that Nigeria would be great.  We pray the Almighty Allah to repose his soul in eternal bliss. As for those who have deviated from the path of decency left behind by Justice Akanbi, we pray Allah to guide them aright and rescue them from the manacle of Stan to which they are sternly tied. However, such people should know that:

    “Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they change the evil acts in their hearts. If Allah decides to afflict them with a calamity, no one can ward it off. Besides Allah, there is no protector for them”. Q. 13:11.