The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Abbas

  • Muslims and use of water

    Muslims and use of water

    In their deep-rooted research, scientists decided to coin a formula (H2O) and use it to analyse the natural contents of water. From such analysis, they identified the various types of water and its uses in an environment. They then concluded that water is actually the source of life for all living organisms. Water is ubiquitous in the environment. It comes from both the space and the earth.

    According to Encyclopedia Encarta (1993-2008 edition), water is the major constituent of any living matter as it constitutes about 50 to 90 percent of the weight of living organisms is water. The basic material of living cells called protoplasm consists of a solution in water of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, salts, and similar chemicals.

    Water acts as a solvent transporting, combining, and chemically breaking down these substances. Blood in animals and sap in plants consist largely of water and aids transportation of food and removal of waste material. It also plays a key role in the metabolic breakdown of such essential molecules as proteins and carbohydrates.

    This process, called hydrolysis, goes on continually in living cells.

    Composition

    Because of its capacity to dissolve numerous substances in large amounts, pure water rarely occurs in nature. During condensation and precipitation, rain or snow absorbs from the atmosphere varying amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases, as well as traces of organic and inorganic material. In addition, precipitation carries radioactive fallout to the earth’s surface.

    In its movement on and through the earth’s crust, water reacts with minerals in the soil and rocks. The principal dissolved constituents of surface and groundwater are sulfates, chlorides, and bicarbonates of sodium and potassium and the oxides of calcium and magnesium.

    Surface waters may also contain domestic sewage and industrial wastes while ground waters from shallow wells may contain large quantities of nitrogen compounds and chlorides derived from human and animal wastes.

    Waters from deep wells generally contain only minerals in solution.

    Almost all supplies of natural drinking water contain fluorides in varying amounts. The proper proportion of fluorides in drinking water has been found to reduce tooth decay and similar ailments.

    Apart from concentrated amounts of sodium chloride, or salt, seawater contains many other soluble compounds, as the impure waters of rivers and streams are constantly feeding the oceans. At the same time, pure water is continually lost by the process of evaporation, and as a result the proportion of the impurities that give the oceans their saline character is increased.

    Rainy season

    Now, in Nigeria, like in many other African countries, we are approaching another season of rains when, as usual, water will be found everywhere but none will be available for drinking. This is the season in which the sky opens up its generous bowl to pour down water in abundance. But the earth has no room to accommodate the gesture.

    This is a period when plants and animals feel that their needs for survival have been grossly exceeded. The world is often flooded with water everywhere and humanity becomes restive. The bounties of Allah seem to be too much for the need of man. In Europe, Asia, Africa and America, the story is one and the same. The world is grappling with a deluge.

    Blaming nature

    When this happens, the tendency is for the scientists to lay blame at the door-step of what they call global warming. They will give many reasons, including the depletion of the Ozone Layer, as the cause. But many centuries before scientists began their research, the unlettered Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had taught Muslims how to handle environmental dryness as well as deluge. One of such solutions is to thank Allah and request for a moderation of His largess. This is the time to realise that moderation rather than excess of anything is the best in man’s life. In Islam, there is no cause or effect of a matter that is not known or cannot be controlled by Allah. Whatever happens in the life of man is by Allah’s permission.

    The world is like a queue. You enter it at a point and come out of it at another point. This is one major lesson which every Muslim has come to learn through the observance of daily prayers (Salat). In Salat alone where queues are essential, a lot of lessons are there to learn.

    Ritual baths

    The very basic lesson to learn in Salat is hygiene. As a new convert to Islam, you have to undergo a ritual bath called Ghuslu-s-Shahadah or Ghuslu-d-dukhul fil Islam (convert’s ritual bath) is performed with water. When you want to observe any Salat, be it obligatory or supererogatory, you must perform ablution with water. This is called Wudu’. If there is no water, you take to Tayammam (dry ablution). As a Muslim, after an intercourse with your spouse, you must perform a ritual bath called Ghuslul Janabah before you can observe any Salat.

    When a Muslim woman completes her monthly menstrual period she must perform a ritual bath called Ghuslul Haydah before she can resume observance of Salat. A Muslim woman who has just completed her blood-dripping period following child delivery must perform a ritual bath called Ghuslu-n-Nifas before she can resume observance of Salat.

    A newly born baby in Islam must be taken through a mandatory bath called Ghuslul Wiladah which is also done with water.

    Muslim pilgrims must commence their Hajj or Umrah activities with a ritual bath called Ghuslul Hajj or Umrah at their respective Miqat before they enter the condition of Ihram. When a Muslim, male or female is dead, a ritual bath is performed on his or her body. This bath is called Ghuslul Janazah. Anybody who carries out a bath on a dead body must also undergo a ritual bath of purification called Ghuslu-t-Taharah mina-n-Najasah (bath for purifying self from filth).

    This is because a dead body in Islam is like a filth which must be disposed of as soon as possible before it starts to decompose and thereby constitute health hazard for the living. Whoever touches such filth has had a share of it and must therefore cleanse up before observing any Salat. Such a person cannot participate even in Salatul-Janazah on the body of the deceased person which he has just cleaned up until he has taken the purification bath.

    Unique hygiene

    Muslims are expected to clean up with water through ablution at least five times a day. And, as a prophetic tradition prescribes, they are also expected to perform ritual bath on Fridays in preparation for Salatul Jum’ah though such bath is Sunnah (optional) rather than Fard (obligation). Naturally, women, especially Muslim women utilise water much more than men. They are the ones who take care of the children and, in the process; they clean up for them many times a day. Besides, women are the ones who must clean up for menses every month. They are the ones who must clean up ritually after 40 days, following child delivery. They are the ones in charge of matrimonial kitchens where they use water day and night. Thus, when the demography of women in any society is compared to that of men one can imagine the quantity of water consumed daily or weekly by women.

    Given the fact that water plays a central role in the life of a Muslim therefore, two important conclusions can be reached. One is the fact that Islam is absolutely a religion of purity. And that is why Prophet Muhammad was reported to have said that “Allah is pure and He will not accept anything impure.” The second is that Muslims are the greatest consumers of domestic water in the world. This is because, besides using water socially, commercially or domestically like other human beings, an average Muslim uses additional one third of total water used by any non-Muslim on a daily basis.

    Muslims’ attitude to dryness

    It thus becomes understandable why Muslims feel more worried when there is dryness and water cannot be easily accessed. This is what led to the idea of a special prayer called ‘Salatul Istisqai’ (rain-seeking prayer). This prayer randomly observed by Muslims when shortage of water becomes acute cannot be observed without water ablution. It is a way of reconfirming to Allah that the main purpose of our existence on earth is to worship Him just as the purpose of keeping domestic animals is to serve man. Salatul Istisqai which is usually followed by heavy rainfalls is a major evidence of an existing covenant between Allah and His faithful servants. The wonderful effect of that Salat contradicts any scientific theory. Non-Muslim meteorologists have always wondered how possible it is for rain to fall at an impossible time, following a congregational prayer by some Muslim faithful in a locality or region. But to their amazement, they have regularly seen the potency of such prayer in bringing rain not only for Muslims but for all and sundry. The question is: ‘can any other religious group do same to the advantage of mankind? This one trillion Naira question is still begging for answer even almost one and a half millennia after the introduction of Salatul Istisqai as a bringer of rain.

    Seeking rain water

    That Salatul Istisqai (special prayer for rain) actually brings rain even in a severely dry season remains a puzzle to unbelievers, especially in the West who see everything, including God, as a product of science. Yours sincerely first took part in the observance of Salatul Istisqai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as a student in that country, in 1976. The two rakat prayer had hardly been concluded when the sky opened its door and rain started falling in torrents. It rained for nine hours continuously in that desert country and flooded the entire Emirates like the historic deluge in Prophet Nuh’s  (Noah) time.

    It took more than a week before normal social and commercial activities could fully resume. I have since participated in the same exercise twice thereafter, once in Nigeria and once in Saudi Arabia.

    The effect of Salatul Istisqai is not necessarily immediate. At times, it may take a week or more before the rain starts pouring. And, if, after some time, following the observance of Salatul Istisqai, rain does not come, the Salat can be repeated. Allah has a design for everything. He knows when rainfall will best serve the need of man.

    And in seeking such a favour, Muslims must not try to jump the queue.

    Manner of observance

    Any participant in Salatul Istisqa’ is expected to be in a sober mood and be absolutely confident that the prayer would be accepted. The essence of raising one’s hands to Allah in prayer is to further confirm that there is no intermediary between man and Allah in worship and in prayer. Allah Himself emphasises this in the Qur’an by saying to Prophet Muhammad thus: “When my servants ask you about Me, tell them that I am very close to them. I accept the prayers of those who seek from Me but let such seekers expect the giving from Me alone; let them be confident in My ability to accept prayer so that they may be guided aright”. However, there is need to correct the wrong notion being spread around that dresses must be worn inside out by those who will partake in Salatul Istisqai. There is nothing like that in Islam.

    The effect of Salatul Istisqai in bringing rains is just symbolic of all other prayers by Muslims. No genuine Muslim prayer is ever turned down by Allah. Acceptance of prayer may not be exactly in accordance with human expectation, it may not be as promptly as man wants it but eventually, a Muslim will realise that his prayer has been accepted by Allah without an intermediary.

    The role of water in Hajj

    Unknown to the non-Islamic world, performance of Hajj every year is a great blessing to humanity rather than just a mere act of worship by Muslims. Hajj is the biggest congregation of human beings on earth.

    Allah loves and respects congregations of pious people who praise Him and pray to Him for the needs of the world. That congregation is essential for the continuity of human existence. There is no country in the world today without Muslim pilgrims joining their brethren from other parts of the world in requesting Allah to save the world from perishing. And each year, as such prayers are accepted, the world is confirmed saved despite the evil moves of Yajuj and Ma’juj (Gog and Magog) as well as their agents who are ignorantly pursuing their own destruction every minute. Thus, like Salatul Istisqai which brings water to everybody and not Muslims alone, Hajj is to the benefit of mankind and not Muslims alone. Thus, its preservation must be ensured by everybody in the interest of continued human existence.

    Conclusion

    Without water, it will be difficult to observe Salat or to fast in Ramadan or to give Zakah or to perform Hajj. Without water, it will be impossible to bear children and bring them up, or to keep farms and sustain them. Water is life. But this is not for Muslims alone. The difference is that Muslims use part of the water to show gratitude to Allah by worshipping Him. Others use it for mundane life alone which is sheer vanity.

    Knowledge is like water which softens the earth for seeds to germinate and for plants to be nourished to fruition. Knowledge in Islam is much more important than worship. No one can validly worship Allah without knowledge. And if for this reason alone, it should behoove the entire Muslim Ummah of the world to join and cooperate in using water to worship Allah. That is the essence of knowledge. It cannot be trivialised.

  • The seed of terror

    The seed of terror

    Preamble

    Yoruba language may have no plural or gender in its structural syntax.

    It may be poor in vocabulary and clumsy in grammar. But it is surely not lacking in proverbs and mythology. In that language, you can hardly express a sentence without enriching it with two or three proverbs. One of its famous proverbs has become an axiom in theory and practice. And many other languages have borrowed it for a token of experience. It goes thus: “A toddler who insists on preventing his mother from sleeping will surely not enjoy the serenity of the night rest”. This subtle axiom has its equivalence in English language. “A drastic problem requires a drastic solution”.

    Language is the root of all human cultures. It is the means of communicating thoughts, ideas and experiences. A people without language can be said to be without culture. Take a man out of his culture and he will immediately become like a fish out of water. His next action will be to rebel against the new but strange environment.

    That is the kind of situation that is cloaking the world in form of terrorism today.

    Language and Culture

    From time immemorial, language has been like a double edged sword. At a time it is used to attack. At another, it becomes an instrument of defence. Concord and conflict as well as love and hatred emanate from the use of language. Without language, there can be no marriage or divorce. Neither can there be business or even government. As a matter of fact, no tribe or nation can lay claim to civilisation in the absence of language.

    In Islam, language is everything human, including life and death. That is why a stammering prophet like Musa (Moses) would need an interpreter like Harun (Aaron) in his mission. Buddhists, Hindus, Judaists, Christians and Muslims, all proclaim Holy Books in one form or another, through their endowed languages. Not only must a prophet possess the power of language, he must also be eloquent in it. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) recognised the enormous power naturally embedded in language and warned the Muslims thus: ‘Tongue is like sword, if you fail to hold it, it may hold you”.

    A person’s first language is called mother tongue while a standardised dialect within a tribal language is said to be ‘received’. If there is one aspect of culture that is not substitutable, it is language. The greatest havoc ever done to any group of people in history, especially through slave trade and colonialism, is language substitution. Nothing is more enslaving than substitution of language. Once language is renounced or substituted, nothing else is left of culture. The black citizens of the world, outside Africa, otherwise classified as Diaspora, are victims of this indelible psychological trauma.

    There are only four countries in the world today with English language as their mother tongue. These are Britain, the United States, Australia and Ireland. What would have been the fifth country is only partially English speaking. And that is Canada. All other countries that speak English as lingua franca only adopted it. Believing English to be the language of modern civilisation, the rest of the world have tacitly adopted it either as a lingua franca or as language of business. Yet the natural speakers of the language don’t seem to be satisfied with this development.

    Evil Axis

    With the role which America played in bringing an end to slavery in the 19th century, the world had expected the self-styled ‘God’s own

    Country’ to be the messiah of the modern age. But that expectation has turned forlorn. Rather than championing the course of peace and tranquility, America has replaced Germany as the greatest threat to humanity in the 21st century. And she has found an inseparable ally in Britain to form an ‘Evil Axis’ of untamable aggressors.

    Both English speaking countries had jointly piloted the modern world into a technological civilisation culminating in what is now known as global village. But they have used the same technology to turn themselves into ‘policemen of the world’.

    There is no part of the world today where a suffocating effect of their presence is not felt. Like a pair of scissors, both countries have jointly subjected many nations and races to untold terror and humiliation forcing countries to disintegrate and compelling friendly tribes to become foes all to further the course of their capitalist interest. Thus, they have planted the seed of terrorism in all corners of the world either in the name of capitalism or under the disguise of democracy.

    In the process of doing this, they have drawn the wrath of many nations, groups and individuals who now tend to react with venomous reprisal. If the militant liberators in Ireland or the patriotic defenders of motherland in Falkland are quiet today, it is not because they have been placated. The fact is that they have not got the power with which to demand for their rights. When they do, the situation may change.

    And, from Vietnam to Cambodia; from Panama to Korea, the feelings are the same. Even Germany and Japan which were de feated in World War II by the American-led Allied Forces in 1945, are still nursing their wounds. Isn’t it amazing that, 69 years after that devastating war, American and British forces are still stationed in those two countries under the cover of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Claiming to be maintaining regional security, these aggressive allies continue to lay siege on those countries despite throat-cutting reparation they had forced them to pay. Today, the entire Middle East is engulfed in a ceaseless turmoil at the instance of the ‘Evil Axis’, and the whole world has become hopelessly restive.

    Propaganda

    Now, using their propaganda machinery to bully the rest of the world, the US and Britain have almost succeeded in branding any revengeful reaction to their brigandage as religious terrorism. What is the religious connection in Britain’s claim of the Falkland Island far away in Argentina? What is religious in America’s capturing of the ruling President Noriega of Panama in his country and taking him for trial in the US where he was jailed and had to languish in prison for years? What is religious in forcing monolingual countries like Korea and Cambodia to break into North and South? What is religious in invading Iraq even after it became evident that the poor country was not harbouring any deadly weapons as alleged? What actually qualifies the US, Britain and other Western countries to be nuclear powered and disqualifies others?

    Even if a country chooses to use religion as her guide in governance as in the case of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran how does that affect Britain and the US thousands of miles away? Is Northern Ireland not a Christian country like Britain? Why the aggression against that country? And is Britain not using religion as an instrument of governance? Why does the Queen of England combine the two designations of Head of State and Head of the Church of England?

    If the truth must be told, the real problem of the world today is the greedy willingness of Britain and America to dominate the economy of other countries in a manner of brigandage. And that has led the duo to adopt military might as a means of cowing down some countries while subjecting others to terrorism.

    It is rather unfortunate that those who are bearing the brunt of the evil actions are innocent people going about their businesses legitimately. Otherwise, neither America nor Britain would have deserved any sympathy for the various terrorist attacks on certain targets in the two countries. Their plight would have been taken for merely reaping the fruits of their labour.

    Religion is being used as a scapegoat in the world today, not by Afghanistan or Ireland, but by Britain and the US because that is their most convenient alibi for unbridled aggression against weaker countries.

    Who wants to die?

    No one loves to die deliberately in Palestine or in Iraq or in Afghanistan or in Ireland. But when you are forced to live without essence, the tendency is to ask yourself the need to live at all. And, to answer such a question some people might desperately conclude that if they must not live, those who are forcing them to die must also not live. “Man is not innately wicked, but when an attempt is made to consign him to the scrap-heap he shows resentment in no uncertain terms”. Terrorism begets terrorism. But what is one nation’s terrorism is another nation’s heroism. And it is the innocent world that will pay the price of peace. Unfortunately, what Nigerians know how to imitate most is evil machinations of other countries. That terrorism has become a conundrum in Nigeria today is an evidence of this assertion. But one fact is very clear about terrorism. It is incontrovertibly a product of corruption and the latter is a bigger terrorism. Those who want to end terrorism therefore must first endeavour to end corruption.

    Allah warns against corruption and the acts of brigandage in chapter 8:25 of the Qur’an thus: “And guard against calamity that may afflict not only the wrong doers (but even the innocent ones among you). Know that Allah’s punishment can be very severe”.

    Solution

    How can we change this evil trend? This, perhaps, is the new reality which dawned on the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, when he was about to exchange baton with his predecessor, Tony Blair, some years ago. In a chat with Labour Party members in Manchester shortly before he assumed office as Prime Minister, Brown said he recognised the fact that global extremism could never be defeated by military force alone.

    His words:

    “Our foreign policy in the years ahead will reflect the truth that to isolate and defeat terrorist extremism now involves more than military force….it (terrorism) is a struggle of ideas and ideals that in the coming years will be waged and won for the hearts and minds here at home and around the world”. Many well-meaning, foresighted Nigerians have drummed the same warning to the ears of Nigerian government. But a government that is wiser than its subjects will never heed such a warning.

    When he was making the above statement, Brown never thought that Britain would soon come under a new terrorist attack. But just a few days after that famous speech, Glasgow Airport became a target of terrorist attack. And that was on the very day he formally assumed office as Prime Minister. What became clearer especially with September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, was that no country is actually immune to terrorist attack.

    History has not cited a single example of terrorism which was conquered on the battle field. Thus, since no power on earth can claim to have monopoly of terror peace would better be achieved by sharing the wisdom of others through dialogue in ending terrorism.

    Reality

    That is the reality to which the West, especially Britain and the US, had deliberately been blind. If that reality now becomes the spectacle with which the West wants to view the world, then, peace may return to its rightful place as the reigning force of human universe. But then, the idea of manufacturing and supplying weapons to some people against others will have to stop permanently.

    The religious world was once peaceful until America renounced her policy of isolationism in 1945. It took that country to join Britain in using the Press to invent labelling names and acronyms to derogate certain religions (particularly Islam) and demoralise their adherents.

    The misfortune in this which the world is yet to realise is that every religion is built on the foundation of culture.

    Therefore, no religion can be attacked to the exclusion of its culture. And nothing in the life of man is called civilisation outside culture. That is why some people are ready to die when their religion comes under a violent attack from those who are ignorant of it.

    The Greeks, the Romans, the Assyrians and the Persians of the ancient world did not fight wars because of religion. Their motives were material but today they have all gone into irreversible oblivion.

    Those of today will eventually follow their way. Materialism is nothing but vanity which is invariably ephemeral. That is why Prophet Muhammad (SAW) or any of his disciples never crossed swords with Christians when they were alive.

    The very first international wars fought for religious reason which by necessity pitched Muslims against Christians were the Crusade Wars.

    And these were caused by sheer miscarriage of information. Yet, about one thousand years after those unwarranted wars, their scar still remains indelible in the world today.

    Violence on the basis of religion can terminate lives. It can destroy properties and ruin cities and towns as well as cause dislocations and relocations of people and settlements. But it can never win hearts nor change conviction. Truth is bitter and thus abhorrent to people of falsehood. But no matter how much it may be suppressed, Muslims are ready to join other oppressed people of the world in welcoming a new initiative from the West with a view to forging peace for all and sundry.

     

  • Enough is enough

    Enough is enough

    Indeed, only Allah knows the Hour (of death); He sends down the rain and knows what is contained in the wombs (of prospective mothers). No soul knows what it will earn tomorrow; no soul knows in what land it will die or be buried. Indeed, Allah alone is all-Knower and He is well acquainted with all things”.  Q. 31:34.

    Cries! Wailings! Tears! Sorrow! Those are the appropriate words with which to describe the tragic occurrence in Nyanya area of Abuja, last Monday morning, which fortuitously put the whole country on the extreme edge. The place was a popular motor park in the suburb of Abuja city. Like a devastating earthquake, a single bang of bomb blast erupted from devil’s own enclave and instantly sent scores of innocent people, including women and children, to the world beyond without any prior premonition.

    And when the electronic waves, especially the cable networks, throbbed with the sad news, the entire world shivered restlessly in frightful perplexity. The displayed pictures of the scene did not help the matter. It was indeed a devil’s day of action.

    But Oh God! Why this again? That was the common question on the lips of millions of Nigerians. Given that situation and its sudden occurrence, it became impossible to know the casualty figure immediately as families, friends and relatives trooped to the scene to look out for their beloved ones. But when the dust settled later, conflicting figures began to emerge from different sources. Some put them as 150, some said called them 200 and others estimated them to be 140. But the official figure which many Nigerians did not believe was 71.

    The fortuitous news of the misfortune simply mirrored the fang of destiny and precipitated untold agony across the African continent.

    The Global Mobile System (GSM) became unusually busy as parents, relatives, friends and business partners in Diaspora started to call in order to know whether or not their beloved ones were affected. All these were greeted by lamentations in the semblance of medicine applied to the corpse of a lifeless body. The rest is a story not meant for today.

     

    Irony of life

    If life is said to have an irony, this implacable tragedy is a typical example. Or how can one explain the situation whereby people who were innocently in pursuit of their daily bread; parents who were taking their children or wards to school; wives who saw off their travelling husbands to the garage; husbands who went to ‘drop’ theirs wives at the garage where they could join the buses that would convey them to their offices and newly employed youths who were going to resume work for the first time; all just fell to the claw of one destiny unplanned?

    Later in the day, it dawned on some parents who were expecting their children back from school that they had seen the last of them when the latter were going to school in the morning. Bachelors and spinsters who left home with the key of their rooms in their pockets would have the doors to those rooms broken after their demise. What a nightmare!

    What a dramatic turn of event! And the agents of Satan who precipitated that evil act would lurk in some corners to laugh away the agony of their victims not knowing what agony is awaiting them too. Our tears, our sorrow and our lamentations can only express our feeling. They can neither replace the lost lives nor bring restitution to their relatives. No amount of money can compensate for a lost life.

     

    Natural demarcation

    The demarcation between life and death is like the diaphragm between the  thoracic and abdominal cavities. It takes only the grace of Allah for that diaphragm to sustain the natural but mysterious demarcation that keeps man intact until the otherwise happens. Death, like birth, is a divinely scheduled programme in the life of man. It is a phenomenon specially shrouded in mystery. The circumstances that precede death are beyond the predictions or permutations of man. They cannot be foretold except by sheer deception. Every soothsayer will die with his soothsaying and no atom of the world will feel his exit.

    Kings die as much as slaves. Masters die as much as servants. And all together will lie helplessly beneath the earth without distinction.

    Because of its invisibility death is known only to the living as no dead person ever knows what has happened to him even as he cruises ahead in his dream-like sojourn to an unknown destination. The painful lamentations that follow the death of a person by his relatives and associates can never remedy that natural occurrence. Times and places may be different, but we shall all join the train of death one day.

     

    Parable of coffin

    From the very first day of man’s conception in the mother’s womb, a parable has occurred in his life. That parable is of a coffin. When a child is perfectly pearled in the womb of a mother, it hardly occurs to anybody that what we generally call pregnancy is a coffin in which the child lives all alone to enjoy the naturally provided facilities.

    While there, he knows neither the source of those facilities nor his next destination. But when he is eventually delivered into the world he feels ejected from the home of pleasure and cries out profusely in protest. Yet, it is that cry that gives assurances and comfort to those who usher him into the world.

    Yes, the world, in the eyes of sheer mortal beings, is quite large.

    But it remains a coffin for everybody as its large size is only to enable it to accommodate as many humans as possible which a woman’s womb cannot contain. Even as small as the womb of a mother is it sometimes accommodates two or three or four or even more children to confirm the concept of coffin in which man lives. Just as twins or triplets or quadruplets or even quintets are born on the same day and into the same hands so do people randomly die in singles or doubles or multiples sometimes at the same hour and at the same place even if they never knew one another.

    We only ignorantly move about in our individual coffins of life and behave as if the pendulum of death has nothing to do with us. And when the unexpected occurs the remembrance of whence we emanated or wither we are bound is completely lost on us. The entire planet called the earth is nothing but one big graveyard in which billions, even trillions of people had been buried through the millennia. There is no single piece of land (even one foot) on earth that has not served as a grave in which skeletons of humans have been buried. Yet the same earth keeps beckoning to us in drones, indicating that she still has space in abundance for those whose time is up for transiting from life to death. And as we had no say in the choice of the mothers who piloted us into this world so we have no say in the choice of that portion of the earth that will pilot us into the hereafter. Our world is a transit along the unknown journey that transforms us from the living to the dead. The choice of place and time of where death will occur are determined only by the Supreme Being who created us and will ask us for the account of our existence on this earth.

     

    Inseparable web

    Death is the inseparable web of life from which no man can escape.

    The time, the place and the mode are the factors that make it a mysterious phenomenon.

    Whenever we are inside or outside our residences we must be conscious that we are in a coffin.

    Whenever we are in a vehicle, in an aircraft, in a ship or a train, we must not forget that we are in a coffin. If that coffin has not been closed on us it is only because the time is not yet ripe for death to lay its icy hand on us. There is no armour against death. That is why the Almighty Allah says in the Qur’an thus: “Say, verily, the death from which you are fleeing is bound to overtake you and then you will be brought back unto Him who knows all that is beyond the reach of human perception as well as all that cannot be witnessed by a creatures’ senses or mind, whereupon He will make you truly understand all that you were brought to do in life”.  Q. 62: 8

     

    Experience

    Were an unborn baby to have a choice on whether or not to exit from its mother’s womb it would have preferred to stay put. But if the baby did not exit from its mother’s womb, how would it enjoy the pleasurable bounties of this world? This is the scenario which Nigeria’s first President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, gave a deep thought in the introduction to his autobiography (My Odyssey) when he wrote thus:

    “Man comes into the world and while he lives, he embarks upon a series of activities absorbing experience which enables him to formulate a philosophy of life and to chart his causes of action; but then, he dies; nevertheless, his biography remains a guide for those of the living who may need guidance either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as an example or both….”. Incidentally, Dr. Azikiwe was a journalist.

     

    Public reactions

    No sooner that the Nyanya tragedy occurred last Monday morning than reactions started pouring from all parts of the country and even the Diaspora. Many Muslim organisations and individuals reacted bitterly and expressed deep concern about what the issue of insecurity in becoming in the country.

    The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in particular issued a press release in which it expressed sadness and condoled with the families of the victims. Read the full text of the press release below:

    Enough is Enough

    For the umpteen times the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) is hereby lamenting and condemning the bomb blast that once again occurred in Nyanya, Abuja in which scores of innocent Nigerians were killed in cold blood.  For how long will these lamentations and condemnations continue in a country that is supposed to be guided by law is the capital question for now.

    We have a three tier government to which the citizenry look for protection and necessary provision of social amenities. Yet, feeling security look alien to an average Nigerian. Where is the place of loyalty and patriotism in this? Nigeria has consistently had a government in place for decades since independence (in civilian costume and military uniform) there has never been any difference. Is this a matter of carelessness or one of complacency? We need to ask ourselves where we are coming from and where are we going from here? Unless these questions are sincerely answered and the necessary decisions are taken at the appropriate time any hope of graduating from a country into a nation may end up in forlorn.

    Today’s precarious experience is not peculiar to Nigeria. Some other countries have passed through similar experience in their history. The only seeming difference is that while others were very serious in tackling such a horrible situation, the required seriousness is conspicuously absent in our own case. We prefer to pass the bulk even where bulk passing serves no purpose. It is strange that in a country which claims to be civilised is still applying an 18th Century solution to a 21st Century problem and yet expecting a deserving result. Treating the effect of an ailment while ignoring its cause as Nigeria seems to have been doing in the past three years is like scratching a monster on the head.

    While we do not necessarily need to repeat here that security is not about bayonets and tanks alone we are constrained to warn that with the current situation, Nigeria may have become engaged in a war of attrition with criminals who may have undisclosed scores to settle with country. And such a situation will rather require strategy and wisdom than military might to be tackled. We have lost enough lives to those who do not value their own lives let alone those of others.

    There is enough evidence to show that the same strategy used in the past three years has become obsolete for the problem at hand and it must be urgently changed.

    Condoling with victims of terrorism now and then can never proffer solution a seemingly insuperable problem like the one currently faced by Nigeria. Enough of losing lives of women, children and innocent Nigerians without any hope for a better option.

    As usual, we painfully condole with the families of the victims of this latest tragedy and all Nigerians who are directly or indirectly touched by the devastating effect of that tragedy believing that another one will not be allowed to occur soon. We pray the Almighty Allah to spare this country of a calamity which may not consume only those who wrought it but also the very innocent ones who know nothing about it. God save Nigeria for us and for those coming behind us.

    Amen!

  • Service or servitude?

    My service to my people is part of the discipline to which I subject myself in order to free my soul from the bonds of the flesh…For me the path of salvation leads through the unceasing tribulation in the service of my fellow countrymen and humanity”.

    Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948)

    The above quoted statement by the late Indian Statesman, Mahatma Ghandi, epitomises patriotism in all its ramifications. However, it requires life, hope and sincerity of purpose to be so dedicatedly determined. Perhaps, if Ghandi had been a Nigerian he would have made such a statement with reservation and that is if circumstances of life would ever permit him to make it at all. This indicates that an Indian of Ghandi’s status and intent might be an aberration in Nigerian environment. Detailed analysis on this may be left for another day.

    About a year ago, (precisely May 22, 2013), the compulsory National service scheme in Nigeria generally known as National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) was 40 years old. It was another time for the federal government to roll out drums characteristically in celebration of the occasion with pump and pageantry. And the cost, as usual, was though not disclosed, must have run into billions of naira. From that jamboree, new millionaires must have emerged while bank accounts of some government officials must have swollen beyond imagination. Yet, we are fighting corruption tooth and nail.

    The Value of 40

    Forty years is universally acknowledged as the age of maturity. It is the age of mature reasoning when man is expected to handle matters with little supervision. It is the age at which the mistakes of the adolescent years are corrected. Incidentally it is the age at which every Prophet of Allah except Isa (Jesus) was commissioned to deliver Allah’s message to mankind. Any man at that age who can still not think before acting is called ‘a fool at 40’. Ditto a government or a nation.

    The establishment of the NYSC scheme by the military government under the leadership of General Yakubu Gowon was not fortuitous. With the promulgation of Decree 24 of 1973, the scheme was established on May 22 of the same year not only as a demonstration of the government’s genuine intention to fulfil the regime’s post civil war policy of ‘Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation’ (otherwise called three ‘R’) but also to accelerate the country’s socio-economic development as well as to foster national unity and integration.

    Purpose of NYSC

    The Scheme was charged with the responsibility of mobilising, deploying and administering Nigerian Youths who must have graduated from tertiary institutions. Their duration of compulsory national service was scheduled to be one full year during which they are to be groomed for leadership. The objectives of the Scheme which compel the youth graduates to serve in States other than those of their origin are as follows:

    1. To inculcate discipline in Nigerian youths by instilling in them a tradition of industry at work and of patriotic service to Nigeria in any situation they may find themselves

    2. To raise the moral value of Nigerian youths by providing them with the opportunity to learn about higher ideals of national achievements as well as social and cultural improvement

    3. To develop in the Nigerian youths the attitudes of mind, acquired through shared experience and suitable trading which will make them amenable to mobilisation in the national interest

    4. To enable Nigerian youths acquire the spirit of self reliance by encouraging them to develop skills for self employment

    5. To contribute to the accelerated growth of the national economy

    6. To develop common ties (among Nigeria youths) geared towards the promotion of National unity and integration

    7. To remove prejudice, eliminate ignorance and confirm, at first hand, the many similarities among Nigerians of all ethnic groups and

    8. To develop a sense of corporate existence and common destiny of Nigerian people

    The Cardinal Points

    There were four cardinal points upon which the scheme is based. These are Mobilisation, Orientation/ Induction Course, Primary Assignment/Community Development Services (CDS) and Winding Up/Passing Out. Through these cardinal points the scheme mobilises Nigerians below the age of 30 years who are graduates of Universities, Polytechnics and (initially), Colleges of Education for a one year national service in any part of the Country. Such qualified Nigerians are given an instrument of mobilisation otherwise known as Call-Up letter which shows the state in which to serve and other particulars relating to the prospective Corps members.

    Also, a three weeks training programme primarily designed to prepare corps members for the one year national service is provided and the training takes place in venues called Orientation Camps located in all the States of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

    The orientation course provides a platform for interaction among Nigerian Youths of diverse backgrounds and inclinations. Then, at the end of the Orientation exercise, corps members are posted to serve in both the public and private sectors. During this period, they provide skilful assistance in meeting the much needed man-power in the rural and urban Communities. The corps members are distributed to all the communities which now make up the 774 Local Government Areas in the 36 states of the Federation plus the Federal Capital Territory.

    In addition, a Community Development Scheme was designed to be carried out by the Corps members along with their Primary Assignments. The CDS was planned to bring development to the host Communities through the activities of the Corps members for whom a day was set aside in a week to carry out Community Development initiative based on community need and to provide a platform for sustainable development in active cooperation of host communities.

    Finally, a winding up/passing out programme was designed to draw the curtain over the service year and bring the corps members together once again to enable them share their experiences during the service year and deliberate on their individual future agenda. This is an opportunity for most corps members to exchange contact addresses and thereby establish permanent relationships. Thus, from such relationships, intertribal marriages and business partnerships emerged. The scheme remains one of the greatest achievements of General Yakubu Gowon’s regime as Nigeria’s military Head of State.

    Policy Formulation

    At the time of formulating the NYSC policy, Nigeria was still a country plagued by a myriad of problems generally known with underdeveloped countries such as poverty, mass illiteracy, acute shortage of high skilled manpower (coupled with most uneven distribution of the skilled people that are available), inadequate socio-economic infrastructural facilities, terrible housing shortage, lack of water and sewage facilities, roads, healthcare services, and effective communication system.

    Faced by these almost intractable problems, which were further compounded by the burden of reconstruction after the civil war, the government and people of Nigeria set for the country, fresh goals, and objectives aimed at establishing a new Nigeria from the debris of the old. The aim was to build a united, strong and self-reliant nation; a dynamic economy; as well as open opportunities for all citizens in a free and democratic society.

    It must be remembered that only six Universities existed in Nigeria by that time. These were the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; University of Ibadan, Ibadan; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; University of Lagos, Lagos, University of Ife, Ile Ife and University of Benin, Benin City. All these Universities, except University of Ibadan, (which was left behind by the colonialist as a national heritage) were forcefully acquired by the federal military government from their regional owners. And the inadequacy of needed manpower supplied by these Universities warranted the inclusion of graduates of Higher National Diploma (HND) from Polytechnics and later, the holders of National Certificate of Education (NCE). (The latter was however excluded with time when more Universities and Polytechnics emerged).

    These universities and other institutions of higher learning are normally expected to serve as training grounds for future leaders, besides being committed to the advancement of learning and knowledge as well as training of people for good citizenship. Perhaps the deviation experienced from this expectation led to the accusation levied by members of the public against the products of those institutions of being too elitist in their outlook and of not identifying with the plight of the common man by appreciating the predicament of the vast majority of the citizenry who live in the rural areas.

    Besides the reasonable policy of emulating compulsory national service from some civilised countries, the year 1973 symbolised the foundation of many great thoughts that would have made Nigeria a great African nation. That was the year in which Nigeria could be said to have gained economic independence by changing the national currency from pounds and Shillings inherited from the colonial masters to Naira and Kobo. It was also the year in which Nigeria’s oil boom began.

    Corps members were paid a monthly stipend of N100 which was only a little less than the new salary of a fresh University graduate at that time. That stipend was not to be increased until the 1980s when inflation began to force the corps members to agitate for more. And for most of the 1980s the stipend paid to corps members was not more than N200 per month. It was only in the 1990s that the stipend attracted some major reviews. And besides the stipend paid by the federal government states and private companies also paid some token to those deployed to them for service in addition to accommodation provided. This is no more the case today. Corps members are now deployed at their own expense. The idea is that they should bear all their expenses from the N19500 or thereabout paid to them monthly.

    Irony of Life

    Ironically, some so-called former militants of the South-South who are virtually illiterates without any skills and are not engaged in any job are paid N60,000 per month for doing nothing other than laying down their weapons of vandalism. The implication of this is that any youth who wants to share in the federal government’s largess can go vandal and then negotiate with the government for a regular monthly fee in lieu of vandalism. Those who are being forced to serve their country for paltry monthly N19,500 are University graduates. And those who are paid N60000 per month for doing nothing are stark illiterates. Yet after one year of compulsory service by those corps members, there is nothing for them in terms of job even while the ex-vandals will continue to enjoy their largess of N60000 per month. What an irony? What a country?

    Apart from preparing corps members for formal post graduation jobs and managerial administration in theory, NYSC is also supposed to serve as a major employer of labour by opening doors for many job seekers to be employed across different cadres. But is this the case now? There are hundreds of thousands of University graduates who have served their fatherland only to end up loitering around and riding motorbikes on commercial basis. Is this how to develop a nation? If University graduates are rendered so useless in a country where sheer mediocre are glorified what future is expected of such a country?

    The year 1973 in the history of Nigeria can be called the turnaround year. But how much of that turnaround was utilised for the benefit of the country is a different question.

    During the celebration of the 20th anniversary of NYSC scheme the need to reassess and upgrade it arose. Thus, Decree 51 was promulgated on June 16, 1993 to replace Decree 24 of 1973 with which the scheme was originally established. The aim of the new Decree was to look beyond the immediate present and think of the future leadership of the country for which the corps members were being groomed. This was done with a view to giving them the proper guidance and orientation relevant to the needs of the country. But now, 20 years after the new Decree, where is the result?

    Deep down in the hearts of the formulators of the NYSC policy the scheme was primarily to inculcate in Nigerian Youths the spirit of selfless service to the community, and to emphasise oneness and brotherhood of all Nigerians, irrespective of cultural or social backgrounds. The history of our country since independence has clearly indicated the need for unity amongst all our people. And, looking at the scheme retrospectively, it is evident that its real effect is vivid not only in the understanding of the cultural settings of certain tribes by corps members from other tribes but also in the settlements of some of those corps members in some parts of the country which, hitherto, could never have been in their dreams.

    Pertinent Questions

    Now, over 40 years after the commencement of this visionary scheme how much of the country’s objectives have been achieved? Does the scheme truly remain a national service that it was design to be or a servitude to a political clique called leaders? In its early days, NYSC was the pride not only of the serving corps members and undergraduates looking impatiently towards their turn to serve but also that of the nation. Does that still obtain today? Has corruption not derailed the original purpose of that laudable scheme? Are the genuine graduates of Universities and Polytechnics not being replaced by ghost graduate as characteristic of Nigerian system? Are graduates qualified for the service not being delayed for a year or two to enable corruption thrive by bringing in hoodlums and political thugs at the expense of the nation? Have factors like nepotism and tribalism not crept into the scheme today? Have stories of embezzlement and other financial scams not disorientated potential corps members and devastated the zeal in them to serve their nation? And what has become of hundreds of thousands who have served in the past many years?

    Are Nigerian graduates useful for Nigeria today as originally planned?

    Is Nigeria really reaping the fruits of the NYSC scheme today? Should compulsory service to the nation be an end or a means to an end? And now that corps members are incessantly becoming sacrificial lambs either at the slaughter slabs of some barbaric elements in the north or in the dragnets of some brutal kidnappers in the East shouldn’t there be a review of the law guarding that scheme if only to safeguard humanity and civility? Should parents continue to lose their children at that level to barbarism and unwarranted brutality in the name of non-existing national unity? Some people sat down to plan the establishment of this scheme. Besides planning to embezzle money through its celebration what plan does the current government have for sustaining it and safeguarding the lives of the youths being compelled to serve the nation?

    Conclusion

    These and many other questions are begging for urgent answers from the current government while some elements in the government are getting richer by the day. If the pleasant past produced the agonising present to the benefit of a clique of misfits let no one assume that the agonising present will produce any hopeful future. The days of life are never the same in other countries. They cannot be the same in

    Nigeria.

    “Allah never changes the situation of a people (or a nation) until those people have sincerely repented and refrained from their iniquities”. Q. 13:11

  • Fake prophecy

    Fake prophecy

    There is something strange about prophecy which remains a puzzle to mankind. It is like the night which is invisibly pregnant but delivers wonders in the day. Genuine prophecy is neither by coinage nor by pretext. Its roots are firmly planted in the rich soil of divinity.

    And only Allah appoints prophets for an appropriate nation with an appropriate mission at an appropriate time. But this has been bastardised by self-styled prophets of the modern world who see prophecy as an umbrella of fortune under which they can hide to mine gold and silver. Such people only sooth-tell satanic dreams to their ignorant and parochial victims who are callously milked in the name of prophecy.

    Except for King Daud (David) and his son King Sulayman (Solomon) who were divinely guided to show the world how wealth is legitimately acquired and managed, no prophet of Allah was stupendously rich. This can be compared with today’s situation where prophecy is measured in terms of billions of dollars or naira at the disposal of fraudsters parading themselves as prophets. Today, prophecy in religion has been fully turned into a platform for preaching prosperity rather than posterity at the expense of godliness and humanitarianism.

    Genuine Prophecy

    It is not by clandestinely predicting the number of Kings who will die in a locality in the coming year or the governors who will lose their seats to opponents that a person can proclaim self a prophet. Genuine prophets are known not by words of mouth alone or amount of wealth they possess but by the exemplary actions that may serve humanity in good stead for many, many centuries. Prophets Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad (SAW) are good examples of this.

    Prophecy, therefore, is not to be judged on the basis of yearly predictions. Virtually all the religious tenets and regulations in Christianity and Islam today are reflections of the prophecies of the two great men mentioned above in the past two millennia or thereabout.

    In contrast, however, fake prophecy today is a product which finds a large market in Nigeria. Ignorant and parochial people queue up in multitudes before fraudsters with the intention of moulding their future to suit their wishes or solve insuperable problems. Such people are forced to carry out satanic instructions which eventually bring ruins to them and pave ways for those fraudsters to zoom into material fortune without any care for conscience. Most broken homes and criminal activities of Nigerian youths today are traceable to fake prophecies and insensitive display of wealth in Churches and Mosques in this country.

    Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had forewarned the Muslim Ummah, over 1400 years ago, against the calamity which false prophecy could bring to them. Addressing his disciples on a particular occasion, he said:

    “There will be calamity!” He repeated this three times. But rather than asking him of its cause, the disciples simply asked for the solution. They had no cause to doubt him. And he told them to look for the solution in the legacy he was leaving behind. That legacy is the rule of law contained in the Qur’an and Sunnah.

    Rule of Law

    The Prophet emphasised to them that nothing besides the rule of law would ever bring them the needed harmony in the world. He described the Qur’an as the all-time permanent solution to the various problems of all times reiterating that only individuals, groups or nations that hold it (Qur’an) tenaciously would never go astray.

    The Qur’an, according to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is the mirror with which to view the past retrospectively and draw a lesson from its experience. It is the effective compass with which to find the way in the hazy wilderness of the present. It is also the impeccable telescope with which to view the future. In other words, the Qur’an is an everlasting prophecy recalling the occurrences of the past, serving as the guidance of the present and tuning focus on the future.

    By asking the world to follow the rule of law in all their ways, the Prophet never aimed at rising from his grave to govern any particular nation or region of the world. Neither did he leave any heir behind who would inherit the governance of the world. His objective, according to the mission he bore, was for the world to be in harmony.

    And, it is only in the interest of mankind to uphold the rule of law for the sake of their harmonious co-existence.

    To marry according to the rule of law; to divorce, if need be, according to the rule of law; to raise families according to the rule of law; to transact businesses according to the rule of law; to play politics according to the rule of law; to give judgment according to the rule of law; to conduct elections according to the rule of law; to legislate according to the rule of law; to govern according to the rule of law, these and more are the elements of the mission preached by Prophet Muhammad (SAW). And, is there any individual, group or nation not affected by all these in the world today?

    Every aspect of life has its rule of law. We work in the day and rest in the night not by our own volition but in accordance with the natural rule of law that guide our existence. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West to obey the rule of law that controls its operations. Fishes live in water. Plants grow generically and are fed by their roots in obedience to the natural rule of law that governs them. Harmony becomes disrupted when deviation occurs in any of these.

    Carnivores like lions, vipers and eagles will never voluntarily feed on plants. Neither will herbivores like elephants, camels and goats, feed on flesh. To force them to do otherwise, in the name of experiment, is to cause disharmony in the animal kingdom.

    Cause of Disharmony

    The world is in disharmony today because of deliberate deviation from the rule of law by those in power. Stronger nations want to dominate weaker nations as in the case of America in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Governments want to enslave the governed as in the case of Nigeria between 1999 and 2014. Groups want to exploit individuals as in the case of the business elite and the consumers. It is all an evidence of dogs eating dogs in the stable of greed. Why won’t disharmony prevail?

    But Allah so much loves mankind that He does not leave them permanently in the hands of devilish pirates. From time to time, Allah sends conscientious individuals either as rulers or as counselors to rescue the oppressed people. That was the fortune of Nigeria when Umaru Musa Yar’Adua emerged as President.

    His insistence on rule of law first sounded odd to some lawless elements who took such stand for granted because they never experienced rule of law in Nigeria. But that is the blessing which our country needed as a solid foundation for a strong building. Rule of law is the first sign of sanity in a society. It is an evidence of decency in a people.

    Remembering Yar’Adua

    In beaming the light of rule of law on Nigeria, Yar’Adua was not a mere touch-bearer he also recognized the fact that one did not necessarily have to be governed by Shari’ah to abide by rule of law.

    What the Qur’an teaches which the Prophet emphasised is for everybody to follow the rule of the law by which he or she is governed. To do this is to follow the guidance of the Qur’an.

    If we had a President in Yar’Adua who could voluntarily return his annual security vote of about two billion naira to the national treasury because he did not see the need to spend it and he did not see it as a personal booty; if we had a President in him who could return the budget to the National Assembly for amendment because he felt it was unnecessarily inflated at the expense of the populace; if we had a President in him who could promptly react positively to the cry of the people on high cost of food items in the market, who could cause the price of cement to crash in favour of the downtrodden masses and suspend any increase on price of petrol indefinitely until his death, it was only because he had the fear of Allah at heart. Thus with him in power it was becoming crystal clear that Nigerians were beginning to appreciate the fact that harmony was truly in sight. And such great gestures which had eluded this country for a long time before he became President came to add greater values to the lives of Nigerians. Rule of law is about conscience and decency of character.

    It marks the difference between man and beast.

    If Yar’Adua did not achieve anything beyond establishing the rule of law in Nigeria that singular achievement was great enough for posterity. And what is more, he achieved much more by bringing a ray of hope to millions of Nigerians in less than two years of his leadership in a country where the sky had been dangerously cloudy. No sane person will sensibly compare sleep with death.

    Lost Paradise

    Prophet Muhammad never spoke in a vacuum. His utterances were divinely guided. And the Qur’an confirms this thus: ‘’He (Muhammad) never spoke out of sheer whim; his expressions are no other than inspired revelations; he is taught by the One who is mighty in power…”

    Nigerians of today have become like the Israelis of yore who after being rescued by Prophet Musa (Moses) from the scourge of Pharaoh, showed ingratitude to Allah and were thrown into the wilderness of life. Having suffered in the hands of a blind and deaf Nigerian Pharaoh for eight terrible years and having been liberated by an unexpected Moses, it only behooved conscientious people to be grateful not necessarily to that Moses but to God who used him for this divine gesture. The sharp difference between the road to hell and the one to paradise which Nigerians have experienced within one decade had shown how wonderful Allah is in His deeds. It also confirms the genuineness of Prophet Muhammad prophesy as attested in Qur’an 20 verse 124 thus:

    “When my guidance is revealed to you, he who follows it shall never err nor be afflicted; but he who gives no heed to My warning shall live in distress and be raised blind on the Day of Resurrection…”

    In his message to the nation on the occasion of Mawlidu-n-Nabiyy and

    Easter of 2008, President Yar’Adua appealed to Nigerians, with humility, to exercise patience with his administration saying there was need for thoroughness and decency to take off. He neither used any abusive language that was the hall-mark of his predecessor nor did he ask Nigerians to continue to bear the unbearable while his own family lived aristocratically.

    Having a man like him at the helm of affairs while he was alive was a special blessing of Allah which Nigerians only came to realize after his demise. And today, that reality is a lost paradise. The Qur’anic verse quoted above must always be a reference point for all decent, law-abiding people. From all indications then, there was a sign of light at the end of our tunnel. When one compares the governing style of today with that of yesterday and weighs the one with the other, it will be obviously realised that the difference is clear. It is impossible for a man to give what he does not possess. For both the rulers and the ruled the only panacea to Nigeria’s plight, especially in a situation where ordinary feeding has become a luxury, is the rule of law. Anything contrary may only pave the way to waterloo. For rulers and politicians, to rely on fake prophesy, as now prevalent in Nigeria, is to cling desperately to a sinking straw. Those who did it in the past are now part of the debris of history. The dreamers of today cannot be different tomorrow. Let those who have ears heed this axiomatic warning.

    “Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they change what is in their hearts. If He seeks to afflict them with a misfortune, none can ward it off. Besides Him, there is no protector (for any rational being).” Q.13:11. God save Nigeria!

    Watch Out!

    In an effort to rejuvenate the Nigerian Muslim Ummah educationally against the ongoing emasculation by the power that be, the Nigerian

    Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) has started a quarterly

    Magazine titled ‘Prime Renaissance’. The magazine being packaged by the Media Committee of the Council has a variety of issues that will serve the Ummah in good stead. And yours sincerely is its Editor-in-Chief.

    To know some details about the aims and objectives of the magazine, please read the opening of its maiden edition entitled ‘OUR MISSION’ below:

    Intention is a mission upon which every human action is based. This fact was emphasised in the very first Hadith of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in which he said that: “all actions are surely based on intention and everybody’s action shall be judged according to intention…”.

    The intention of this timely noble magazine is to genuinely carry out the three basic objectives of journalism: Information, Education and entertainment which have been grossly abused and even bastardised by agents of bias through the colouration of politics and religion. This modest effort is aimed at putting the records straight by bringing genuine, unpolluted knowledge and correct information to the teeming population of Nigerian Muslims and others who are desirous of genuine and undeniable facts and figures. And this is why the magazine is rightly titled ‘PRIME RENAISSANCE’….

    In the course of our publications, we intend not only to right the wrong in terms of information and education dissemination but also in terms of character building in our youths and harmonisation of the society, especially the Ummah, for the purpose of peace and tranquility.

    Thus, the activities of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic

    Affairs (NSCIA) as well as those of the regional or provincial Muslim organisations in the country will be projected and highlighted for the generality of Nigerian Ummah. Muslim women in Nigeria will occupy their rightful place in this magazine as much as the Muslim children, the handicapped, the underprivileged and the crème de la crème of Nigerian society.

    This magazine shall be purely religious in contents and in outlook.

    But religiousness here does not mean that such areas as politics, economy, social events and international trends will be non-Grata.

    Every aspect of human life is encompassed in Islam and none shall be compromised in this magazine for whatever reason. It is our mission to make this magazine a compendium of knowledge and genuine information that will serve as a worthy reference for generations of yet unborn Nigerian Muslims…

    With this unprecedented step from the apex body of Islamic Affairs in

    Nigeria, one of the hitherto missing points can be said to have been found. It is hoped that sustaining it should not be a problem. Readers, Muslim and non-Muslims alike, are welcome on board of this new ship as it cruises on the storming sea of this era.

  • Sheikh Lemu’s award

    Sheikh Lemu’s award

    A Nigerian of global recognition, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Lemu, an erstwhile Grand Qadi of Niger State and Chairman of Presidential Panel on Nigeria’s Post-Election riots in 2011, is one of the five winners of this year’s (2014) King Faisal International Awards. He won the Prize not only for Service to Islam but also in recognition of his efforts towards educational development particularly his defence of Muslim women’s rights as well as his initiative in combating religious extremism in Nigeria.

    Other winners of the award in various categories this year include: Prof. Gerd Faltings of Germany (for Science); Prof. Yuk Ming Dennis Lo of China/UK (for Medicine); Dr. Abdullah Ibrahim Allawi AlBussabah of Iraq (Prize for Arabic Language and Literature), and H.E. Professor Abdul Wahab Bin Ibrahim Abou Sulaiman of Saudi Arabia (for Islamic Studies). The monetary value of the prize in each of the five categories consists of the following:

    1. A hand written Diwani calligraphy certificate, summarising the Laureate’s work.

    2. A commemorative 24 carat 200 gram gold medal uniquely cast for each prize.

    3. A cash endowment of SR 750,000 (US$200,000).

    Co-winners in any category share the monetary grant. The Prizes are awarded during a ceremony in Riyadh Saudi Arabia under the auspices of the King of Saudi Arabia.

    Profile

    Sheikh Lemu who is Chairman, Council of Trustees, Islamic Relief Commission Office, will join other four other winners in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for the conferment of the award on Sunday, March 30, 2014. A devout Muslim, composed intellectual, and an advocate of moderation and open-mindedness, Sheikh Lemu is a member of several international Islamic organisations worldwide. He is the second Nigerian to win the prestigious award the first being the late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi who won the award in the same category in 1987.

    Sheikh Lemu’s legendary efforts towards enhancement of education, development and call to Islam are evident in his series of lectures, seminars and class tutorials. He has authored many Islamic books, pamphlets and school references thereby fulfilling a significant part of the needs of Nigerian community. He also serves as an important resource person for many Nigerian Muslim generations, helping them to understand Islam and to expand their knowledge of the religion.

    Sheikh Lemu is a frontline scholar playing a significant role in defending Muslim women’s rights an effort that culminated in the establishment of the Union of Muslim Women’s Societies in Nigeria and promotion of peaceful co-existence among the various religious and tribal groups against sectarian violence. It is also due to his effort that the Islamic Da‘awah (Propagation) Institute aimed at combating extremism was established. He has won several national and international accolades and prizes for his services to Islam.

    Lemu has a solid educational background in both Islamic and western systems. He started his career as a teacher under the Bida Native Authority and was at different times, principals of the School for Arabic Studies (SAS), Kano, and the Arabic Teachers’ College, Sokoto. He was appointed Grand Qadi of Niger State after the creation of the state in 1976.

    Born 85 years ago in Lemu, Niger State, Sheikh Lemu is a national and world acclaimed Muslim scholar and jurist. The President of the Minna, Niger State-based, Islamic Education Trust (IET), he is married to a British woman, (Aisha Lemu) who embraced Islam at his instance and also became an author of several Islamic books. The delegation to the occasion which will take place on Sunday, March 30, 2014 will be led by Nigeria’s Vice-President, Architect Muhammad Namadi Sambo.

    King Faisal Foundation

    The King Faisal Foundation was established in 1976 by the sons of King Faisal who was just murdered. The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Foundation is Prince Muhammed while its Managing Director is Prince Khalid Al-Faisal. The foundation is one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the world.

    The Arabian Peninsula now called Saudi Arabia consisted of two major components (Hijaz and Najd) which existed independently of each other until 1932 when the two were fused together by a Prince called Abdul Aziz Bn Abdur-Rahman Al-Saud who named it Saudi Arabia and became its first King.

    People had inhabited Hijaz and Najd since 15000 to 20000 years before the coming into existence of the modern state. But in the early 18th century, a Muslim scholar and reformer named Sheikh Muhammad Bin Abdul Wahhab began to advocate a return to the original form of Islam. For this, Abdul Wahhab was initially persecuted by local religious scholars and leaders who viewed his teachings as a threat to their power bases. He therefore sought protection in the town of Diriyah, which was then ruled by Muhammad Bin Saud.

    Both Muhammad Bin Abdul Wahhab and Muhammad Bin Saud jointly resolved to dedicate themselves to the restoration of pure Islamic teaching in the community. With that resolution, Bin Saud established the First Saudi State, which prospered under the spiritual guidance of Bin Abdul Wahhab, simply called Sheikh.

    By 1788, the Saudi State was already ruling over the entire Central Peninsula called Najd and by the early 19th century, its rule had extended to most parts of Hijaz, including Makkah and Madinah.

    However, the popularity and success of the Al-Saud rulers aroused the suspicion of the Ottoman Empire, the then dominant power in the Middle East and North Africa. And in 1818, the Ottomans dispatched a large expeditionary force armed with modern artillery to the western region of Arabia and besieged Diriyah, which by then had grown into one of the largest cities in the peninsula. Ottoman forces leveled the city with artillery and made it permanently uninhabitable by destroying all its social and economic means of living including wells and date palms.

    The Second Saudi State

    In 1824, the Al-Saud family regained political control of central Arabia and the then ruler, Turki bin Abdullah Al-Saud, transferred his capital to Riyadh, some 20 miles south of Diriyah, and established the Second Saudi State. During his 11-year rule, Turki succeeded in retaking most of the lands lost to the Ottomans and endeared his rule to his people by ensuring that they enjoyed fundamental human rights while enhancing their well-being.

    However, the established calm was shattered in 1865 by a renewed Ottoman campaign which sought to further extend its Middle Eastern empire into the Arabian Peninsula. Thus, faced by a much larger and better equipped army, Abdulrahman bin Faisal Al-Saud was forced to abandon his struggle in 1891. He sought refuge with the Bedouin tribes in the vast sand desert of eastern Arabia known as the Rub’ Al-Khali, or ‘Empty Quarter from where his family left for Kuwait to settle down until 1902. With him on that trip was his young son Abdulaziz, who was already making his mark as a future leader.

    The Modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    The young Abdulaziz was determined to regain his royal patrimony from Al-Rashid family which had taken over Riyadh and established a government there backed by an Ottoman garrison. Accompanied by only 40 men with implacable determination, AbdulAziz staged a daring night march on Riyadh to displace the city garrison known as the Masmak Fortress. This historic event marked the beginning of the formation of the modern Saudi state. And on September 23, 1932, the country was named the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, an Islamic state with Arabic as its national language and the Holy Qur’an as its constitution.

    The Prize award wing of King Faisal Foundation is dedicated to the support of intellectual development and knowledge. While announcing the names of 2014 winners of the award recently, the Chairman of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees said “Every day, in every corner of the (Saudi Arabian) Kingdom, we are working to build educational establishments to improve the lives of our people. This prize is an expression of that”.

    The yearly King Faisal International Prize is the Arab world’s most respected award, often referred to as the “Arab Nobel Prize” as many of its recipients have also received the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.

    The Foundation rewards individuals and institutions whose accomplishments are not only exceptional in their own right, but also make significant contributions to human knowledge and development.

    Memory Lane

    A mild drama occurred in 1987 when the late Sheikh Gumi won the Prize. Gumi’s award was announced barely six months after Professor Wole Soyinka won Nobel Laurel in September 1986. General Ibrahim Babangida was then in the saddle as President. The latter’s government and Wole Soyinka did not see eye to eye, before then, for many reasons. But when the award was announced, the government saw an opportunity in it to silence a chronic critic by appeasing him with a governmental largess.

    On the order of President Babangida, the then federal government quickly zoomed into action by arranging a large entourage to accompany the first black African Laureate to Stockholm where the award was to be conferred. The group was conveyed in a national air jet. All the expenses were borne by the government. And on arrival at the Murtala Muhammad Airport in Lagos, Wole Soyinka was met with the national honour of Commander of Federal Republic (CFR).

    Six months later, the King Faisal Foundation announced Sheikh Gumi as a winner of the Foundation’s prize thereby making him the first black African to win that prestigious award. At that point, the same federal government that rallied round Wole Soyinka decided to switch off and pretended not to hear of Gumi’s award winning.

    MKO’s role

    It took the singular effort of the late business mogul, Bashorun MKO Abiola to arrange for the reception of the award in Riyadh as he chartered a jet for that purpose. Abiola quickly invited some prominent Nigerian professionals, technocrats, clerics and academics (200 of them in all), to form a befitting entourage for Sheikh Gumi and he bore the cost. Abiola’s action was to prevent any feeling of rejection in Gumi as a Nigerian. Observing this obvious injustice, yours sincerely, then a journalist and a columnist in Concord as well as a Personal Assistant to MKO, decided put pen to paper and exposed the government’s hypocrisy querying its decision to favour a citizen and disfavour another on a similar issue in the same country where both were freeborn citizens.

    The article reverberated across the length and breadth of the country and sent jitters to the government even as the matter became the talk of the town. Sensing the implications of such a discriminating attitude, General Babangida’s government suddenly changed gear. An official message was sent belatedly to Abiola asking him to hands off the arrangement, saying the government was ready to take it over and bear its cost. But Abiola, a democrat to the core, would not take a unilateral decision on such a sensitive matter. He summoned his think-tank cabinet, including yours sincerely, to a meeting for deliberation on the matter and a consensus was reached that the government should appoint a delegation to meet with a private delegation from the plan already on ground to reach a compromise.

    The two teams met at the office a Colonel (name not remembered) who then served as secretary to the then military Chief of Staff at the old Senate building, Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos. Alhaji Liad Tella, (an editor in Concord and a member of MKO’s kitchen cabinet) and I were the chief negotiators. At the end of the meeting, it was resolved that the entourage be divided into two equally (i.e. 100 for the federal government and 100 for the private arrangement. The understanding was that the federal government would bear the cost of its nominated members while MKO would bear the cost of the private team). Yours sincerely was part of the entourage to Riyadh.

    Philanthropic Magnanimity

    Meanwhile, since 200 people had been invited for the Abiola team while the government came up with extra 100 nominees what would then become of those earlier invited with their passports already submitted for ticket and visa? This was a big question which also took MKO some time to answer. Abiola said since he had fully budgeted for the trip, it would be unfair to return people’s passport without travelling. He then announced that those who could not make the Riyadh list should proceed to Makkah for Umrah (Lesser Hajj) a decision that satisfied everybody.

    And on reaching Saudi Arabia, MKO just went ahead to cater for everybody not minding the list or the team they belonged. At least, nobody received less than $2000 from MKO’s personal pocket. Some people were even paid $5000, some received $4000 and some were paid $3000 depending on their respective status. We pray the Almighty Allah to bless the soul of both MKO Abiola and that of Sheikh Abubakar Gumi.

    Today, with a second Nigerian (Sheikh Lemu) winning the prestigious award, history seems to have rekindled its brilliant glow in favour of Nigeria and we are lucky to witness the fit. ‘The Message’ hereby joins all well-wishing Nigerians in congratulating Nigeria’s latest Laureate for achieving this exemplary glory and wishes him longer life with sound health and the best of AL—AKHIRAH. Amin!

  • The road to Moscow

    The road to Moscow

    Say oh Lord! The Sovereign of all dominions! You bestow power to whomever You wish and withdraw power from whomever You wish; You exalt whomever You wish and abase whomever you wish; In Your Hand lies all that is GOOD. You embed the night into the day and embed the day into the night; You bring forth the living from the dead and You bring forth the dead from the living. You grant sustenance to whomever you wish beyond all reckoning” Q. 3: 26-27

    Nights are pregnant. They invariably give birth to wonders during the days. All pleasant or sad events found in the records of history are often conceived in the night. The belly of nights is a mystery that cannot be easily explained through the success or failure of human dreams. Man is a mere spectator in the environmental drama going on in the theatre of life. He only reacts to that drama randomly as it affects his interest. The main actor in that drama is the phenomenon called destiny.

    Rein of Power

    In history, great empires and nations have reputation for rising to the peak of their glory at a time. They also have notoriety for falling unexpectedly to the abyss of life’s dungeon at another time when they might have reached the elasticity limit of their power wielding. And as it is with nations so it is with rulers. In this, what obtained in the past still obtains in the present. This confirms that humans are like flakes of history they rise today and fall tomorrow according to the dictates of momentary tempest. Yet the world surges ahead without looking back at them.

    There seems to be a striking similarity between the events and developments that precipitated the fall of the Union Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) and those prevailing in Nigeria today. The two countries may not have much in common but they significantly share a destiny that pilots their affairs separately. Like the defunct Soviet Union, Nigeria was forcefully fused together as a country in 1914 and subjected to the hegemony of the British colonial empire.

    This year, Nigeria is said to be 100 years old in theory. But in practice, she is still a teething country crawling with her many tribes and tongues towards an unstable boat with which she wants to sail across the rough sea of life.

    The Soviet Experience

    For the Soviet Union, the 74 years that lay turbulent between 1917 and 1991 can be described as the most electrical in the 20th century history. That period symbolised the nearest signal towards the end of human world. It was an era of blind ambition for mutual destruction between the capitalist West and the communist East of Europe through unbridled competition for unwarranted armament. It was an era that kept the existing historians of that time as busy as the bees in an active apiary.

    In those years, the competition between capitalism championed by the US and communism championed by the USSR was so fierce that the entire world was incessantly restive. It took only the grace of Allah to get our world propelled till date.

    That frightening ideological Cold War however took a dramatic turn in December 1991 when the world watched helplessly with amazement, as the great Soviet Union, suddenly crumbled like a pack of cards and amazingly disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. According to analysts “Its collapse was hailed by the West as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and an evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. The United States rejoiced as its formidable enemy was brought to its knees, thereby ending the Cold War which had hovered over these two superpowers since the end of World War II. Indeed, the breakup of the Soviet Union transformed the entire world political situation, leading to a complete reformulation of political, economic and military realignments all over the globe”.

    What led to that monumental historical event deserves a good study but it is of less concern here than its political implication for contemporary Nigeria. Going the memory lane, one may be recall that the Soviet Union was built on approximately the same territory as the Russian Empire of yore which it succeeded. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the newly-formed government developed a Socialist philosophy with gradual and eventual transition to Communism. The philosophy was intended to overcome ethnic differences and create one monolithic state based on a centralised economic and political system. However, this State built on a Communist ideology, was later transformed into a totalitarian state in which the Communist leadership had total control.

    However, the project of creating a unified, centralised socialist state proved problematic for many reasons some of which are as follows:

    1.The pioneer leaders underestimated the extent to which the non-Russian ethnic groups in the country (which comprised more than fifty percent of the total population of the Soviet Union) could resist assimilation into a ‘Russianised’ State.

    2.The central government’s economic planning failed to meet the needs of the State, which was caught up in a vicious arms race with the United States. This led to gradual economic decline that eventually necessitated the need for reformation.

    3.The Communist ideology which the Soviet Government worked hard to plant in the hearts of its populace, never took firm root because it was incompatible with the primordial economic culture with which people were familiar. Eventually, the government lost whatever influence it had originally wielded.

    The Gorbachev Debacle

    By the time the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, rose to power in 1985, the country had slipped into a situation of severe stagnation, with deep economic and political problems which required a ‘surgical operation’ to effectively confront and overcome. Recognising this situation on assumption of power, Gorbachev introduced a two-tier policy of reform. One was glasnost which meant freedom of speech; the other was perestroika meaning economic reform. And based on these, Gorbachev released many political prisoners in February 1987 and called for the blank pages of Soviet history to be filled. He also renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine saying the Kremlin would no longer intervene militarily in the Eastern Bloc’s internal affairs. This was closely related interpreted to mean that the states in the Eastern bloc would become economically self-sufficient. Glasnost was the cornerstone of alleviating Cold War tensions aimed at drastically reducing Soviet military spending and creating an international reputation of a liberal leader for Gorbachev.

    In doing these, what Gorbachev did not realise was that by granting complete freedom of expression to the people, he was unwittingly removing the carpet of governance from his own feet. This meant that he inadvertently awakened in the people the insatiable economic yearnings and political emotions that had been bottled up for decades and could now become powerful enough to burst the bubble. Unfortunately, his policy of economic reform did not bring the immediate results which he had envisage and publicly predicted. The Soviet, haven become aggressively impatient, seized the opportunity of their newly granted freedom of speech to criticise Gorbachev for his failure to improve the country’s economy.

    Thus, Gorbachev’s miscalculation led to un-foretold collapse of the Soviet Union at a time when some dozens of countries around the world were looking up to USSR for rescue from the claw of Western imperialism. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union with the intention of transforming the economy and easing Cold War tensions because he realised that the USSR could no longer compete with the United States in the Cold War arms race as its economy was far weaker than that of its rival.

    While surging ahead with his ‘Reformation Agenda’ of glasnost and perestroika coupled with liberalisation of the Soviet military might, Gorbachev did not realise that what actually sustained communism for a long time in Eastern Europe was the Red Army which he came neutralise. He strongly believed that with the implementation of his two newly formulated policies the USSR could allow the Warsaw Pact states to operate autonomously without the threat of Soviet military intervention even as those countries remained allies to the Soviet Union.

    Brezhnev Doctrine

    Hitherto, Gorbachev’s predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev’s policy towards the Eastern European Bloc, known as the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine,’ had forbidden any democratisation or economic integration with the West amongst Warsaw Pact states. And before Brezhnev, Joseph Stalin had also maintained the Eastern Bloc as Soviet’s satellite states through the threat of force. However brutal those previous policies looked, they were actually the cornerstone of the stability of Soviet’s Eastern Blocs. The main reason why the Eastern Europe remained communist and under the Soviet’s sphere of influence, was the use of the Red Army as an instrument of threat.

    By September of 1989 when Hungary opened its borders with Austria thereby paving way for East Germans to cross into West Germany through Austria it became obvious that communism was approaching its end. About eleven thousand East Germans thus fled the communist rule which indicated that a vivid anti-communist feeling had begun as people took to the streets to show their resentment. This culminated in the collapse of the Berlin wall on the 9th of November, 1989 and incident that eventually led to the unification of Germany and the collapse of communism.

    The West German population enjoyed a much higher living standard than that of the East, and therefore East Germany was willing to join West German governance. The East German thinking allowed the Chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Kohl, to reunify Germany under Western conditions. This meant a reunified Germany would join NATO and the European Community. Gorbachev planned on allowing cooperation between Europe’s capitalist and communist camps, but did not anticipate East Germany to join the capitalist camp outright.

    That historic unification prompted the then President George H.W. Bush of the US to openly proclaim, during a November 1990 speech in Paris, that the Cold War was over.

    Conclusion

    For Nigeria, there are many lessons to learn from the rise and fall of the Soviet Union which cannot be taken for granted. When the Bolshevik regime led by Vladimir Lenin zoomed to power like a hurricane in 1917, hardly was it envisaged that it would end the way it did in 1991. Like the defunct Soviet Union, Nigeria is now toying with the tail of a tiger through what is called National Confab. After a seemingly unwinding economic and political rigmarole, President Goodluck Jonathan decided to grab a blind bull by the horn. He suddenly announced on October 1, 2013, the readiness of his government to organise a National Dialogue that later came to be known as National Confab. The shoddy manner in which that announcement became experimented and the lopsidedness that characterised the selection of participants in it as well as the dictatorial tendency it entailed have since polluted the environment with a stench of suspicion.

    Two major factors, besides ethnic and religious, are particularly militating against the Confab at this material time. One is the current fragility of the country and the freezing tension of the coming 2015 general election. The other is lack of legal backing for it. The one is as dangerous as the other. And the multifarious protests and agitations against it across the country are a confirmation of this assertion.

    To continue to pretend not to see or feel the presence of a surging furnace behind a pervading fog is to be determined to sit on a keg of gunpowder. He who rides on the back of a lion must think of how to alight from it. A Nigerian Gorbachev at this precarious time may be too costly for our country. God save Nigeria.

  • The hornet’s nest

    The hornet’s nest

    This article was a reaction to an outburst of some Nigerian political demagogues aimed at strengthening the confusion in the land. It was first published in 2013 but has to be repeated here today due to popular demand by ardent readers. It went thus:

    “Conscience is an open wound; only the truth can heal it” Uthman Dan Fodio

    Nest, to the hornet, is a sanctuary. Whoever wants to stir it must be ready for painful sting. It was the words of Nigeria’s lotus eaters against those of the former American President, Bill Clinton, in Abeokuta, Ogun State, sometimes last year. When the latter opened up on the cause of insecurity in Nigeria, particularly concerning Boko Haram, hardly did he realise that he was stirring the hornet’s nest. As a man who knew because he was in a position to know, Bill Clinton openly identified poverty as the main cause of insecurity in Nigeria without minding whose ox was being gored.

    Commenting as a guest speaker on Nigeria’s insecurity at ThisDay’s awards ceremony, the former US President canvassed some ways by which Nigeria could effectively deal with Boko Haram insurgency and other forms of insecurity in the country. Among the ideas he suggested were poverty eradication, thorough education at all levels, equitable distribution of wealth and job creation for the nation’s teeming unemployed youths.

    Highlighting some desired programmes urgently necessary for curbing the spate of violence and general insecurity in the country, Clinton said: “You have to somehow bring economic opportunity to the people who don’t have it. You already have all these political problems — and now violence — that appears to be rooted in religious differences as well as all the rhetoric of Boko Haram and others, but the truth is that poverty rate in the North is three times that of Lagos”.

    Economic Management

    Counseling on the need to re-design the country’s economic management to the delight of all and sundry while pointing out that “too much inequality” was capable of limiting growth and opportunities among the citizens of a country, he stressed that only a redistribution of wealth would go a long way to address the prevalent violence and insecurity in Nigeria. He went further to say: “You have about three big challenges. First of all, like 90 per cent of the countries who have one big resource, you have a number of ways with your own money. It shows you have different ways. Now you are at least not wasting the natural gas, you are developing and selling it through the pipelines. You have to do better job of managing the natural resources…..”

    “Secondly, you have to somehow bring economic opportunities to the people who don’t have. This is not a problem peculiar to Nigeria. In almost every place in the world, prosperity is heavily concentrated in and around urban areas. So you have all these political problems for now even violence. There appears to be political and religious differences and now, the rhetoric of Boko Haram and all that. You have to build a powerful state and local governments as well as a national policy that works along. If you just keep trying to divide the power into loosening strategy, you have to figure out a way to devise a strategy that will help share the prosperity.”

    He then went further to advise that education should be used as a tool to tackle poverty among Nigerians, saying that if citizens were well educated they would be economically empowered and hence have less inclination towards violence. He opined that: “Nigeria, which earns billions of dollars from her oil industry and is a major supplier to the US, must not take a “divide the pie” approach towards attacking poverty”. He, therefore, advised that governments at all levels needed to tackle youth unemployment which, according to him, is a major source of instability across the world.

    Bill Clinton was not the first experienced international figure to make such truthful but painful comments about Nigeria and her style of governance. On January 27, 2010, the former US Secretary of State, Mrs. Hilary Clinton spoke in the same manner about Nigeria in Nigeria. And the reactions that followed her statement were not in any way dissimilar from those that greeted Bill Clinton’s statement last year. Incidentally, both Clintons are a couple but spoke differently and in different capacities. While the wife spoke in official capacity, the husband spoke in private capacity. But the coincidence in their speeches was not just in the similarity of their thoughts but also in the similarity of the reactions that greeted both speeches. Speaking in blunt terms at a “town hall” in a meeting with Nigeria’s State Department officials in Abuja Mrs. Hillary Clinton said:

    “….The most immediate source of the disconnect between Nigeria’s wealth and its poverty is a failure of governance at the federal, states and local levels … Lack of transparency and accountability has eroded the legitimacy of the government and contributed to the rise of groups that embraced violence and rejected the authority of the state.”

    Government’s Failure

    Nigeria, she continued: “Africa’s biggest energy producer and second-largest economy, “faces a threat from increasing radicalisation that needs to be addressed. Describing corruption in Nigeria as unbelievable, she reiterated that the government’s failure to deliver basic services helped foster extremism in young people…adding that: “The failure of the Nigerian leadership over many years to respond to the legitimate needs of their own young people, to have a government that promoted a meritocracy, that really understood that democracy can’t just be given lip service, it has to be delivering services to the people, has meant there is a lot of alienation in that country and others”. She lamented poor governance and deteriorating living conditions which she said made Nigeria’s disaffected young people ripe targets for militants looking for recruits to attack the West.

    Substantiating her assertion, Mrs. Clinton said, when she met with a group of Nigerians in the capital city of Abuja, “people were … standing and shouting about what it was like to live in a country where the elite was so dominant, where corruption was so rampant and criminality was so pervasive”. And “that”, according to her, “is an opening for extremism that offers an alternative world view”.

    Reaction

    However, in a spontaneous reaction, some members of the ruling party who were then in government virtually told Mrs. Clinton to shut up and mind her own business by leaving Nigeria alone. The resentment came through the mouth of the then Publicity Secretary of the party, Prof. Rufai Ahmed Alkali, who, in a swift statement, said Mrs Clinton’s remarks were baseless.

    He recalled that the ruling party had cause to comment on the relations between Nigeria and the United States, following President Barack Obama’s visit to Ghana, “which was viewed by some commentators as a slight to Nigeria”. In his words: “Although the ‘ruling party’ saw Mrs Clinton’s “visit to Nigeria as a further expression of the age-long strong cordial diplomatic relations between both countries, we are at the same time concerned that some of her remarks are not only way off the mark but also based on misinformation. Her sweeping statement on what she calls a ‘failure of leadership’ does not correspond with the reality of present day Nigeria where a committed leadership operating within the realm of the rule of law holds sway”.

    Professor Alkali said the ‘ruling party’ found Mrs Clinton’s “condescending statements against our country and leaders not contextualised,” adding that she “seems to have taken her briefs from individuals or groups and other failed politicians who have an axe to grind with the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”.

    He added: “It is a fact that the present administration inherited a lot of challenges that were entrenched in the body polity for a long time since assumption of office in May 2007, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has demonstrated a rare but firm commitment to right the wrongs of the past, using constitutional instruments in order to strengthen democratic governance in the country”.

    Despite leaving a bad taste in the mouth, Alkali’s statement did not bother Mrs. Clinton who knew Nigeria better than the respondent Nigerians. Her reaction was a reminder of a Yoruba adage which says ‘a dog that refuses to respond to the warning whistle of the hunter is surely destined to stray into permanent perdition’. If Bill or Hillary Clinton were a Muslim, some fanatics especially in Nigerian media, would have characteristically accused him/her of wanting to Islamise Nigeria just for telling the naked truth.

    However, to the great delight of reasonable and patriotic Nigerians, the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), in a statement signed by its President then, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN), said it wished “to align itself with the statement credited to the US Secretary of State the summation of which was that corruption, amongst other factors, has caused failure of governance in Nigeria”.

    “We cannot agree less and note that President Yar’Adua admitted that Nigeria was facing challenges in its war against corruption and bid to reform its electoral system, which has underscored failure of governance at the federal, state and local government levels,” it said, adding: “This intervention could not have come at a better time than now when agents of the government are on the prowl, deploying viciously the weapon of blackmail against the leadership of the NBA who has long identified this and continues to clamour for change”.

    He continued: “Secretary Clinton having reiterated the position of the Bar, it would, perhaps, not be out of place for those who are quick to stand logic on its head to satisfy greed, to conclude that the top diplomat, being a lawyer, must also belong to Action Congress or any of the opportunistic organisations dubbed parties.”

    Nothing Strange

    It is not strange therefore, that last year’s comments by Bill Clinton drew similar parochially partisan reactions from those who are benefiting directly from the ongoing rot in the country. It seems that politics in Nigeria is like an animal carcass on which idle vultures must feast without caring about the pollution which the odour there from would cause to the environment. Even a blind person can perceive the poverty in Nigeria or smell its odour. It is rather an added assault on the public to say that Mrs. Clinton in 2010 and Mr. Clinton in 2013 must have been briefed by certain individuals who were antagonistic to the ruling government. Such a statement could only have come from people of feeble minds who exemplified the ineptitude of Nigeria’s government of the time.

    On December 22, 2012, the Nigeria Muslim Forum, UK, held its 22nd Annual Winter Conference at Stamford Court University of Leicester. At the conference, retired General Abdur-Rahman Dambazau delivered a paper that electrified the Hall. The paper which was entitled ‘Poverty Alleviation, Security and Stability’ addressed the Nigerian situation from social, economic and political points of view. In the paper, he made the meaning of poverty clearer, using verified statistical indexes to buttress his arguments. The retired General also looked at the ranking of Nigeria on the poverty table which showed Nigeria as one of the 20 most poverty-stricken countries in the world; and the Northwest as the most hit and Southwest of the country as the least affected. Generally, the situation is by far worse today than it was then.

    “In his own contribution to the discussions the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Dr. Mathew Kukah, stressed that poverty was one of the main causes of intolerance in the society, which in turn often leads to conflict and insecurity. He said people react to poverty in various manners and that they respond to conflict in ways they feel would bring them justice. He also blamed the deterioration of the situation in Nigeria on injustice and warned that injustice would continue to breed violence in the country unless something was quickly done to ensure equitable dispensation of justice. He explained that diversity should be seen as an advantage to the society as it enhances growth, “although in Northern Nigeria the reverse is the case due to the failure to manage it well in view of the crises the region now faces”. He therefore advocated respect for human dignity as opposed to simply tolerating each other and significant boost to governments’ poverty alleviation policies. He also urged the Diaspora communities to lend financial support and contribute constructive ideas towards tackling the challenges in order to elevate the status of the country internationally”.

     

    Frank Talk

    In an earlier similar statement he made in January 2012 about Boko Haram and causes of insecurity, Bishop Kukah said inter alia: “We live in a state of ineffective law enforcement and tragic social conditions. Corruption has destroyed the fabric of our society. Its corrosive effect can be seen in the ruination of our lives and the decay in our society. The inability of the state to punish criminals as criminals have created the illusion that there is a conflict between Christians and Muslims. In fact, it would seem that many elements today are going to great extremes to pitch Christians against Muslims, and vice versa, so that our attention is taken away from the true source of our woes: corruption. As Nigerians, Christians and Muslims, we must stand together to ensure that our resources are well utilised for the common good. This is why, despite the hardships we must endure as a result of the strike, the Fuel Subsidy debate must be seen as the real dividend of democracy”.

    “Three, religious leaders across the faiths must indeed stand up together and face the challenge of the times by offering a leadership that focuses on our common humanity and common good rather than the insignificant issues that divide us. We therefore condemn in very strong terms the tendency by some religious leaders to play politics with the issues of our collective survival”.

    Rather than rallying our people, some of our religious leaders have resorted to divisive utterances, wild allegations and insinuations against fellow adherents of other religions. In the last five or so days, text messages have been circulating across the country appealing to some of our worst demons. We are told that many senior clerics either believed or encouraged the circulation of these divisive and false text messages. We must condemn this for what it is…..”

    With all these issues still prominent on the national table it may be interesting to ask a very vital question as the so-called National Confab is about to commence thus: ‘To what direction will the pendulum in the horizon finally swing? The answer may be provided in this column next Friday God willing.

  • Egypt for instance

    Egypt for instance

    Egypt has never been a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). She was not an oil producing country until recently. The main stay of her economy was agriculture which was well facilitated by her River Nile endowment.

    This North African Arab country was in economic mess in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her war with Israel had reduced her to a virtual beggar nation. Not only did her macro economy plummet, her micro economy also dwindled to the lowest ebb. No job for the rising army of highly skilful people and no income for the majority of the citizenry. Thus, the country looked like a famine- stricken one. The best residential houses were rented out to foreigners. And most vehicles on Cairo and Alexandra roads were terribly rickety.

    It took an ingenuous management by President Gamal Abdul Nasir and later President Anwar Sadat to device a means of bailing out the country from what could have amounted to self-genocide. With the meagre amount of money accruing to the nation from agriculture and manpower export at that time, the government was able to set up a food distribution centre in each ward where every family in the ward was registered.

    All varieties of foods, including meat, milk and eggs, were supplied to each family every week. And no family got less than what could suffice for one full week. The cost of those highly subsidised food were deducted from the salaries of those working while others were supplied free foods for survival. And to ensure that only the citizens benefited from the wonderful largess, the use of national identity card to qualify for supply was made compulsory.

    Security and patriotism

    This Islamic welfare business strategy did not only create a high sense of security in the citizenry it also spurred them to become die-hard patriots. With that strategy, Egypt was able to weather the economic storm of that time even as the war with Israel continued.

    What could have been a major problem for the ordinary Egyptians at that time was the education of their children. But President’s Nasir’s government had taken care of that since inception. A fundamental policy of the Egyptian government introduced by President Nasir was free education at all levels. That policy which Chief Obafemi Awolowo copied for primary education in western Nigeria had put Egypt far ahead of all African and Arab countries. The policy became profitable for Egyptian government when the going became rough.

    The country began to supply all other Arab countries their needed man power such as teachers, doctors, accountants, pharmacists, engineers, nurses, and administrators. These experts were officially deployed to those other Arab countries on three years renewable contract. And each deployed expert was made to remit about 35 per cent of his/her income to the government of Egypt monthly. Such remittances were not difficult to make since those expert were well paid. The remittances were made directly by the employers who deducted the agreed amount from the salaries of their employees. Thus, in those days, manpower generated from planned education was more profitable than today’s oil wells. Yet, countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates and others that benefited from the programme found the arrangements convenient because they did not need to employ interpreters separately as would have been the case if they had employed Americans, French, Germans and Italians for the same purpose. At least, based on Islamic principles, their languages and culture were almost the same.

    Social welfare

    With the provision of social welfare for the people, Egyptian government of the 1970s, led by the duo of Presidents Jamal Abdul Nasir and Anwar Sadat, was able to solve the problem of the three necessities of life: food, shelter and clothing. Not only that, the government was also very much aware that an idle hand was the devil’s workshop. It therefore provided soft loans for many university graduates to embark on small scale businesses that could boost the nation’s economy at the micro level.

    With this, it became possible for most of those fresh graduates to be self employed while aiming high to mount the economic ladder of life to the very top. Today, some of those businesses have grown into gigantic industries exporting their products to many countries, including Nigeria.

    If Egypt is not one of Africa’s poor countries today, it is because her government managed that nation’s economy to the benefit of her ordinary citizens, despite several decades of war with Israel. Compared to the industrialised nations, Egypt may not be called a rich country now, but her preparation for the future seems to be assuring her of a frontline economic position soon. Her unsurpassable investment on manpower through education is a confirmation of that.

    Industrialisation

    What obtains in Egypt equally obtains in most other Arab countries, especially those of the gulf. For instance, Saudi Arabia has always known that oil would not flow forever in her wells. Thus as far back as 1982, that country had diversified her economy by establishing two industrial cities of Yambu’ and Jubail, a project which the United states described as the most ambitious ever in the industrial history of mankind.

    Much more have since been put in place for the benefit of the future generations. And, travellers who have visited countries like Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Libya, Yunisia, Morroco, and Algeria will confirm that the future of global wealth will definitely be in the Middle East courtesy of the above mentioned countries. But the greatest assets of those countries are manpower which their free education programme is providing from primary schools through the University with impeccable foresight.

    Despite her limited natural resources, Japan has shown that no material wealth can equal education. And, the Arabs had learnt that lesson after centuries of derivation from what used to be the greatest Islamic heritage bequeathed to humanity.

    With the ongoing bulk-passing between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on remittance of the crude oil money and the ceaseless rampancy of oil theft at the highest government level can Nigeria ever learn any lesson from the above narration? Economic growth is neither by dreaming nor by empty promises.

    Shameless deception

    Long before now, a promise of economic leap was made in respect of year 2000. That year came to pass without any fulfillment. Then another promise was made in respect of year 2010. The year also came to pass without any fulfilment. Now it is the turn of year 2020 which will also come to pass in six years time. Haba! Is there no shame for the so-called rulers in Nigeria? The speedy economic train of the modern time waits for no crawling nation like Nigeria.

    Blind trust

    Long before the West knew anything about the term “blind trust” at all, Islam had educated the Muslims in details on that subject. The great religion had foreseen the possibility of manipulating this term to the advantage of the exploiters in certain societies and, had thus, forbidden it.

    In Islamic jurisprudence, “blind trust” simply means the transaction of business illegally between a seller and a buyer to the detriment of either of them. In this case, the buyer or seller may be an individual or a group. “Blind trust” is like a coin with two sides. In it, either the seller or the buyer can cheat. An example is a situation where a product is sold in a wrap without allowing the buyer to examine what he wants to buy before paying. This may occur in any sector of the economy. In agriculture for instance, it is forbidden to sell tubers like yam and cassava without uprooting them. Such a business is often done on a mere assumption, thereby putting either the seller or the buyer at a great risk and disadvantage.

    Blind trust may also occur in an ordinary market of quantity grains like rice, beans, millet, bally salt or groundnuts where and when the instrument of measure is manipulated with the intention of reducing the quantity of its contents while receiving the payment in full. Also, selling wrapped dresses or textile materials without indicating their sizes, yardage or fault may amount to “blind trust”. Even, those who engage in the sale of electronics without allowing the buyers to test the products before paying are trading in “blind trust”, which is illegal in Islam. In a nutshell, any business that entails some elements of doubt and does not allow for transparency is “blind trust” prohibited in Islam. And, anybody who is engaged in such a business is deemed to be a criminal. It must be remembered that the people of Madyan (Median) whose Prophet was Shuayb, faced with the wrath of Allah and became perished because of “blind trust”

    In modern times, the term “blind trust” has been given a new connotation through a new operation. Not only is the chain of business deliberately being elongated to allow for more middlemen and thereby create unnecessary inflation, the sale and purchase of public shares on behalf of some people without the knowledge of those people is being treated as a legitimate norm in capitalism.

    This is a concept now being arrogantly flaunted in Nigeria with a view to having one’s cake after eating it. “Blind trust” as operated in Nigeria today is not only a rape of the constitutional provision which demands for the declaration of assets on assumption of public office and prohibits conflict of interests, it is also an audacious way of telling the public that only ‘might is right’. Whoever wants to demand for equity must come up with clean hands. In Islam, there is no connotation for blind trust other than public theft. And whoever uses the rein of power to escape human justice on this fundamental injunction will surely answer the call of Allah’s justice sooner or later.

  • To Muslim parents

    Dear Muslim parents,

    Assalam alaykum wa Rahmatu Llah wa Barakatuhu!

    Preamble

    This is not a parents/teachers association meeting in which new school fees or new calendar year is often discussed. It is rather a meeting of positive and constructive minds over the most fundamental issue in the life of man. And it is to be moderated by the guideline divinely put in place in the name of ‘Al-Qur’an’ by the Almighty Allah.

    Your joys as parents are secret, so are your grief and fear. Hardly can you hide the one or openly express the other. Happy are those of you parents whose children are fortunate enough to tread the path of your divinely guided dream. And sorrow is the portion of those of you whose children are unfortunate to deviate from the rightly guided path. All of you will account either for what brings you joy or what pushes you into sorrow.

    Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had admonished on this when he said: “all of you (parents) are shepherds and all of you shall be asked to account for your herds”.

    Children are the most invaluable gift of Allah to man. They can neither be bought nor sold. Even adoption or exchange of children for money (otherwise called child slavery) is only a temporary act which will become a permanent question later. One day, the child will ask of his real parents or get to know that the foster parents who have been caring for him in life are not his biological parents. Then he will ask the permanent question: “whose child am I? This is why adoption of children in the Western sense is prohibited in Islam. You can only help to bring up abandoned or stranded children who are not biologically yours for humanitarian reason but not for the purpose of turning such children into your own.

    As a parent, you may give your biological or adopted children your love and your ideas but surely not your thoughts. Because they (children) learn more and understand better from what they see than from what they hear. Children of today have their own thoughts which you may never be able to take away from them or even alter. You may clad them in the best attire and house them in the most comfortable residences. You may send them to the best schools and endear them to a world of unlimited affluence. But hardly will you ever be able to influence their thinking faculty in any way.

    While you are busy interacting closely with their physical beings today, you will discover that their thought dwell in the abode of tomorrow which you can neither see in your dream nor perceive in your imagination.

    Children are a bundle of joy. But they can also be a load of grief. At least, they form the source of both in the life of man. No man or woman becomes a parent without first being a child. What is perceived as experience in any human being today sprang from the childhood pranks of some years past. And the cycle continues.

    Manual of Life

    Everything in life has its own manual. For Muslims the general manual of life is the Qur’an; that anchor message of Allah leaves no stone unturned in the life of man. In chapter 31 verse 13 of that divine Book Allah relays to us how Prophet Luqman counselled his son. The verse goes thus: “And (remember) when Luqman admonished his son saying: ‘My son, associate none with Allah, for associating something with Him is a grievous iniquity’…. (Go and know that) Allah will bring all things to light, be they as small as a grain of mustard seed or hidden inside a rock or even in the earth. Allah is all-wise and all-knowing”.

    “My son! Be steadfast in offering Salat; enjoin justice and forbid evil. Endure with fortitude, whatever befalls you. That is a duty incumbent upon you. Do not scorn fellow human beings nor walk arrogantly on land; Allah does not love the arrogant and vainglorious ones. Be modest in your gait and lower your voice when talking because the harshest of voices is that of the braying of an ass….”

    The above verses of the Qur’an are a good example of how Allah wants us to rear good human beings in every society by bringing up our children in exemplary manner. Prophet Luqman and his son were just used symbolically. Nothing concrete can be achieved in this without the fear of Allah which every parent is expected to preach practically to his or her children from the very early age as did Prophet Luqman. And the only concrete substance in life is what forms the visa with which man is admitted into the hereafter. The evidence of that substance in any man or woman is contentment.

    Elite Parents

    It is however unfortunate that most Nigerian parents, especially in the elite class, do not see life as a queue which ought to be followed scrupulously. They rather believe that any queue, at all, is a fool’s route to success where short cut must always be available.

    Those are the parents who create special class for their children right from birth. They show those children how superior they are to other children and tell them the category of children with whom they should be friendly not on moral but on material grounds. They provide for them what those children do not need. They take them to schools in very expensive cars and create in  them the impression that money is not their problem. Thus, when occasionally, their children refuse to ride in old cars brought for them by their drivers, the parents quickly apologise and send new cars to convey them from the same schools attended by some children of paupers.

    These are children who have never worked for one kobo in their lives. All they know is that money is abundantly available and meant for them to spend. They cannot fathom where the money is coming from and how their parents acquire it. And here are parents whose main source of income is stealing directly either by the use of pen in their offices or indirectly by deceit. With such dirty money, they sponsor their children in the most expensive schools abroad or at home. They follow them to school to grease the palms of their teachers to ensure that their children secure the required marks for promotion into the next class or certificates that will be used as meal tickets in life.

    It does not matter much to them whether or not those children understand what they are taught in school. What matters to them is the short cut that will ensure the passage of those children through the University as early as 19 or 20 years of age so that by the age of 23, such children would have become Chief Executives of banks or multinational companies in which they (the parents) had fraudulently acquired major shares. And, with that, the cycle of corruption would continue unabated in the family.

    Now, why wouldn’t such a brazing desperation pave way for mass cheating in school examinations and eventual monumental corruption in the society as now being experienced in Nigeria? Are the children to blame? What else is expected of them when you parents are prepared to buy anything for them including live examination papers? And the children of the less privileged parents would also want to take advantage of the terrible rot to succeed in life. Where such advantage is denied, they become desperate and plan to stand in the way of those who deny them. That is how criminal tendencies escalate in the society.

    Some of you parents often forget that no amount of fraudulent spending can make any child rich except by the grace of Allah. Today, where are the children of yesteryears’ moneybags?

    For such shallow-thinking parents the Qur’an has the following admonition: “Are they the ones who apportion your Lord’s blessings? It is ‘WE’ (Allah) who apportion to them their livelihood in this world; He exalts some in ranks above others so that the ones can take the others into their service. Your Lord’s mercy is better than all their hoarded treasures”. (See Q. 43: 32).

    Today’s World

    The misfortune or calamity afflicting the world today, especially, that of Nigerian society, is caused by the elite parents. Right from infancy, most children of the elite, particularly the white-collar jobbers, have been given the impression that they are born to be masters. And they behave as such at every stage of their lives.

    It all starts with unwarranted lavish spending on children’s birthday which have virtually become the past-time of those parents,especially women. Sometimes millions of naira is spent by parents to celebrate the birthdays of their children in a society where many families can hardly afford one meal per day.

    The implication of this is that such spoilt children are being practically taught how to spend money without being taught how to make money. And by the time they grow up, they would have been fully used to easy money while the parents would have then forgotten how they initiated the innocent children into the world of corruption through stupendous extravagancy.

    Today, what used to be ordinary examination cheating in the primary and secondary schools has grown monstrously to become the national calamity called corruption even at the highest level of a government in power. We now have black market certificates issued in most of our higher institutions both at federal and state levels at the instance of naira. We also have criminal election rigging practically supervised by political vampires who wear the garb of umpires. There are law makers in our country who must take bribe before voting for or against any bill. There are law enforcers whose main source of income is nothing but audacious bribe. There are unrepentant civil servants who live like kings and queens while milking the society shamelessly without any regard for their pedigree. There are half-baked lawyers who are feeding fat on fraudulent opportunities while capitalising on the deliberate lapses created by our so-called constitution.

    In all these, who will curb the ever-rampantly growing monster called corruption in Nigeria? Is it the parents who are so desperate that they would do anything, including illicit sex, to see their children through? Or school principals, proprietors and lecturers who are the real architects of examination fraud and certificate rackets? Or the officials of the various examination bodies who often facilitate and help to perfect the act? Or the secret security agents whose orientation is to call a spade a hoe where money is involved?

    All of these and others not mentioned here are elite parents who can hardly come up with a clean hand on anything legitimate. How can they curb the largess from which they benefit so tremendously?

    Unfortunately, some of you Muslim parents, in defiance to Allah’s instruction, have joined this terrible cartel. You feel satisfied with your children’s fraudulent mundane lives even as you are evidently indifferent to the spiritual lives of those children. This has caused some temporal agony in certain lives and spiritual melancholy in others.

    An Elderly Parent’s Experience

    Yours sincerely was in an Islamic meeting with some other brothers in Lagos sometime in the mid 1990s. While we were about to reach a consensus on a vital matter, a septuagenarian parent of four grown up children suddenly burst into tears. He subbed painfully like a house wife who just lost her first child at the point of delivery. Surprised and embarrassed, we enquired from the old man what the matter was since the issue under discussion in that meeting had no sad angle. In his response after calming down, the man who was a former Nigerian Ambassador said he had lost his entire life. He narrated his pathetic story in a very sober mood and concluded that he had lived his entire life in vain.

    He told us how three of his children (all boys) had their secondary and university education in London. The fourth child who was a girl joined them immediately after she completed her secondary education. And after graduation, they all got juicy jobs and settled permanently in England. But by then, they had all crossed over to the other side of the spiritual bridge haven adapted to a non-Islamic life style.

    This was, however, not the cause of his regret. The real cause of his regret was the attitude of those children to his own religious life which he claimed to have cherished so much. First, the children never thought it right to pay him any visit in Nigeria, despite his old age. Secondly, whenever he visited them, in London, none of them would oblige him the chance to observe his daily Salat as they often told him that such was uncivilised. After all efforts to persuade them failed, he had to abandon them and live like a man without children.

    The old man’s most agonising point was in seeing the children of his friends who practised Islam very well in the same country (England) even as they were all doing fine in their various careers. The difference was that the parents of those other children had cared for their spiritual lives from the very beginning. That is the plight of a man who had the courage to voice it out after admitting his guilt. There are thousands of others like him who would prefer to lick their messy wound secretly till death comes to strike.

    If this can still happen in a Muslim home at this age, despite the Qur’anic lessons abundantly available for those who want to learn, what is the value of life? Why would any sane person want to lose his life and his life hereafter just to gain vanity? See what avarice is doing to some Muslim parents?

    It is only for the reason of avarice that most Muslim parents do not see any necessity in giving their children such qualitative Islamic education as they do in the Western way. But Allah has a wonderful way of doing things. Some of the children who could not be given formal secondary education some years past, because their parents were too poor, are professors in the universities or top professionals today in their own right and yet they remain solid Muslims. What else? Train your children in the way of Allah and leave what will become of those children to Allah alone who provides even for ants. Let your children know that the only antidote against greed and avarice is contentment which gives man absolute rest of mind and enables him to appreciate Allah’s endowment in his life. Anything else is sheer vanity that invariably fetches regret. It is only with contentment that any form of corruption can be eliminated. For you Muslims, there is a lesson in this to learn and disseminate to others.

    Without Our Mandate

    This is not the first time the Muslim Ummah of South West Nigeria will be alerting the nation about a danger being surreptitiously engineered by a group of Christians calling itself ‘Yoruba Leaders’ in the region. For quite some time, this self-arrogated body has been stirring ripples in a religious brook not minding the consequences of its action.

    Following the announcement of National Dialogue by President Goodluck Jonathan in October last year, the group began to meet secretly in readiness for the Confab at different places without involving the Muslims in the region. And when a consultative committee was appointed by the President to work out the modalities for the conference the group quickly seized the opportunity to influence the operations of the Committee because the Chairman of that Committee was alleged to be its member.

    Thus, as a way of excluding the Muslims in any decision that might be taken, meetings were fixed for the time of Jum’at service on Fridays knowing very well that the Muslims would attend the service. This happened in Akure and in Lagos where the clandestine act led to a tantrum between them and the few Muslims who were present for the meeting. When MUSWEN noticed the injurious anomaly, it quickly issued a press statement to caution on such clandestine move and warn against its consequences. Yet, the group continued to meet secretly to the exclusion of the Muslim majority in the region.

    When another meeting of the group was held in Isara-Remo, Ogun State, a couple of weeks ago at which the group was reported to be collating the names of those who would represent the Southwest at the Confab, MUSWEN issued another press release to warn against the consequences of such a dangerous action. Despite these warnings, we heard from credible sources that the group has presented a list of 15 delegates (all Christians) who would represent the region at the Confab.

    In a press conference meant to react to the impunity of the illegal, self-appointed caucus calling itself ‘Yoruba Leaders’ the Executive Secretary of MUSWEN, Professor D. O. S. Noibi said inter alia: “I want to make it loudly clear here that we Muslims in the South West region do not recognise the so-called Yoruba Leaders and we have not mandated any group to represent us at the Confab. Any decision reached by that group on behalf of the South West region will therefore be null and void”.

    “We hereby call the attention of the Presidency, the governors of the six States in the region, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and the Director-General of the State Security Service (SSS) to this alert for security reason. Any attempt by a self-appointed group to force itself on the Muslims of this region will be resisted by all means. To be forewarned is to be fore armed.”