The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • A fateful Hajj

    A fateful Hajj

    Indeed, only Allah knows the Hour (of silence); 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 all-Acquainted”.

    1. 31:34.

     

    It was like an earthquake penultimate Friday, September 11, 2015, when the global electronic media throbbed with the news of a crane accident that occurred (for the first time) within the premises of the sacred sanctuary (Haram) in Makkah. And its immediate effect forced the global tree of the pen profession to tremble down to its tap root.

    It was another 9/11 day albeit with smaller scale. According to the toll figure, 134 mainly pilgrims, including six Nigerians, fatally fell victim of the accident. Three hundred and ninety four (394) others were seriously or partially hospitalised, following various degrees of injuries they sustained in that fortuitous accident.

     

    The breakdown of the victims as at the time of writing this article in Saudi Arabia is as follows:

     

    DEAD                   HOSPITALISED

     

    Iranians        25                             15

    Bangladeshis  25

    Egyptians       23

    Pakistanis       15                          51

    Indonesians    11                          42

    Indians             11                         15

    Turkish            8                          21

    Malaysians      6                         10

    Nigerians        6

    United Kingdom  2                   3

    Algerians                                    1

    Afghans                                       1

     

    The tragedy occurred three days after yours sincerely arrived in Madinah for Hajj 1436 AH.

     

    Saudi Government’s Reaction

    The incident was the deadliest crane accident in human history. After visiting the site on Sunday, September 13, 2015, King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia ordered an investigation into the tragedy and vowed to sanction the culprits.

    He, immediately, suspended work on the site and announced the revocation of the contract handled by the popular Bin Ladin Construction Company and, a couple of days later, he ordered the payment of 1 million Saudi Riyals (N65 million) as compensation to each of the dead victims and SR 500000 (N30 million) to each of the injured and hospitalised victims.

     

    Lamentations

    The fortuitous accident simply mirrored the fang of destiny and precipitated untold agony across the globe. This was followed by lamentations and wailings which only presented the semblance of medicine applied to the corpse of a lifeless body. The rest is a story not meant for today. Inna Lillah wa inna ilayhi raji‘un!

     

    Irony of Life

    If life is said to be ironic this disturbing accident is a confirmation of that assertion. Or how can one explain the situation of a journey that took millions of Muslims to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage from various countries of the world. What is more ironic about it is that the area of the Haram where the accident occurred is almost exclusive as only a few pilgrims have business there. To what else then could such an accident be attributed other than destiny? Such accident did not occur at densely populated areas, such as King Abdul Aziz entrance. It did not occur at Babus-Salam through which most pilgrims prefer to enter the Haram. It did not occur at the Ka‘bah where hundreds of thousands of people were circumambulating.

    It did not occur between Safa and Marwah where male and female pilgrims struggle for space in their trot in service to Allah. It rather waited for those Mutawwifin to complete their Tawaf and step out of the Haram. If that accident had occurred at any other place in Saudi Arabia outside Makkah and Madinah some people would have put the blame on impatience or carelessness on the part of the victims. But here we are. Upon what else apart from destiny do we put the blame? Why those victims and not some other people?

     

    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 conception in the mother’s womb, a parable has occurred in the life man. 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.

     

    The ever expanding earth

    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 quintets are born on the same day, from the same womb 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 terrestrial 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 remains of human beings 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 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.

     

    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.

     

    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

     

    Destiny

    Let no true believer ascribe the death of a person to another person or carelessness. Death is only ascribable to destiny. The time to come into the world and exit from it is destined only by the Almighty Allah the Creator and Sustainer of all things. In Islam, the Angel of death is called ‘Asrail’. That Angel does not work by whim. Its operation is in tandem with divinely appointed times. And if we were not consulted before coming into the world how can we expect to be consulted before exiting from it? The Angel of death has no respect for age, wealth or position. The activities or plans of man are not his concern. What matters to him is the duty which he is divinely assigned to carry out and when it is time to do that, he goes ahead to do it without looking back. In Islam, there is no untimely death and there is nothing like reincarnation. The difference between reincarnation and resurrection is that while the earlier is satanic the latter is divine.

    As mortal beings we always find reasons for occurrences in our lives. And that shows the limit of our faith. Those of us who are still alive are neither wiser nor closer to God than those who died. The fact is just that our own coffins have not yet been closed up. When it is time for that, nobody can stop it. Once again, Nigeria has been afflicted by a calamity which no one can reverse or remedy. Inna Lillah wa inna ilayhi rajiu’n. We are surely from God and to Him we shall all return.

    Among the countries and prominent religious groups that commiserated with the victims’ families and associates are the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Nigerian government, Nigerian Supreme Council For Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) the Jama‘atu Nasril Islam, Muslim Ummah of the Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) and a host of others from all parts of the world. Their messages signed by Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede and Professor D. O. S. Noibi are as follows respectively.

    The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) under the leadership of its President General and Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Dr. Muhammad Sa‘ad Abubakar, received with deep grief and sorrow, the news of the crane accident in Makkah  which claimed the lives of 118 pilgrims of different nationalities. About 394 others were seriously injured and hospitalised.

    Coming to add to the grief inflicted on the world by terrorism and insurgency, such a disturbing incident could only amount more agony for the entire world. The irony of life in this case is that destiny cannot be evaded by any human being despite any level of carefulness.

    While commiserating with the families of all the deceased and the peoples of their nations we can only pray the Almighty Allah to repose the souls of the victims in eternal bliss and grant their relatives the fortitude with which to bear the grief.

    We also invoke the mercy of the Almighty God to ensure a speedy recovery for those who were wounded in the accident and protect the lives of the teeming other Nigerian pilgrims still in Saudi Arabia for Hajj rites. ng them.

     

    MUSWEN condoles

    Sad news is like a whirlwind which has neither a scheduled time nor place. Its overwhelming effect on man can hardly be measured in terms of agony or sorrow. Or how else can we describe the crane accident of last Friday at the Holy Land?

    We also pray for speedy recovery of those who were injured in the accident and need intensive health care just as we praise the prompt actions groups and individuals who quickly rallied round the injured ones to ensure their survival.  But we also implore all and sundry to intensify such efforts in order to avert further deaths through this calamitous incident.                                                                                                                       Finally, we pray for continuous safety of all other journalists in the country as well as professionals in other fields who often face hazards in the performance of their service.

  • Not by desperation

    Who are those arrogating the right of distributing of your Lord’s blessings to themselves? It is We who do distribute among peole their livelihoods in this world and We exalt some in rank above others so that some may employ the services of the others. Your Lord’s mercy is better by far than all their hoarded treasures”. Q. 43: 32

     

    Peamble

    History is resplendent with leasons for people whose steps in life are in tandem or not with Allah’s guidance. There is no life’s odyssey without a divine warning. Heeding or shunning such a warning is however a matter of choice. And the consequences or otherwise of such a choice will eventually become the heritage of the concerned person.

    We live in a world, today, that is quite different from that of the centuries past when the Quran was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW). But surprisingly, nothing in the contemporary world has run counter to the predictions of that sacred Book or those of the last Messenger of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

    For instance, business transactions in the time of the Prophet might not involve high technology but the norms which guided business in those days are still as vital today as they were then. Not even the introduction of mundane ideologies like capitalism, socialism, and communism has altered those norms. So far, the source of the wealth of the world has not changed from what it was in the past millennia. That source is the earth from which everything is explored. Even the materials used to manufacture satellites or space shuttle aircraft are from the earth.

    Thus, from agriculture to nuclear device, no new norm has been introduced to warrant any new world order that can affect the faith of the Muslims. As a matter of fact, the world has witnessed the collapse of communism and that of socialism within a period of 74 years despite its overbearing influence when it held sway. It is just a matter of time for the current pervading capitalism to go the way of socialism and communism.

     

    Economic ideology

    An unlettered personality like Prophet Muhammad (SAW) did not need to formulate any mundane economic ideology to run a great Islamic government. He was not just a political leader but also an economic expert, a great law giver and an army general of impeccable disposition.

    Without necessarily going into details on how he managed the economy of the Islamic state which he established and ruled from the scratch, it is obvious that even his ascension to the seven planets which paved way for modern man’s exploration of the space is of immense economic value to the contemporary world which no sensible critic can logically dispute. Although the Quran which was revealed to an unlettered Muhammad (SAW) is seen by some ignorant people as a mere religious book, the economic value of that Book has remained unquantifiable and will remain so forever. The fast spreading Islamic banking in the West today is a clear evidence of that fact.

    Being the most read book in the world, the Quran has been translated into hundreds of languages making it possible for millions of people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to be employed at the various segments of the world’s economy. For instance, the writing of the Qur’an, its recitation, its proofreading, its printing, its marketing, its teaching, its translation, its interpretation and even criticism by unbelievers are all sources of economic survival for millions of people in the world irrespective of their religions. The global engagement in research on that glorious Book by various scholars and intellectuals either for acknowledgement of facts or for criticism are an attestation to the above assertion. There was no book like the Qur’an before its revelation and there will never be a book like it till the world will come to an end. The mounting hostility to it in certain quaters is largely due to ignorance about it. And that cannot continue forever.

     

    The Prophet as employer of labour

    If only one quarter of a billion people is gainfully employed in the workings of the Quran alone, today’s world economy would have been remarkably upheld by the religion of Islam. And, apat from the Qur’an, millions of people are engaged in various businesses relating to Hadith (Prophetic Tradition), Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence), Tarikh (Islamic History), Tawhid (Faith in the oneness of Allah) and Thaqafah (Islamic Culture) among others.

    Even, for hundreds of years that the Orientalists were busy trying Islam through their satanic publications, it was undeniable that those destroyers were benefiting from the economic legacy of Islam through the sale of those publications.

    Today, as the same Orientalists are busy reversing themselves on what they had maliciously published about Islam in the past they are still benefiting economically from that great religion.

    Despite the vast economic advantages provided by Islam, however, some unscrupulous Nigerian Muslims still engage in illegal businesses that contravene the tenets of that divine religion. Some of such Muslims are among the thousands of Nigerians who are now languishing in various prisons around the world. Some others are even sentenced to death by hanging as punishment for their crimes. Incidentally, some of such people do commit their atrocities under the cover of Isalm. This happened even during the current Hajj rites.

    This reminds yours ssincerely of a fortuitous encounter with one of them as far back a 1981 which keeps quivering my heart even today. I had once relayed that ugly encounter in this column but decided to repeat it here today because it was an experience from which young Muslim men and women of today can draw a lesson a lesson from.

     

    Illicit act

    A Nigerian youth of about 30 years of age called Akram (not real name) did not have anything like poultry in his dream when he was going into Saudi Arabian prison as a convict in 1981. His only prayer was for Allah to influence the minds of the Saudi Authorities to have mercy for him and grant him amnesty after two or three years in prison. His service term was fifteen years. He had earned the sentence through drug trafficking engendered by blind ambition to be quickly rich by all means.

    Akram, a quiet, easy going young man from the Southwest graduated from the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia. I first met him in 1978 when I went for a first degree in that country. His University was in Madinah while mine was in Jeddah. He left Saudi Arabia after graduating in 1980 and settled down in Nigeria following a one year compulsory national service to the nation. In his plan, Akram did not want to work for anybody. His ambition was to be a big merchant of automobile and electronics. However, since there was no ready-made capital with which to start off such a business, he decided to take a short cut typical of Nigerian style. And he found Saudi Arabia, the country that funded his University education, as most suitable for such a dirty business. Thus, he embarked on his first illicit ‘business trip’ to the country of his Alma Mata in 1981. It was on my way back to school from a summer holiday of the same year that I met him at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA). After embracing and exchanging pleasantries, we decided to sit together in the aircraft in order to have a chat on the good old days and the expected future. And from Lagos to Jeddah (a journey of five and a half hours), we really chatted to our fill. When we arrived at King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah after five and half hours, it was as if we had not spent one hour.

     

    Youthful dream

    As bachelors, we discussed various issues ranging from marriage, bearing of children to monogamy and polygamy as well as family structure. We gossiped on the political trend in our country as championed by the then ruling party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). We compared Nigeria’s pace of development with that of Saudi Arabia and concluded that our government neither had focus nor plan, a situation which made Nigerian youths abroad feel like orphans.

    We also talked about world peace, the then cold war between the Western World championed by the United States and the Eastern Socialist Block championed by the now defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Reublic (USSR) and the future of Islam in Africa and the Middle East. We analysed the Middle East crises and the role of the two opposing world powers in those crises. We also veered into Nigeria’s micro economy by discussing the role of small and middle scale businesses in our country compared to those of other countries with similar status like Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, Singapore, India, Pakistan and Egypt. And without gazing through any crystal ball, we concluded that with no middle class in place, our country might have no hope except through an accidental miracle. We also reviewed the use to which Nigerian oil was put vis-a-vis that of Saudi Arabia, Libya or Algeria. On this, we concluded that oil in Nigeria was a blessing from Allah which the country’s ruling class turned into a curse. But we were experienced enough to suggest solution.

    Thus, in that long conversation touching virtually all issues affecting the corporate life of Nigeria and her citizens we agreed on some and disagreed on some. However, we were satisfied to have delivered our minds of their pregnancies if only for widening our horizon.

     

    Point of departure

    On arrival at the King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, my friend quickly dashed into the toilet and requested me to help push his baggage to the security desk for checking and promised to join me shortly. It was almost my turn for checking before an instinct gingered me into consciousness. For more than 30 minutes after he entrusted his baggage to me and went into the toilet, my friend did not resurface. Something just told me to abandon his baggage as I was approaching the checking desk and I did. My own baggage was checked and I went out of the arrival hall to wait for him at the taxi garage. After about one hour of waiting and Akram did not surface, I decided to proceed to my hostel where he was to pass the night in my room as already agreed.

    While still expecting him in my hostel, the electronic waves throbbed with breaking news. The Saudi Television reported the arrest of a Nigerian who smuggled drugs into the holy land. His name was ‘Akram’. That was at 9pm Saudi local time. We had arrived in Jeddah at about 11am that day. And about one hour after the breaking news, my friend was brought to the glee of the nation through the tube and paraded on the Saudi national television as the suspected culprit in the illicit drug trafficking. That was one of the most frightening moments of my life. Akram wanted to be rich and I was to pay the cost of his richness.

    What would have happened if I had not heeded the warning of my instinct? Who could have imagined that a seeming gentleman like Akram would ever think of trafficking in drug for whatever reason? If I had been caught with Akram’s baggage, what explanation could have exonerated me? Those were the questions that immediately ran through me like milk through water and changed my mind about sentimental friendship with people no matter how innocent they might look. There and then, I decided never to assist anybody again in carrying his or her baggage while on a journey.

    After about three months of trial, Akram was sentenced to fifteen years in jail. He was lucky that drug trafficking at that time in Saudi Arabia had not attracted death as penalty. If it were now, the punishment would have been death sentence by beheading. I was also lucky that at that time the Saudi immigration authorities had not adopted the use of secret camera to monitor passengers.

     

    Prison for reformation

    For 15 years thereafter (from 1981 to 1996), Akram remained behind bars languishing in Saudi Arabian Prison as an inmate among criminals and expecting to be let off the hook one day. But one good thing about Saudi Arabia as a country or any other Islamic country for that matter is the concept of reformation which imprisonment entails. Inmates are not just imprisoned as punishment for crimes they are also prepared for a better post-prison life and re-orientated for better world outlook. Besides, prisoners are paid a specific amount of money daily for their labour in prison. And that gives them hope of reintegration into the society after leaving the prison. Such money is kept in a special bank account opened for them. The total amount is paid to each inmate after his or her prison term.

    Thus, when Akram left the prison in 1996, the post-prison money paid to him became his main lot in life. He was deported to Nigeria but not without that prison labour reward that became his capital for a poultry business. And within a couple of years thereafter, he had become a big poultry farmer but whether or not he learnt any lesson from that incident is another matter.

     

    Qur’anic admonition

    Most of the young men and women of today do not seem to believe in crawling before walking. To them, what matters most in their lives is how to quickly get money to spend and not how such money is made. And that is the main cause of the high rate of crimes witnessed around the world today and the entailed short life span for those youths. In Qur’an, Chapter 43, Verse 32 quoted above, Allah had warned Muslims against desperate accumulation of wealth over 1,400 years ago even when desperate quest for wealth was unfashionable. However, the refusal by today’s youths to heed that warning and the aggressive greed of the privileged elders in power constitute the main cause of restiveness and insurrection around the world today.

    In I slam, desperation for accumulation of wealth is prohibited because it encourages a focus on the end result rather than the means and its entailed morality. In the past decades, Nigeria had sunk so deep into the valley of corruption that no one care to ask about the source of any wealth again even as corruption became the taproot of Nigeria’s tree of existence. Now, with parents, teachers and even legislators getting so desperate to become rich even right before their children what future is expected for those children?

     

    Parochial wealth estimation

    Desperation is not what fetched Nigeria the enormous oil wealth of today. If desperation ever had any role to play in accumulating wealth, perhaps Nigeria would have long become a country in penury. This is because people who were more desperate in this same country and had lived and died some centuries back would have discovered this oil wealth and they would have exhausted it long before our own generation. But in consonance with the quoted Qur’anic verse above, Allah deliberately preserved it for our own generation for a reason best known to Him. Yes, oil may be the source of wealth at this time, it is surely not the last wealth in this country. There are other sources of wealth preserved for the future generations which no desperate ‘awks’ in this generation can discover. Those who see oil as the climax of wealth and want to own its control or die for it should engage in a rethink. You can only have the privilege of presiding over the wealth of a nation for a while and not at all times. The experience of the immediate past regime in Nigeria should serve as a sufficient lesson. And those in government today should also note this very well. The privilege of the past did not extend to the present and that of the present will not extend to the future. Every era is a transit. And every transit has a term.

  • Re: David Mark in the vortex of history

    Last week on this page, I had re-run a piece (Like Mark, Like Saraki ; first published Aug. 28, 2015), following a rejoinder from Kola Ologbodiyan, an aide to former Senate President, David Mark. I had also run Kola’s letter side by side my article.

    Since Kola also accused me of frustration, I am re-running today’s piece to show that I am indeed ‘frustrated’. But not in the manner of a politician denied of pork as Kola seems to suggest. My frustrations stem from the obduracy of leaders like his boss Mark who have managed to hold Nigeria and her people hostage over the years. This article was first published on February 17, 2012. It was rerun on March 30, 2012 when out-of-the-world allowances were awarded lawmakers. Again on July 26, 2013, it was reproduced once more as The Economist of London branded Nigerian lawmakers as the highest paid in the world in its edition of that week.

    Today’s is the fourth rerun. How frustrating indeed can life be for a columnist? How can the current Senate President continue on that same unsustainable template we have wept about? They are so ‘dead’ in their ways they do not care whether the economy is crumbling. They don’t care if workers are not paid for one year…

     Leaders without vision do not care about history:

    They are too dim and too enamored with the trappings of this fleeting moment to spare a thought for tomorrow. They bury themselves in the inane perquisites of today’s office and position; they deny the reality of tomorrow and ignore the power of history. But surely there will be tomorrow and history will be told as long as there is life on earth. If only leaders in positions would stop a while and pop the question at themselves: how will history judge me?

    How will history judge the current Senate President, David Bonaventure Mark? I have elected to ask this question on this page for many reasons. First it was triggered by the news recently that each Senator will get a N16 million state-of-the-art jeep as official car and second, at the end of this tenure, he would have been in the Senate for a total of 16 years, eight of which would have been at the helm of the National Assembly as Senate President. This position makes him the de facto number two man in the land. But most important, providence has hoisted him onto a position to tinker with history, to shape history, to direct history and in deed to make history. So we ask today, what has he done (will he do in the remaining period) with this gavel of history handed to him? But sorry to say that so far, he has bungled his moments in history and here are some reasons why:

    Poor personal leadership example: As has been mentioned above, the senate presidency is the second most powerful and influential position in the land and Mark would have done eight years by 2015. Under a more perspicacious and insightful personage, that position has the capacity to bring about far-reaching changes in Nigeria. By sheer effusion of personal examples from the man at the helm, the legislative arm (down to the State assemblies) would have been the unblinking moral compass of the various governments.

    We saw a glimmer of this leadership precept in the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. He said he would uphold the rule of law, he showed practical examples at the critical time and soon the judiciary caught on to it and this was reflected in the court rulings of that time. He declared his assets and made it public for the whole world to see; the first time any president would do that in our recent history. Without being prompted, his vice and other governors, followed suit. In less than three years, Yar’Adua made more salutary impact on the psyche of Nigerians and had more positive influence on our system than President Olusegun Obasanjo did in eight years. Today, the bonfire billowing in the upper chamber can be seen burning most assuredly in all the houses of assembly across the land. Just like the Senate, they have all become hollow chambers of mercantilism and debauchery.

    Lack of probity and transparency: All of a sudden Nigerians can’t tell anymore, how much their legislators earn. All we know now is that being a legislator in Nigeria (at any level) is the best job in the world. It must be the highest paying and most risk-free job known any where. Never a headache from any graft agency as other government officials suffer; in spite of the cries and clamour by the populace the legislature insist on creating a fiscal haven of its own that defies appropriation acts and revenue guidelines.

    The hallowed chamber of the National Assembly (NASS) seems ensconced in the bosom of mammon and held spell bound by its self-awarded boundless perquisites of office. NASS is certainly the new honey pot of a rotten Republic. Legislators have become so licentious that they would corral banks into granting them billions of naira in loans to share. At what interest rates and costs to the taxpayer? It is on this framework that the current Senators would award themselves a N16 million official car in a time of severe austerity in the land. At a period the populace has been badgered into relinquishing the only ‘subsidy’ they enjoy’ at a time that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has determined that 100 million Nigerians are dirt poor earning less than $1 a day. It is doubtful if any other senator anywhere in the world rides such an exotic machine at tax payers’ expense.

    Oversight function, oversight extortion: This is the most critical function of the legislature apart from passing bills. But this key instrument of check and balance has been bastardised and debased. It has become an instrument for self-aggrandisement and extortion. MDAs across the country are comatose and non-functioning because oversight function on them is weak or nonexistent. If the legislature is compromised by the MDAs where would it find the moral authority to exercise oversight? Any wonder things like turnaround maintenance (TAM) on our refineries are mired, a road project right under the nose of the Senate in Abuja is overpriced to the tune of N38 billion; corruption grows organic and cancerous in the land eating up the entire fabric of society  yet nobody seems to know what to do. What about the probe panels in various legislative assemblies? Mum is the word on this cash cow.

    People alienated and unrepresented: May we urge the Senate President to do an unscheduled tour of the constituency offices of his members and while at it, inspect the constituency projects for which huge funds are allotted to his members. It is a stark fact that most Nigerians do not know their legislators; there is hardly any functional constituency office anywhere, no projects for monies allotted and no town hall meetings. No country will grow one inch with legislators of this ilk.

    In conclusion:  the NASS has become very toxic to this country, unbeknown to the members. The onus is on David Mark to resolve to pick his spot in history. Let’s note that history is not about the wealthiest man or the most powerful of his time but about he who brings the most positive change to his people and society. Fortunately he still has a bit of time. Few quick things he can do quietly with his colleagues include fashioning out a simple, workable code of conduct; making sure that all members have standard and functional constituency offices, ensure town hall meetings are held regularly by members, ensure that the auditor-general of the federation does his work and releases his annual report promptly, and ensure probity, accountability and transparency in the finances of the Senate. The Senate can rescue the country from the current slide down the slope if it resolves to have a fresh start.

  • Education and our value priorities

    Education and our value priorities

    Let us start this discourse with two assumptions.

    First, whether as individuals or communities, including states, zones, and country we have multiple desires. Second, unfortunately, by token of our human conditions, the resources at our disposal are not adequate to satisfy all our desires or realise all our values. Given these two assumptions which can reasonably be described as the realities of human life, we have a human dilemma: how do we satisfy our desires or realise our values in the face of inadequate resources?

    The resolution of the dilemma has been approached in various ways. One is to insist on satisfying all desires by appropriating resources from others individuals (stealing and corrupt enrichment) or communities (exploitation through colonialism or imperialism). Another is to work harder to accumulate more resources for the satisfaction of all the desires. Not a few individuals and communities have achieved their aspirations through honest hard-work.

    A third approach is limiting desires so that they are realisable with available resources; in other words, cutting our coat according to our cloth. Finally, however, there is also the course of prioritising desires such that the highest on the scale of values are satisfied while the lowest wait until more resources are available. With this approach, one still works hard, but one does not risk overworking with its accompanying stress which then prevents the realisation of any one the desires.

    Of the four approaches, only the first is flat out wrong because it is unfair to those victims of stealing, corruption, and exploitation. But, of course, there are those individuals or communities who are motivated, not by fairness, but by greed. I reject the Hobbesian idea that greedy accumulation and appropriation is natural in the state of nature. Even in that state, there is the morality of conscience that must continually warn any reasonable person that it is not right to take more than you need for your survival. After all, in the state of nature, all you really need is the fulfillment of the basic survival needs.

    Now, the other three approaches are within various degrees of reasonableness. Attempting to satisfy all desires through hard work is reasonable but risky for the stress that it may cause. Limiting desires is reasonable if it is not motivated by laziness or aversion to hard work. Prioritising desires doesn’t give up on any of the desires; it only ranks them such that the most urgent and important are prioritised.

    If it appears reasonable to prioritise desires, it is because it is; for individuals as well as for communities, including political communities. How does it work in reality?

    For individuals, let us assume that the desires are for basic needs such as food, health, clothing, and housing. Surely, none of these can be set aside as unimportant. To survive, each is a priority in its own right. But each can be satisfied by a variety of means, from the very basic to the most luxurious. Prioritising here means distributing resources in such a way that the need for food is not frustrated by the need for housing or clothing, and that all contribute to the satisfaction of the desire for health.

    More importantly, however, our sample individual will benefit from gaining adequate knowledge not just about the importance of these needs and desires, but also about how best to satisfy them. The acquisition of such fundamental knowledge is essential to the successful prioritisation of his desires, and to his survival and prospering. This is the meaning and significance of education in its most basic and simplest form.

    There is no misery to it. Without education, all other values and desires amount to naught. A certain amount of it, that which is needed in the state of nature, is innate and instinctive. And so the caveman is able to determine that he has to hide in the cave to avoid the bitterness of the elements or that he has to hunt to avoid starving to death.

    As human settlement and families emerge, education becomes a collective endeavor so that the ignorance of a member doesn’t jeopardize the survivor of the rest. The collective responsibility to educate the young requires the family to prioritize and reconcile its desires with available resources.

    One way the task is accomplished traditionally is to assemble family members at a palaver session, where the issue is thrown out with the family head underscoring the priorities that must be attended to and the limitation of the resources available. Wastage is rebuked. Greed on the part of any member is condemned. The uncontrolled contribution of mouths to feed by some members doesn’t go unnoticed or unchallenged. There is a general agreement on what is identified as the most important of the desires and it is accorded the most urgent priority with resources allocated. Communal life is saved and it moves on.

    A little over two years ago, I discussed the model of the state as family in a different context. In that context, I made reference to a justification of the former president’s action on ground that he was the father of the nation doing the best for his children. Though, I found the statement inadequate in the context, I also conceded that the idea of the state as the family was not original to the former president because it was a common idea in political philosophy. Even Chief Obafemi Awolowo once explored the analogy with his suggestion that the paterfamilias as the patriarch of his family negotiated with other patriarchs and that this was the origin of the state. This was a historical account of the origin of the state.

    Let us assume that the historical account has some element of credibility. In the present crisis of value conflicts and desire frustrations, how might a political community resolve the conflict?

    That there is value conflict is not in doubt. That there is desire frustration is not deniable. Between individual members of the political community, the conflict is obvious. While a few indulge in opulence, many wallow in abject poverty. ActionAid just reported that more than 10 million children are out of school in Nigeria and that 1 in 6 of out of school children worldwide are in Nigeria. But many Nigerian families also have no problem sending their children to expensive boarding schools overseas and inside the country. While many with life-threatening diseases resign themselves to fate, others can afford to travel overseas for periodic checkups and for cosmetic surgeries.

    Between groups as ethnic nationalities, zones, states, and local governments, the conflict is demonstrable. The North has just for the umpteenth time complained of marginalization, claiming to have the highest number of people making below $2 a day and the lowest literacy rate in the country. On this score it rejects the 2014 National Conference and demands a special national conference for the development of the North. There is no more powerful demonstration of the value conflict that I just described. The nation itself is suffocating under the weight of its irresolvable conflicts.

    To my mind, there is one value that is central to all others and if it is prioritised and the constraints against its effective realisation are confronted and nipped in the bud, the nation as a political community can move with speed. The value I have in mind is effective functional education of citizens. I have in previous contributions in the last few months analysed the issue extensively. But in light of recent policy announcements and decisions of various governments, it bears repeating.

    Simply put, what is needed is a prioritisation of our state and national values so that education is on top of the hierarchy. It doesn’t mean that citizens will get a pass. It means that individuals and groups are assigned requisite responsibilities for the effective functional education of citizens. Everyone will be expected to pay their fair share and make necessary sacrifices, including limiting the number of children they sire. Is the political will there for action?

  • Like Mark, like Saraki

    I am re-running this piece originally published here Friday, August 28, 2015 because of the embedded rejoinder. This is to avail the writer a right of reply and afford readers the opportunity to read and judge by themselves. I overlook the actionable statements in the rejoinder.

    Cash is king, no, cash is god.

    May history be damned! Monetise our legacy! Hand us cash bequeathals! This must be the silent chant of members of our National Assembly (NASS) in the last 16 years. If only they knew any better; if only they realized that the unit of measure of life’s worth lies in legacies and not currencies.

    This is why history will have no golden chapter for Senator David Mark who was senate president and head of NASS for eight years. The refrain of his supporters has been that he was instrumental to stabilizing the Fourth Republic and Nigeria’s nascent democracy. But ‘stabilize’ to what end? Didn’t he merely hold down the cow for it to be milked to death?

    As this column has always canvassed, the position of the Senate President is only second in importance to that of the president of the federal republic. Therefore, under the control of a noble and enlightened mind, the NASS is a veritable instrument for ringing far-reaching socio-political and constitutional changes. But as we have witnessed, none of the structural dysfunction plaguing the polity was righted; no landmark legislation such that could untangle the system and unleash the potentialities of the state was pushed.

    For 16 years, the NASS remained a wayward, licentious lad and in eight years under David Mark’s leadership, it grew into a rapacious money mongering ogre; a loose King Kong trampling the polity and gobbling up our commonwealth. Mark will be remembered for the singular achievement of nurturing a NASS where members earned more than members of the US Congress and the British Parliament put together. We will remember him for bequeathing us with the inimitable legacy of a rogue assembly during his presidency.

    We remember Mark today and for always for that outstanding record of creating a NASS that earned the highest wages in the world. We will always remember him for breeding a corps of hard-hearted men and women who are lacking in compunction or empathy for the teeming horde of a poor and deprived populace.

    We will remember David Mark and his gang not only for mindlessly immiserising the people but for also over-sighting the historic pillage of Nigeria in the last five years. Never in our history had a parliament entered into such incestuous relationship with the executive branch to rape and ravage the country and her people.

    Saraki, Chip of the old PDP block While we shall allow history to damn Mark and his baleful lot, we shall have to march on the current Assembly. In just a few days, it has become obvious that Senator Bukola Saraki, the new president of the Senate is as much a lost soul as Mark. For Saraki, ‘change’ must be a stupid new buzzword Nigerians have just discovered. None of all that ‘change nonsense’ for him; Nigeria’s billions of naira beckons, it seems. His eyes must be firmly glued to a future of imperial positions, and he needs money to purchase it. That is all that matters; again, legacy be damned!

    One had thought that Senator Saraki would be influenced by the advantage of better learning and better democratic credentials. We are mistaken it seems. A buccaneer is a pirate and a vampire will always relish blood. Having tasted blood (of the people) in his first term it is too late to let up now. It does not matter that the economy is flailing, it does not matter that revenues have dried up drastically and it does not matter that workers are not being paid their humble wages across the country. All that matters is to grab positions over which they had bludgeoned themselves since inauguration in May. Now that positions seem settled, the time has come to shovel funds generously into their pockets.

    This must be the best job in the world Is it possible that these NASS members have hurled home the sums we hear they have hurled in just three months of bickering and taking recesses? Is it true that about N13 billion has been shared by our lawmakers already? Is it true that each of the senators has been paid at least N36 million while each of the House of Representatives members has pocketed about N25 million so far?

    It is scary that all our law makers including supposed ‘noble’ men and women (like Ben Murray-Bruce and Dino Melaye) in these pristine chambers would not take a definitive and open stance against what is obviously an obscene, under-the-table payouts. How on earth did the NASS arrive at an annual budget of N120 billion (N150billion up till last year)? Why should NASS comprising of only 469 lawmakers have a bureaucracy of about 4660 civil servants?

    Even at that, why would a NASS with a total head count of 5129 persons have an annual budget of N120 billion while a state like Benue for instance, with a population of about 4.2 million people has an annual budget of N98.5 billion. To think that such states like Benue would have to also provide infrastructure and public utilities such as roads, water, health and educational facilities among others. What this suggests is that the NASS may not need more than N25 billion in total annual budget.

    We will therefore expect the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) in all its twiddling and twaddling about fixing legislators’ emoluments and pay cuts, tell us what N120 billion is used for.

    The Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAGF) which ought to scrutinize all appropriated expenditures in the federation has been remiss in its duties. It is its duty to ensure that every kobo of this whopping sum is accounted for.

    Members of NASS have been sharing cash as if they were hooded bandits sharing booty this last decade because the federal audit system had become near moribund. Since it has become obvious that Saraki is anything but a change agent and that it seems his leadership would be worse than Mark’s, Nigerians must brace up to effect the change they need by themselves. Enough is enough! Who needs the senate anyway?

  • Not by desperation

    Who are those arrogating the right of distributing of your Lord’s blessings to themselves? It is We who do distribute among people their livelihoods in this world and We exalt some in rank above others so that some may employ the services of the others. Your Lord’s mercy is better by far than all their hoarded treasures”. Q. 43: 32

     

    Preamble

    History is resplendent with leasons for people whose steps in life are in tandem or not with Allah’s guidance. There is no life’s odyssey without a divine warning. Heeding or shunning such a warning is however a matter of choice. And the consequences or otherwise of such a choice will eventually become the heritage of the concerned person.

    We live in a world, today, that is quite different from that of the centuries past when the Quran was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW). But surprisingly, nothing in the contemporary world has run counter to the predictions of that sacred Book or those of the last Messenger of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

    For instance, business transactions in the time of the Prophet might not involve high technology but the norms which guided business in those days are still as vital today as they were then. Not even the introduction of mundane ideologies like capitalism, socialism, and communism has altered those norms. So far, the source of the wealth of the world has not changed from what it was in the past millennia. That source is the earth from which everything is explored. Even the materials used to manufacture satellites or space shuttle aircraft are from the earth.

    Thus, from agriculture to nuclear device, no new norm has been introduced to warrant any new world order that can affect the faith of the Muslims. As a matter of fact, the world has witnessed the collapse of communism and that of socialism within a period of 74 years despite its overbearing influence when it held sway. It is just a matter of time for the current pervading capitalism to go the way of socialism and communism.

     

    Economic ideology

    An unlettered personality like Prophet Muhammad (SAW) did not need to formulate any mundane economic ideology to run a great Islamic government. He was not just a political leader but also an economic expert, a great law giver and an army general of impeccable disposition.

    Without necessarily going into details on how he managed the economy of the Islamic state which he established and ruled from the scratch, it is obvious that even his ascension to the seven planets which paved way for modern man’s exploration of the space is of immense economic value to the contemporary world which no sensible critic can logically dispute. Although the Quran which was revealed to an unlettered Muhammad (SAW) is seen by some ignorant people as a mere religious book, the economic value of that Book has remained unquantifiable and will remain so forever. The fast spreading Islamic banking in the West today is a clear evidence of that fact.

    Being the most read book in the world, the Quran has been translated into hundreds of languages making it possible for millions of people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to be employed at the various segments of the world’s economy. For instance, the writing of the Qur’an, its recitation, its proofreading, its printing, its marketing, its teaching, its translation, its interpretation and even criticism by unbelievers are all sources of economic survival for millions of people in the world irrespective of their religions. The global engagement in research on that glorious Book by various scholars and intellectuals either for acknowledgement of facts or for criticism are an attestation to the above assertion. There was no book like the Qur’an before its revelation and there will never be a book like it till the world will come to an end. The mounting hostility to it in certain quaters is largely due to ignorance about it. And that cannot continue forever.

     

    The Prophet as employer of labour

    If only one quarter of a billion people is gainfully employed in the workings of the Quran alone, today’s world economy would have been remarkably upheld by the religion of Islam. And, apat from the Qur’an, millions of people are engaged in various businesses relating to Hadith (Prophetic Tradition), Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence), Tarikh (Islamic History), Tawhid (Faith in the oneness of Allah) and Thaqafah (Islamic Culture) among others.

    Even, for hundreds of years that the Orientalists were busy trying Islam through their satanic publications, it was undeniable that those destroyers were benefiting from the economic legacy of Islam through the sale of those publications.

    Today, as the same Orientalists are busy reversing themselves on what they had maliciously published about Islam in the past they are still benefiting economically from that great religion.

    Despite the vast economic advantages provided by Islam, however, some unscrupulous Nigerian Muslims still engage in illegal businesses that contravene the tenets of that divine religion. Some of such Muslims are among the thousands of Nigerians who are now languishing in various prisons around the world. Some others are even sentenced to death by hanging as punishment for their crimes. Incidentally, some of such people do commit their atrocities under the cover of Isalm. This happened even during the current Hajj rites.

    This reminds yours ssincerely of a fortuitous encounter with one of them as far back a 1981 which keeps quivering my heart even today. I had once relayed that ugly encounter in this column but decided to repeat it here today because it was an experience from which young Muslim men and women of today can draw a lesson a lesson from.

     

    Illicit act

    A Nigerian youth of about 30 years of age called Akram (not real name) did not have anything like poultry in his dream when he was going into Saudi Arabian prison as a convict in 1981. His only prayer was for Allah to influence the minds of the Saudi Authorities to have mercy for him and grant him amnesty after two or three years in prison. His service term was fifteen years. He had earned the sentence through drug trafficking engendered by blind ambition to be quickly rich by all means.

    Akram, a quiet, easy going young man from the Southwest graduated from the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia. I first met him in 1978 when I went for a first degree in that country. His University was in Madinah while mine was in Jeddah. He left Saudi Arabia after graduating in 1980 and settled down in Nigeria following a one year compulsory national service to the nation. In his plan, Akram did not want to work for anybody. His ambition was to be a big merchant of automobile and electronics. However, since there was no ready-made capital with which to start off such a business, he decided to take a short cut typical of Nigerian style. And he found Saudi Arabia, the country that funded his University education, as most suitable for such a dirty business. Thus, he embarked on his first illicit ‘business trip’ to the country of his Alma Mata in 1981. It was on my way back to school from a summer holiday of the same year that I met him at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA). After embracing and exchanging pleasantries, we decided to sit together in the aircraft in order to have a chat on the good old days and the expected future. And from Lagos to Jeddah (a journey of five and a half hours), we really chatted to our fill. When we arrived at King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah after five and half hours, it was as if we had not spent one hour.

     

    Youthful dream

    As bachelors, we discussed various issues ranging from marriage, bearing of children to monogamy and polygamy as well as family structure. We gossiped on the political trend in our country as championed by the then ruling party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). We compared Nigeria’s pace of development with that of Saudi Arabia and concluded that our government neither had focus nor plan, a situation which made Nigerian youths abroad feel like orphans.

    We also talked about world peace, the then cold war between the Western World championed by the United States and the Eastern Socialist Block championed by the now defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Reublic (USSR) and the future of Islam in Africa and the Middle East. We analysed the Middle East crises and the role of the two opposing world powers in those crises. We also veered into Nigeria’s micro economy by discussing the role of small and middle scale businesses in our country compared to those of other countries with similar status like Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, Singapore, India, Pakistan and Egypt. And without gazing through any crystal ball, we concluded that with no middle class in place, our country might have no hope except through an accidental miracle. We also reviewed the use to which Nigerian oil was put vis-a-vis that of Saudi Arabia, Libya or Algeria. On this, we concluded that oil in Nigeria was a blessing from Allah which the country’s ruling class turned into a curse. But we were experienced enough to suggest solution.

    Thus, in that long conversation touching virtually all issues affecting the corporate life of Nigeria and her citizens we agreed on some and disagreed on some. However, we were satisfied to have delivered our minds of their pregnancies if only for widening our horizon.

     

    Point of departure

    On arrival at the King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, my friend quickly dashed into the toilet and requested me to help push his baggage to the security desk for checking and promised to join me shortly. It was almost my turn for checking before an instinct gingered me into consciousness. For more than 30 minutes after he entrusted his baggage to me and went into the toilet, my friend did not resurface. Something just told me to abandon his baggage as I was approaching the checking desk and I did. My own baggage was checked and I went out of the arrival hall to wait for him at the taxi garage. After about one hour of waiting and Akram did not surface, I decided to proceed to my hostel where he was to pass the night in my room as already agreed.

    While still expecting him in my hostel, the electronic waves throbbed with breaking news. The Saudi Television reported the arrest of a Nigerian who smuggled drugs into the holy land. His name was ‘Akram’. That was at 9pm Saudi local time. We had arrived in Jeddah at about 11am that day. And about one hour after the breaking news, my friend was brought to the glee of the nation through the tube and paraded on the Saudi national television as the suspected culprit in the illicit drug trafficking. That was one of the most frightening moments of my life. Akram wanted to be rich and I was to pay the cost of his richness.

    What would have happened if I had not heeded the warning of my instinct? Who could have imagined that a seeming gentleman like Akram would ever think of trafficking in drug for whatever reason? If I had been caught with Akram’s baggage, what explanation could have exonerated me? Those were the questions that immediately ran through me like milk through water and changed my mind about sentimental friendship with people no matter how innocent they might look. There and then, I decided never to assist anybody again in carrying his or her baggage while on a journey.

    After about three months of trial, Akram was sentenced to fifteen years in jail. He was lucky that drug trafficking at that time in Saudi Arabia had not attracted death as penalty. If it were now, the punishment would have been death sentence by beheading. I was also lucky that at that time the Saudi immigration authorities had not adopted the use of secret camera to monitor passengers.

     

    Prison for reformation

    For 15 years thereafter (from 1981 to 1996), Akram remained behind bars languishing in Saudi Arabian Prison as an inmate among criminals and expecting to be let off the hook one day. But one good thing about Saudi Arabia as a country or any other Islamic country for that matter is the concept of reformation which imprisonment entails. Inmates are not just imprisoned as punishment for crimes they are also prepared for a better post-prison life and re-orientated for better world outlook. Besides, prisoners are paid a specific amount of money daily for their labour in prison. And that gives them hope of reintegration into the society after leaving the prison. Such money is kept in a special bank account opened for them. The total amount is paid to each inmate after his or her prison term.

    Thus, when Akram left the prison in 1996, the post-prison money paid to him became his main lot in life. He was deported to Nigeria but not without that prison labour reward that became his capital for a poultry business. And within a couple of years thereafter, he had become a big poultry farmer but whether or not he learnt any lesson from that incident is another matter.

     

    Qur’anic admonition

    Most of the young men and women of today do not seem to believe in crawling before walking. To them, what matters most in their lives is how to quickly get money to spend and not how such money is made. And that is the main cause of the high rate of crimes witnessed around the world today and the entailed short life span for those youths. In Qur’an, Chapter 43, Verse 32 quoted above, Allah had warned Muslims against desperate accumulation of wealth over 1,400 years ago even when desperate quest for wealth was unfashionable. However, the refusal by today’s youths to heed that warning and the aggressive greed of the privileged elders in power constitute the main cause of restiveness and insurrection around the world today.

    In I slam, desperation for accumulation of wealth is prohibited because it encourages a focus on the end result rather than the means and its entailed morality. In the past decades, Nigeria had sunk so deep into the valley of corruption that no one care to ask about the source of any wealth again even as corruption became the taproot of Nigeria’s tree of existence. Now, with parents, teachers and even legislators getting so desperate to become rich even right before their children what future is expected for those children?

     

    Parochial wealth estimation

    Desperation is not what fetched Nigeria the enormous oil wealth of today. If desperation ever had any role to play in accumulating wealth, perhaps Nigeria would have long become a country in penury. This is because people who were more desperate in this same country and had lived and died some centuries back would have discovered this oil wealth and they would have exhausted it long before our own generation. But in consonance with the quoted Qur’anic verse above, Allah deliberately preserved it for our own generation for a reason best known to Him. Yes, oil may be the source of wealth at this time, it is surely not the last wealth in this country. There are other sources of wealth preserved for the future generations which no desperate ‘awks’ in this generation can discover. Those who see oil as the climax of wealth and want to own its control or die for it should engage in a rethink. You can only have the privilege of presiding over the wealth of a nation for a while and not at all times. The experience of the immediate past regime in Nigeria should serve as a sufficient lesson. And those in government today should also note this very well. The privilege of the past did not extend to the present and that of the present will not extend to the future. Every era is a transit. And every transit has a term.

  • The day the world changed

    The day the world changed

    December 7, 1941 was a day that will live forever in infamy. That was the verdict that President Franklin D. Roosevelt pronounced on the day that the Japanese decided to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the heart of the United States bled for its innocent citizens.

    It was an act of war and the country and its leaders treated it as such. It was the beginning of the end of the 2nd World War. While the fortune of that war changed, the world didn’t. And at the end of the war, normalcy returned; and Japan and the United States have remained allies and trading partners for most of the last century to date.

    September 11, 2001 (9/11) was a different class in the calendar of days. It was the most appropriate for the title of a Day of Infamy. Fourteen years ago today the world really changed and normalcy has been a mirage ever since.  Witness security operations at local and international airports. Though radical Islamists had been a nuisance to the sensibilities of the civilised world for most of the last 40 years or so, 9/11 carried its raging insanity too far, striking the soul of the capital of the industrial world with its mindless fury. And the world appeared to have had more than enough. Or has it, really?

    If in fact the world had it on 9/11, the question that cries for an answer is “why hasn’t the world really come together to excise the cancerous mass from its body?” And why has it allowed the malignancy to spread so aggressively?

    Further still, from the way in which terrorists have unleashed their murderous venom on innocent human beings in all corners of the world, shall we infer that the rest of the civilised world, from Africa to Asia and Europe to the Americas, cannot combine their forces to defeat and root them out from the face of the earth?

    Terrorism is about the use of violence and terror to achieve political change. This is true of religious terrorists as it is of freedom fighters. The purpose is political. ISIS, Al Qaeda and Boko Haram all want to have a Caliphate that they control. Boko Haram once insisted that no non-Moslems will be allowed to rule their fold. But they also discriminate between their version of Islam and those they reject. No members of other Moslem sects are also to be trusted to rule over them.

    What they want they cannot have by persuasion because they don’t trust their own power to persuade others to their point of view. Rather they will force their creed into the mind, (sorry, make that the flesh), of others. If you cannot persuade by reasoning, you cannot reach the mind of anyone. If you then choose to impose your creed by force, you are capturing the body, the flesh, and not the mind. How deep does that go? That is why Oxford English Dictionary defines a terrorist as anyone who attempts to further his or her views by a system of coercive intimidation.

    One is tempted to blame it all on the civilised world itself. Not just because they have proved themselves utterly ineffective in stopping the spread of terror in at least the last 15 years; but also because, as some will argue, they started it all in the first place.

    Tracing the history of terrorism in a seminal book, Inside Terrorism, Bruce Hoffman observes that the French Revolutionists designed the “reign of terror” to consolidate the power of the new government they established by intimidating the counter-revolutionaries and subversives who they regarded as enemies of the people.

    Robespierre, the Revolutionary leader, defined terror as nothing but justice, prompt, severe and inflexible. He regards it therefore as an emanation of virtue itself. How perverse this must appear to us now if Shekau were to offer himself as the embodiment of virtue. Indeed, hasn’t he taunted and mocked the rest of us as kaffirs, which is another term for vice, the opposite of virtue.

    What state terrorists, such as Robespierre started, anti-state and pro-anarchist terrorists took over and ran with in the aftermath of the industrial revolution and the widespread alienation it caused. And of course, the state that never quite abandoned its absolute control over the use of force also found terror handy as an instrument of the totalitarian state. On their part, the oppressed and dispossessed in colonial enclaves, rejecting the title of terrorists, self-identified as freedom fighters. The tactic and outcomes, however, remain identical.

    But can there ever be a moral justification for terrorism, which unlike conventional war, makes no distinction against morally justifiable and unjustifiable targets of violent actions? When Shekau and his terror gang send innocent girls and young boys on suicide bombing missions, we cannot assume that those young people know or fully understand what they are being asked to do. Then they die and they kill others who have nothing to do with whatever the grievances of the gang might be.

    Or when Chibok girls were herded away in trucks to an unknown destination and forcefully kept against their wish while some were converted to Islam against their wish as the President recently observed, does Shekau consider this act as good-in-itself or as a means to some end that he wants to achieve? If he thinks it is good in itself to abuse and brutalise innocent girls he must be the most perverse and devilish human being. Isn’t it a most bizarre and cruel irony that he would suggest that he is doing whatever he does in the name of God and in obedience to his will?

    So we know that it is bizarre. We understand that it is devilish. And we agree that it is evil. What is it that prevents us from not just verbally condemning these mindless violence and others, such as the beheading of innocent men and women by ISIS, but more importantly, combining the forces of the entire world community, which are certainly greater than those of the terrorists to defeat them?

    One reason the world has not come together is the perceived dissimilarity of vested interests among the leaders of the civilised world. One props up a regime that gasses its citizens. Another turns a blind eye towards atrocities committed by a friendly regime. A third is inward looking and doesn’t care as long as it is not a target. Yet for another it is the economy that matters and she will enter into trade relations with the devil if it pays. And so with disparate national interests, worldwide terror, even with its limited strength, gets a break that it doesn’t deserve.

    With a purposefully united international community AWOL, terrorists are having a field day, and evil is let loose!

    African nations cannot afford the devastation, dislocations and the psychological trauma that terrorism is inflicting worldwide. This is why it is important for them to combine their forces to defeat it and erase it from the face of the continent. This is supposed to be Africa’s century. It is its take-off time. It cannot afford to be pulled down by the weight of terror.

    President Muhammadu Buhari is on the right path with his shuttle diplomacy to neighbouring states, mobilising his fellow leaders to the theatre of the war against terror. With their arms wide open appealing for support, the West must be ready to lift them up with the resources they need to execute the war to its logical conclusion.

  • Re-Like Mark, like Saraki

    As a mark of respect, I hate to join issues with my senior colleagues on the pages of Newspapers (sic). This position of mine was further encouraged by the President of the Senate Emeritus (sic), Senator David Mark, who always told me that every man has a right to his opinion. In the eight years I spent with him officially as his media advisor, Senator Mark’s preference and insistence was to speak directly with those who held contrary opinions to his views not minding their reactions in the newspapers. He often advised that we leave all channels of communication open for “those who need to know.”

    As a journalist, I also subscribe to the dictum that the right to free expression is not open ended. In simpler terms, the freedom of expression has its limits. It is in the light of this that I believe that my first boss and senior colleague, Steve Osuji, went beyond his freedom of expression in his “ Like Mark, like Saraki” as espoused on the Backpage of The Nation newspaper of Friday, August 28, 2015. His opaque views must not be allowed to pass or else many will mistook (sic) his rubbish fiction as a fact.

    Osuji in his EXPRESSO column surmised that the eight years of Senator Mark as President of the Senate would only be remembered for what he ( Osuji) dubiously tagged as “a rapacious money mongering ogre ; a loose King Kong trampling the polity and gobbling up our common wealth” among many other fables. There is no conclusion that could have been farther from the truth about the Mark’s Years.

    Throughout his uproar, Osuji did not accuse Senator Mark of helping himself from the disbursement of funds or committing any malfeasance arising from pilfering in the general purse. Rather, his accusations were like venting self-inflicted frustrations on an imaginary enemy. Osuji was uncouth and sounded like a confused town crier.

    For the avoidance of doubts, it is imperative to state that the Senator David Mark Years of (sic) the Nigerian Senate created a stable polity and amended electoral laws that guaranteed credible, fair and free elections which every Nigerian including Osuji are (sic) proud of today.

    Also, that Senate was historic for her cohesion, indivisibility and unity of purpose as Senators spoke in unison irrespective of creed or political affiliations.

    It is also curious that Osuji will forget so soon that the Mark’s Senate remained the only government department in annals of our contemporary history to return a whopping sum of N 7billion Naira to the national coffers as unspent fund in the 2008 fiscal year.

    I do not think that Osuji suffers dementia. But it shuddered (sic) me that he failed to remember that Senator Mark in the last session of 2014 led his colleagues to slash the budget of the National Assembly by over N30billion Naira.

    It is indeed sordid, sad and reprehensible that Osuji and his likes would prefer to make Senator Mark the scapegoat of their hate campaigns. Their wishful thinking notwithstanding, majority of Nigerians will continue to adore the legacies of stability; cohesion; executive/legislative collaboration; the invocation of the Doctrine of Necessity that saved our polity from the precipice; electoral reforms; anti-same sex marriage bill and many other bills.

    These and many others are the achievements of Senator Mark which Osuji and his hate promoters cannot dwarf in the court of public opinion no matter the pecuniary interests that ink their pens.

     

    Ologbondiyan is media aide to Senator David Mark

  • One hundred daze

    SO soon, 100 days have wheezed by since President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) was sworn into office to lead the Federal Republic of Nigeria over the next four years. One hundred days out of four years may be insignificant, but 100 days could also make all the difference in a four-year programme. Besides, 100 days is a whale of a time if you reckon it by seconds, minutes and hours. To make the point and cut this paragraph short, what I am saying is that the world can actually be changed in 100 days for anyone so minded.

    It has become difficult especially for columnists to make a candid assessment of PMB’s nascent era without Nigerians (even ardent readers) labelling you a spoilsport or a saboteur. The feeling is understandable. The generality of Nigerians have been starved of quality leadership for so long that they may have lost some of the capacity to assess leadership and governance adequately.

    This is why in a situation where nearly the entire populace is convinced they have never had it so good, it may be dangerous and inimical to one’s well-being to try to state otherwise or showcase some obvious misconceptions. How many Nigerians would accept if it is pointed to them that we have had 100 days of all motion with nary a movement forward yet? Many readers and of course the establishment would take offence and yell bad faith if they were pointed to the fact that PMB has started on a wrong footing and has in fact been in a daze of sort in the past 100 days. Even his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), was caught up so swiftly by ‘100 days’ it now denies time-bound promises it made. How time flies.

    There is no doubt that many will disagree and fiercely too, but that is one’s candid reading of the situation. Many will be quick to jump into the fray with the fact that hey; but power has become more stable, fuel has been selling at N87 per litre with those obnoxious marketers back in their damp holes like the worms they are. Refineries are also said to be working; anti-corruption agencies are acting up once again and cheery things are generally happening to us.

    I agree. All these and many more have happened in the last 100 days. In fact the most significant happening (notice that I refrain from calling it achievement) in the Buhari second coming is the instant death of impunity. Perhaps for the first time since Tafawa Balewa, we have a president or head of state who is not lasciviously eyeing our treasury every waking moment the manner a stud eyes a beautiful woman. I wager that most of our leaders who have had access to our treasury spend more time ‘plotting’ treasury plunder than national development.

    Parable of the train, the pilot, baboons and gorillas: To digress a little, to loot the treasury seems the easy part, the real work must be in managing the loot, hiding it, laundering it, keeping it out of the official circuit and most crucial, making sure your accomplices don’t covet your loot and stab you in the back or vice-versa. You will agree with me that it is no mean task. Why do you think the Americans, so far away, yet have dossier of Nigeria’s loot; a certain former governor lodged his loot in an overhead tank; a former IG of Police buried his in the precincts of his country home, but somehow, the hand of the ‘corpse’ was jutting out. My people say one man cannot bury corpse! It is the same way it’s difficult ‘managing’ money that cannot be kept in the bank. So you ask: why do individuals want to have more money than all the banks in their country can hold?

    And once a leader has boarded the loot train, he immediately loses concentration of the arduous task of managing the treasury and ensuring the equitable and wise deployment of the commonwealth.

    Once he has cranked the engine of the loot train, he becomes its captain and unknown to him, the show is no longer entirely in his hands; he is spending his tenure managing the loot train, instead of running a country or state. And you know what, it is a longish train whose coaches stretch far back (or down) out of his sight. And of course, all sorts of monkeys and baboons and gorillas would join in on the loot train while the pilot is hurtling on, merrily oblivious of the havoc being wreaked in the coaches behind him. And because the treasury is what any enclave is all about, our captain would soon find he is running a hollow republic of gangsters.

    What we have had through most of our history had been loot train captains who have spent time in office managing their loot and the fellow gangsters in their trains instead of running a country. They would pretend at running the country, they would hee and they would haw; they would spew all sorts of rubbish platitudes until their terms were up. This has been largely our lot through history. Sorry we digressed.

    Back to PMB, it must be said that he is not bugged down piloting a loot train. He does not have ‘loot challenges’ to contend with and importantly too, the monkeys and baboons who always hover around the treasury are kept at bay. PMB’s challenge on the other hand, is to apply the treasury efficiently, effectively, judiciously and speedily too.

    We appreciate the fact that our treasury is intact; we appreciate the fact that this is happening by sheer fact of his personal character and integrity. I cannot remember any other president or leader at the national or even state level one can vouch for who had no loot challenges. We appreciate the fact that as a result of his personal example and good behaviour in office, the baboons and monkeys are behaving themselves so far: the baboons and monkeys of the power sector; of the fuel subsidy saga; of NNPC, etc who were riding merrily in former President Goodluck Jonathan’s loot train are now behaving themselves. We appreciate PMB for this singular – shall we call it achievement, as most of us are mistakenly calling it?

    Would I be crucified if I said I think PMB has been dazed by the office so far and that there has been much motion without movement? I have a dozen examples, but for fear of being accused of bad faith or malice, I will proffer just a few. First, they say we cannot form government in 100 days because the rot is deep and needs to be cleansed; he needs to fight corruption; even President Obama did not form government so fast. Fallacy; America’s systems and institutions are so strong government can run pretty well without the presidency.

    If the rot is deep, what we need is a proper government to set up systems and institutions quickly. How much can one man do even if he worked alone for four years? There is also this fallacy of getting permanent secretaries to brief the president on their ministry. The ‘cult of Perm Secs’ is probably the bane of the civil service today. I wager that half of the reports they present to the president is worthless report that will not serve us any purpose. He will probably need 40 years to go through all the junk reports they will generate and seek to ‘bury’ him with. Would any perm sec tell us how many ghost workers he has bred and ‘owns’ in each ministry or how many unauthorised appointments he has made since May 29 this year? So much for cleansing rot.

    We are saying that fighting corruption is not the President’s primary duty. If PMB had done the right things, for instance, by ‘cleansing the EFCC, ICPC, Auditor-General of the Federation’s office and appointing the right Attorney-General of the Federation, some of Jonathan’s ministers would be in jail by now. Or at least they would not have regained their voices to be making public statements.

    We are tired of having to repeat this daily. The President should please quickly set up systems to work for us. We don’t have time; the economy is failing; the country is retrogressing further. And remember he is allowed to make mistakes, so long as they are honestones.

     

     

  • MUSWEN on the Move

    Have you not seen how Allah has presented the parable of good deed like that of a fruitful tree which roots are firmly planted in the belly of the earth while its foliages sprout gorgeously into the firmament of the sky, yielding (edible) fruits every season by Allah’s permission? Allah presents human beings with parables that they may be mindful”

                                                            Qur’an 14 verse 24.

     

    Preamble 

    In what is considered a logical move to solidify its strategy in upholding the unity of the Southwest Muslims, a powerful delegation of the Muslim Ummah of Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) paid a courtesy visit to Ado-Ekiti, the capital city of Ekiti State, last Sunday. The visit was for two main reasons: (1) to congratulate the new President-General of the League of Imams and Alfas of the Southwest, Edo and Delta, Alhaji Jamiu Bello Kewulere who is also the Chief Imam of Ado-Ekiti; (2) to reassure the Muslim Community of Ekiti as well as the League of Imams and Alfas that MUSWEN is as much in partnership with them as it is with other Muslim Communities and organisations in the region.

    The delegation was led by the President of MUSWEN, Chief Sakariyau Olayiwola Babalola, OON who is popularly known as Chief SOB Babalola. He became the President of MUSWEN early this year at the General Assembly meeting of MUSWEN. He is the third President of that umbrella body of the Southwest Muslim Ummah. He succeeded Justice Tijani Bolorinwa Babalakin, JSC (Rtd), CON, LLD  who also succeeded the late Prof Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa, NMO, CON, the pioneer President of MUSWEN.

    Ever since he assumed office as President, Chief S.O.B has been taking some revolutionary moves aimed at putting MUSWEN on a very sound footing and at improving the welfare of the Muslim masses in the region. One of his progressive moves was the trip to Ado-Ekiti last Sunday which further confirms that this President is really on course in his determination to move MUSWEN to a higher pedestal. That visit which will soon be followed by similar ones to other states reminds yours sincerely of an article published in this column about MUSWEN in 2009. It went thus:

     

    Dynamism and Evolution

    “Life is both dynamic and evolutionary. Its dynamism springs incontrovertibly from its evolution. Without evolution, there can be no experience for man. And, without dynamism, every progressive move capable of fetching more experience would have been in vain. To Islam, one of these two phenomena of life (dynamism and evolution) is a corollary of the other. Thus, the presence of evolution without that of dynamism is like the appearance of the sun without its rays.

     

    Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

    Contrary to the atheist theory of evolution propounded by a British naturalist, Charles Darwin, in his book entitled ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’, published in 1859, Islam believes that evolution is rather a matter of reformation than transformation. Darwin had wanted the world to believe that all living organisms were from a single atom, which transformed from nature to nature and from shape to shape until all the living things we can see today came into existence.

    He also hinted that all those perceivable living things would not remain what they were and concluded that they would change from time to time assuming new natural postures entirely different from what they looked originally. By this queer theory, cockroaches were expected to transform into man at a stage and man into a cow or an elephant. Can you imagine that?

    Thank God, however, that the widely popularised but obviously illogical theory has now been consigned to the refuse bin where it naturally belongs. Falsehood is like a smoke oozing spirally and aggressively into the atmosphere. It may pollute the air for a while. It may colour the atmosphere momentarily. But it will finally and definitely vamoose into permanent oblivion. Allah had alluded to this in the Qur’an where He says: “truth has come and falsehood has vamoosed; surely, falsehood is meant to vamoose”. The Darwin theory of evolution is a typical example of such falsehood.

    Readers may be wondering how Darwin’s theory of evolution concerns MUSWEN. This will be explained shortly. In one of the write-ups published in this column in the past, I described Islam as “a mighty ocean flowing ceaselessly towards all directions and watering all plants into life through the deltas of adjoining rivers”.

     

    Reminiscence

    When that ocean flowed into Nigeria about 1,000 years ago, it only attracted a few men and women of divinely guided minds who were foresighted enough to embrace the new light of Islam coming to illuminate the dark continent of Africa. For several centuries thereafter, that light remained in the area now called Northern Nigeria. And when it eventually reached the Yorubaland (now Southwest Nigeria), in the 15th century, it hardly found any tributary with which to water the plants around. All the people who later embraced Islam and became Muslims practised it as individuals and not as organisations. They only came together as congregations in Mosques during observance of Salat.

    It was only in 1916 when Ahmadiyyah Muslim Jama’a came to Nigeria via Lagos that the idea of real Islamic organisations began to germinate. Hitherto, all Muslims in the north and in the south were just Muslims of the Sunni doctrine. Shi’ah, at that time, had not yet been known to this part of the world. The little differences that later arose among the Sunni Muslims emanated from the differences of opinions among the four renowned Sunni Imams (Malik, Shafi’i, Hambali and Hanafi) concerning the jurisprudential interpretation of Sunnah. And, with time, when Sufi doctrine began to spread, ignorance took the centre stage as the followers of Qadriyyah and those of Tijaniyyah began to engage in mutual confrontations with each claiming a non-existing superiority over the other.

     

    Nigeria’s First Muslim Organisation

    It may therefore, be said that the very first real Muslim organisation in Nigeria is Ahmadiyyah Muslim Jama’a, which was imported into the Southwest of Nigeria from England in 1916. Although that organisation later broke up into two main factions in Nigeria, it nevertheless opened door for many other Muslim organisations to spring up especially in Lagos.

    Some of such organisations include Jamaatu Islamiyyah, Anwarul Islam, Ansar-ud-Deen Society of Nigeria, Zumratul Islamiyyah, Nawair-ud-Deen Society of Nigeria, Muslim Association of Nigeria (MAN)  and a host of others, like the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN), National Council of Muslim Youths Organisation (NACOMYO), Federation of Muslim Women Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN), The Criterion,  Nasrullah-li-Fatih (NASFAT), Fatiu Quareeb, The Muslim Congress (TMC) and the like, most of which sprang up later in Lagos.

    However, except for bodies like Lagos Muslim Council and the League of Imams and Alfas, none of the aforementioned organisations attempted to serve as an umbrella for the entire Muslim community in the region. Even the two that made attempt only succeeded in catering for certain sections of the Ummah. This is in contrast to what obtains in the north where Jamaatu Nasril Islam is the main umbrella body for all Muslim organisations in that region.

     

    NSCIA and JNI

    Considering the fact that Jamaatu Nasril Islam (JNI) serves the entire north the South West Muslim population which is less than 20 percent of the northern Muslim population, ought to have created a similar umbrella for the region’s Muslim community to serve as a strong compliment to that of the north.

    But, even after about 500 years of embracing Islam, the thought of having such a body did not materialise until August 2008 when MUSWEN came into existence. One can therefore see why the Muslims in this region were so disunited even before a common threat. But it is better to be late than never. At last, MUSWEN has come to stay and it is waxing stronger.

     

    Genesis of MUSWEN

    The idea of forming MUSWEN as the umbrella body for the Southwest Muslims started in March 2004 at the instance of ‘The Companion’, a Lagos based Organisation of Muslim business and professional youth elite. MUSWEN as umbrella body was inaugurated in Ibadan in August 2008 in the presence of virtually all the frontline Muslim Obas and Chieftains. His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto was the Special Guest of Honour on the occasion where all Muslim organisations in the Southwest were duly represented not as guests but as full members. Their presence indicated their commitments.

     

    MUSWEN’s Vision

    MUSWEN’s vision is of a united and effective voice for Muslims in the region under a strong, veritable and collective leadership. This had eluded the region for a very long time but the right time has come. The overall aim is to project the right image of Islam and raise the profile of the Muslims in this part of the country with a formidable unity. That aim also includes enabling them and their offspring to live fully worthy lives as staunch believers and practitioners of the faith while at the same time contributing their quota to the development of the country as respected citizens.

     

    Before Now

    As individuals and organisations, we had wandered aimlessly for centuries like unguarded flock. We had cried for a guiding umbrella body without getting one. We had identified disunity as the bane of our existence and yet we had failed to find a solution for it. But Allah has a time for everything just as He has a programme for every nation or community. Now is the time for solving the chronic problem confronting the Southwest Muslim. Now is the time to flock together in peace and harmony. Now is the time to fly where we had been crawling and fortunately, MUSWEN has a capable pilot in its President, Chief S.O. Babalola.

    Who can claim to be happy where virtually all the children of school age that are out of school happen to be Muslims? Who can feel satisfied with having fewer schools and fewer teachers than we need at all levels our educational system? Who can claim to be well pleased with a situation where the most skilled and most professionally qualified Muslims have crossed to the other side of the bridge due to lack of guidance? Who does not know that the enclave of penury in this part of the country is domiciled in the Muslim community? Should we continue to be complacent with this gloomy situation and indifferent to a positive change? To put correct perspective in place, only cooperation by all will be good for all.

     

    An Eye Sore

    If we look around us, we shall find that almost all the touts in our city and town motor garages claim to be Muslims. Overwhelming majority of ‘never do well’ artisans in our region claim to be Muslims. Most of the hooligans used by the politicians to kill or maim political opponents claim to be Muslims. There are no worthy private Muslim schools in which to enroll our children. No trusted Muslim hospitals are available for our masses. Few Muslim law chambers can compare with those for non-Muslims. Few Accounting firms owned by Muslims are of the highest standard. Even ordinary continuous education centres to coach our children for Secondary School Certificate or General Certificate of Education or Joint Admission and Matriculation exams are not available for Muslims. Why then, are we complaining of attempt in certain quarters to convert our children? Who does not know that anybody who pays the piper automatically has the authority to dictate the tune?

     

    Why MUSWEN?

    It is in order to end this gloomy situation and rekindle the glow of hope that MUSWEN emerged as a formidable platform for the Muslims of the Southwest to prove their mettle. But why is MUSWEN so named and why is it restricted to the Southwest of Nigeria?

    The history of Islam and the conditions of the Muslims in Southwest Nigeria are so unique that they require a special and appropriate attention. The presence of Islam among the Yoruba people who inhabit the area now called Southwest dates back to centuries before the advent of Christianity and the coming of the British colonialists in 1842. Islam had thus made a tremendous impact on the language and culture of the people. Being a religion of literacy and education, Islam brought these to the Yoruba and the rest of West African people for the first time.  At that time, Yoruba language was committed to writing in Arabic alphabets otherwise known as Ajami. Arabic, therefore, became the first language of literacy as well as the medium of formal communication and scholarly discourse among Yoruba Muslim scholars. But hasn’t that been reversed today?

     

    Concern

    It is rather a matter of concern and even an irony that the same Muslims are now far behind their Christian counterparts in education. How did this irony come about? How can it be reversed?

    What are the aims and objectives of MUSWEN? What is its structure? What programmes does it have for the Southwest Muslims? What is its position vis a vis the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs? These and many more questions about MUSWEN will be answered in this column in the near future In sha’a Llah.