The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • Missing shared accountability

    Missing shared accountability

    Segun Gbadegesin

     

    FOR this first full week of 2021, I had planned on focusing on a concern that I believe many fellow citizens share with me. Rightly so, because many of the challenges that we’ve had as a nation ultimately boil down to the absence of accountability. We don’t hold ourselves accountable for our conduct which has adverse effects on others and on the nation.

    As I mulled over the matter, my focus was going to be entirely on the political context. After all, it is the foremost institution, the architectonic, which has the most impact on our lives. Yet it is one that is lacking most in accountability. However, as I thought more about this, it occurred to me that what ails the political institution has its roots outside that institution, and it is a carryover from other institutions.

    We can go down to the minutiae of this issue, especially at the domestic or family level. Many bring children into the world with no thought or plan for their care and future. They fail woefully in the matter of discharging our responsibility to them. From their impressionable years, they forge in them a spirit of dependency.  They seek help from others to bring them up. They distribute them to relations to take care of. Or in ignorant understanding of religious tenets, they hand them over to spiritual leaders who in turn use them as beggars for alms.

    I concede that, traditionally, there is the belief that it takes a village to raise a child. But that does not mean that parents are expected to delegate their responsibility for raising their children to the village or community. Rather, it is simply a reflection of the understanding that a collective effort is warranted in introducing the children to the values of their village, community, or nation. Indeed, there was more personal responsibility in our traditional and indigenous societies than the so-called modern era. Traditionally, a child can expect to be given the resources he or she needed for entering into the family business, trade or profession, whether it be farming, weaving, or trading.

    For the most part now, however, we just give up on the products of our loins and the fruits of our wombs, leaving them to their fate while we produce yet more. And those that we give up on almost always go on to become anything from hoodlums and cultists to hard core criminals with dire consequences for society. And no one is held accountable. Perhaps if parents are held to account for the crimes committed by their minors, they will assume responsibility.

    This lack of shared responsibility and shared accountability runs through every aspect of our national life and we ignore it at our peril. As the elders observe, our untrained offspring will eventually destroy the edifice that we build in lieu of their training. But as it is for families, so it is for nations, which end up bearing the burden of family irresponsibility and negligence.

    There is more, however. The idea of shared responsibility extends to the relationship between the family and the state. As an assembly of families, the state has the mandate to promote the welfare of citizens through their elected representatives. It does this by making provision for their security, education, and health. But to carry out this important mandate, the state depends on the contributions of citizens to its pool of resources. Where such contributions are not forthcoming, shared responsibility is lacking and the mandate cannot be fulfilled.

    Before the discovery of oil, the nation depended on taxes from agricultural produce to fund development and welfare programs, including the popular free education in the old Western Region. A responsible government channeled those resources to benefit the people with glaring results that elicited the pride of the people in, and respect for, their government. It was a give and take philosophy in practice.

    That, unfortunately, is no longer the practice. With a majority of our people in a paralyzing dependency mode, we have moved to the realm of representation without taxation. As we know, taxation without representation is a valid justification for a revolutionary stance on the part of the people. However, the government is still very much expected to carry out its responsibilities even when the people renege on theirs.

    Perhaps a fair distribution of the proceeds of the natural resources at the disposal of the nation would be alright to provide for the basic needs of every citizen even without taxation, as is the case in some countries. In those jurisdictions, a powerful few don’t grab available national resources. Too bad, we do not belong to that fortunate group of nations.

    The result of this combination of misfortunes is the inadequacy of public goods from security to education and health. And everyone pays dearly for this. Thus, while the state could provide a better security regime for all from a pool of resources to which everyone contributes, many families and communities end up establishing their own security regimes around their homes and streets respectively. Unfortunately, however, there is no guarantee for their safety with armed robbers now operating in groups with sophisticated weapons.

    In the golden era of shared responsibility, public education was at its best, with dedicated and well-trained teachers, from primary to modern and secondary schools, producing the best and brightest, many of whom are still making the nation proud. Surely, there were complements of private schools, including mission schools. But these were effectively regulated by governments, and their fees weren’t prohibitive.

    What can we say of our public education system now? It is a disaster. From dilapidated buildings and falling roofs to staff and teacher shortage, the rot is mind-boggling. We are failing the future of children and we don’t seem worried. Now there is a plethora of private schools catching in on the mess and taking advantage of the predicament of parents. What we fail to contribute in taxes to have good public schools, we pay in exorbitant fees to private schools with pecuniary interests. Amazingly, we are alright with it.

    It is the same story in the matter of health. Since 1985, we have been comparing our hospitals to glorified dispensaries. At one point, we even described them as morgues in waiting. And for more than thirty five years, instead of improvement they have actually further deteriorated. This is especially true of general hospitals in rural areas. But who cares for them? There are private hospitals for the rich, and for the super- rich there are countries with great healthcare systems even if they are the same age as our country. Shamelessness will not kill us!

    Currently, however, there is no greater evidence of how we are undermining the importance of shared responsibility and shared accountability than in our collective response to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the government has been forthcoming about what is at stake, and have inundated us with guidelines to prepare us for the fight against the disease, many in the population have either been in denial or are simply disdainfully unconcerned.

    In the absence of a functioning health system to cope, our best chance for escape from the wrath of the virus is prevention. Surprisingly, we have failed woefully. Even with a scary spike in number of positive cases in the wake of a second wave, beaches were packed for Yuletide festivities. We are really pushing our luck and I fear the worst may soon descend. What are we going to do? Already some thought leaders in the west are wondering why Africa hasn’t been hit hard. And we seem to be helping them witness the horror that they cherish to see out of Africa.

    My point of departure for these reflections is shared accountability in politics. As the institution with the most responsibility for the populace, it appears that citizens have all but delegated their responsibility to politicians. But my thoughts on this will have to wait till next week when I discuss a model of politics that is not for the common good. Unfortunately, it is one that we seem to have embraced.

     

     

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  • Reimagining the nation

    Reimagining the nation

    Segun Gbadegesin

     

    SO long, 2020. Welcome 2021. But did we just end an old decade and now starting a new one? Or are we a year old in a new decade that started in 2020? The fact that there is no uniform answer to this question confirms the point made on this page last week. Numbering of years is arbitrary.

    A monk gave us the Gregorian calendar based on his calculation of an event which may not have been an accurate one. The Farmers’ Almanac agrees with his numbering and suggests that 2021 is the beginning of the new decade, (there is no Year 0). However, our cultural preference favors 2020 as the beginning (we talk about the 20s not the 21s).

    While we don’t need to be bogged down with the arbitrariness of year numbering, we need to bother about what we think and do in the new year or decade and how what we think and do impact our lives. The nation has been slouching slowly to a precipice over the years. And this is impacting the lives of residents and citizens in negative ways. What exactly is the challenge and what should be our response to meeting it head on? How might we turn things around beginning in 2021?

    We are not in shortage of critics and analysts. From the objectively naive to the subjectively personal and every one in between, this country is immensely blessed.  It should concern us greatly that our freely offered criticisms and suggestions have not had the desired effect of moving the nation forward. And this is not just a recent phenomenon.

    Genuine policy differences have always played out in the public arena as is normal. The Anglo-Nigerian Defence Agreement, 1958-1962 was one such in the First Republic while controversy over census figures and election manipulation ended that era with military putsch.

    The military era, justified as a corrective regime, ironically ended up muddying the water and politicizing the fundamental blocks of the nation, ending in a bitter civil war, the consequences of which are still with us today. It is heart-wrenching watching the degeneration of our contemporary public discourse especially because it parallels the degeneration of public accountability.

    Let’s be clear. While there is a lot of self-serving critics and commentators posturing as genuine patriots, many critics and analysts are sincere in their love of country and we have no right to second-guess their patriotism. Even self-serving criticism, based on verifiable facts, can be useful despite its motive. Let us take this lesson from the utilitarians that motives do not negate the rightness of an action that promotes good consequences.

    For instance, I do not doubt the usefulness of a former elected official’s criticisms of aspects of governmental policies even though I am not sure about his motives. Furthermore, that he had eight years in office to oversee some of the issues he’s raising now is a fair observation. But it doesn’t detract from the rightness of his observations about what ails the nation. It would be good for him to acknowledge his omissions while in office. But if, for reason of character flaw, it doesn’t occur to him to do that, we can still use his born again insights.

    What is clear now is that there is mass discontent in the land. The economy may be on the rise in global ranking but the feat of being number 25 is felt neither in the pocket nor in the stomach of the people. And as we saw with the recent unfortunate protests across the nation, a hungry mob is an angry mob. What should we do differently this year? Let us agree that the government is doing its best in the matter of infrastructure development and that, hopefully, this will translate into a better populist economy in the near future. But what happens before then? How shall we meet the basic needs for food and shelter of millions of youth without a means of livelihood?

    Much has been made of the government’s renewed focus on agriculture and mining meant to supplement or even replace fossil fuel as foreign exchange earners. Agriculture remains the base of the economy and focusing government’s efforts on it appears to be yielding some decent dividends. According to available statistics the contribution of the sector to GDP increased from the second to the third quarter of 2020 and is expected to rise again in 2021. This is promising.

    Yet there are obvious constraints that dim the prospects of this bright picture. The rural areas are home to both small scale and large scale agriculture. Even with limited access to financing, subsistence and small scale farmers are still the live wire of the industry. But they face serious challenges from insecurity to lack of access to public goods, including but not limited to good road network to connect them with markets for raw materials and farm products.

    A national newspaper published a story about the crisis of insecurity in Oke-Ogun and Ibarapa divisions, the food basket of Oyo State. With increasing episodes of kidnaping and armed robbery targeting rural banks, fear has gripped these communities and lives have been dislocated. Helpless farmers are at the mercy of herdsmen feeding their cattle on farmlands, destroying crops with impunity. And the state governor recently alerted us on bandits’ invasion.

    Combine this challenge of insecurity with the abject poverty of rural dwellers and you have a perfect storm from which young people seek refuge elsewhere, usually, in the urban centers. This increases the need of urban areas, and it further marginalizes rural communities as resources and facilities are concentrated in the cities. To compete with the latter for security personnel, rural communities must make contributions that are not demanded of cities. Ditto with educational institutions. While city communities are not required to contribute buildings and generating sets to secure higher institutions, these are typical conditions for campuses in local communities. Needless to add, these kinds of policies further alienate rural communities.

    The point worth emphasizing, however, is the primary importance of security as the foremost purpose of government. With banditry and terrorism rampaging the north, and kidnapping, cultism and armed robbery afflicting the south, the nation certainly needs new ideas. To this end, the establishment of community policing was approved months ago. And, acknowledging the inadequacy of police officers, the federal government also endorsed the recruitment of additional police personnel and implementation is apparently ongoing with screening and training. Hopefully, these measures will make some tangible difference nationwide.

    These two issues–economic woes which citizens face and insecurity that threatens their lives–are at the heart of the discontent and alienation that people have felt for a long time. And naturally, they compare this new dimension of life since the military era to the life more abundant they enjoyed in the first civilian republic. And they ask two simple questions: why did we abandon a system that served citizens well? And why did civilians adopt the military system of central control for a federal republic?

    The answer they figure out only further deepens their sense of outrage. For it occurs to them that it is not for the benefit of the common good. It furthers the interest of some while negating and jeopardizing that of the masses of the people. Hence the incessant call for a new structure that ensures equitable development and fair distribution of the burden and benefits of national life. This is not too much to ask. It is the core of a just society.

    More relevant is the fact that what we have practiced in the last fifty four years hasn’t worked as successfully as the system we practiced in the first six years of independence, the golden era of the nation. And as the wise acknowledge, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, getting the same poor result, and failing to change course. In this 61st year of the birth of the republic, we must change course. If we don’t and we record another year of failure, we cannot blame 2021. We must blame ourselves.

    Happy New Year!

     

  • Terrorism: The Madrasah Connection

    Terrorism: The Madrasah Connection

    FEMI ABBAS

     

    Monologue

    The ongoing raging calamities in form of terrorism, banditry, armed robbery and serial rape in Nigeria, today, are cultivating a variety of focuses, ironically, from the agents of the Lucifer, who are clandestinely engineering them. The calamities are virtually turning those  agents into thirsty entities searching for water in a chronic desert where no oases are available. The world is passing through a trying period which needs to be studied with caution and candour. And, those who will sincerely be involved in such a study must thread softly. The continuity of human existence is dependent, not on selfish destruction of the lives of others but on ventilating the atmosphere for all and sundry through universal peace. It is rather a deceptive bid for certain people in a part of the world to engage, surreptitiously, in the annihilation of another part of the world on a satanic assumption that the survival of the their own part. In their search for the root cause of terrorism around the world, some Western countries began, some years ago, to  beam their searchlights on madrasah (ie Arabic/Qur’anic school) in the entire world in an errorneous belief that only such school could serve as as the main bastion of  extremism and breed terrorists in various societies. While this satanic remains un-established, the occurrences which led to its germination are far from making it a justifiable cause of such an allegation.

     

    Preamble

    Whereas madrasah has been in existence in Nigeria since the 9th century CE, terrorism in this country is a recent phenomenon engendered by certain imported circumstances clandestinely imposed mostly on third world countries. To genuinely identify the causes of terrorism, a thorough and unbiased study of the circumstances that warrant it should be a sine qua non.

    Since 2009 when Muhammad Yusuf, the founder of a religious group that came to be called ‘Boko Haram’ was killed in cold blood by Nigerian Police, no single case of terrorism has been linked directly to any madrasah either in the Middle East or in Asia or in Europe or in America or even in Africa. Most of the persons who were arrested and judicially tried for terrorism in Nigeria, in the past one decade or thereabout,  attended formal, conventional schools and not madrasah. In fact, most of those criminals have been found to be professionals in various fields of human endeavour.

    It is thus, clear, in reason and logic, that anybody who would handle such sophisticated weapons of mass destruction must be reasonably educated in sciences and technology. And, the secrecy of training such criminals, as well as the intellectual and material resources required for their training, are far beyond the level of any local madrasah boys and girls.

    Madrasah (the plural of which is madaris), is a school where Qur’an and Sunnah are taught and learned in Arabic language. And, the purpose of learning in those schools is to thoroughly comprehend Islamic law and jurisprudence for acquiring deep Islamic knowledge and for worshipping Allah, based on such knowledge.

     

    Locations of Madaris

    Wherever Muslims are found, madaris must be found. Madrasah is the primary source of acquiring Islamic education. All other serious religions also have similar schools for similar purposes and they are not subjected to any persecting harassment through the media. For instance, there was nothing like Boko Haram in any part of Africa, in 1988, when a group named ‘The Lords Resistance Movement’ (LRM), was established in Uganda. That Movement of an heterodox Christian group, which was destructively operating in Northern Uganda, was led by one Joseph Kony. Its objective was to overthrow the government of Uganda and establish a Christian government in that country as a model in Africa. For 24 years, from 1988 when that terrorist movement was established to 2014, when its leader, Joseph Kony, went into hiding, LRM remained a painful whitlow on the thump of Uganda. Yet no Musli media linked it to any Chritian cathechism.

     

    Reminiscence

    For the information of tose who are venomously labelling madrasah as a breeder of terrorists, it is on record that the very first University in the world (the University of Cordoba, established by the Muslims in Spain, in the 9th century, sprang from madrasah. And the three oldest Universities in the world today, (Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt; Qarawiyyin University in Fez, Morocco and Zaytuniyyah University in Tunis, Tunisia; all of which were established in the 10th century, emerged from madrasah. It was from those Universities that the West first came in contact with the idea of tertiary education.

     

    Attestation

    Attesting to the above fact in a lecture he delivered at Oxford University in 1993, Prince Charles of England said as follows: “If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt which our own culture and civilisation owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure which stems, I think, from the straight jacket of history which we have inherited. The mediaeval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished”.

    “But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of belief, we have tended to ignore it or erase its great relevance to our history. For example, we have underestimated the importance of 700 years of Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th centuries. The contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of classical learning during the Dark Ages, and the first flowerings of the Renaissance, has long been recognised”.

     

    Traits of Civilisation

    In his 1993 educative lecture at Oxford University, which drew applause from renowned intellectuals, Prince Charles continued as follows:

    “Many of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion, alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of cities”. “Medieval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time allowing Jews and Christians the right to practise their beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West….”

     

    Comment

    If this was the Muslim situation in medieval Europe and it all came through the madrasah, why should the same madrasah become a hunted institution in the 21st century?

    A Professorial Analysis

    It was for the purpose of answering the above question succintly that the role of ‘madaris’ in the modern world caught the attention of LAI OLURODE, a renowned Professor of Sociology at the University of Lagos, who wrote a well researched book on that subject, which was publicly presented on Wednesday, January 13, 2009 at Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.

     

    Comparative Analysis

    In the book entitled ‘Glimses of Madrasah in Africa’, Professor Olurode did a comparative analysis on the function of madrasah in Nigeria and Kenya pointing out the similarities and dissimilarities in the methodology of teaching Arabic language/Islamic religion in both countries as well as the impact of those madaris on the peoples of both countries.

    Professor Olurode, a onetime Dean of the Faculty of Arts in the University of Lagos and now the Chairman of the that University’s Muslim Community, also looked into the structure of ‘madrasah’ system of learning in the two mentioned countries of study with regards to ownership, student enrolment, gender and age distribution, curriculum, location and environment of madrasah. He did not stop there as he went further to examine  teachers’ qualifications and remunerations as well as funding and parents’ expectations from those schools.

     

    Strength and Weaknesses of Madaris

    Using Iwo (in Osun State) and Ilorin (in Kwara State), two Yoruba speaking cities in the Southwest and Middle Belt of Nigeria and two coastal towns of Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, as study cases, Professor Olurode went into thorough analysis of strength and weaknesses of madaris pointing out what ought to be done in those institutions as against what was on ground at the time he presented his book.

    In that book, he also looked at the phenomenon of madrasah in the medieval time as well as the contemporary time, vis a vis the conventional modern day schools and, he traced the  connection of madrasah  to the current global geo-politics.

     

    Excerpt

    Below is an excerpt from what he said in the book:

    “The American war against the Soviets in Afghanistan could not have recorded much success without the collaboration of Muslim coalition forces that were determined to oust the pro-Russian regime in Afghanistan. The US conveniently courted the friendship of those Muslims and their organisations that were willing to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan so as to roll back the evil of communism.

    “The research findings of M. Mamdani (in his book published in New York in 2004: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: ‘The Cold War and the Roots of Terror’) suggested a strong possibility of a CIA connection in the recruitment network that prosecuted the war in Afghanistan. There were also traces of religious and charitable organisations involvement in the recruitment drive and on an international scale too. Mamdani went further by insisting that: The Tablighi Jamat was neither set up nor functioned as a terrorist organisation. This main stream religious group was, however, among those used by the CIA as a conduit in its recruitment.

    “In the United States too, the CIA took cover behind legitimate charitable and religious Muslim organisations…one instance will suffice to highlight this development thus: “According to Cooley, the Al-kifah Afghan refugees center on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, was turned into a key center for “recruiting and fund raising for the Afghan jihad” and came to be called “Al-Jihad center by those who worked there. (See pages 13-15 of Mamdani’s book).

    Also, after touching deeply on such areas about madrasah like: Centrality of Early Child Education to Poverty Reduction; Connecting Madrasah to Public Education and Empowerment; Advocacy and Public Support for Madrasah; Penetrating the Worldview of Madrasah Pupils and Teachers as well as Cultural Heuristic and Moral Considerations, Professor Olurode concluded as follows: “The theory which drives this analysis, as outlined before, was that which subscribes to the centrality of culture in development. On several occasions, when culture has been ignored, development action, even where it manifests, is patently unsustainable. In a world that is characterized by turbulence, social prejudice and stereotype, violence, restlessness, profound uncertainties and insecurity, the madrasah system as a cultural heritage of the Islamic world has endured”. “This, it has done because it provides a shield from the perceived global siege on Islam and its practitioners”.

    “Muslims are generally of the view that Islam and Muslims are under siege and there exists a conspiratorial theory against Islam by the West and their allies. But the survival of Islam and the Muslims in the context of globalization is not without noticeable changes on its fringes. The retention of the core features of madrasah in the Islamic societies under study underlines the importance and the wisdom in working through this heritage, rather than by-passing it in the efforts to open up Muslims to effective participation in modern education. The typical madrasah should therefore be courted….”.

     

    When Professor Olurode’s social theory of madrasah and his recommended conclusion are juxtaposed with the thinking in the West, there is tendency that keen observers will settle for Rudyard Kipling’s couplet in which he concluded that “West is West and East is East; never will the twain meet”.

    The issues bringing the East and the West together are more mutually suspicious than friendly. And no amount of pretext can erase this fact. The lopsidedness in that relationship however is the main cause of the current global turmoil. There are much more fundamental causes of wonton destruction of lives and property than the principal actors therein are presenting to the world.

     

    Conclusion

    Now, there seems to be much more trouble ahead than currently being witnessed. America is engaging many countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia in a counter-terrorism war. And she wants to win on all fronts. The Iraqis and the Afghans are calling on the US to withdraw her forces from their land. Yemen and Pakistan are grudging over America’s usurpation of their security managements. Saudi Arabia and Syria are not pleased with the master’s role which America is playing in the Middle East. Iran and Lebanon are almost in readiness for war with the US. Nigeria and Kenya are watching very carefully, the step being taken by the US in blacklisting them over isolated cases of attempted or suspected terrorism link.

    This is the same situation that paved way for the doom of Germany in the World War II when Adolf Hitler lost to arrogance of power rather than inferiority of arsenal. In a situation where the United States in collaboration with her Western allies is pulling dozens of countries into a war arena whither the world in the 21st century?

  • Reflections on 2020

    Reflections on 2020

    Segun Gbadegesin

     

    THE year 2020 is ending. Habitually, we tend to think of a year, especially a leap year, as having a magical power over human lives. Seriously, however, reflecting on a year requires us to ask not about what it did to us, but rather what we did in it. A year has no agency. Humans do. It is not what a year makes of us. It is what we choose to make of the year.

    Like days, years come and go, and events occur in them. While we often tie natural events to God or the gods, we take responsibility for human-made events. The myth of a year having the power to impact us as separate from our power to order our lives is soothing. But it is a myth.

    In his letter to the Ephesians, Apostle Paul urged them to redeem the time, “because the days are evil.”  This appears to endorse the idea that days our autonomous evil entities. And, since the days make up the year, it would appear to follow that, a year could exert tremendous evil on helpless humans. I don’t believe that this is what Paul means. Rather, his intention was to encourage believers who were facing persecution on account of their faith. The days are evil because of what is being done in them by evil people. To redeem the time is to make the best of the opportunities believers have to serve God even in the midst of unjustified persecution.

    There are a mix of reactions to the year 2020. The first warning was not about disease or death. It was about its identifying numerals. To avoid fraudulent people scamming us, we were warned to write 2020 in full. Writing 1/1/20 opens us to the risk of someone adding 18 or 00 to 20 to read 2018 or 2000, which would render legal documents, including checks, invalid. Therefore, throughout the year, we had the burden of writing the damn number in full on all documents. But that was a minuscule preview of what awaited us in January.

    An outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus occurred in China’s Wuhan region toward the end of 2019. It was kept secret. Meanwhile, Chinese and foreign residents of China continued with their lives and travels around the world, unsuspectingly spreading the virus to other countries. The United States recorded its first case in January when a Washington State resident had a positive diagnosis. In Nigeria, the first case was imported from Italy in February. The battle against the disease which quickly became a pandemic began earnestly.

    Enormous suffering and untimely death occurred. Lives were dislocated, families upended. According to a report out this week, 2020 has shattered the record number of deaths in a single year in the United States with more than 3 million deaths, “due mainly to the coronavirus.” In Nigeria, a combination of hardworking officials, conducive weather conditions, and sheer luck has helped to mitigate the impact of the virus. We remember with sadness the lost lives and pray for the repose of their souls.

    The question remains however: what has a year got to do with our experience of loss and tragedy that occurs as its calendar rolls by? The pandemic might not have occurred, or at least not to the extent of the calamity it was, if every human actor took it seriously in the beginning. When political leaders shun their responsibility or declare arrogantly that they take no responsibility even as their fellow citizens die in thousands, and they get a pass, we trivialize issues when we blame the year.

    God is not to blame either. Granted, He is the architect of the universe and He is in control. But He makes us in His image such that we have the will to choose whatever we want–good or bad, wicked or kind, life or death. We can do so severally or collectively, but we must live with the consequences of our choices.

    In the middle of the crisis, there were warnings and instructions about masking, social distancing, sanitation, and lockdown. Many chose to abide, some chose to ignore them. The latter became conduits for the spread to innocent ones who succumbed to the virus. Those wicked ones are answerable to God who will ask them of the blood of the innocent.

    One of the more stunning developments in the reaction to the restrictions of the pandemic was the resistance of some religious leaders. They condemned the lockdowns that forced the doors of their worship houses to be closed. Orthodox Jewish communities in New York publicly burned face masks. Jewish and Catholic groups sue Gov. Cuomo’s rules which restricted their occupancy capacity and won at the Supreme Court. Some Nigerian church leaders claimed divine immunity and championed resistance.

    By contrast, the Pope, the spiritual leader of the global Catholic Church, who is supposed to prioritize faith over reason, divine wisdom over worldly wisdom, took the reality of the virus more seriously than some of the so-called world leaders who are expected to favor rationality. And while some men of faith led protests against measures designed to protect people against the virus, the Pope rallied his congregants to follow the guidelines.

    Beside the pandemic, nations experience other tumultuous events in 2020. In the United States, one among several was the protest against police brutality led by Black Lives Matter movement. In Nigeria, EndSars protest, also against police brutality, was the most consequential. In both, people were hurt, and deaths were recorded. Should we add these to the litany of evils wrought by the year 2020? Or should we be brave and perform an audit of the issues that those events raised with a view to finding solutions to them? Hanging the untoward occurrences on the mystical neck of 2020 may be comforting; it won’t solve the problems.

    At any rate, 2020 was not all disaster. They were a few silver linings on the cloudy sky of the global community. And what place to start than the good that came out of the pandemic itself? Health experts are elated about the record speed with which vaccines were developed against the virus. This is the first time in the history of vaccine development when one was developed successfully in less than a year. The urgency of the virus apparently stirred up the collective ingenuity of scientists and they delivered. Hopefully, going forward, we now have a record to try and break. That is a good thing.

    The virus slowed us down in every sector. Lockdowns led to office closure, schools shutdown, government paralysis. But it also spurred creativity in technology with new forms of communication devices. Zoom videoconferencing replaced in-person meetings and it keeps becoming more and more sophisticated. While videoconferencing cannot totally replace in-person gathering, this second-best is a wonderful breakthrough that we must acknowledge.

    Alongside death and disease incidence, the pandemic wrought untold hardship and poverty on many across the world. Lockdowns affected more disproportionately the people who could least afford to be isolated from work. Wage earners and gig workers had to forgo their means of livelihood or else expose themselves to infection. In many jurisdictions with strict lockdowns, they don’t have the option.

    Compassionate governments with good understanding of what their folks go through enacted legislations that sought to ease the pain of unemployment. In the United States, Congress passed the Cares Act which provided a direct payment of $1200 to each citizen, $600 unemployment insurance benefit; a moratorium on eviction for nonpayment of rents or mortgage, and direct loans to small businesses to retain their workers on payroll even when they are not producing. These measures had the cheery effect of even lowering poverty rate during the pandemic. It’s a lesson for what a government can do for its people.

    Finally, just as there were sad records of death and disease, so there were joyous occasions of weddings, pregnancies, and child births. The cycle of life continues despite the pandemic. And if we blame 2020 for the negatives; for the sake of fairness, we should commend it for the positives.

    Merry Christmas!

     

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  • Democracy lessons from America

    Democracy lessons from America

    Segun Gbadegesin

     

    “DEMOCRACY prevailed”, President-elect Joe Biden declared with a passion that he rarely displayed during the election season. It was the appropriate feeling. After a baseless and dangerous assault on democratic institutions which have been the pride of a nation for more than two centuries, righteous indignation is warranted.

    The assault was not unanticipated. A candidate refused to commit to accepting the results of the elections even before the first votes were cast. It wasn’t the first time. In 2016, the same candidate refused, suggesting at a point in a debate that he would accept, before completing the sentence dramatically with “if I win.”

    That should have been a signal for every democracy-respecting politician regardless of party affiliation. They should have raised their voices to stop the demagogue from debasing the pride of the nation. But they didn’t. He won then, and the losing candidate called to congratulate him in the middle of the night, and conceded publicly within twenty-four hours, pledging her support for the new administration. That was the norm and the expectation. Until now.

    A maverick candidate with a resolve to shatter norms appealed to the worst instincts of his fellow human species with bitterness eroding their sense of right and wrong, and rammed his way through a political party which sells itself as a conservatory of norms and values. Many in the party saw him for what he was then, and they knew that he had displayed the essence of who he is. They characterized him in unflattering terms. But he won fair and square. Then each of them was transfigured from critic to sycophant, abandoning their brand which has now been all but ruined.

    What, however, is the beef? What is the complaint of the loser-in-chief? His campaign lawyers insinuated voter fraud in the court of public opinion. But when they had their day in the court of law where it mattered for their case, they avoided the language of voter fraud because they knew it can’t be proven. Thus, out of the 60 court cases they filed, they lost 59 and won 1. Not a bad statistic for democracy! The one they won had to do with the counting of a few late votes in Pennsylvania, which had not been counted anyway. It didn’t change the outcome of the state election.

    Still, what was the basis of the allegation of voter fraud in the court of public opinion? This election year has been an enormous challenge. Coronavirus pandemic which was downplayed by the administration has killed more than 300,000 Americans to date and infected more than 16 million. States and local government officials faced a daunting task of conducting elections in a pandemic-ridden environment with the potential of risking the lives of poll workers and voters. In their wisdom, they decided to expand their mail-in voting capacities. Strangely, one candidate saw this as a fraudulent option, and endlessly railed against it.

    Voters defied all obstacles including the fear of Covid-19 infection. In record numbers, they took advantage of legal mail-in voting, in-person early voting, and in-person Election Day voting, shattering previous records by huge numbers. The tirade against mail-in voting didn’t deter them. Neither did the threat of Election Day intimidation by “poll watchers” stop them from exercising their right.

    Some state legislatures and county board of elections, obviously being clever by half, instituted policies that prevented mail-in ballots from being counted earlier than in-person Election Day ballots. Thus, in some states and counties, Election Day ballots gave the appearance that the Republican candidate was winning because Republicans largely voted in-person on Election Day while Democrats mostly voted by mail or early. But when election officials started to count mail-in ballots, the result shifted significantly in favor of Biden. This is where the allegation of fraud and mysterious ballot dumps came from. All the efforts of the president’s lawyers have been directed toward throwing out these legally counted mail-in ballots.

    Election officials, having authorized mail-in voting and other precautions for safe election, not ready to compromise their integrity, stuck to their decision and refused to budge despite pressure from the highest office in the land. Even the closest allies of the President became his staunch enemies in the process. The Attorney-General who didn’t refrain from doing anything no matter how compromised for the President, was forced to resign because he declared that his department found no voter fraud. The Cyber Security Chief was fired by the President for declaring that the election was the most secured ever. And the President has all but declared his ally, the Georgia State Governor, a one-term governor for his stand on the election.

    None of the three Supreme Court Justices appointed by the President supported his lawsuit against the results. Same with all his appointed lower court judges some of who dismissed his lawsuit with prejudice. But as the President-elect noted on Monday, the outrage in all of these is that more than half of the Republican elected members of Congress and Attorneys-General from at least 17 states signed their names to a frivolous lawsuit which they must know won’t succeed. This suggests that these so-called leaders are weak in character. But for the strength of the institutions and a few men and women of sturdy character, American democracy would have been irreparably damaged.

    And so, democracy prevailed because some chose to serve with conscience as my friend put it in a recent exchange. And here is the special lesson from the American election. The issue is not just about the outcome of the election, as important as that is. Surely, there are many who support the policies of the Trump administration, including its inward-looking America First agenda. There is nothing wrong with that. Election has consequences and a president must be seen to be committed to the mandate given him or her. But the absence of values of decency and honesty is distressing for many, including members of the President’s party, especially the Lincoln Project sponsors who battled him to submission.

    Yet, that’s not all the lesson. If the president and his team had their way, their goal is the disenfranchisement of millions of black and brown voters who live in battleground states and counties where their votes were instrumental to his loss. Democracy is a game of numbers. But the lesson this trite axiom should teach politicians is the need to multiply their numbers. Unfortunately, it appears that the lesson Trump and his allies learnt is to subtract rather than add, to divide rather than multiply. They would rather disenfranchise black and brown voters rather than enact policies that would attract them to the Republican Party. That, obviously, is not a smart strategy.

    In the final analysis then, to survive the weakness of human nature and thrive, democracy depends on strong institutions and some honest brokers who believe in its ideals. We have no assurance that there will be no rogue actors and chaos agents every now and then. In a long time, America has not had this kind of disruptive agent on the national scene with such a herd following. As many smart commentators have suggested, it is how fascism begins and triumphs. What this means is that even the oldest modern democracy is not immune from the threat of fascism. This time, the dedication of a few patriots saved the nation.

    Nigeria is a baby democracy with severe teething problems not least of which is the tendency toward authoritarian dictatorship with a cat and mouse relationship between the elite and the masses in both private and public sectors. Whereas American democracy has created strong institutions and has produced some committed institutionalists ready to defend the system against attack, Nigeria has not even started that task. Egoistic human nature still runs through the veins of many citizens and leaders. “What’s in it for me?” is their philosophical posture and their assumption is that everyone has a price. If no one is ready to defend the system, and there are rogue agents waiting in the wings to game it, we cannot count on it sustaining itself. This is our stark reality.

     

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  • The foresight of a Leader

    The foresight of a Leader

     

     

    Femi Abbas

     

     

    Preamble

    An article entitled ‘A Voice from Harvard’ published in this column, on Friday, October 21, 2011. That article is being repeated here today because of its vivid relevance to Nigeria’s current situation. Its repetition is in response to popular demand by many readers of this column who passionately believe that the article is as nuch  relevant to the  happenings in today’s Nigeria as it was nine years ago. It mostly contains excerpts from a wonderful lecture delivered by His Eminence, Dr. Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar CFR, mni, the Sultan of Sokoto and President General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), at Harvard University, in the United States of America, on October 3, 2011.

    The title of that royal lecture was ‘Islam and Peace Building in West Africa’.

    In the 33 page lecture which drew a very lasting standing ovation and a reverberated applause through the global media waves, His Eminence enumerated the causes and effects of violent crises, including terrorism, Vandalism, armed robbery and banditry in the West African sub-region with particular reference to Nigeria.

    In that lecture, His Eminence blamed such crises on three major issues:

    • Political struggle for supremacy between the elite and the poor masses
    • Bad governance on the part of the ruling class and
    • Primordial ethno-religious sentiments. Now, which of these issues is not true of Nigerian situation today?

    The most prominent of those three issues, according to His Eminence, was bad governance which engendered corruption, joblessness, poverty, exploitation, inter-tribal suspicion and general bitterness in the land.

    Preamble

    Traditionally, ‘The Message’, as a column, does not serialize articles because such is journalistically unprofessional. Thus, a single but lengthy speech like that of the Sultan had to be divided, for the purpose of publication, into a number of segments with each segment given a different title.  One of those segments, which is being repeated here today, is qualified to be ebtitled as ‘The Foresight of a Leader’. An excerpt from that memorable lecture is as follows:

    “….Many people (outside our country) consider Nigeria as a theatre of absurd conflicts and interminable crises.  They may be justified in holding such a view. With the Jos crises festering for years, with persistent post-election violence and suicide bombings (at that time), it is difficult to think otherwise.  When we consider Nigeria’s population of about 150 million, half the population of West Africa, its over 250 ethnic and language groups, its regional and geo-political configurations, its landmass and diversity in religion and culture, it may be difficult to reach a different conclusion.

     

    Catalogue of Crises

    ”Nigeria may be a paragon of stability which, as God Almighty has willed, shall undergo all the trials allotted it early enough in its national history.

    But in all fairness, systemic ethno-political and religious crises, like the ones we witnessed in recent years, do not have a long history in Nigeria.  They all began in the late 1980s, following the intense competition for power and influence, especially among the western educated elite. The Kafanchan crisis of 1987, in Southern Kaduna which was quickly followed by the one in Zangon Kataf and others, all in the same vicinity, cannot be easily forgotten.  On the other hand, the democratic dispensation, which began in 1999 also came with its set of problems, the most visible being the Shari’ah crisis and the first Jos crisis, which led to the declaration of a state of emergency in Plateau State.

    But these crises, varied as they were, had a multi-dimensional nature of Nigeria as a political entity. From time to time, we witness the primacy of politics in almost all of them.

     

    The Struggle for Power

    In the struggle for power and political supremacy, politicians exercise no restraint in aggravating the socio-religious and ethnic cleavages which characterize the geo-politics of the Nigerian State.  It should not be forgotten that the second Jos crisis of November 2008 was ignited by a botched Chairmanship election in Jos North Local Government. That was a dimension”.

     

    The Second Dimension

    ”The second dimension to the festering  crises, especially in Kaduna and Plateau States, is that of indigene/settler dichotomy which is yet to be addressed properly by the Nigerian State.  Many ethnic groups in those conflict areas see the other ethnic groups as foreigners who should not enjoy the full rights of bona fide residents. Incidentally, most of those disenfranchised Nigerians happened to be Muslims. However, those who oppose that dichotomy argue that the so-called settlers had spent more than two hundred years in the areas of their residence. They believe that as Nigerian citizens, they have the full right to reside wherever they wish and pursue their legitimate businesses without let or hindrance. After all, like Nigerians of other religions or tribes, they cannot be settlers in their own country”.

     

    The Third Dimension

    ”The third dimension of Nigeria’s ethno-religious crises is the potential of those crises to become a systematic national problem. When a person is killed in any of the areas of conflict, his co-religionists, especially in the cities, react violently and begin to kill anyone they think is related to him.  This often triggers further reprisals from other parts of the country where victims come from.  It took a lot of efforts by the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC), which I co-chair, and State authorities, to treat each crisis independently and thereby reduce the risk of systemic reprisals”.

     

    The Fourth Dimension

    ”The fourth dimension of Nigeria’s crises is poor leadership and bad governance usually associated with its management. Many of those charged with authority in the States where these conflicts occur are also parties to the crises. They make feeble efforts to control the violence and do so only when much of the damages has been done…”.

     

    Bad Governance

    “….The issue of poor leadership and bad governance also explains how the Boko Haram movement was able to transform itself from a small Hijrah group in Yobe State, escaping from the uncertainties and contradictions of the Nigerian State, into a militant movement able to wreak havoc and destruction, at will. Those in authority were prepared to court the leaders of this group when it suited them and to trample on them like flies when they were no longer useful…However, the bombing of the United Nations Office in Abuja introduced an international dimension to terrorists’ activities, a development which was hitherto entirely unknown to Nigeria”.

     

    The promise of Dialogue

    “….When I became the Sultan of Sokoto in November 2006, some of the major problems I found on ground were the after-effects of the Riots, especially in Kaduna, Jos and some parts of the North East as well as a disturbing atmosphere of mistrust, fear and hostility, especially between the leaderships of Nigeria’s two major religions: Islam and Christianity. To resolve those knotty issues, we chose the path of positive engagement, which we thought would engender meaningful discourse, improve communication and understanding as well as change the dynamics of our operating environment to that of trust and confidence…”

     

    NIREC

    “…At that time, the Nigerian Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) provided the right platform for constructive engagement. The Council itself, a product of Nigeria’s ethno-religious crises, composed of 25 members each from the two religions and co-chaired by myself, in my capacity as the President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, and the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). The approach of NIREC was simple and practical. Firstly, we affirmed the sanctity of human life, Muslim and Christian, and insisted that anybody who took the law into his hands, regardless of the circumstances, must bear the full legal consequences of his action. However, despite the frequency of those disturbances, only a few people were punished for perpetrating any act of violence. The masterminds often went scot-free. Secondly, while appreciating the fact that we (in NIREC), were required to look after the interest of our co-religionists, we still had to pay attention to the other dimensions of our conflicts. As many people were preparing to declare a religious war in Jos, for example, we laboured hard to draw people’s attention to the other dimensions of the crisis. It was a conflict between Muslims and Christians quite alright, but it was not a conflict between Islam and Christianity. When Nigeria’s President called for a parley among stakeholders, we made bold to declare that the Jos crisis was a political. Thirdly, we adopted a tactical approach to conflict resolution. Whenever there was a break-out of violence, we worked together to restore law and order and asked the quarrelsome questions later inhouse. We took this approach to minimize loss of lives and to ensure that the crises were contained in the primary areas where they occurred. Also, we devised and scheduled quarterly meetings that took us to all parts of the country. It was heartening to many to see us working together and preaching peaceful co-existence and religious harmony even in areas, which never registered an ethno-religious conflict”.

     

    Observation

    ”I must point out that it was also our view that inter-faith action should transcend conflict resolution. For it to be effective, we believed that it must affect the life of the common man. To accomplish this, NIREC floated the Nigerian Inter-Faith Action Association (NIFAA) to take up any arising challenge and, thus, NIFAA became very active in the control of the dreaded tropical disease called Malaria. We also realized that we had to act together to address issues related to electoral reform, good governance and anti-corruption. I am also glad to state that the goodwill and understanding which these activities were able to generate gave impetus to the development of inter-faith dialogue to a new level. I often remember, with happiness, the seminar organised by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in April 2010, on ‘Knowing Your Muslim Neighbour’, where I presented a paper on the topic. The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) gracefully reciprocated by inviting CAN members to its formal meeting in Kaduna, where the CAN representative gave a lecture on Islam in the Eyes of a Christian.

    At that occasion, both Muslim and Christian scholars gave inspiring responses on the scriptural basis of mutual co-existence. However, despite serious setbacks in recent times, many of us remain committed to this positive engagement and to the promise that dialogue offers the best resolution of Nigeria’s ethno-religious crises”.

     

    Looking Ahead

    “…Now, understanding the multifarious nature of Nigeria’s ethno-religious crises should strengthen our resolve and determination to deploy all the energies and resources at our disposal to see to their resolution. Of course, our inability and reluctance to take meaningful action posed a challenge, not only to our common humanity but also to our self-worth.  It is, therefore, important for us to appreciate, first and foremost, the importance of consensus building within the polity, with a view to ameliorating the current state of political polarization. Those in the Nigerian political class must be able to speak and understand one another as well as develop a minimum national agenda to chart the way forward.  The political class must also be able to open dialogue on a variety of national issues, including the perennial problem of power rotation and willingly enter into agreements that they can honour with dignity. Also, governance, at all levels, must translate into tangible benefits for all Nigerians, regardless of their ethnic and religious affiliations. Nigeria has the resources to make life more pleasant for its people.  It is equally imperative to address the poverty problem as well as the needs of the youth population both in all the geo-political areas of the country.

     

    Joblessness

    ”In a situation where over 50 per cent of our population is jobless at less than 19 years of age, we are definitely sitting on a time bomb much deadlier than that of Boko Haram unless we take urgent action to defuse it.

    Furthermore, there should be renewed determination to address both the Jos and Boko Haram sectarian crises.  The Federal Government must take seriously, its security responsibilities and effectively contain those crises.  But beyond that, a genuine dialogue must be initiated, to begin healing festering wounds and to bring genuine understanding and reconciliation amongst the entire people of Plateau State and beyond. The social dimension of the Boko Haram cannot, also, be resolved by mere use of force.  This is the reason why I have consistently suggested State government’s emphasis on education, especially modern education as a matter of necessity”.

     

    Out of School Children

    Millions of pupils, especially Muslims, are already outside the school system. Millions more will definitely follow if urgent intervention is not undertaken to enlighten the younger generations. And, the question I have always asked is this: ”What kind of society can we build in the 21st century when our youths turn their back on Science and Technology and are unable to produce the next generation of doctors, engineers and other specialists necessary for sustaining the socio-economic development of the society”?

     

    Conclusion

    “Finally, we should not neglect the impact of the international environment on Nigeria’s ethno-religious crises. Happenings in the US, Iraq, Afghanistan, Norway, Netherlands, the UK and France are as the recent relevants in Jos, Maiduguri and Abuja. We must preach international tolerance and moderation. The fight against extremist groups should never be perverted to become a fight against Islam and its doctrines.  We should all remember that in the final analysis, it is not what the perpetrators of violence do that will count.  It is the actions we take, individually and collectively, that will shape the fate of humanity….”

     

    Comment

    The year 2011 was nine years ago. If the issues raised by His Eminence in his lecture at Harvard University, as far back as 2011, had been seriously addressed by the government since then, Nigeria would not have degenerated to the current dangerous level of fear and despair. Who says the words of foresighted leaders are not the words of wisdom? God save Nigeria!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Seeking common ground

    Seeking common ground

    Segun Gbadegesin

     

    IF the debate over restructuring can be construed as the battle for the soul of this nation, what we have had recently is a remarkable raging of the weapons of war. And while some battles are avoidable if only there is adequate attention to grievances across fault lines so it is in the matter of the soul of the nation. For if we succeed in redeeming the soul of the nation, there is no denying that it will redound extremely well for every citizen, group, nationality or religion.

    The soul of the nation is the perfect equilibrium, the eternal gift that keeps giving. We saw an inkling of it in the First Republic when each region had its optimal development of material and human resources unlike the lopsided inequitable development that we have had since 1966. Everyone knows that this is true. But not everyone feels the need to change the status quo probably because it benefits them. And why bother about others when you feel on top of the world! The reason to bother is simply that inequity breeds grievance which breeds discontent which natural breeds agitation and, ultimately, revolt. Humans are wired to complain and struggle against an unacceptable condition of existence. That is what we have been witnessing play out before our eyes. So, to the unconcerned, there is reason to panic.

    What do you do if you are concerned and want to be part of the solution? You make rational moves to change the situation. Fortunately, this has been going on on many fronts by individuals and groups in the last many years. And as I discuss below, there are competing approaches which are coalescing around key proposals.

    Of course, we must note that as intense as the demand for restructuring has been in the past few decades, a substantial segment of the population still resists it on the ground that the structure is good as it is. A few say it loud, many are silent resisters for fear of being branded as such and loathed. The resisters have a number of reasons ranging from blaming the operators rather than the constitution, or recommending a restructuring of the mind instead of the polity. What they don’t care to consider is that centralization facilitates corruption and undermines the development of the states.

    Let us dismiss the position of the resisters as self-servicing, to the detriment of the collective interests of the nation. If it works for them, it doesn’t matter whether the nation as a whole makes progress. That’s unfortunate.

    For the many who see the wobbling structure as needing repair and reconstruction, there is not one proposal but many. It is understandable and it is a good sign that we are all interested in the work that needs to be done. The challenge is that the more we delay the resolution of the many differences that set us apart, the more difficult it is to come to a resolution. And as we have come to see in recent weeks, the delay has kept open the door of disenchantment and disillusionment giving rise to calls for separation and divorce.

    For those who agree that there is need for restructuring, there is also unfortunately no meeting of mind. The recent discourse is not even about the substance of the desired outcome. Rather, the focus has been on process and what is desirable to be done. Thus, some insist that what is needed is some simple work and it must be through NASS in the assurance that since APC manifesto endorses restructuring, and its committee has prepared the way, it shouldn’t be a hard sell. On this view, what needs to be done is amend the 1999 constitution to devolve power to states by removing functions from the Exclusive to the Concurrent list and providing necessary resources for states to perform those functions, possibly including state police.

    There is no doubt that if there is the political will, and we are not into the territory of deception, this is the quickest way to get something done. The two pertinent questions are: First, is the will there and it’s not all deception? Second, is it just about getting something done, no matter what and how inadequate it is?

    These questions makes sense given the time that has been wasted over the years, including especially the last five years since APC administration which campaigned on restructuring as devolution of power. This is what has frustrated even the most sympathetic of restructuring advocates. If you are forever preparing for madness, when will you sink your crazy teeth into a tree trunk?

    Consequent upon this frustration, but also because of a much different understanding of what is needed to move the nation forward on equitable grounds, the second approach insists that what is needed is not so simple and cannot be achieved through NASS. What is needed, the argument goes, is a fundamental redrawing of the structure of the federation and not just an amendment of the 1999 constitution.

    The necessary process cannot be achieved through NASS because NASS is a product of a flawed 1999 constitution which itself assumes and privileges unitarism. If unitarism is the problem, then the constitution that assumes and privileges it cannot just be amended; it must be rejected and a new federal constitution enacted. Furthermore, on this argument, the approach of power devolution is unacceptable because it is still operating within the unitary constitution when what is needed is a complete abandonment of unitarism.

    Now, the NASS Constitution Amendment Committee has rightly acknowledged that enacting a new constitution is above its pay grade or even that of NASS as a body. It follows that what the second approach is demanding is outside the purview of the NASS. Only a Constituent Assembly can propose a new constitution. To this end, there have been various suggestions on how best to get this done.

    One proposal is that each nationality unit conduct a referendum which seeks to know and register the constitutional preferences of its members. On the basis of its findings, each nationality should prepare a constitution of its liking. Each nationality will then meet at a Constituent Assembly to figure out through dialogue and consensus a new constitution. The idea behind this approach is the understanding that nationalities are the component units of the federation of Nigeria and they must be the ones to determine a new constitution, whatever it is that they desire. Of course, dialogue and consensus or majority decision will be the modus operandi of the national conference with the hope that a minimal consensus of a workable federal arrangement is achievable.

    Between the two approaches, there is a stark difference of night and day, and without a bending of iron minds on either side, it will take some miracle for us to get anything done, which of course will be pleasing to the resisters.

    While the second approach is most likely to give us a lasting solution to the challenges of governance, it is the more difficult to achieve within our present context. The stumbling block includes the existing constitution through which any act still has to be measured. NASS, a creation of the constitution, is alive and it is the 800 pounds gorilla in the room. It will have to use its constitutional authority to create a new body, a Constituent Assembly or National Conference which will then propose a Draft Constitution to be enacted by the NASS. Will it? President Goodluck Jonathan bypassed NASS in 2014 and we saw how that effort ended.

    Meanwhile, is there a middle ground on which we can chew gum while we are also jogging to the finish line of constitution making? Can there be a movement that acknowledges what needs to be done urgently in the matter of devolution of power for security and other matters while not assuming or pretending that it’s all that is needed for restructuring? In other words, can we move on both fronts taking one step at a time? Reason would seem to be on this side of compromise. Otherwise, the resisters prevail in the end.

     

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  • Sir Ahmadu Bello’s Christmas Message

    Sir Ahmadu Bello’s Christmas Message

    FEMI ABBAS

     

    This is the month of December, a month of paradoxical tradefair in which lies, fabrications and falsehood are, invarably, the wares displayed for exhibition. This is the month in which ostentation displaces faith and deception replaces conscience. How and why are these case? Please, read the story of facts and fictions below.

     

     

    Preamble

    An axiomatic Yoruba adage came to mind

    Again recently, when a so-National Christian Elders’ Forum (NCEF) of octogenarians published a fabricated statement in Nigerian media and falsely credited it to the late Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello. The statement was quoted from a false publication by some Biafra agitators of Igbo extraction, as a justification for their thoughtless secession bid. The adage goes thus: “Any slave that is desperate to forcefully usurp an estate bequeathed to an innocent orphan must fabricate a rootless history to justify his/her inordinate ambition for usurpation”. For people who can read between the lines, this adage needs no interpretation. It is self-explanatory.

     

    Record of history

    Here is a season in which recalling certain aspects of Nigerian history, if only to put the records straight, is a sine qua non. History is a living phenomenon that is common to all people around the world, in time and in space. No matter what interpretation or misinterpretation is given to it, in certain quarters, the fact remains that history is not anybody’s personal property and can, therefore, not be anybody’s enclave of monopoly.

     

    Memory lane

    Sir Ahmadu Bello, the first and only Premier of Northern Nigeria was not just one of the foremost political icons in Nigeria’s First Republic. He was also a patriarch of the political party called Northern People’s Congress (NPC). This man of colossal status became the Premier of Northern Nigeria in 1954, the same year in which his political counterparts and arch-rivals, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, became Premiers of Eastern and Western regions respectively. The trio assumed office as Premiers, in 1954,  through party-based elections. They were later joined by Chief Denis Osadebe as the fourth Premier in Nigeria. The latter became the Premier of Midwest region, in 1963, when that region was created. However, barely five years after Nigeria’s independence, Sir Ahmadu Bello was calously killed, as Premier, on Saturday, January 15, 1966, by some Nigerian military coup plotters whose real intent was to obliterate all traces of Islam in Nigeria. Virtually all  those coup plotters were of Igbo extraction and no single one of them was a Muslim, an indication that the coup was religiously motivated. That devilish coup was led by one Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, an Igbo man from the present day geographical area of Nigeria, called Delta State. Those coup plotters had killed the Muslim leaders in government, inclding Premier Ahmadu Bello, Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and several other poltical leaders of other tribal extractions, in that year’s sacred month of Ramadan, before they started looking for reasons to give as a justification for the heinous termination of those leaders’ lives. The three reasons that they gave after killing those leaders were corruption, tribalism and religious bigotry. It was a matter of calling a dog a bad name in order to hang it.

     

    Analysis of their reasons

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

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

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

     

    Genesis of Tribal Politics in Nigeria

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

     

    His 1959 Christmas Message

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

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

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

    That was the Christmas message that Sir Ahmadu Bello delivered in a radio broadcast on Thursday, December 24, 1959. And, it remained intact in Nigerian historical archive until 18 years ago (2002), when a Yoruba agent of the Lucifer came up with a fabricated statement that is now being devilishly quoted and circulated spirally by mischievous elements in Nigeria, who have been  crediting it to Sir Ahmadu Bello.

     

    The fabricated version

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

    “…The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather Othman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the north as willing tools and the south as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future….”

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

     

    Truth and falsehood

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

     

    Comparison

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

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

     

    Evidence of fabrication

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

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

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

     

    The 1966 Coup Episode

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

     

    The major casualties

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

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

     

    The False Allegations

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

     

    Beneficiaries

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

  • More on a nation divided

    More on a nation divided

    Following my analysis of the roots of our national division on this page two weeks ago, I received messages from two colleague-friends for whom I have a lot of respect. While they did not disagree with the fundamentals of my position, they raised some interesting points about what they thought I should not have left out of consideration. It is worthy of note that while they wrote me separate messages, they raised similar if not identical issues. I would like to address their concern today.

    I should start with a brief summary of my position from last week. We have a divided nation. But there is more to our division than ethnicity and religion, which have often been our focus of attention on this matter. Of course, we have ethnic and religious differences. But if these are well-managed with policies that prioritize equitable access to national resources so that, as the founding fathers had hoped, no one is oppressed or marginalized, we would have little or no division now. We are a nation divided because, in national policy and in elite leadership calculations, we abandoned the core values of brotherhood/sisterhood.

    The abandonment of the philosophy of brotherhood/sisterhood has created divisions between haves and have-nots, educated and non-educated, employed and unemployed, well-fed and hungry, privileged and marginalized. We find each of these pairs in every nook and cranny of the country and across every ethnic and religious differences. And while we have often generally focused on these differences as the problem, the marginalized are beginning to see things differently and are asking for their due as a just basis for national unity.

    Take just one statistic. Three years ago, there were 1.7 million undergraduates and about 230,000 graduate students studying in 170 federal, state, and private universities in Nigeria. Yet the ratio of admitted to unadmitted applicants is 1:4. In other words, 75% of applicants don’t receive admission. Some of these may get admitted to other higher institutions including polytechnics, nursing schools, technical colleges, etc. Majority, however, will roam the streets and many of them end up frustrated and give up on their dreams.

    But here is an even grimmer statistic. According to a World Bank study, 33.4% of the national labor force is unemployed this year. 38% of these are graduates of higher institutions. Of course, there are various reasons for this, but policy matters have something to do with many, if not all of them. I should note, however, that this is not all on the watch of the current administration as it is a cumulative effect of years of erratic government policies regarding this matter.

    Parents and grandparents of today’s millennials graduated in the early and mid-70s with two or three job offers waiting for them. There was no discrimination based on ethnicity or religion. The then University of Ife had a career office that mentored students about the interview process. It was easy for those graduates to see themselves as proud citizens of a nation that cared for them. In turn, they represented the nation well to the outside world.

    Dating back to the early and mid-80’s structural adjustment policies, however, private companies were forced to lock their shops and thus a major source of graduate employment was closed. With only federal and state governments and a few private companies, including banks, superstores, and the oil industry now open to hiring graduates, the competition is heart-wrenching. While more than 500,000 undergraduates and graduates graduate from higher institutions yearly, less than half of these can expect to have jobs. Jobs are just not growing at a rate as fast as the rate of the growth of labor force. And unfortunately, many youths who made sacrifices to do what the adults asked them to do aren’t just a happy lot now. Their unhappiness and frustration with the system is playing out on the streets.

    Now, my friends agree with the analysis thus far. They also agree that this is a fruitful way of understanding our division. But they are worried that I have left out of my analysis what they regard as two of the main sources of division, namely ideology and partisanship.

    Here’s how one of them puts it: It may not appear to you that we are an ideologically divided nation. But we really are. There is a section of our population that would rather conserve the values of the past, while another section would like to move us in progressive steps. It has always been so since the beginning of the republic. The radicalism of the South against colonialism and its aggressive demand for independence wasn’t appreciated by the North. On his part, my second friend brings up the issue of partisan divide as an offshoot of the ideological divide. Surprisingly to me, he sees the apparent tension in the struggle for political power especially by the strongest political parties as a reflection of a fundamental division.

    To be honest, while I had expected objections to my analysis, I did not expect that these two—ideology and partisanship—would be the basis for any serious objection. I had expected to be criticized by readers who might seriously believe that I had downplayed the role of ethnicity and religion. After all, most of us have grown up experiencing the harm caused by an overbearing influence of ethnic and religious jingoism on national politics.

    Furthermore, these differences still appear to be in the forefront of our thoughts. However, my point is simply that those differences by themselves are not at the root of our division as they play out in the public arena. Rather it is our mismanagement of those differences that create divisions which turn out to be very difficult to bridge. Needless to add that a large part of that mismanagement includes using political power to inordinately and unjustifiably prioritize the interests of one’s own ethnic or religious group while frustrating those of others.

    Now, the matter of ideology is easy to dismiss. I have yet to see any form of ideological division in our national politics that is strong enough to cause fundamental division. The reference to the colonial era and the nationalist struggle seems to be a misconception of what happened then as ideology. That the North was reluctant to move at the same fast pace as the South wanted in the struggle for independence was less of an ideological issue than it was of a pragmatic understanding of the reality of her status vis-à-vis the South.

    The North wasn’t ready, not because she wanted to conserve values, but simply because she didn’t want to be a junior partner in the Nigerian enterprise. You cannot begrudge that political calculation. The South would also be as hesitant if she was in the position the North found herself. The culprit was the colonizer who shielded the North from the educational advancement it allowed in the South.

    Assume, however, that with a stretch, we may identify some ideological difference between the Action Group’s Democratic Socialism and the Northern People’s Congress’ One North, One Destiny, it is hard to identify any ideological division between our present national political parties. APC and PDP are both center-right political parties with similar manifestos. They both claim to be for the people. In the time that each party has controlled the center, they have worked on constitutional amendment. However, neither of them has done anything about the fundamental structure of the constitution.

    Most importantly, the fact that members of the leadership cadre of each party have found it easy to ditch their parties and to move effortlessly between parties should tell us something about the (lack of) ideological difference between them. On this point, consider, how unappealing American political leaders have found changing their political parties even when they have differences of opinion with the way their party is being run. Lincoln Project members who worked against Donald Trump in the November presidential election still retain their membership of the Republican Party. Their hope is to reclaim the party and reposition it as a Conservative party post-Trump. Obviously, that’s not the way we operate here.

  • 1979 in Contemporary History

    1979 in Contemporary History

    FEMI ABBAS

     

    No sensible human being ever restricts his itinerary to a particular habitat; to keep moving by migrating from place to place is the secret of human progress….”.

    Arab Poet

     

    Monologue

    Today, ‘The Message’ column is migrating, if psychologically, from the insanity of Nigeria’s political/economic/religious rigmarole to the globally escalating tempest of disatrous  diseases, including the current Corona Virus pandemic codenamed COVID 19. Such a migration by ‘The Message’ may bring a temporary respite to readers of this column especially in respect of the current combination of suffocating economic heat with incessant incidents of terrorism and banditry in the country.

    That is a way of ventilating a relative atmosphere of peace for peace-loving Nigerians.

     

    Preamble

    It is not by accident that today’s world is in a sweeping turmoil. That turmoil is rather by design. But most people do not know its genesis especially as it coincides with the advent of the 21st century.

    Perhaps, this is an opportunity to recall the fact that the multifarious calamities currently ravaging the entire world, to the detriment of peace and tranquillity for mankind, is a product of long term plan for which the Europeans are well known. Since the end of the 19th century, when the once lucrative European venture of colonizing certain countries and utilizing their resources to the benefit of the colonizers, began to fade out, due to agitations for freedom and independence of those colonies, the Caucasian race of Europe had started to plan new ventures that could enable them to continue the domination of the world economy.

    Thus, an ambitious blueprint for the current millennium was theoretically prepared at the beginning of the 20th century. It was

    the practical effect of that blueprint that precipitated the current ongoing turmoil that began with three fortuitous incidents 41 years ago (1979). Incidentally, 1979 was the turn of the Islamic century 1400 AH.

    The first of the dramatic incidents in that year was the undreamt Iranian revolution that toppled the

    then, Imperial Shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, after 38 years reign (1941-1979) on Iran’s imperial throne. The man reigned as the Shah of Iran from September 16, 1941 to February 11, 1979. The revolution that stripped him of despotic throne occurred on February 11, 1979. It must be remembered that Shah Pahlavi was the monarchical agent of the West, planted in the midst of the Middle East monarchs who were aversed to Western model of democracy. His main duty as an agent was to hobnob with other kings in the region and spy those kings for his Western masters.

    The second frightening incident, in 1979, was a failed coup d’état that was staged during Hajj time, in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, on November 20, 1979.

    And, the third incident was the invasion of Afghanistan by the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on December 24, 1979. That invasion, which eventually led to the emergence of Usama Bn Laden phenomenon, through his founded Al-Qaeda Islamic Group, was part of the struggle for supremacy among the Western powers.

    Usama was recruited by the US to assist in getting Islamic mercinaries who could resist USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. It was the same US that engineered the establishment of the Taliban government in that country, as a couter force to the Soviet aggression. All these were in a bid to counter socialism/communism in Asia Minor and the Middle East.

    But after the USSR had been forced by the Muslim forces to withdraw her invasion of Afghanistan, the US proposed a confrontation with certain Muslim countries to which Usama objected. And, that was the beginning of the rift between the US and Usama Bn Laden. A former American Presidential candidate, who was also a onetime American First Lady, Hilary Clinton, confessed to that American plot against Islam.

     

    Explanation

    Although the above listed incidents occurred separately in different countries and at different times of the year, they were, nevertheless, interconnected through two major factors. One of those factors was the religion of Islam which linked the peoples of the affected countries who were predominantly Muslims.

    The other factor was the then raging cold war between the the capitalist West and the socialist East which had engendered an unpredictable ideological cold war that engineered global enmity among human races in the 20th century. If these two factors are deeply viewed from divergent angles, Islam will be discovered to be the main target of both blocks.

     

    A Grand Design

    Long before the above mentioned incidents began to rear their ugly heads, a dangerous graph of desperation had been designed, by the West, in anticipation of perpetual domination of the world.

    That grand design was first expressed in 1902 by a British Prime Minister, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman when he observed as follows:

    “There are people who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources.  They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate them from one another….If, per chance, these people were to be unified into one state it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never-ending wars. It could also serve as a spring board for the West to gain its coveted objects”.

     

    Analysis

    Although Bannerman did not mention his targeted race and religion, it was obvious that he was talking about the Arabs of the Middle East and Islam which was their religion. The subsequent developments in that region later proved that the religion in reference was no other than ISLAM.

     

    Follow Up

    Sir Bannerman’s observation was in further pursuit of an earlier demand by an Austrian Jewish Lawyer/Journalist, Theodor Herzl, who founded the Zionist movement in 1879 with a cogent demand from the Western powers. In his demand at that time, Theodor Herzl said:

    “Let sovereignty be granted us (Jews) over a portion of the globe, large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest, we shall manage by ourselves…”

    In response to that clandestine demand, some years later, another British Prime Minister, James Arthur Balfour, issued a devastating declaration that now bears his name. The declaration which was issued on November 2, 1917, (one year before the end of the World War I),  conceded a major part of Palestine to the Zionists as a home.

     

    The Letters of the Declaration

    That (Balfour) declaration, which was aimed at enabling the British government to gain direct access to the Suez Canal in Egypt, with Israel as her Policeman in the Gulf, has since put the Middle East in an incessant turmoil till today. The declaration read thus in part: “…His majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective…. The rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country shall not be prejudiced by the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

     

    Implementation

    To facilitate the implementation of that objective effectively, some other Middle East countries had to be incapacitated economically and politically by excising from them, some juicy chunks of their lands. Thus, Lebanon was excised from Syria just as Kuwait was excised from Iraq. The strategy was to cause an irresolvable dissention among the citizens of those countries with the intention of breaking the yoke of the Muslim unity which Bannerman had targeted in his infamous observation of 1902, quoted above.

     

    Iranian Status

    Now, how does Iran come into the above painted picture when she is not an Arab country?

    That is a logical question that anybody who is not quite familiar with the Middle East and the intricacies of its political and economic set up would ask.

    Naturally, Iran is affected by three major factors: Politics, economy and culture. And, by culture here, we mean ISLAM.

    Iran is a foremost Islamic country even if her official language is farsi and not Arabic. And, as an Islamic Country, whatever affects any Muslim country must affect her. Iran is the only non-Arab country in the Gulf area of the Middle East.

     

    Turkey for Instance

    The case of Turkey is another good example of a no-Arabic speaking country that has a direct link with the Middle East. Turkey was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate until 1924 when a diabolical agent of the West came on stage as Head of State. His name was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a man who wanted to prove to the West that it was possible for a non-Catholic to be “Holier than the Pope” especially when it came to adopting the so-called Western Civilization. On March 3, 1924, just one year after he assumed office as the new ruler of Turkey, Ataturk introduced a Bill to the Turkish Parliament, seeking to secularize his country by abolishing the office of the Caliph without any consideration for the feelings and sensibility of the people he wanted to rule.

    Presenting the Bill, Ataturk said: “Ottoman Empire was built and   existed on the principle of Islam. Islam is Arabic in character and in concept. It shapes from birth to death, the lives of its adherents; it stifles hope and initiative. The Republic (of Turkey) is threatened by the continued existence of Islam in its midst….”

    Thus, with the passage of that Bill, albeit under duress, Turkey was recognized as a secular state. Politics was separated from religion and Islam was relegated to a personal matter rather than the state religion that it was before then. The Caliphate was abolished and Islamic law was abrogated. Ataturk borrowed the new Turkish civil law from Switzerland, he borrowed the criminal law from Italy and the international law of trade from Germany. The Muslim personal law was harmonized with the European civil law. Religious instruction in public schools was prohibited. Islamic Purdah system was abolished and declared illegal while co-gender education was compelled in schools. The use of Arabic alphabets was prohibited and replaced by the Latin Script. Adhan (the call to prayer) was no longer to be made in Arabic but in Turkish language while the national costume was changed to that of the Europeans even as the wearing of hat was made compulsory. What Ataturk did not do was to abrogate the tenets of Islam completely.

    Thus, by one man’s whim, Turkey lost her values and heritage of centuries in a bid to adopt the so called ‘modernity’ brought by ‘Western civilization’. One can imagine what Islam would have become today, if countries like Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan had adopted the same misfortune in the name of civilization.

     

    The Emergence of  Khomeni

    It was the fear of a reoccurence of the unfortunate Turkish experience that prompted the late Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatullah Ruhullah Mousavi Khomeini to lead the commencement of a liberation struggle, in Iran, in 1963, which culminated in a successful revolution of 1979. However, unlike Ataturk, Imam Khomeini knew that the greatest virtue that could be lost in the life of man or that of a nation was culture. He knew that without a clear-cut culture, man couldn’t have been better than a beast. He knew that such values as law, education and religion, which served as the guiding factors for man in his peregrinations on earth, were the main attributes of culture. He knew that a nation, which surrendered its culture and adopted that of another nation, had enslaved herself permanently to the caprice of that other nation. Thus, Khomeini saw Islam, (the culture of over one billion adherents in the world (at that time), as the target of the Western imperialists, which needed defence and protection.

     

    The Revolution

    No one believed in 1979 that a mere mass protest by armless Mullahs could snowball into such a great magnitude of political ‘earthquake’, capable of sweeping an imperial monarchy like that Muhammad Pahlavi into permanent oblivion. By the time the foggy dust finally settled in February 1979, a new Iran had emerged from the debris of the old. Thus, against the wish and expectation of the capitalist West, the secular, monarchical Iran became an Islamic Republic. The drama was quite electric.

    But, characteristic of the West, all hands still remained on deck, at that time, to ensure that an Islamic Republic did not succeed the despotic monarchy headed by Shah Pahlavi which was heavily backed up by the oppressive West.

    In particular, America was most active in that ambitious but vainglorious plot. She would not easily allow the massive material benefit that she had been enjoying for decades in that oil-rich country, under the Shah regime, to slip out of her hands just like that. Thus, under the pretext of wanting to rescue her citizens from the siege laid by Iranian students on American embassy, in Tehran, the US attempted an invasion of Iran.  The espionage activities by the American diplomats, inside that embassy, against the new Islamic government had warranted the siege.

     

    The American Strategy

    While a number of US F15 jet bombers were approaching Iran, the then US President, Jimmy Carter, tactically engaged his country’s press men in a media chat without giving any hint of the impending military operation in Iran. The tactics was to divert the attention of the press and, even that of the entire American populace from the illegal Pentagon’s military expedition. But no sane person can ever fault the contents of the Qur’an.

     

    Qur’anic Notion

    Almost 1400 years before the American plot in Iran, a verse of the Qur’an had been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “They (the unbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemes. Allah is the supreme schemer”. Q. 3:54.

    Jimmy Carter’s thought was that by the time he would be finishing his media chat, information would have reached him that America had successfully invaded Iran to reinstall Shah Pahlavi as the imperial ruler of that Country. He had therefore intended to announce the news of his ‘great’ successful scheme to the press as the epilogue of his media chat. And that would have served as his impetus for wining that year’s Presidential election for a second term in office. But, as Allah would have it, instead of the expected news, what he got was a shocker of his life.

     

    The failure of American Might

    Two of the F15 fighters deployed for that surreptitious operation miraculously collided in the air and crashed with their contents, just at the point of entering the territory of Iran. And, the crash consumed the lives of 16 top air force officers inside those jets while the other jet fighters had to turn back after realizing the futility of continuing the mission.

    When the news of that devastating occurence reached Carter, it was too much to hide and it quickly went viral through the throbs of the media.

    Thus, the mighty America failed woefully, with her technology, in circumstances she has never been able to analyze convincingly till date. Allah Akbar!

     

    Jimmy Carter’s Fate

    And, with that failed plot, it became obvious that Jimmy Carter of the Democrat Party had dug his own political grave. Of course, he lost the election to the cowboy turned Politician, (Ronald Reagan) of the Republican Party that succeeded him in office.

    And, for about 444 days (well over a year) after that incident, the 52 American diplomats that were held hostage in American Embassy, in Tehran, remained under the siege of the Iranian students. It took high-level diplomacy, through third party countries, to get them released.

    Yet, America was not done. She went ahead to freeze Iran’s foreign reserve of about $80 billion in addition to imposition of economic sanctions with the intention of running that country’s economy aground. The only Iran’s offence in this case was to have decided to chart an independent political course that could liberate her citizens from the manacles of the Western imperialism. Trust Iran, she recovered her money from American banks by an unimaginable means.

    Ever since, the diplomatic relation between America and Iran has remained icy. However,

    that relation further deteriorated recently when Iran started a nuclear project with which to prop up her economy through electricity. America responded with a threat to Iran, saying the United States would not tolerate any nuclear project in that Gulf country because she (America) could not trust that Islamic country with nuclear power when Israel, in the same Gulf, had acquired nuclear power.

     

    Secret of American Power

    The secret of America’s military successes in various parts of the world is neither in technological advancement, nor military superiority per se. That country’s  failed rescue mission in Iran, in 1979, has confirmed this assertion. America’s secret is rather in her ability to cause schism among some other nations and races. That is why many American Presidents have won or lost elections at home due to the foreign policy of the concerned President.

    Iran has never been a direct prey to any Western military aggression, because she has never played a fool, dancing to the sour music of a predator in an open market.

     

    Coup in Saudi Arabia

    In the same 1979, some disgruntled elements fortuitously staged a coup against the monarchical government of King Khalid. The aim of the coup was not to change the system of government but to hijack the monarchy in the name of a Mahdi (a promised messiah). That incident caused a stoppage of salat and Umrah for almost four months.

     

    Invasion of Afghanistan

    Also, in 1979, the now defunct Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with the intention of annexing the latter. It was  that incident that led to an unprecedented jihad that paved way for the emergence of Alqaida and that of the Taliban government in that country.

    All these incidences of 1979 jointly formed the foundation for the global turmoil of the 21st century now pervading the world and threatening human existence. The details of the coup attempt in Saudi Arabia will be discussed in this column at another time soon, in sha’Allah.