The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • An unending nightmare (2)

    An unending nightmare (2)

    Segun Gbadegesin

     

    INTRODUCED my first installment on this topic two weeks ago with an exploration of the challenge of race and racism through the lens provided by the foremost African American scholar, W.E.B. Du Bois. I observed that Du Bois foresaw the unending nightmare of blatant racism of White America against people of color but felt helpless, as many before and after him, to do much about it.

    The two original sins of White America continue to be its wholesale intentional genocide against Native Americans and the wicked enslavement of Africans. As Du Bois would later reflect, the sins are so egregious that it is difficult if not impossible for the nation to see forgiveness. “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins;” and as he puts it in the second half of that statement, the reason is simple: “the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.” Therefore, it is impossible for the nation to find peace. Hence the refrain we hear so clearly in the protests across the nation and worldwide “No Justice, No Peace!” It is the law of nature. Our people put it succinctly, a baby that would not allow her mother enjoy a restful night, will also deny herself the joy of a peaceful night.

    You violently uprooted a people from their homeland. You treated them as economic cargo through the middle passage. You threw those you considered too weak for your liking into the sea. Those that survived the treacherous voyage you used as mules and donkeys on your plantations. Even as you proclaimed your faith in the God of love, you sowed hatred in the land and you refused to acknowledge the humanity of your fellow human beings, treating them as mere objects. Four hundred years! That you could still with a bold face send missionaries to Africa in the name of evangelization is one of the greatest hoaxes of the last century.

    The offspring of the cobra is venom-personified, and the lion cub doesn’t need any tutorial for ferocious hunts. White supremacy is alive and well because it is in the genes. Haters reproduce haters. Thus, even now, with all the negative attention against racial hatred, racists continue to multiply across the nation. And with police brutality taking heat from far and near, there continue to be multiple cases of police violence against people of color.

    What do we expect when, what you hear from the most sacred chambers of government and the most powerful bully pulpit the world has ever known, is a dog whistle which white supremacists perfectly understand as a call to action. If looting is what you see and react to in the midst of a people’s cry for justice; if your voice is not the most persistent for change; if all you proclaim is your law and order credentials as opposed to being the foremost advocate for justice and peace, then you have lost a golden opportunity for leadership by example.

    In the morning of the same Memorial Day that George Floyd was murdered, a White privileged woman in Lower Manhattan called the police on a Black man. Christian Cooper is a bird watcher devoted to his hobby. He had been up early on that holiday morning and headed to the park. Mary Cooper (no relation) also headed to the park, walking her dog unleashed, against park rules. Christian requested her to leash her dog. She refused and threatened to call the police with a complaint that the African-American man was threatening her life. She did. But this ended well because the Black man filmed every detail of the interaction and the police and others saw through the mischief. She was fired from her job. Not all such cases end well, however.

    In the midst of the recent protests, two young black men were found hanging on trees in Southern California. Another was found hanging in New York and yet another found hanging in Houston. While police and sheriff offices have ruled out foul play in these cases, the tragic history of lynching is still too fresh and traumatic, and with emboldened White nationalists roaming freely the streets of the nation’s towns and cities, it is imprudent not to think of the worst in these cases.

    The brutal murder of George Floyd was the trigger of my discussion two weeks ago, as it was the catalyst for the national and global protests which appear to be taking the shape of a movement. Since Floyd’s murder, however, there have been more similar incidents of police excesses. It thus appears that the police establishment in many of the nation’s police departments have simply turned a deaf ear to the persistent cry for reform.

    A particularly gruesome video of a police killing of a young man was sent to me by my friend. And I regret watching it and forwarding it to my wife. Both of us have since been too traumatized looking at that video. I kept thinking, God, it could be me. It could be any of my loved ones. What does one do to be safe in a country that nurtures racist law enforcement officers?

    The video was too gruesome not just because of how it ended, but also because of the horror watching the young man make serious efforts to obey all the conflicting instructions that the police officer was thundering out to him. “Get down and lie on your stomach” He did. “Stretch out your hands.” He did. “Cross your legs with the right leg on the left leg.” He did. “Get up on your knees and put up your two hands.” He did. “Make sure you don’t make any mistakes because if you do, I will shoot you.” The young man begged: “Please don’t shoot me.” “Shut up your mouth”, the officer thundered again. “I am not being diplomatic with you.” “I am trying to obey you”, the young man responded. The officer ordered him to crawl toward him. The young man was doing so when the shot rang out. The young man was dead.

    What was that young man’s offence? He was with a sales company. He had checked in to a hotel. Someone saw him with a pellet gun and called the police. The police had not even asked him any questions about the pellet gun before they killed him. Can this not happen to any black man in this God’s country?

    How can you experience that and not see something terribly wrong with the system? The news anchors who introduced the story were dumbfounded. They queried: “The Police are supposed to be our protectors, how is it that they become our oppressors and killers?” It is a good question, but one that only the authorities are capable of answering. Are they comfortable seeing their law and order instruments killing and maiming the innocent without cause?

    If it is any consolation, we may credit the ubiquity of smart phone photo and video apps for exposing these socially delinquent actions of law enforcement officers. From 1994, with the beating of Rodney King, to this time, many of these cases have been reported. Unfortunately, very few have been resolved justly and fairly because the presumption of innocence has hitherto been in favor of the police. Yet a society in which young Black men and women are presumed to be guilty and deserving of police brutality is an inherently unjust one which cannot know peace.

    Hopefully, America is finally coming to terms with the need to take Black lives as seriously as White lives. This is the meaning of Black Lives Matter which has become a rallying cry of the protests. A country that treats a significant portion of its population as expendable because of the color of their skin cannot claim any special place in the reckoning of a just and fair God. To be truly God’s country is to live in accordance with the creed that ALL human beings are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are

    …. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

     

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  • Trump’s way to Siberia

    Trump’s way to Siberia

    Femi Abbas

    Monologue

    This article is a reminder of an article written and published in this column by yours sincerely on Friday, January 20, 2017, in which I predicted what would become of the United States of America (USA) at the instance of that country’s newly elected President, Donald Trump before the end of his first term. The article was entitled ‘Welcoming a Trump of Sadism’.

    Two weeks before the publication of that article, an earlier article had was written and published, also by yours sincerely, in this same column. It was entitled ‘Waiting for January 20’.

    Excerpts from both articles can be found below as follows:

    Like the hands of a clock, many democratic countries in the world do swear a new President into office every four or five years at the expiration of a previous tenure. Now, it is the turn of the United States of America to do that again. And the man to take  White Houseas from today, January 20, 2017, for the next four years, all things being equal, is called Donald Trump, a man that most people in the world, including Americans, who voted for him, have seen as a wild bull surging furiously into a china shop.

    In an article entitled ‘Waiting for January 20’ and published in this column two weeks earlier, yours sincerely cited the example of Adolf Hitler’s oath of office and his inaugural address of 1933 that culminated in the World War II which started in 1939 and ended in 1945.

    The dramatic events within that period of 12 years (1933-1945) were the main determinants of today’s world history”.

    The above quoted excerpt was from the article entitled ‘Welcoming a Trump of Sadism’.

     

    Another Excerpt

    Below is also an excerpt from an earlier article entitled ‘Waiting for January 20’ and published on January 6, 2017, in this same column by yours sincerely. Its contents went thus in part:

    “All eyes, across the world, are on the 20th day of January 2017.  That is the day that the new America’s President elect, Donald John Trump, will be formally ushered into the ‘White House’ in Washington, with a swearing in ceremony. He will be the 45th American President. That the entire world is waiting for this event is a confirmation of America’s undisputed leadership of the contemporary world. There is no doubt that this event will be historically electric positively or negatively. A similar wait had taken place in February 1933, in Germany, where a Nazi magnate, Adolf Hitler was sworn into office as the Chancellor of that country. The speech he delivered that day eventually altered the destiny of Germany and reshaped the geography of the world. Incidentally, Donald Trump’s ancestral origin is Germany.

    Now, will Trump of the 21st century come out like Hitler of the 20th century to put the world on the path of another World War? That is a major question that the unfolding events of the days ahead may need to be answered fundamentally.

     

    The Meaning of Trump

    The name TRUMP is a short form of trumpet, a musical instrument with which the decision of a tyrant is often announced in a local cultural setting. Ever since he was declared the winner of the American Presidential election of November 2016, this Trump has been trumpeting his tyrannical plans to the world arrogantly. And, the jitters rolled out from that trumpet have started gripping the world with an imaginary icy hand. That an American President elect had begun to overrule his still serving predecessor even before taking an oath of office is a clear indication of what the world should expect from the china shop in which a wild bull will start to operate as from today.

     

    History as a Teacher  

    History is a well known phenomenal teacher. It teaches the old and the young alike. Its students are always drawn from far and near. It examines those students from time to time and gives them examination results periodically. Its lessons are as generational as they cut across races and cultures. Yet, it has no peculiar communication language. But then, history faces a fundamental problem. That problem is not in the repetition that has characteristically become its culture but, rather, in getting mankind to understand its repeated teachings as well as in heeding its warnings.

    In virtually all celestial religions, history plays such a prominent role that gives it the permanent identity of a teacher. And, from its beneficial teachings, human beings build ladders of experiences with which they mount the pyramids of life, sometimes to the peak.

     

    Christianity and Islam

    Despite the seeming brutal gangsterism being vaingloriously displayed by the goon called, Donald Trump, the Muslim world is hereby advised not to write him off completely as an agent of the Lucifer.

    In the histories of both Christianity and Islam, we are repeatedly told of certain arch antagonists of God’s divine message, who dramatically turned round to become voluntary Ambassadors of the same message to which they had been   viciously antagonistic. One of such antagonists was Saul of Tarsus, an avowed anti-Christ who dramatically turned round to accept the message of Jesus after the later had vacated the scene of this world. Saul later adopted the name Paul as a symbol of his new apostolic faith. That was in the Bible. Another known antagonist of Allah’s divine Message was Umar Bn Khattab of Makkah who had plotted the murder of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) but dramatically turned round to embrace Islam on the very day he was to practically implement his plot. Eventually, Umar rose to become the second Caliph in Islam and he conscientiously spread Allah’s divine religion across nations and continents even more than any other Caliph.

     

    Jesus’ Wish

    Jesus had wished that Saul, a well- educated Jew, accept his message while he was around. But that wish did not materialize until after his departure from the stage.

    However, if Saul had not eventually accepted Christianity when he did, perhaps, the situation of that religion would have been completely different today.

     

    The Case of Umar

    In the case of Umar Bn Khattab, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had prayed the Almighty Allah to enable one of the two famous persons bearing Umar in Makkah at that time, to accept Islam.

    Although the Prophet’s mind was on the other Umar, It however turned out that Umar Bn Khattab was the one  Allah’s favour magnetized. And, Umar Bn Khattab’s acceptance of Islam became so remarkable that the Prophet was reported to have once said of him as follows: “Were there to be a Prophet after me, Umar would have been that Prophet”.

     

    Irony of Life

    Today, another thorny bud seems to be wildly growing under the armpit of an American bitter tree in the 21st century. That proverbial human bud is an avowed racist and morbid hater of Islam that emerged as President in that country in 2017. His physical appearance alone, anywhere, is a vivid reminder of the unbridled atrocities of a onetime originator of Nazism, Adolf Hitler, who brutally terrorized the entire continent of Europe for about a decade.

    And, for the first time ever, majority of Americans who voted to choose Trump as President started to express fear of uncertainty about their choice even before he formally assumed office.

    Thus, from the beginning of his four year presidential tenure, Trump had been perceived as an incubated egg waiting to be hatched.  However, the kind of chicken that would come out of that incubated egg was a matter of guess. Nevertheless, such a perception in 2017 might have been too early in the day for the eagerly agitated Americans. After all, the cited cases of Saul and Umar still remain very validly influential on contemporary history.

     

    Future Shock  

    From the foresighted perception of yours sincerely, the narration above was a virtual indicator of a future shock that the world was waiting to grapple with after the 2016 American Presidential election.

    Now, the ongoing occurrences in the United States, besides COVID-19, have come to vindicate my perception. The only aspect of that perception that is still eagerly awaiting vindication is what will eventually become of today’s sadistic Trump.

     

    Curious Questions

    Why was it after the conversion of Saul, that the Greek Empire and, subsequently, the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as official religion? Why did the whole Arabia wait for Umar Bn Khattab to embrace Islam before it formally accepted that divine faith as her State religion? And, by analogy, shouldn’t America be getting ready for a similar eventuality? After all, centuries of religious practice in America have proved that Christianity is just a decoration with which Americans have been trading in fun as a mere symbol of public association. That fun has now virtually dwindled to its lowest ebb. And, in reality, nothing remains of Christianity in America today beyond name.

     

    In Retrospect

    It sounded odd in the yore, when speculations began to indicate that Rome could adopt Christianity as State religion. It also sounded unbelievable that the whole Arabia could adopt Islam as official religion following the reversion of Umar. But reality eventually prevailed and, today, the rest remains a property of history.

    In the same vein, far from prophesying, I foresee a day, in a foreseeable future, when America will become the home of Islam and give that genuine divine religion the Impeccable reality of life that it deserves in the West. In reaction to this millennial prediction, as it happened in the Roman and Greek Empires of yore, the Nigerian doubting Thomases of this era may commence their repugnant arguments from here. But those who will engage in any argument on this assertion should remember that the roots of tomorrow’s gargantuan tree of peace are already being firmly planted in today’s fertile soil as it happened in Guantanamo, USA, recently.

    The Guantanamo Bay

    Terry Holdbrooks Junior is an American native of Huntsville in Alabama. He grew up a troubled kid with junkie parents that dumped him at age 7 on his ex-hippy grandparents to be raised. By 18, he’d completed both high school and trade school which is suggestive of brilliance on his part. But along the line, he indulged in drugs, illegal sex and tattoos which covered his arms from shoulder to wrist. His earlobes were stretched to a plug that a thumb could pass through.

    Thus, when he walked into an Army recruiter’s office in Arizona a year after 9/11 saying he wanted to join the Army, to be able to kill people and get paid for it, the recruiter looked up briefly and turned back to his computer saying “No, thank you”.

    Finally, it was only during his fourth visit to the recruitment office that he was allowed to take part in the military’s aptitude test when the recruiter realized the potential in him. Then, Holdbrooks signed up for the military police because it offered a bonus. And when his unit was transferred to Guantanamo, the sergeant detoured through New York to take them to Ground Zero where he told them to “remember what Muslims did to us and who you are supposed to protect”.

    Thus, the 29 year old Terry Holdbrooks Jr., enrolled in American Army in 2003/2004 and was posted to Guantanamo Bay as a military Police officer in a detention camp earmarked for people pronounced as criminals. Part of his duties was not just to prevent those detainees from escaping but also to escort them to interrogation rooms and then return them to their cells. He knew the kind of stresses and tortures those detainees were undergoing in repeated questionings.

     

    How Islam beckons

    All along, Holdbrooks Jr.’s perception and understanding of Islam was not dissimilar from those of his military colleagues in Iraq, Afghanistan or even Guantanamo Bay. However, one day, the thought of accepting Islam as a rightfully guiding religion crossed his mind after several months of conversation with some Muslim detainees in that camp.

    Before he became a Muslim, Holdbrooks was wearing the beard of a bald Amish guy, the tattoos of a punk kid and the twitchy alertness of a military policeman. Take him to a restaurant, and he’ll choose the chair with its back against the wall. Take his photograph and he’ll prefer to look away from the camera. That was Holdbrooks before 2013 when he embraced Islam.

     

    He took  Shahadah

    After three months of intensive study and conversation, Holdbrooks told the Muslim detainees one night that he wanted to become a Muslim. And in response, the detainees explained the implications of that to him. They said: “Converting to Islam means you would have to change your life style including your diet. You will quit drugs, drinking, profanity and tattoos. Then, be prepared for good relationship with everybody – wife, neighbours, the Army and the government”. Thus, little by little, Holdbrooks made the changes as he found a measure of health, discipline, family and peace of mind which he never had before.

    “If Prophet Muhammad (SAW) were to come back to the world today, people would find the best examples of Islam in the United States. American Muslims have a responsibility to live their faith so that others can see a true example, not the perversions of the terrorists or the tyranny of corrupt governments. He concluded that: “For every little step I took toward Islam, Islam was taking more steps toward me”. Thus, the man who was employed to quench the glow of Islam became a propagator of Islam in America.

    The same President Donald Trump, who is innately persecuting Islam and the Muslims today may become like Holdsbrooks tomorrow. Allah’s way of doing things is full of wonders. Nothing is impossible with Him.

  • All hail the king!

    All hail the king!

    Segun Gbadegesin

    Let me begin today with a promise that I will soon get back to the trend of thought which I started last week. However, this is a special day, and I would like to celebrate a special achievement in the eventful life of a special person and in the annals of a unique community.

    Twenty-seven years ago today, a super majority of Nigerians spoke with one voice to move Nigeria forward democratically. Unfortunately, that hope was dashed by the military. But the day has since become a symbol of a people’s faith in democracy and, as subsequent struggles demonstrated, a disaffection with the military and the unitary system of governance it represented and promoted.

    Democracy is a universally acclaimed system of governance for a republic such as ours. But it is also true that almost every society, with perhaps the exception of the New World created by rebellious immigrants, had a history of governance that predated democracy. And while they almost all transited to democratic governance beginning around the 17th century, many Western societies still retain, rightly in my view, their age-old institution of monarchy because they find it worth preserving. So do we.

    The appeal of monarchy in our clime is derived from the distinctive purposes it serves in the lives of communities and the nation. First, the king reflects a community’s common identity and mobilizes the people’s sense of identity to further the collective good. With the success of such efforts, the people are encouraged more to contribute to the life of the community, which further rebounds on them as individuals.

    Second, in our communally oriented society, democracy cannot thrive without the support of the diverse communities that make up the states and the nation. We see ourselves as community beings, our values as community values, and our achievements as community achievements. From the smallest to the largest communities in our land, individuals still strive for the progress of their communities, and communities revel in the achievement of their sons and daughters.

    Third, Nigeria was cobbled together as one nation under Britain with little attention to the different traditions of governance. It took the wisdom of the nation founders to recognize the invaluable asset of communities and traditions and their institutions to the success of the new democratic republic, with the recognition of traditional rulers. And over the decades, that singular decision has been of tremendous importance to the resilience of the new republic and its triumph over many obstacles.

    There is no doubt that the traditional institution of monarchy has come to stay, not just in Yorubaland but also across the nation. This conclusion is based on a couple of observations. Over the last several years, we have witnessed the emergence of highly educated and successful people as traditional rulers. They combine expertise in various fields of learning with a tremendous knowledge of the traditions and values of their people. Second, they are well-exposed to the tenets of democracy and the politics of development. Therefore, they represent a strong bridge between tradition and modernity. With their combination of knowledge and skill sets, they can mobilize their people for progressive development.

    The newly installed Oniru or Iruland, HRM Oba Abdul-Wasiu Omogbolahan Lawal, Abisogun II is a rare gem who perfectly fits this bill of great education combined with knowledge of tradition and exposure to the tenets of democracy.  It is for this reason that I am extremely excited about the news of his appointment and installation. It is a spirit-uplifting event that helps, in these trying times, to diminish the psychological impact of the ongoing terrible coronavirus pandemic and the horrific nightmare of hateful racist police brutality. It is a cheering development in the annals of Yorubaland and the nation.

    I have always had an excellent impression of the new Oniru. Indeed, I have known him for more than 25 years since he served as Aide de Camp to Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007. His sense of dedication to duty is unparalleled. His sense of discipline is legendary. As the Aide de Camp, he went beyond the call of duty, looking out for his boss’s security, and never allowing his own convenience to compromise the discharge of his responsibility in this regard. In that capacity, he also helped to de-escalate inter-communal clashes in the state and to maintain peace and order through a network of security intelligence teams.

    When I first met him, he stood out as a highly intelligent young man. We had many discussions on a wide range of subjects including politics, economics and education, and I have always enjoyed his sense of history especially as it relates to Nigerian politics. One of his strengths, which I appreciate very much and which he must have acquired from his training as a police officer, is his ability to maintain a dignified posture in the face of what others may consider a huge crisis. Meanwhile, he is working quietly to resolve the crisis and, in the end, his boss thanks him for a job well done.

    Over the years, I have come to attribute the rare qualities of our new Oba to a number of factors, including his good education, his training as a police officer, and his participation in national and international professional training programs. In addition to those formal trainings, he has also had a good exposure to outstanding role models, and he has made the best of the opportunities they offered him. More than all of these, however, I am convinced that Oba Lawal had an outstanding home training in traditional decency that the Yoruba refer to as Omoluabi. You cannot meet him without noticing in him a deportment of morally mature upbringing. Thankfully, on this, he and his loving wife, Olori Mariam are birds of a common feather.

    This last point is extremely important and will serve Oba Lawal well in his newly acquired status as the 15th Oniru of Iruland. Let me explain.

    The tradition that is most important to the responsibility of the new Oniru, and one which he must cultivate in the people of Iru kingdom is what I will refer to as tradition of conduct. By this I mean the customary habits of conduct that are the basis of a community being what it is, and which also help to motivate and inspire other communally useful activities. Indeed, without an overarching tradition of conduct, it is difficult, if not impossible, for other institutional activities to thrive.

    Take the economic institution as an example. Markets will not function successfully without an overarching tradition of conduct that sets out limits on the conduct of market operatives. Loans must be repaid. Contracts must be executed faithfully. Sellers must use accurate measures, etc. These injunctions were taken for granted in pre-colonial Yorubaland. But they are being eroded left, right, and center in contemporary Nigeria into which Yorubaland in general, and Iruland in particular, have been coopted. However, while the challenge of ethnic diversity has complicated matters, our aims and aspirations remain common.

    Indigenes and residents of Iruland want to live peacefully with their neighbors. They want good schools for their children. They want to earn decent living. They want to enjoy clean environment. They seek fairness and justice in a land where freedom reigns and no one is oppressed. They share this vision of a good life in common with Nigerians around the country.

    The traditional value system of Iruland, if not abandoned and jettisoned for the low life that we mistakenly regard as high life today, would guarantee the realization of this vision for all. Therefore, to achieve those aims and aspirations in Yorubaland and Nigeria, we need a moral revolution which is a prerequisite for the desired revolution in all-round economic resurgence. I am happily convinced that Oba Omogbolahan Lawal’s ascension to the throne of Iruland is divinely ordained so that this moral revolution may start in Iruland. He has the upbringing, cultural training, skill sets, and the strength of character to make it happen.

    Ade a pe lori. Bata a pe lese. Irukere a di pupo. Ase a pe lenu.

     

     

     

  • Letter to Muslim Parents

    Letter to Muslim Parents

    By Femi Abbas

    Dear Muslim parents, this is not a parents/teachers association meeting in which new school fees or new calendar year is to be discussed.

    It is rather a meeting of positive and constructive minds over one of the most fundamental issues in the life of man. And it is to be moderated by the conscientious guideline divinely revealed in the ‘Qur’an’ by the Almighty Allah.

    In relation to the wellbeing of children, the joys of parents are manifest just as their griefs and fears are secret. Hardly can you hide the one or openly express the other.

    Happy are parents whose children tread the path of their divinely guided dream. And, sorrowful is the portion of parents who end up regretting bringing certain children into this world. All of them will account either for what bring them joy or push them into sorrow.

     

    Prophetic admonition

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

    Children are the most invaluable gift of Allah to man. In a sane society, they cannot be bought. They cannot be sold. Even adoption or exchange of children for money is only a temporary illegal act which will become a permanent question later.

    One day, the child will know his parents or know that the foster parents or slave drivers who take charge of him at a time in life are not his real parents. Then he will ask the permanent question: “whose child am I?

    You may give your biological or adopted children your love and your ideas but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts which you may never be able to alter. You may clad them in the most fashionable dresses.

    Life of vanity

    You may house them in the most comfortable residences. But you can never, never gain a way into their souls in the absence of the divine instruction of Allah.

    While you may be able to interact closely with the bodies of your children today, you will discover that their souls dwell in the abode of tomorrow which you cannot see even in your dream.

    Children are a bundle of joy. But they can also be a load of grief. At least, they form the source of both in the life of parents.

    Manual of life

    No man or woman becomes a parent without first being a child. What is perceived as experience today sprang from the childhood pranks of some years past. And the cycle continues.

    Everything in life has its own manual. The general manual of life is the Qur’an; that anchor message of Allah, which leaves no stone unturned in the life of man.

    In chapter 31 verse 13 of that divine Book Allah relays to us how Prophet Luqman counseled his son thus: “And (remember) when Luqman said to his son while admonishing him: ‘My son, associate none with Allah, for to associate others with Him is a grievous iniquity’…. (Go and know that) Allah will bring all things to light, be they as small as a grain of mustard seed, hidden inside a rock or in the earth.

    Allah is All-wise and All-knowing. My son, be steadfast in offering Salat; enjoin justice and forbid evil. Endure with fortitude, whatever befalls you. That is a duty incumbent upon you.

    Do not scorn fellow human beings nor walk arrogantly on land; Allah does not love the arrogant and vainglorious ones. Be modest in your gait and lower your voice when talking for harshest of voices is the braying of an ass….”

    The above verses of the Qur’an are a good example of how Allah teaches us what to do in each circumstance of life and how to do it.

    Harmonious life

    Prophet Luqman and his son were just used symbolically. What Allah wants us to know is how to bring up our children as gentle and responsible men and women on earth, if only for nations and tribes to live harmoniously in peace? But that cannot be achieved without the fear of Allah which every parent is expected to preach practically to his or her children from the very early age as did Prophet Luqman.

    Elite parents

    It is quite ironic that most parents especially in the elite class do not see life as a queue which ought to be followed scrupulously. They rather believe that any queue, at all, is a fool’s rout to success where shortcut is available.

    Those are the parents who create special class for their children right from birth. They show them how superior they are to other children and tell them the category of children with whom they should be friendly.

    They provide for their children what those children do not need. They take them to schools in very expensive cars and create in them the impression that money is not their problem.

    And when, occasionally, their children refuse to ride in old cars brought for them by their drivers, the parents quickly apologize and send new cars to convey them.

    Easy money syndrome

    These are children who have never worked for one kobo in their lives. All they know is that there is money. And they don’t want to know where the money is coming from.

    And here are parents whose source of money is stealing public funds either by pen or by gun. With such dirty money, they sponsor their children in the most expensive schools abroad or at home.

    They follow them to their schools to grease the palms of the teachers. At times they buy cars for such teachers just to ensure that their children secure the required certificate or marks for promotion into the next class.

    It does not matter to them much whether those children know what they are taught or not. What matters to them is the shortcut which will see their children graduate at an early age of 19 or 20 so that by the age of 23, such children would have become Chief Executives of banks or multinational companies where the cycle of fraud would continue for the family unabatedly.

    Now, why wouldn’t such a brazing desperation lead to mass cheating in examinations and greedy stealing at work as now being experienced in Nigeria? Are the children to blame? What else is expected of them when their parents will buy anything for them including live examination papers? And the children of the less privileged parents will also want to take advantage of the terrible rot to succeed in life.

    Adorned children

    Some parents have taken their children for an adorable ornament which nothing should tamper with. Such parents often treat their children like fragile eggs.

    They lavish stolen money on them and give them the impression that they were not born to be poor. They often forget that no amount of fraudulent spending can make any child rich in life.

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

    Implication

    The misfortune or calamity afflicting the world today, especially, that of Nigerian society, is mostly caused by the elite parents.

    Right from infancy, most children of the elite, particularly the white-collar jobbers, would have the impression that they are born to be masters. And they behave as such at every stage of their lives.

    It all starts with unwarranted lavish spending on children’s birthdays which has virtually become the past-time of those parents.

    Sometimes millions of naira may be spent by parents to celeberate the birthdays of their toddler children. The implication of this is that such children are being taught how to spend money without being taught how money is made.

    And by the time they grow up, they would have been so much used to easy that they quickly resort to desperation in the absence of easy mone. By that time, the parents would have forgotten how they indulged the innocent children into such act.

    Advanced level fraud

    Today, what used to be examination fraud in the primary and secondary schools has gone beyond that level. We now have black market certificates issued in most of our federal and state universities.

    We also have election frauds at all levels of governance practically supervised by those who are supposed to be umpires. We also have lawmakers who must take bribe before voting for or against any bill.

    We also have law enforcers in the name of police whose main source of income is open corruction audaciously committed even on the roads.

    As a matter of fact, nothing symbolizes the extent of corruption in Nigeria than the uniformed government enforcement officials called Policemen or Policewomen.

    We also have the unrepentant civil servants who live like kings and queens while milking the society shamelessly without any regard for their legitimate earnings.

    We also have the half-baked lawyers who are feeding fat on fraudulent opportunities while capitalizing on the deliberate lapses created by our so-called constitution.

    In all these, who will curb the ever-rampant examination fraud spreading like bush fire in Nigeria? Is it the parents who are so desperate that they would do anything including illicit sex to see their children through? Or school Principals and Proprietors who are the real architects of examination fraud? Or the officials of the various examination bodies who often facilitate and help to perfect the act? Or the police whose orientation is to call a spade a hoe where money is involved? Or the legislators who will prefer to keep mute on anything fraudulent, having dipped their hands so much into illegalities?

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

    Agonising result

    Many Muslim parents have, in defiance to Allah’s instruction, joined the terrible cartel of the above listed crimes. They feel satisfied with their children’s mundane lives which entails no care for their spiritual lives. This has caused some temporal agony in certain lives and spiritual melancholy in others.

    We were in an Islamic meeting at the University of Lagos Mosque sometime in the early 1990s when a septuagenarian parent of four grown up children suddenly burst into tears. He sobbed painfully like a housewife who just lost her first child at the point of delivery.

    Surprised and embarrassed, we inquired from him what the matter was since the issue under discussion had no sad angle.

    In his response after calming down, the man who was a former Nigerian Ambassador said he had lost his entire life. He narrated his pathetic story in a very sober mood and concluded that he had lived his entire life in vain.

    He told us how three of his children (all boys) had their secondary and university education in London. The fourth child who was a girl joined them after her secondary education.

    And after graduation, they all got juicy jobs and settled permanently in England. But by then, they had all crossed over to the other side of the spiritual bridge having married spouses from outside Islam.

    This was however not the cause of his regret. The real cause of the man’s regret was the attitude of those children to his religious life which he claimed to cherish so much. First, the children never thought it right to pay him a visit in Nigeria despite his old age.

    Secondly, whenever he visited them, in London, none of them allowed him to observe his daily Salat as they told him that it was uncivilized. After all efforts to persuade them failed, he had to abandon them and live like a man without children.

    The old man’s most agonizing point was in seeing the children of his friends practice Islam very well even as they were all doing fine in their various careers.

    That is the plight of a man who had the courage to voice it out after admitting his guilt. There are thousands of others like him who would prefer to lick their messy wounds secretly till death comes to strike.

    Despite the Qur’an

    If this can still happen in a Muslim home despite the Qur’anic lesson, what is the value of life? Why would any sane person want to lose his life and his life hereafter just to gain vanity? See what avarice is doing to Muslim parents?

    It is only for the reason of avarice that most Muslim parents do not see any necessity in giving their children such qualitative Islamic education as they do in the Western way. But Allah has a wonderful way of doing things.

    Some of the children who could not be given secondary education some years past, because their parents were too poor, are professors in the universities today.

    What else is worthy of pursuit in life? You are your children’s real school. Let them learn the value of real education in your conduct.

    it may be tomorrow. God bless you all.

  • An unending nightmare (1)

    An unending nightmare (1)

    Segun Gbadegesin

     

    IN 1903, as the world was just welcoming a new century, Harvard trained American sociologist and foremost pan-Africanist, W.E.B. Du Bois soberly but boldly predicted in The Souls of Black Folk” that the problem of the 20th century was going to be the problem of the color line. As he goes on to explain, by the color line, he means “the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men (and women) in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”

    At the First Pan-African Conference in 1900, Du Bois saw the problem as “the question of how far differences of race…will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization.” It was prophetic.

    Though Du Bois chose the 20th century as his focus, he was not unmindful of the history of race and racism in earlier centuries. Indeed, in the same chapter, he notes that “it was a phase of this color line that caused the Civil War” of the 19th century. There is also no doubt that Du Bois knew that the problem of the color line was not going to be resolved in the 20th century. Indeed, towards the end of his life he relocated to Ghana where he died and was buried because it was clear to him that America was not ready to solve the problem of race relations.

    In his time, Du Bois was the foremost scholar of the race problem in the United States. He was not just a scholar, he was also actively engaged in practical action to solve the problem across the world, including as a co-sponsor of the Pan-African conferences. In 1897, just six years before the publication of The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois presented a paper before the American Negro Academy. Titled “The Conservation of Races”, the paper has an academic and a practical purpose. The academic purpose is to define the concept of race in both scientific and socio-historical terms. However, concerned about the political condition of Negro people, Du Bois’s practical purpose is to push his audience to greater heights, not necessarily as individuals, but as a group.

    However, Du Bois observes that Negroes were reluctant to embrace the concept of race and that the reason for this was that talk of race was a reminder of their oppression and the racists’ denigration of their natural abilities. White racists, not Negroes, came up with the idea of race, and they did that just to play the race card in support of the oppression of nonwhites. Is there a scientific basis for their invention? The fact that it was invented should put to rest the idea of its naturalness. But the invention stuck, and it served its purpose.

    Du Bois grappled with the fact of the artificiality of race. He observed that science cannot help us in the matter of making distinctions between human races because many of the so-called scientific criteria are mingled and unhelpful. Color, hair, cranial measurement cannot be used to classify human beings into different races. They are intermingled. Yet even after making this valid point, Du Bois cannot resist the conclusion that race exists and that there are three racial groups, White, Negro, and Yellow.

    The tension is palpable between the reality of scientific invalidation of race and the political necessity of pushing the Negro to make their own mark in a world that has invented race and has been using it against them. So, while he acknowledges the scientific problem, Du Bois feels that he has a job to do, because he knows that the scientific invalidation of race distinctions has not prevented White powers from using their power to uplift white people and oppress Black people. This was the point of his intervention in 1897.

    It has not worked because in the game of life between Whites and Blacks, the deck has been stacked so unfairly. And it is so weird that there is a double decker reality now as America has become the epicenter of two global pandemics: coronavirus and virulent racism. It is unusual to see racism as a pandemic. But we better believe that it is a disease that is as old as the human race itself as anthropology and the holy books demonstrate.

    The coronavirus pandemic has also laid bare the underbelly of racism and racial disparities in health. While African-Americans are about 13% of the population, they account for more than 40% of the pandemic deaths in the United States. This is due to many factors, all of which are related to structural racism, environmentally hazardous neighborhoods, lack of access to healthcare and to education.

    Systemic racism accounts for innumerable cases of unjustified arrests, unprovoked searches, and assaults by police officers. In the late 1990s, a young Nigerian-American man graduated from Harvard and was hired for his first job in Seattle. He had just received his driver’s license. Upon arriving in Seattle, he got a rental car reserved by the company. A few days later, while returning from work, he took a wrong exit from the highway to a White neighborhood. A police officer pulled him over, asked for his papers, which he handed over. To his shock, the officer accused him of driving with an expired license. He had just received the brand new license the week before he travelled. The officer confiscated his rental car, drove him to the police station and booked him. That started a frantic phone call. The Maryland Vehicle Administration which issued the license confirmed that it was current. The young man was only guilty of “Driving While Black (DWB)”. The following morning, he was released without any apology. He thanked God that his life was spared and he moved on.

    The murder of George Floyd in plain view on the street of Minneapolis was as egregious as they get, and it has rightly caught the attention of the world from Nigeria to New Zealand and from France to Canada. Watching the video, you see a murderer in official state uniform meant for the protection of citizens, looking nonchalantly with glee in his eyes, snuffing life out of a fellow human being.

    But I am wrong. The wicked spirit inside that officer didn’t allow him to see a human being moaning under his brutal hold. Did he see an animal? This is where ingrained racism unfolds in the reaction of official Washington. Even a dog would receive more heartfelt sympathy from White people than George received. We heard some platitudes about the shock. But what followed the immediate reaction was the macho attitude that has always characterized such shallow half-baked response. Certainly, they would have a more heartfelt outrage in response to the killing of a goose than they mouthed against the murder of George Floyd.

    George Floyd was the most recent victim in a string of racially motivated murders of Black people by White state officials or ordinary citizens across the US. In the month of May alone, there were three, with similar degrees of evil. A young man was jogging in a White neighborhood. A former trooper and his son pursued him in a truck, accusing him of being a thief. They gunned him down. A young lady and her boyfriend slept in her room only to be woken up by banging on the door. They suspected invaders. The man fired a shot to scare them away. The police officers at the door with a warrant for a totally different house opened fire, killing the lady. Floyd was the third. Between 2015 and 2020, during part of which a Black man was resident in the Oval Office, it is estimated that more than 1200 African-Americans were killed by the Police in America.

    When will it end? Or will it ever end? These are the questions that reasonable people are demanding answers to.

     

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  • A Falcon’s footprint

    A Falcon’s footprint

    Femi Abbas

    “I shall pass through this world but once; If therefore, there is any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being; Let me do it now; Let me not defer or neglect it, for I may not pass through this way again”

    Monologue

    It was as if the young Nigerian Muslim Journalist, Waheed Bakare, who departed the shores of this ephemeral world on Eidul Fitr day last Sunday, May 24, 2020,
    knew the secret of the divine schedule of his death date.
    His concept of life, despite his virtual indigent status, tallied perfectly with the above quoted poem in accordance with Islamic philosophy of humanitarianism and welfare management. That concept, which the deceased young man willingly adopted
    as his guiding principle of life now represents the footprint which serves him in death as an irrigation that nourishes the seed of kind-heartedness and philanthropy by which he lived his life.

    Preamble

    Life is like a cycle which constantly rotates around a permanent axis. Whatever goes forth comes back. Whatever goes up comes down. In summer season, the sun rises in the East every day and travels to set in the West. It comes back the following day to repeat the same journey without losing its track. That is the divine will of Allah which no mortal being can ever change.

     

    Parable of Life

    Human life is like the rotation of the seasons in their turns. Seasons exchange batons on a quarterly basis. Spring, autumn, summer and winter, all come at their right time without one taking the place of another.

    Children come into the world daily and grow up to become adults with time. Parents rear their children the way they, themselves, had been reared so that the cycle of life may continue after their demise. We sleep and wake up just as we eat and defecate almost daily until we are stopped by the supreme force that fixes and schedules everything in our lives. And our successors proceed from where we stop if only to keep the cycle of life rolling in continuity.

    Human beings are like cash crops. We germinate into embryo from spermatozoa. We transform biologically from stage to stage until we blossom into youthful adolescents and grow up into productive adults just like fruitful trees. And, then, we begin to grey as an indication that we are starting to wither away like trees which leaves are turning into yellow or red colours. However, when the icy hand of death comes to pluck us like ripe fruits, the indication is that our transit visa in this ephemeral world has become automatically expired. But our journey still continues from the unknown to the unknown until we are summoned by our Creator to give the account of that journey.

     

    Man’s Mission on Earth

    No man comes into the world without a mission. The mission may be positive or negative. It may be completed or carried out half way. But what is common to all is a place in history which may serve as an encouraging guide for others or a warning against the vanity of human wishes or both. In man’s initial journey into the world, the soul is firmly in harmony with the flesh. Both work in tandem physically and spiritually. At that stage, a spade is always seen and called a spade. And that is why children are said to be innocent. But after some time, the flesh outgrows the soul and becomes like a mossy stone eagerly wishing to crush the fragile lily that the soul represents in human body.

    At that stage, Satan begins to assemble his destructive tools with which to rework or dismantle man’s engine of life to enable him propel his own destructive mission. No one drives a car without an engine. But when the engine is removed from the car or damaged, the body of that car becomes immobile. The same is the case with the corpse of man after the exit of the soul. But blessed are those who do not nourish the flesh at the expense of the soul.

     

    Waheed Bakare

    The similitude of the cited car is like that of the life of the young man, Waheed Bakare, a Journalist, who, like a falcon, flew away forever while leaving the falconer behind. Waheed had a young wife and four young children of school ages. Now, neither the wife has a spouse to call her husband nor the children, the eldest of whom is just about 16 years old, have any bread winner they can call their father. Now, for that wife and her young children, the reality of life has avowedly come on board to distinguish itself from imagination. Every married Muslim wife can put herself in the position of Waheed’s wife. And, every Muslim father can imagine what could have become of those children if he were to be in the present position of Waheed Bakare. This is where we, Nigerian Muslims, should honestly re-examine ourselves about our practice of Islam.

     

    The Lockdown on Zakah

    Ordinarily, as responsible adherents of Islam, we should not be calling on members of the public for help whenever we have a case like that of Waheed at hand. Waheed was only lucky to be associated with people who can do that for his family. What about millions of other Muslims, widows and widowers as well as orphans and elderlies who have no means of reaching out to the public?   Zakah as a whole pillar of Islam should automatically take care of the underprivileged people and give us a befitting confidence as practitioners of Islam. But here we are in the hands of certain clerics who dogmatically believe that Zakah should serve as a protecting factor for the rich rather than for the poor. Those are the clerics who insist that the Nisab of Zakah must be based on the current price of gold as determined by the Jews who are globally known to be the principal merchants of gold. To those clerics, the Nisab of Zakah must be far, far ahead of the incomes of most Muslims.

    The statutory facts of Zakah are clear and obvious. And, Islam is a dynamic, not a dogmatic religion. Zakah is the only pillar of Islam that touches the lives of others, especially the downtrodden poor. But in a Nigerian situation where Nisab is rising astronomically every year and the number of Zakah payers is geometrically dwindling just because it must be done as it was done in the time of the Prophet. As of now, the locally prescribes Nisab is about N1.74 million or thereabout. How many Nigerians of today can boast of such net income? Thus, in a situation like this, where is the statutory protection for the poor? Yet, thousands of Nigerians are going Hajj and Umrah regularly witout ever paying Zakah in a country where millions are helplessly wallowing in abject poverty.

    This is one of the reasons why yours sincerely promised to open a new column on the problem of Zakah in Nigeria after Ramadan. That column will be entitled ZAKAH REVOLUTION. And, its main objective is to discuss regularly cluster areas of Zakah, based on evidential research until Nigerian Muslims really understand it to the benefit of Islam. As a columnist in the defunct Concord newspaper I started writing  on certain major issues in since 1982, when most Nigerian Muslims were not quite familiar with them. Among those issues were Zakah, Hijrah calendar, Hijab, Indebtedness in Islam as well as orphanage and Muslim Will.

     

    Personal Concern

    As a payer of Zakah, in my own little way, I do not pray to become a recipient of Zakah again in my life. But the shame to which Islam is being subjected through the ridiculous rampancy of begging in our society is a major concern of my life. As for the modalities of Zakah payment and the issue of Nisab, when we get to the bridge, we shall cross it through this column in sha’Allah.

     An Appeal as Usual

    As a Muslim and a Journalist, if anything implacably constitutes an irritating nuisance to me, it is begging in the name of Islam. But, unfortunately, that is not just the fashion in vogue now in Nigeria, it has also become the principal norm by which Nigerian Muslims are known in the society. And some clerics believe invariably that such a nauseating norm is preferable to payment of Zakah on a reasonable and lawful Nisab even when earners of the monthly minimum wage of N30000 in Nigeria are paying tax to the government willy nilly.

     

    Back to Appeal

    Lest I forget, my appeal here is to kind-hearted Nigerians whose children are joyously and hopefully attending schools as well as those whose children have graduated, to please, join some others who have kindly indicated interest in giving a helping hand to Waheed’s family whose bread winner has fortuitously vacated the stage even without saying bye to his innocent children. It should ordinarily be the responsibility of the Muslim Ummah to rescue this young family from an impeding scourge of poverty if seriousness had be duly applied to the management of Zakah in Nigeria. Actually, but for the highly laudable efforts of some Muslim groups and organizations whose commendable efforts have opened the eyes of Nigerians to that pillar of Islam, Zakah would have been completely forgotten. To    unwreawake the consciousness of Nigerian Muslims on Zakah, the unwarranted lockdown rigidly imposed on Nisab of Zakah by some theoretical lerics in the name of the primordial norm is must be removed.

     

    Bak Account Details

    The Bank Account Details of the wife of Waheed Bakare are as follows:

    Name of  Bank: First Bank

    Account Number: 3148987691

    Account Name:

    Bakare Basirat Adekemi.

    I pray the Almighty Allah to safeguard the lives of kind hearted Nigerians home and abroad, who are ready to rescue the lives of these innocent children from the cobweb of moral and education confusion that would have put them on an endless rigmarole. I pray the Almighty Allah never to subject the educational lives of your own children to begging.

    Read the Poem Again

    Meanwhile, while appreciating the marvellous gestures of some brothers and sisters who have been enquiring about the bank account details for assistance, I call on the readers of this article to please, read the top quoted poem once again and try to live by its contents. Yes, it is Waheed Bakare’s turn today even in the month of Ramadan, no one knows whose turn it may be tomorrow. God bless you all.

  • Celebrating Oba Akiolu’s 17th anniversary

    Celebrating Oba Akiolu’s 17th anniversary

    Segun Gbadegesin

    As readers of this column may know, I love tradition, an enduring pattern of values, beliefs and actions that typify us as a people. Without tradition, we do not have a deep root, and a people without a deep root withers as easily as a rootless plant.

    Years ago on this page, I observed that tradition is a customary way of doing things that is unique to a group. It is what is handed down from generation to generation. To borrow a religious language, it is the acceptance of the faith of our fathers. As renowned sociologist Shils puts it, the “decisive criterion (of its traditionalism) is that having been created through human actions, through thought and imagination, it is handed down from one generation to the next.” Of course, being handed down does not entail being accepted. A tradition is a tradition only because it is accepted by the next generation that also passes it on. The continued acceptance of a tradition is the basis of its endurance.

    Importantly, the acceptance of a traditional idea, belief, or practice is subject to what the people it serves make of it in terms of their well-being. The notion that a tradition has a suffocating grip on a people is, therefore, misleading. It depends on the moral weight that the people accord it. This is what Kwame Gyekye (the late Ghanaian philosopher) has in mind when he notes that “the continuity or survival of a tradition depends on the normative weight it can carry with (a) generation” that accepts it and “much of the authority of an inherited tradition is said to have derived from the evaluative activities of a recipient generation.” We inherited a tradition of kingship and we keep it because we value it.

    What goes into the evaluative activities of a recipient generation? How do individuals and communities come to the conclusion that a way of life that they inherited from their forebears has meaning for them and is good for their well-being?

    These questions assume that we really have a choice in the matter. And to some extent, we do. We can choose to ignore or even eradicate those traditions that we find unacceptable. The limitation has to do with the fact that a recipient generation is not completely isolated from the giving generation. Unless a whole generation of potential receivers collectively commits patricide, they will have their parents for the better part of their lives. So did those parents have their own parents. There is, therefore, an interlocking and intersecting relationship of givers and receivers with givers interested in and monitoring the receivers’ attitude to the tradition of their parents and grandparents. In general, we are obedient and loyal offspring of the community that seers us.

    To the extent that our parents are invested in tradition that they bequeath to us, and we in turn see ourselves inseparable from the tradition so that we pass it onto our children with our two eyes focused on their observance of its dictates, we are engaged in the preservation of the tradition. And that’s the way it ought to be, provided we cherish our collective identity. Surely, not everything about any tradition may be worth preserving, and in our case, we have been witnesses to the justifiable jettisoning of some of the obnoxious aspects of our tradition, including those that demean the humanity of members: enslavement, human sacrifice, etc.

    A core aspect of our tradition, that which in the beginning was indispensable to its survival, is the institution of kingship or traditional rulership. Ilu kii wa ko ma lolori: A township without a head is an anomaly. There are various theories about the origin of kingship from divine to military. But no matter how the earliest heads of communities, villages, and townships emerged, we must acknowledge their contributions to the initial survival and subsequent thriving of those communities and peoples. Doing so means appreciating the significant contributions of the institution of kingship to human civilization.

    In the Yoruba tradition in particular, there is a justifiable respect for the institution of kingship. We respect our traditional rulers for various reasons. They are understood to be the symbol of the identity of the community and the nation. The Oba’s palace is the rallying point of a stable community. They are also the authoritative representation of God on earth. They are the chain that connects the past, present, and future generations. And for these reasons, a huge responsibility is placed upon them and therefore, as captured in a meaningful aphorism, their heads of crowns lie uneasy. For these reasons, the community takes seriously the responsibility for their choice by tapping into tradition and the wisdom of God for guidance, prayerfully trusting that they don’t regret their choice.

    The last point is significant. There have been communal regrets in some parts of Yorubaland over the choices they made. Traditionally, communities have rebelled against and deposed their rulers. In other cases, especially with the mix of republicanism and tradition, there have been political interventions that cut short the reign of traditional rulers. In such cases, the gods may not be blamed, as it is often due to a clash in the philosophies of governance.

    Which takes me to Alaiyeluwa Oba Rilwan Akiolu, the Oba of Lagos. Olowo Eko, as he is fondly addressed by his subjects and fans, has a simple philosophy of kingship, which, in my view, has helped him in his approach to his responsibilities as the traditional ruler of the most complex city, the only megacity, in the nation. Oba Akiolu’s philosophy acknowledges three important principles.

    First, for Akiolu, God is the ultimate Kabiyesi and human power is nothing. Kabiyesi, the signature Yoruba salute to the awesome power of traditional rulers, literally suggests that nobody can ask questions about an Oba’s actions or utterances. Oba Akiolu rejects the salute on the ground that the only Kabiyesi is the unquestionable Almighty. This shows that he is fully aware of his humanity, which subordinates him to the power of the Almighty. This understanding is wisdom, and this wisdom comes from the fear of God.

    Second, with this divinely-inspired wisdom, Oba Akiolu models a life of simplicity and humility. He is at home with the nobility as well as with commoners. His simplicity and humility draws to him many who are in awe of these scarce qualities in aristocracy. Years ago, Oba Akiolu visited Maryland. With some of his subjects based in Chicago, I drove to the airport to meet him. I prepared the back seat of the car for him, with an apology that it was not as comfortable as I would love. Alaiyeluwa refused to sit in the back seat. He jumped in the front passenger seat of my car and I drove him to his hotel. Later, he visited us in the house with lots of surprise goodies for my family. That he didn’t consider it demeaning of his status to bring us foodstuff all the way from Lagos was awe-inspiring to me, and I can never forget his thoughtfulness.

    Third, for Oba Akiolu, truth and righteousness matter in the interaction between human beings in general, and, in particular, between a ruler and his subjects. He has not only emphasized this in his various public interviews and private discussions, he has also demonstrated it in his interactions with his subjects and friends. On several occasions he had publicly tongue-lashed highly-placed politicians for their duplicitous relationship with the truth. This is his affirmation of the injunction that only the truth uplifts a nation. Hopefully, those occupying the seats of power and authority take seriously this injunction.

    Olowo Eko ascended the throne of his forefathers in May 2003. The development that Lagos has witnessed in the last seventeen years is an incontrovertible testimony to the efficacy of the philosophy of kingship that has guided him on the throne. By God’s grace, many more blessings and developments are on the way. Ade a pe lori. Bata a pe lese. Ase a pe lenu. Ojo a dale. Happy Anniversary, Alaiyeluwa.

  • After Ramadan

    After Ramadan

    By Femi Abbas

    The month of Ramadan in the life of a Muslim is an annual cleanser. It cleanses you of all the past misdeeds which border on irreligiousness. It is also a rejuvenator of the mind as much as it is a reformer of the soul.

    By abstaining from eating and drinking for 30 or 29 days during the month, you have reinvigorated the organs of your body to your own advantage. And, by abiding by the rules and regulations of Ramadan, you have reshaped your lifestyle to suit your conscience.

    Ramadan has taught you how to be closer to your Creator and Sustainer. It has taught you how to moderate your relationship with your fellow human beings, in the family, in the neighbourhood or in business. It has also taught you how to simplify your mind and tame your heart against wild conduct.

    With Ramadan, you have learnt how to sympathize with the poor and the needy by offering them financial help, kind utterances and good conduct.

    You have also learnt the futility of gluttony and greed. And, by recognizing the rights of others including your wife’s and your children’s, you have learnt how not to imprison your conscience again.

    In the first ten days of Ramadan, you have been showered with Allah’s blessings. In the second ten days, you have been forgiven your sins. And, in the last ten days you have been liberated from the claw of Satan. During those days, you have woken up in the nights in obedience to the will of Allah. You have spent the days enduring thirst and hunger. You have also boosted your health with the exercise of fasting and praying.

    In other words, you have become a renewed person before your Creator. Your slate of record has become clean of sins and full of rewards. And, now, you have banished the fear of death in you.

    Having achieved all these, would you want to go back into a wild world dominated by fear of death?

    The essence of Ramadan is to remind humanity that this world is a transit and not a destination. No one has ever come to stay permanently in this world and no one will ever do. Would you then want to be lost in transit with your luggage? That is the question you should always ask yourself after Ramadan. God bless you and Ramadan Karim

     

  • Who will save us from ourselves? (2)

    Who will save us from ourselves? (2)

    By Segun Gbadegesin

    “Everybody is just about himself or herself. God help us all. God help us all.”

    The quotation above came in the nick of time, as if by divine design, for our discourse today. It came at the end of a troubling video which a young man had shot in Lagos. The video was sent to me by a respected family friend who had also sent to me the video of the young lady who security officials had robbed of her N10,000 ATM withdrawals, which I used as illustration last week.

    This new video was narrated by a visibly shaken young man who made it known that he was in emotional pain, having witnessed a morally callous occurrence. The scene was on Yaba road, Lagos. The young man, with bushy hair, had gone out to buy hand gloves for his barber to use for his haircut. On his way back, he ran into traffic. As he drove to the source of the traffic, he saw a young woman slump back inside her car. He approached the car with his gloves. He also gave gloves to some other onlookers willing to help. He noticed that the woman had used up two inhalers. She was apparently asthmatic and in crisis.

    As the Good Nigerians worried about the woman, an ambulance approached. They were relieved that help had arrived, and they flagged it down. But the driver would not stop. Desperate, some of them jumped in front of the ambulance. But still the driver tried to move pass them. An older woman in red approached the driver, begging him. He did not appear to care. Another young man requested those with camera to take his picture. And you could hear the driver defiantly asking: “so what if you take my picture?”

    The young narrator also alleged that some physicians drove by with stethoscopes hanging on their back mirror. None of them stopped. And, perhaps, no surprise to many in the populace, he added that it was only when the older woman, a complete stranger to the woman in need, offered some money to the ambulance driver did he agree to help. What he finally did was unclear. I assume he probably agreed to take the woman to the emergency room. The young man ended his narration with a bit of tongue lashing for us all.

    Now, let us try to think through the case in hand. Were there any excuses on the part of the ambulance driver that could offer mitigating considerations? Could there be anything that was beyond his control in that situation which justified his conduct? Was he, for instance, on a call to another emergency? Doubtful. He could have offered that explanation on the spot. Was he on an errand? What errand could have excused him from offering help to a dying human being? Was he afraid hospitals would not take the case from him? Perhaps. It has happened on several cases that “Good Samaritans” ran into trouble with our medical system. But in this case, it couldn’t have been an excuse because this was an official state ambulance established for a purpose like this. And the fact that when money was offered to him, he did what he should have done, suggests a self-regarding motive. This is one sad fact about the ugly situation.

    Last week, when I raised the question “Who will save us from ourselves?” it did not occur to me that within the week I would be confronted with such a clear illustration of the hopelessness of our condition as a portion of the human race in this part of the world. Our young man, so psychologically distressed by what he witnessed, asked a further question: “Is this what we have come down to?” In other words, is this what our humanity really means?

    Fortunately, we have an answer for him, which he and his fellow human beings on the scene clearly demonstrated. No, the behavior of the official ambulance driver did not, and will not, represent humanity. And the fact that the young man, the older woman, and other folks at the scene showed such a compassion and empathy for a fellow human being in distress, was enough to reassure us that humanity will survive if the morally conscious, even if they are in the minority, do not give up.

    Now, the question: “who will save us from ourselves?” beckons for an answer. But before we attempt the semblance of an answer, we need to break the question itself further down. What, for instance, is the object in reference? Who is “us” and “ourselves”? From the discussion last week, it appeared that my interest was in the sub-set of humanity that is domiciled in this part of the world. But I also had in mind the human race in its entirety.

    With reference to the human race, it is clearly true that we faced a present danger even prior to the assault of the global pandemic. In the race for economic ascendancy, and its attendant greed and possessive individualism, we have jettisoned the moral imperative of moderation in our stewardship of the environment. With super powers asserting nationalist and populist prerogatives and following through with devastating policies, who will save humanity from this human greed that portends human disaster?

    We could appeal to the human tendency to exploit religion and spirituality and suggest that the creator will save humanity because he is a loving God. That route has a soothing effect. But we deceive ourselves if we thought that without lifting our fingers, the manna of our survival of the coming danger will fall from heaven. Heaven, they say, helps those who help themselves. And should aliens truly exist in other planets, can we realistically depend on them for help, when it is more than likely that they are our rivals?

    Some four centuries ago, some philosophers, thinking about the challenge of governance, came up with various versions of the theory of social contract. Central to their assumption for that theory, were two beliefs. First, none but humans would have to solve human problems. Second, there are copious resources internally available to humanity to solve its problems. Principal among such resources is human rationality. Based on this property, they suggested that humans will form a compact of association to prevent the state of nature degenerating into a state of war. This was their way of morally justifying the state.

    We have the same resource and it has also been put to use in several instances, from the formation of the United Nations to the adoption of Universal Human Rights, to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Only humanity can save itself from imminent disaster provided irrational selfishness doesn’t predominate.

    What about the portion of human race in this clime of ours? Who will save us from ourselves? The episode that I opened this discourse with is not an outlier. It is typical of our common experience across the nation. When it is not motivated by ethnic or sectarian animosity, it is the product of egoistic exploitation of the poor and marginalized. Not unsurprisingly, these category of the citizenry are even more at risk of neglect and abuse by their peers.

    We can appeal to the same common property of rationality to deal with this issue. Assume, for instance, that there was a change of positions and the ambulance driver was on the receiving side of his own conduct. How would he feel? Or what if we have a generalised act of unconcern for the distress of everyone in a health emergency situation, so that no one comes to the aid of anyone dying. How about a generalised act of kidnapping in which everyone organizes themselves into gangs of kidnappers? Of course, in such settings, society will be worse for everyone. Therefore, if it would be intolerable for all if everyone does it, it follows that it is wrong for anyone to do it. This same principle goes for any conduct that has social consequences. It is the principle we need to adopt to save us from ourselves.

  • An orphan’s legacy

    FEMI ABBAS

    “Who shares his life’s pure pleasure and walks the honest road; who trades with heaping measure and lifts his brother’s load; who turns the wrong down bluntly and lends the right a hand; he dwells in God’s own country and tills the holy land.” Louis F. Benson

    Monologue

    This article is not new. It had been published in this column before. But it is being repeated here because of its relevance to the appreciation which humanity owes an exemplary orphan from Arabia whose mentorship rescued us from the crushing dangers of certain thorny paths of life.

     

    Preamble

    No man in history has ever been as fitting to the above poetic description as Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the undisputable   greatest man that ever lived. His legacy is the solid foundation upon which the contemporary civilization is built.

    But despite the vivid feasibility of that legacy it remains invisible to many eyes that are alien to the light of Islam. Thus, the Prophet’s legacy is like the beaming sun which no blind person can see and no seeing eyes can perceive in its natural nakedness.

    Yet, both the blind and the seeing feel its burning effect ‘willy-nilly’ even as it photosynthesizes the proverbial ‘plants’ around them and nourishes those ‘plants’ to fruition with sustainable potency.

     

    His Legacy

    This article is rather a token of an appreciation of Prophet Muhammad’s unprecedented accomplishments than the trivialization of those accomplishments in the guise of his birthday celebration called Mawlidun-Nabiyy by some people.

    Muhammad, the son of Abdullah and Aminah was not born a Prophet. He only became a prophet by Divine ordination at the age of 40 years in 610 AH. Before then, his birth was neither remembered nor celebrated. And while he was alive, no one dared the celebration of his birthday.

    Therefore, if anything were to be celebrated about the personality of this great man, it must be his Prophet-hood which was about his service to humanity.

     

    The Prophet’s Biography

    From the creation of Adam, (the first human being created by Allah), till date, no man’s biography has ever been so much written and read as that of Muhammad (SAW), the son of Abdullah and Aminah.

    This man’s biography has been written from all perspectives, positive and negative, by various men and women of diverse races, tribes, ideologies and religions in the past over 1400 years or there about.

    And the biography is still being written and re-written authoritatively and un-authoritatively, today, in uncountable languages.

    Even those who are obviously bereft of writing prowess randomly resort to cartooning him just to seek relevance and curry ignominious fame.

    Through the writings of Prophet Muhammad’s biography, some millions of people have zoomed into un-dream-able fame.

    Some others have sunk into the abyss of a permanent oblivion. But virtually all the writers have benefitted from their writings directly or indirectly, in coins and in kind.

    No other Prophet’s biography has attracted as many writers from among believers and non-believers, as well as from friends and foes alike, over the centuries, as that of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

    Every aspect of this Prophet’s life including the dresses he wore, the food he ate, the way he spoke, the steps he took, the laws he enacted, the wives he married, the children he bore, and the wars he was forced to fight, has formed the components of his biography.

    In short, next to the Qur’an, no book is as much read daily in the world today as the biography of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in one form or another.

     

    A vital Question

    Given this situation, however, a vital question has arisen thus: why has there been so much global focus on this unlettered Prophet from Arabia for so many centuries? The answer to this question is not far-fetched.

    The world has not produced any human personality comparable to   Prophet Muhammad (SAW), and, it will not.

    He is the seal of all the Prophets/ Messengers of Allah and the epitome of human exemplariness. In him alone are found all the traits of what a perfect gentleman should be in all ramifications.

     

    The ‘Ifs’ of His Life

    The life of every human being is full of ifs. And, it is the conglomeration of those ifs that often form the particles of what is called profile or biography. For example, if Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had not been an orphan, he would not have been able to guide humanity on how orphans should be treated especially with regards to inheritance.

    If he had not been a husband, his marital life would not have been an excellent template for others to emulate and women’s rights would have been permanently ignored. If he had not been a widower the world would not have realized the plight of widows and how to provide for them.

    If he had not been a father, the proper parental care deserved by children would have been relegated to the background in Islamic doctrine. If he had not been trustworthy, the value of trust would have been totally lost in the lifestyle of mankind.

    If this nonesuch Prophet of Allah had not been compelled to migrate from Makkah to Madinah, the culture of wayfaring and hospitality, which is universally   imbibed today, would not have been in existence.

    If he had not been forced to fight wars, the laws of war, armistice and reconciliation would have eluded humanity. If he had not diplomatically overcome the oppression to which he was subjected by his adversaries, the word magnanimity would not have found a place in the dictionary of the victors among warriors.

    If the Prophet from Arabia had not been a judge, the virtue of justice would have been globally thrown to the winds and survival in all societies would have been for the fittest.

    If this greatest Messenger of Allah had not been a democratic ruler, the relationship between the ruled and their rulers, all over the world, today, would not have been dissimilar from that of slaves and their masters and dictatorship in governance would have known no boundaries.

    If he had not been poor despite being a Head of State, the policy of social welfare adopted in civilized societies today in favour of the poor, would not have been possible. If he had not been an illiterate, the world would not have known the difference between literacy and education.

    And, if, despite all these qualities in him, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had not been humble and affable, arrogance would have been the main character of all privileged people in the world today.

     

    Comparison

    Who else can be compared to this greatest man that ever lived in history? And, in which any other single personality could all the aforementioned qualities have ever been found in history? There can be little wonder, then, why so much attention was and is still being focused on the personality of this extra-ordinary human being.

    That is Prophet Muhammad (SAW) for you, the like of whom the world has never seen before him and will never see again after him.

    If this man is celebrated anywhere in the world today or any other time, therefore, it is definitely not because he was born like any other man. Rather, it is because his achievements transcend ordinary birth.

    But for him, the world would have remained in the dungeon of ignorance and primitivism without any distinction between humans and beasts.

    It was he who brought back the manual of life to mankind after it had been lost to vanity through centuries of man’s peregrinations on earth.

    That manual of life is the divine instruction called the Qur’an, which came gradually from Allah to mankind in accordance with the growth rate of human intellect.

     

    Attestations

    After many decades of scientific experimentations, a German-born American physicist and Nobel Laureate, Albert Einstein the inventor of atomic bomb who is generally known as the 20th century creator of special and general theory of relativity wrote about Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

    He compared the Prophet’s works with the contents of the Qur’an and concluded as follows: “Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind”. He then called on fellow scientists to endeavour to read the Qur’an without bias in order to know the true origin of science in human life.

    Einstein was not alone in such unfaultable reasoning and advocacy. Other great contemporary scholars have made similar observations.

    One of them is Professor Tagatat Tajasen, Chairman of the Department of Anatomy at Chiang Mai University in Thailand. Through his deep research, this Professor had to accept Islam on the strength of just one scientific sign accurately mentioned in the Qur’an to his intellectual consternation.

    He had spent a great amount of his time, as a Professor, in search of pain receptor. When his attention was drawn to the Qur’an, he did not believe initially that such a highly sophisticated aspect of science could have been mentioned over 1,400 years ago.

    But when he confirmed it by himself in the translation of the Qur’an, he became so much impressed that he publicly embraced   Islam which he   accepted as a truly divine religion.

    Perhaps, it was those attestations by great men of intellect that prompted one Michael Hart, a Jewish American Astrophysicist, to research into the personality of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) whom he named as the greatest man that ever lived, in his famous book entitled ‘The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History’. There are many more prominent scholars who, at one time or another, gave   testimonies about the un-questionability of the divine mission of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). One of them was Alphonse de Lamartine of France, who had the following to say about the Messenger of Allah in his book entitled ‘Histoire de la Torque’:

    “Never has a man set for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a more sublime aim since this aim was superhuman; to subvert superstitions which had been interposed between man and his Creator; to render God unto man and man unto God; to restore rational and sacred idea of divinity amidst the chaos of the material and disfigured idolatry which were then in existence”. He went further thus:

    He went further thus: “…If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astounding results are the three criteria of human genius, who could dare to compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws and empires only.

    They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled before their very eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples and dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls. On the basis of a book (the Qur’an), every letter of which has become law, he created a spiritual nationality which blended together peoples of every tongue and of every race…..”.

    He then concluded thus: “As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured we may well ask, is there any man in human history that is greater than Muhammad?”

     

    Napoleon Bonaparte’s Testimony

    On his own, Napoleon Bonaparte, the great 18th century French conqueror of Europe was so much amazed by the traits of Islam which he saw in Egypt during his military expeditions that he made the following historic statement about that divine religion and its great Prophet:

    “Muhammad, in reality, was a great leader of mankind. He preached UNITY among Arabs who were, till then, torn asunder due to internecine quarrels, sometimes resulting in bloody war fares.

    He brought them out of the obscure world in a short time and the discipline which they maintained under his leadership was simply marvellous, and so was their bravery, courage and devotion to the cause which they loved and cherished”.

    He also continued as follows: “…this, coupled with the contempt for death, as taught by their leader, made them great soldiers and fighters like of whom history rarely produces.

    I simply marvel at the achievements of this great ‘Son of the Desert’ within a mere period of less than 15 years; a thing which Moses and Christ could not do in 15 centuries. I salute this great man; I salute his qualities of Head and Heart….”

     

    George Bernard Shaw’s Comment

    Meanwhile, in corroboration of the above highlighted testimonies, variously made by renowned men of letters and intellect, another foremost Orientalist, playwright and dramatist, George Bernard Shaw, had the following to say about Islam and Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in his book ‘The genuine Islam’ (vol. 1 No 8 of 1936):

    “The Christians and their missionaries have presented a horrible picture of Islam. Not only that, they also carried out an organized and planned propaganda against the personality of Prophet Mohammad and the religion he preached. I have carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet.

    I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to the conclusion that Mohammad was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under a most agonizing pain. I have always held Islam in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality.

    It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing face of existence which can make it appealing to every age. I have studied him-the wonderful man and in my opinion, far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the saviour of humanity.

    I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness.

    I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today”.

     

    Conclusion

    These are just some of the facts that make an unlettered Arabian orphan, Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the greatest human being that ever lived on earth.

    If non-Muslims could go so far to analyze the facts above about Prophet Muhammad (SAW) without reference to his birth, what is expected of Muslims for whom his mission is primarily meant? The life of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was about service to mankind and not self adoration in the name of birthday.

    As we are now celebrating another Eidul Fitr, we pray the Amighty  Allah to continue to bless the invaluable soul of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as well as those of his companions, his spouses and household till the Day of Judgment. Amin. Eid Mubarak!