The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • Whenever the Sultan Speaks…

    Leaders are not those who ascribe leadership to themselves by caprice or by whim. Real leaders are those who are sincerely acknowledged as effective leaders by their followers. Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abukakar, CFR, mni, belongs to the latter category. His leadership traits are not, in anyway, hidden. He neither speaks just to be heard nor moves just to be seen. His utterances are always timely and meaningful. And he combines certain qualities the likes of which distinguished Umar Bn Khattab among the first four Caliphs in Islam. Sultan Abubakar is a bold and charismatic soldier like Umar. He is visionary, firm, humble and affable like Umar. And he believes so much in leadership by example just like Umar.

    Perhaps that is why he is so close to the ordinary people in his day-to-day running of the Sultanate administration and that of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) just as Umar was.

     

    His Royal Antecedent

    A few years ago, this Nigeria’s 20th Sultan spoke passionately at a public function on three important issues each of which is vividly manifesting today.

    First, he advised the three tiers of government to ventilate the economic environment for possible employment of the teeming youths, warning that unemployment is a time bomb which could explode anytime. He attributed the viral poverty in the land to gross unemployment of millions of able hands rendered idle and cautioned those in government against criminal consequences of that ugly situation. At the time he made that speech, the menace of banditry, kidnapping and what later came to be known as Boko Haram had not commenced.

     

    Admonition

    On that occasion, His Eminence admonished Muslims not to be bellicose towards non-Muslims in reaction to religious misconduct of some disgruntled people especially those who relished in the pleasure of fomenting religious trouble with obnoxious preaching and offensive media propaganda like a provoking cartoon published in faraway Norway some time ago. He counselled the Ummah to rather educate any non-Muslim who might want to tread the path of religious transgression against Islam than resort to hatred. In that speech, His Eminence concluded that it was only in a peaceful atmosphere that people of diverse spiritual and temporal backgrounds could comfortably co-exist in a multi-religious and multi-tribal society like Nigeria.

     

    On His way to Ekiti

    On Sunday, Sultan Abubakar will arrive in Akure enroot Ado-Ekiti for conferment of a Doctoral Degree on him by Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUA).

    That will be one of many of its types in various universities across the world since he assumed the exalted royal office of the Sultan in November, 2006. And since then, his impact both as a royal father and the Commander of Nigerian Muslim Ummah as well as the CUSTODIAN OF NIGERIA’S NATIONAL MOSQUE has been unprecedentedly historic.

     

    In Retrospect

    When this great man was five years old on the throne in 2011, yours sincerely wrote an article about him in this column which remains as relevant today as it was then. An excerpt from the article is as follows:

    “In every crowd of horizontal men, there is always one vertical man who deserves honour not much because of his vertical position but because of the significant difference which that position makes in a society”.

    History and Man

    “History and man are like Siamese twins or a pair of scissors. The one cannot do without the other. History makes man just as man makes history. And the reciprocal baton continues to change hands between them as long as they remain in existence”.

    “In November 2006, a public announcement of the sighting of a human crescent which had lain hidden in the firmament of the orbit was made. That crescent was the towering personality generally known today as the Sultan Abubakar did not ring any bell in Nigeria before the referred historic announcement.

    Thereafter, he was crowned ‘The Sultan of Sokoto’ precisely on November 6, 2006.

    Thus, the emergence of Brigadier-General Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar (rtd.) as the successor to the exalted throne of the great Sokoto Empire without any controversy came as a surprise to many Nigerians.

    At 50 then, many people thought that he was one of the youngest men to mount that throne in many decades. But he disagreed with such assumption and recalled that his own father, Sultan Abubakar Sadiq III who died in 1988 ascended the throne at the age of 37.

     

    His Pedigree

    With a sound military background coupled with intellectual aristocracy and a diplomatic exposure, this Sultan has been perceived, since coming into office, as a millennial royal Commander divinely designated to pilot the affairs of Islam and the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria with unequalled success.

     

    Philosophers’ Assertion

    Philosophers who once asserted that every new century has a way of producing a great leader were right after all. Dr Abubakar is a manifest attestation to that assertion. Ever since he assumed the exalted royal office of the Sultan about 13 years ago, this great man has convincingly exemplified all the qualities of genuine leadership. Every statement he has made socially, religiously or politically and every action he has taken officially or personally has proved to be a school from which all well-meaning people have learnt one lesson or another.

     

    ABU Chancellor

    Five years after his assumption of office, the symbiotic relationship of history and man was reconfirmed in Zaria, on Wednesday, (November 23, 2011), where a galaxy of well-meaning men and women from all walks of life assembled to say “we are here to bear witness”. That was the day His Eminence was installed as the Chancellor of Ahamadu Bello University, Zaria. The occasion was just one of many laurels accruing to him since he assumed office.

    An American President, Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), once described a leader as “a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like it”. By his activities and functions so far, Sultan Abubakar has proved Truman right by demonstrating to Nigerian Muslim Ummah that the time has come for the reformation not only of the  NSCIA but also the Sultanate.

    Education in Islam

    In Islam, education is the first law. It is only through it that man can understand life in all its ramifications. That was why Allah’s very first revelation to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in the Qur’an ordained education thus: “Read in the name of Allah who created; He created man from clots of congealed blood; Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One, Who taught man by the pen; He taught him what he did not know…”Q. 96:1-4.

    To further emphasize the compelling need for education in Islam, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was reported to have said in one Hadith that “knowledge is a lost treasure. Muslims should search for it and pick it wherever they could find it”.

    Without education, there can be no information. And without information there can be no progress. That is why the Sultan started his reformation of the Sultanate from the premise of education. It is only with education that most problems in this world can be solved without much ado. Sultan Abubakar also believes that education without social harmony is like a virtue without value and that there can be no harmony in a society where people are overwhelmed by ignorance and penury as in Nigeria. Thus, he has consistently focused on both.

     

    As ABU Chancellor

    At his installation as the Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University in 2011, Sultan  Abubakar told the crowd that the current socio-economic indices in Nigeria were a clear indication that the country had begun to drift. He lamented that despite the nation’s unprecedented resources, development had failed to match the national wealth.

    In his words: “Corruption has emasculated our progress even as poverty and unemployment have pushed citizens to the brinks, fuelling and confounding social conflicts and inter-communal crisis has extracted heavy toll in both human lives and property”. He went further to say that: “Persistent insecurity has generated panic and anxiety; our social and physical infrastructures are far from meeting the needs of the nation; the country appears to be adrift and at the core of all these is moral decay engendered by ignorance and greed.”He also noted that no reformation of the tertiary education sector  could be effective without putting in place, the progressive developments required in the basic and senior secondary education sectors. He  insisted that “our state governments, especially those of the North, must begin to realise the enormity of the challenges facing the education sector and take urgent and necessary steps to address these challenges.” He lauded the founding fathers of the ABU, particularly, the late Sarduana of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and urged the authorities of the school to continue to abide by the cardinal principles on which the institution was founded.

     

    Royal Voice against Corruption

    That Nigeria’s renascent Sultan for you, a man who is at the topmost echelon of the tree of comfort but feels so much concerned about the plight of the peasants who are hopelessly consigned to the weeding of the shrubs  by official policies. He has never relented in his advocacy for good governance, denunciation of corruption and religious intolerance.

     

    Muslim Unity and Interfaith Engagements

    When His Eminence was invited in January 2010 as a Special Guest of Honour to a religious seminar organised by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) with the theme: ‘Knowing Your Muslim Neighbour’, he delivered an historic speech that reverberated meaningfully across the entire world. And in May, same year, he also invited the leadership of CAN to a special conference of the NSCIA held in Kaduna. The theme of that conference was: ‘Islam in the Eyes of the Christians’. He is the first Nigerian first class Monarch ever to engage in such an interfaith affair at the national level and his speech on that occasion was also electrifying.

     

    Electoral Reform

    According to the Sultan, the National Assembly, and indeed all tiers of Government, should not relent in their efforts at Electoral Reform and in ensuring that Nigerians have a genuine electoral process that guarantees free and fair elections. Unless and until we do that, our nation will continue to be haunted by the unholy alliance between fraudulent elections and illegitimate electoral outcomes, the consequences of which we all know too well. We must break away from this vicious circle and confer on Nigerians the power and indeed the ability to decide, freely and willingly, who leads them at all levels  of governance”.

    “….There is also the urgent need for us to re-evaluate our conception of leadership as a nation…. needless to add, that there is no way we can make genuine progress as a nation when a significant number of our populace wallows in abject poverty unable to secure the requisite means for their sustenance and to cater for the health and educational needs of their families. Democracy must build a humane society capable of looking after the legitimate needs of its citizenry. For it to be truly successful, it must be able to bring real progress to all sectors of our diverse society.

    “Finally we must all work hard to limit the influence of wealth in our society and to support those values that promote social responsibility, excellence and hard work”.

     

    Grassroots Interaction

    That is Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, a leader who knows the problems of his followers and associates with them in solving those problems. Through his humble interaction with all Muslims in Nigeria irrespective of tribal or geographical boundaries, he has become the first Sultan to create a strong feeling of a united Ummah under a competent and kind leadership. And by speaking out incessantly against policies which seem to deliberately impoverish ordinary Nigerians across board, this Sultan has brought a rare hope to Nigeria and the Muslims are the luckiest for it. Such a leadership deserves allegiance, loyalty and regular prayer from the Ummah. We pray for the elongation of his life with very sound health and regular Allah’s guidance.

  • Community matters

    THE story of our nation from amalgamation until now is an interesting one for what we have largely considered important versus what we have all but sidelined. Our narratives of development or lack of it, peace and insecurity, health and disease, education and poverty have focused on the state as if it is the sole driver of the engine of our lives.

    For the most part, we have sidelined local communities and how they matter to the lives of citizens. Every now and then, this columnist has tried to bring communities back into the national discourse. Because community matters and matters that affect community development are at the heart of our national malaise.

    Our penchant for seeing everything good or bad from the perspective of state action or inaction is a relatively recent development. There were times in our history when we held our local communities in high esteem, seeing them as the foundation of the good life for indigenes. They gave us life. They offered us opportunities for education whether formal or informal. They instilled in us cultural and moral values for successful lives.

    I grew up in pre-independence era Okeho community. It was closely knit with everyone looking out for the success of every child. As I reminisced in All the Way: Serving with Conscience, Okeho was the epicenter of traditional values which continually torture the heart and soul of the one who ever thinks of deviating from them even long after leaving the community. A kii see (It’s not done) is the brutal warning.

    Having such a burden of conscience not only prepares you for a life of devotion to the common good, it is also a powerful force against anti-social or unethical tendencies. Thus, faithfulness to the ethos of community ensures not only the success of individuals in life, it also guarantees social cohesion and peaceful coexistence. After all, every community instills virtually the same core values.

    For its grateful beneficiaries, the attraction of community is so long-lasting that no matter how far they venture away from it, it is not out of their mind. They keep going back to their root and they keep paying forward their debt of gratitude. When each is so vested along with like-minded home folks, the ensuing display of the joy of re-membering could be truly inspiring, contagious, and moving. That was my experience two years ago this month when Okeho celebrated the centenary of its return to its original site.

    Re-membering, as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o underscores, is the sacred act of recovering and restoring that which has been lost or taken away. Ngugi’s book, Remembering Africa, takes off from the dismembering of Africa by 400 years of enslavement and 200 years of colonialism and neo-colonialism. To re-member is to put together the dis-membered.

    The Okeho centenary was a small community version of Ngugi’s vision of African re-membering. It was the re-membering of values and norms of community, which decades of political schism had almost but destroyed. It was the reconciliation of old and young to the tradition of community service that spawned them in the first place. It was the rebuke of a destructive individualistic ethos that had become a threat to the wellbeing of the self and the community. And the response was overwhelmingly positive. It gladdened the heart.

    Volunteerism took on a new and inspiring meaning. Old and young sacrificed time, mental and material resources to make the celebrations a success. The major community association, Egbe Omo Ibile, Okeho, which had gone through periods of demobilization by partisan bickering found its mojo and reengaged with the community. Together with Okeho Development Association (ODA), and A Centenary Committee led by a successful corporate leader, the ground was laid for a successful program of events.

    What was most gratifying was the determination of young professionals who, undeterred by the modern attraction of individualistic competition, chose communal commitment and inaugurated committees to take on development ideas that they had figured out needed to be pursued. This has translated into communal activism in the quest for developmental projects.

    Okeho has no higher institution. In 2016, Oyo State Government approved a campus of Oyo State School of Health Technology. But the community must provide land and classroom blocks. With Kabiyesi Onjo of Okeho’s leadership, the community embarked on the project. The school is now open to students from all over the state. But the Okeho community had to bear the burden of its opening.

    In 2017, National Open University (NOUN) authorities considered a request from the community for NOUN Study Center in Okeho. NOUN has a long list of conditions for the approval of the request. including a study hall for 200 students, 100 desktop computers, 100kva generator, fencing of the premises. Again, every segment of the community has been involved in the project with Egbe Omo Ibile leading the charge. A group of young professionals formed a Special Ad-Hoc Committee on NOUN Study Centre, fundraising for the project. In addition to supplying desktop computers, it has also donated a branded Mini-Bus to the proposed institution.

    Why do I go into all these? I would like to make two important points. First, the spirit of community, which used to be the driving force of all developmental efforts in the past, is still alive and well. This is especially true of small local communities which are virtually left to their fates by state and federal governments in the race of development.

    The two examples of educational projects that I just narrated reveal an important truth. In thIs country, development is not evenly distributed and the inequality that characterizes inter-personal relationships also exists between communities. State capitals can boast of multiple higher educational institutions, dual carriage ways, and basic and specialized health institutions, while rural communities have none. Some communities are more equal than others.

    However, while deprived communities can task themselves to satisfy conditions for the location of educational and health institutions, there are other tasks, such as road construction or rehabilitation that they cannot be expected to undertake. And such are at the heart of the extreme poverty they experience. Ibadan-Iseyin road, Oyo-Iseyin road, Okeho-Iseyin Road, Okeho-Iganna road in Oyo State have been in states of abandonment for many years. Yet Oke-Ogun division, which these roads connect to the state capital, is famously known as the food basket of the state. Thanks to the intervention of the Honorable Minister for Works and Housing, Okeho-Iseyin Road is receiving attention and would hopefully be completed eventually.

    My second point is that the spirit of community that inspires volunteerism and commitment to common good is dead in our national life and needs to be revived. You may wonder if it makes sense to suggest that the spirit of community is expected to be revived in the national life. Is the expectation not misplaced? If Ngugi can invoke, rightly in my view, re-membering as an approach to reconnecting Africa to its roots by recovering and restoring what has been lost through the violent intervention of foreign invaders, the concept is certainly applicable to Nigeria. For it was the same violent intervention that tore us from our communal roots.

    This point was brought home vividly to me in the NYSC camp in Enugu in 1974. One of our guest lecturers drew a distinction between Oru Obodo and Oru Oyinbo (Work of the Community versus Work of the Englishman or Foreigner). Obviously, with the intensity of community development burning bright, Oru Obodo was taken more seriously than Oru Oyinbo. Unfortunately, notwithstanding independence, the state simply replaced Oyinbo in our mental picture. More so, since our different communities see others as aliens and competitors.

    But it is more and worse. Many of us go from seeing community differences or from promoting our communities above others. We have come full circle to seeing our own communities as instruments for the promotion of our self-interests. This is why constituency project funds end up in the pockets of individualistic legislators. Unfortunately, therefore, the reality of our historical currents as a nation is a betrayal of the expectation of the dictates of community ethos. We can do much better.

     

     

     

  • Exit of a Cornerstone

    “Every soul shall taste death. You shall receive your rewards on the Day of Judgement. Whoever is spared Hell and admitted into Paradise shall profit from his end; for the life of this world is nothing but a fleeting vanity”. Q. 3:185.

    Death, like life, is a   natural phenomenon divinely programmed by the immortal Creator for the mortal beings. Both (life and death) are like the day and the night exchanging baton at specific hours as divinely scheduled. The contents of today’s article in this column are not quite dissimilar from those written by yours sincerely last June following the demise of a Nigerian iconic journalist, Alhaji Kolawole Adio Animasaun, of Vanguard newspaper fame. Both personalities

     

    Point of Reference

    In the introduction to his autobiography entitled ‘My Odyssey’ published in 1970, Nigeria’s first President, the late Dr. Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe wrote thus:  “Man comes into the world and while he lives, he embarks upon a series of activities absorbing experience which enables him to formulate a philosophy of life and to chart his causes of action. But then he dies. Nevertheless, his biography remains a guide to those of the living who may need guidance either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as encouragement or both”.

     

    Demise of an Icon

    It is no longer news that Dr. Sakariyau Olayiwola Babalola (OON), the President of the Muslim Ummah of Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) and Deputy President-General, Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) is dead. He died in the early hours of Wednesday October 2, 2019 and he was buried on the same day at Ikoyi cemetery in Lagos according to his wish. Shortly before his demise, Dr. Babalola had altered his Western oriented will to reflect Allah’s prescription on Muslim will writing through Shariah. It was through that alteration that he indicated his wish to be buried wherever he died and hence his burial took place in Lagos.

     

    Comment

    To many people in Nigeria and abroad who, out of sheer ignorance, see death as an intruder in the life of man, Dr, Babalola’s death might have come as “a rude shock” even at about the age of 87 years. But to Muslims who understand their religion very well and know that death is an inevitable alternative to life, it couldn’t have been a shock.

     

    The Prophet’s Example

    When Prophet Muhammad (SAW) died in 632 CE, some Muslims (including Umar Bn Khattab who later became the second Caliph) refused to hear such news and described it as heresy. It took the courage and maturity of Abubakr to stand on the podium and address the crowd of the Ummah who wanted a confirmation or denial of the news. In a quivering but clear voice he said: …”Those of you who have been worshipping Muhammad be informed that Muhammad is no more. But those who have been worshipping Allah should know that Allah is immortal”.

    Abubakr said this in further reiteration of Qur’an 2:255 which has stood out for over 1400 years as a perfect answer to an heretic question of a deeply ignorant unbeliever who wasted his entire life writing a whole book to ask one sentence senseless question: “Who is this Allah?”. Unknown to him, a Qur’anic verse had provided the accurate answer to that blind question   about half a millennium ago in what is called Ayatul Kursiyy thus: “Allah; there is no god but Him, the living, the eternal One. Neither slumber nor sleep overtakes Him. His is what the Heavens and the earth contain. Who can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows all about the affairs of men at present and in the future. They can grasp only that part of His knowledge which He wills. His throne is as vast as the Heavens and the earth, and the preservation of both does not weary Him. He is the Exalted, the immense One”.

     

    Lesson from History

     

    Like all those who had   passed through this world before him, Dr. S. O. Babalola is dead. All other things about him are now history. But from that history is a lesson for those succeeding him in private and public life to learn. His is now a closed chapter in the history of Nigeria.

     

    The Cornerstone

    “While man’s desires and aspirations stir, he cannot choose but err; yet, in his erring journey through the night, instinctively, he travels toward the light”. By Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

    The above poem is the parable of a rejected stone that has turned out to be the ‘Cornerstone of the House’. Those who can still remember the history of Prophet Ismail, (the first son of Prophet Ibrahim) should be able to recall that he was once ejected from his parents’ home and banished to a desert asylum.  Today, see the outcome of that episode in the everlasting uniqueness of Hajj as the fifth pillar of Islam. As it was in the primordial time, so it is in the contemporary time.

     

    A Mark of Philosophy

    Before his exit from this world Dr. Babalola had enabled us to know that the purpose of human life is not just to live and be happy.

    Beneath many days of happy mood are some nights of tears. That is the secret of human experience which should serve as the first lesson for future leaders. This man, who combined humility with conscience to form an identity by which he was generally known, has exited from this transient world. That is an identity that clearly distinguishes a man of honour from men of wealth. We should all know that humility based on conscience is the most active cursor of piety.

     

    His Rising Profile

    Perhaps, if Dr. S. O. Babalola had not experienced rejection at a stage in his life’s odyssey, he would not have emerged as the President of the Muslim Ummah of  Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) which is the umbrella body for all Muslim organizations in the South West region of this country. And if he had not become the President of MUSWEN, he would probably not have risen to the post of Deputy President-General (South) of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA). What could have made this possible besides destiny through the guidance of Allah?

     

    The Difference He made

    What actually made conspicuous difference in Dr. Babalola’s life, which only a few people were able to note, was his ability to identify, early in life, the factors of equanimity in human existence.

    Those factors are contained in a poetic axiom succinctly coined by an American statesman and intellectual of renown, Williams Webster, who had the following to say in a stanza:  “If we work marble it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, and instill in them just principles, we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time can efface but will brighten into all eternity”.

    That was the guiding principle adopted by Dr. S. O. Babalola who rose from the dungeon of obscurity to reach a high pedestal of limelight in his life despite all odds. But he added an addendum of his own to that principle. That addendum was that for a person to be happy in life he must make others happy. And to live in peace, a person must ventilate a peaceful environment for others. Happiness, according to him, is based on peace and peace from man to man must be reciprocal.

     

    His Leadership Qualities

    For Dr. S. O. Babalola, rising to become a towering leader was not by fortuity. He had painstakingly studied the qualities of a good leader

    and he patiently imbibed those qualities through self-discipline and divinely guided inspiration.

    Those qualities of good leadership which together form the ladder that took this great man to the confortable apex of status in his life are as follows: Meaningful focus, interminable patience, relentless confidence, untamable courage, inspired innovation, natural humility, irrepressible endurance, insubordinate assiduity, divinely-guided self-motivation, impeccable resilience, enviable transparency, unequalled generosity, plausible accountability, unfaultable authenticity, intractable decisiveness, absolute contentment and of course, unpolluted conscience.

     

    Inquisition

    Now, which of these qualities were not found in this great man? And which of them should not be emulated by young men and women who are aspiring to be leaders tomorrow?

    Now, with his exit from our midst, Dr. S. O. Babalola has become a school in history for those who want to study the ladder of life and how to mount it to the peak.

     

    The Cornerstone

    “While man’s desires and aspirations stir, he cannot choose but err; yet, in his erring journey through the night, instinctively, he travels toward the light”. By Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

    The above poem is the parable of a rejected stone that has turned out to be the cornerstone of the house. Those who can still remember the history of Prophet Ismail, (the first son of Prophet Ibrahim) should be able to recall that he was once ejected from his parents’ home and banished to a desert asylum.  Today, see the outcome of that episode in the everlasting uniqueness of Hajj as the fifth pillar of Islam. As it was in the primordial time, so it is in the contemporary time.

    A man has just taken an exit from this ephemeral world whose rising profile while alive enabled us to know that the purpose of human life is not just to live and be happy. Beneath many days of happy mood are some nights of tears. That is the secret of human experience which should serve as the first lesson for future leaders. That man is Alhaji (Dr.) S. O. Babalola, OON, who combined humility with conscience to form an identity by which he was generally known. That is an identity that clearly distinguishes a man of honour from men of wealth. We should all know that humility based on conscience is the most active cursor of piety.

     

    His Rising Profile

    Perhaps, if Dr. S. O. Babalola had not experienced rejection at a stage in his life’s odyssey, he would not have emerged as the President of the Muslim Ummah of Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) which is the umbrella body for all Muslim organizations in the Southwest region of this country. And if he had not become the President of MUSWEN, he would probably not have risen to the post of Deputy President-General (South) of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA).

    What could have made this possible besides destiny through the guidance of Allah?

    Now, if, in the cause of recounting his livelihood, we trace his background to any school or any madrasah he attended at the early age of his life, what lesson are we to learn from that? If we describe him as one of the foremost but quiet philanthropists of his time, and list the chains of his philanthropic gestures, what uniqueness can that attribute to him as a special icon? If we say here that he was married with children and he gave those children highly qualitative education how does that make his life different from the lives of his peers? All those are a common feature of common citations often presented publicly, sometimes, to the boredom of the audience.

     

    The Difference he made

     

    What actually made a conspicuous difference in this man’s life, which only a few people were able to notice, was his ability to identify, early in life, the factors of equanimity in human life. Those factors are contained in a poetic axiom succinctly coined by an American statesman and intellectual of renown, Williams Webster, who had the following to say in a stanza:

    “If we work marble it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, and instill in them just principles, we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time can efface but will brighten into all eternity”.

    That quotation was the guiding principle adopted by Dr. S. O. Babalola who rose from the dungeon of obscurity in life to a high pedestal of limelight despite all odds. But he added an addendum of his own to that principle. That addendum was that to be happy in life one must make others happy. And to live in peace, one must ventilate a peaceful environment for others. By Dr, Babalola’s perception of life, happiness should be based on peace and peace from man to man should be reciprocal.

    Thus, for Dr. S. O. Babalola, rising to become a towering leader was not by fortuity. He had painstakingly studied the qualities of a good leader and which he patiently imbibed through self-discipline and divinely guided inspiration.

     

    A voyager’s Prayer

    In the course of his life’s odyssey, this great man came across a special prayer that was once offered poetically by an American woman (J. Walch) who dedicated her entire life to the service of humanity and died on it. Dr. Babalola promptly adopted the prayer as his daily rhyme and started to live by it in words and in action in his late sixties. The prayer goes thus: “God make my life a little staff, upon which the weak may rest, that what so health and wealth I have may serve my neighbours best”.

     

    MUSWEN’s Way Forward

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

    Their presence indicated their commitment.

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

     

    In Retrospect

    As individuals and organizations, Muslims of the Southwest of Nigeria had wandered aimlessly for centuries like unguarded flock. They had cried for a guiding umbrella body without getting one. They had identified disunity as the bane of their existence and yet they had failed to find a solution to it. But Allah has a time for everything just as He has a program for every nation or community. This is the time for solving the chronic problem confronting the Southwest Muslims. This is the period to flock together in peace and harmony.

    This is the time to fly where we had been crawling.

    Who can claim to be happy where most of the children of school age that are out of school happen to be Muslims? Who can feel satisfied with having fewer schools and fewer teachers than we need at all levels of our educational system? Who can claim to be well pleased with a situation where the most skilled and most professionally qualified Muslims have had to cross to the other side of the spiritual bridge in quest for livelihood? Who does not know that the enclave of penury in this part of the country is domiciled in the Muslim community? Should we continue to be complacent with this gloomy situation and be indifferent to a positive change?

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

    The history of Islam and the conditions of the Muslims in Southwest Nigeria are so unique that they require a special and appropriate attention. The arrival of Islam into the midst of Yoruba people who inhabit the Southwest area of Nigeria took place centuries before the advent of Christianity and long preceded the coming of the British colonialists in 1842. Islam had thus made a tremendous impact on the language and culture of the Yoruba people before Nigeria came into existence as a country. Being a religion of literacy and education, Islam brought civilization to the Yoruba land and some other parts of West Africa for the first time.  At that time, Yoruba language was committed to writing in Arabic alphabets. Arabic therefore became the first language of literacy and the medium of communication and scholarly discourses among Yoruba Muslim scholars.

    It is rather a matter of concern and even an irony that the same Muslims are now lagging behind their Christian counterparts in Western education.

     

    Relevant Questions

    How did this irony come about? How can it be reversed?

    What are the aims and objectives of MUSWEN? What is its structure?

    What program does that structure have for the South West Muslims? Who are the people behind it? What is MUSWEN’s position vis a vis the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA)? These and many more questions about MUSWEN are what the Muslims leaders of the region, under the presidency of Dr. S. O. Babalola, had been practically addressing before the latter’s demise. But the same questions will be theoretically answered in this column very soon Insha’a Llah. We pray the Almighty Allah to repose Dr. Babalola’s doul in eternal bliss and grant his family the fortitude with which to bear the agony of his exit from their lives. Amin. Inna liLlah wa inna ilayhi raji’un!

  • Gen Akinrinade at 80: Courage, commitment, consistency

    FEDERALISM is the combination of self-rule and shared rule in compound polities…. While government in large unitary states is to some extent decentralized, it is non-centralized in federal ones. The powers of regional governments are not delegated by a central government but are directly derived from democratic representations.” — Rainer Baubock, “Why Stay Together? A Pluralist Approach to Secession and Federation” in Citizenship in Diverse Societies edited by Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman (2000: Oxford University Press), p. 368.

    ‘No country in the world, where people are forced to co-exist on disagreeable terms lasts. Nigeria will not be an exception, if “true federalism” is not entrenched as a national principle of coexistence. It was clear from the beginning that a unitary system will not work in Nigeria as Lugard’s attempt to construct Nigerian unity through an amalgamation failed.’—General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, “Which Way Nigeria?” A Lecture Delivered at the Inauguration of the New President of The Challenge Club, Ibadan, 2017

    General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, CFR, GCON, just turned 80 yesterday and, served in his honor was an intellectual menu worthy of his consistency of principle and courageous commitment to national greatness. Ten years ago, on his 70th birthday, I described General Akinrinade as “a one soldier integrity squad.” He remains so.

    Twenty years ago, on General Akinrinade’s 60th birthday, The Moremi Foundation held a symposium in his honor at the Blackburn Center, Howard University, in Washington DC. The theme of that symposium was “Nigeria and the future of federalism”. It was a fitting tribute to the courage and commitment of an officer and gentleman in the best of that tradition, who, having served at the highest levels of the military in professional and political appointments, has not minced words, and has not shied away from speaking truth to power about the  fundamental challenges that we face as a nation. That the powers that be turn deaf ears doesn’t take away from the clarity of his thoughts and the forthrightness of his warnings.

    My interest in this piece is to salute General Akinrinade’s intellectual endowment which he has consistently deployed for more than 25 years in pursuit of true democratic federation in Nigeria. I do this by revisiting his constructive critique of the wobbly structure that the military imposed on the nation by fiat, and his thoughtful alternative for the resolution of the crisis of democracy in our land.

    If Rainer Baubock is right in my opening epigram, that the powers of regional governments are not delegated by the central government but are derived from democratic representation as fashioned in the constitution, we must admit that Nigeria has been practicing a fake variant of federalism since 1966. This is the fundamental problem with our system of governance. It is the root of our crises of identity.

    General Akinrinade is one of those who first saw in the military annulment of the 1993 presidential elections more than a personality disorder on the part of the principal architect of the annulment. He saw the foundation of that blatant disrespect for the rule of law something more sinister lurking in the inner recesses of a group, not just an individual.

    It is well known that Akinrinade refused to join the train of democratic transition in 1999 because it was clear to him that a solid foundation had not been laid for the democratic experiment. He expressed his disappointment that our people had not learnt from their recent history. Thus, in the interview he gave Wahab Gbadamosi of The News in Washington DC in June 1999, it bothered him that the political class decided to accept the military imposed constitution without raising a voice of protest:

    “If you have a political class that knows what the interests of the people and the political system ought to be, they ought to get together and call a conference of their own, outside this their parliamentary system, which is for a selected few who had been put there and declare that they don’t have a constitution….And therefore the political class should reject that (1999) constitution en masse…. They should then declare that they want to make a constitution for the people in their way. And they will win.”

    Of course, they will win because it would be a battle between the military and the people, and the military had just then been disgraced out of office. And the trajectory of our politics would have taken a whole different turn.

    The seed of that 1999 remark was already embedded in the text of General Akinrinade’s speech at the official launching of the Yoruba Autonomy Certificate in Washington DC in May 1998.  That speech underscored the importance of a true federal system which respects the internal autonomy of its constituent units:

    “…But let us suppose that we have managed to establish a Nigeria where there is recognition of equality of rights and privileges for all our people with whatever constitutional restrictions are necessary. Will that guarantee the stability of the commonwealth of Nigeria? …. Is it not quixotic to hope that a democracy of one man one vote will be enough to guarantee the stability of the state?”

    His answer is, of course, No. He then asks if it is not in our interest “to look now beyond the military and try to find our own home grown method of creating a stable Nigeria from the ashes of the military jackboot, a nation that will endure, a nation where no man (or woman) is or feel oppressed.”

    His emphasis then and now for the solution of our democracy crises is to find a political formula that enhances a sense of fairness and justice between the component nationalities so that an Ogoni citizen doesn’t feel oppressed by decisions taken based on majority votes of Fulani or Yoruba citizens. This is the nationality question for liberal democracy. We deceive ourselves if we believe that the principle of one man one vote is the be-all and end-all of democracy.

    In his 2017 Challenge Club lecture quoted in my second epigram above, General Akinrinade canvassed for a restructured Nigeria as solution to the threat of instability and the plague of underdevelopment with its attendant symptoms. He cited the unanimous agreement of the founding fathers for federalism in the 1951 and 1954 constitutional conferences when the emphasis was on “achieving unity at the center through strength in the regions.” This was the principle that formed the bedrock of the 1960 federal constitution and the 1963 republican constitution. It was the principle put into practice between 1955 and 1966 with good visible results that we still reminisce today.

    This takes me again to the quotation in my first epigram. Rainer Baubock distinguishes between unitary states and federal states based on the division of powers between them. Whereas unitary states decentralize powers from the center to the regions, in federal states power is not centralized to start with. Therefore, decentralization is a misnomer. Second, in a federation, the powers of the regional government are not delegated to them from a central government. Those regional powers are derived from democratic representation based on the constitution. Again, this was our system of government prior to the military era.

    Talk about devolution presupposes a pre-existing unitary government doling out excess powers to the regions. Based on the history of the country since 1966, we cannot fault anyone thinking that Nigeria is a unitary state, and that what we need is devolution of power from the center to the states. Incidentally, this is what APC manifesto promises. However, the depth of our structural challenges requires more than doling of powers from the center. It requires a new beginning that takes account of the defining mark of Nigeria as a multinational state. As Baubock also observes, in multinational states, “ a common grievance of national minorities is that “the terms of federation are either unfair or have been violated by the majority” (367).

    Redressing that grievance requires fundamental restructuring that recognizes the primacy of constituent units as was the case in 1951 and 1954.

    Happy 80th, General! Looking forward to the 100th!

     

  • Arabs as impediment to Islam

    Monologue

    Today’s article was first published in this column in 2010 albeit with a different title. Its publication at that time was warranted by an unpredictable pendulum which started to swing dangerously on the entire Arab world with what came to be known globally as Arab Spring.

    The repetition of the article here is due to its relevance at this time when a political tsunami seems to be foraging the Arab world crushingly at the expense of Islam. That tsunami can be linked to the recent diplomatic ripples in the Arabian Gulf which led to the ostracization of Qatar by the tripod of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. That fortuitous incident later became complicated by the criminal murder of a US-based Saudi Journalist, Jamal Kashogi, in cold blood, right inside the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Turkey.

    Preamble

    Today, Islam in the Arab world is like a lily by the mossy stone. And that mossy stone is nothing other than the Arabs themselves through whom Allah’s divine religion was revealed to mankind. The more turbulent the Arab world goes politically, the more fragile the Islamic lily becomes. Now, many questions are begging for answers around the world about Islam, but most of those questions are not immediately answerable.

    Islam at Inception

    When, at the inception of Islam, the Qur’an described the “pre-Islamic Arabs as a people with great penchant for recalcitrance and hypocrisy” they (the Arabs) quickly retorted by saying that the reference was to rural and not urban Arabs. Their justification for that reaction at the time was that over 80% of the Arabs were rural dwellers. But today, with more than 80% of the Arabs being urban dwellers, has it not become manifest that Arabs are Arabs irrespective of whether they are urban or rural dwellers?

    Arabs before Islam

    To those who are not quite familiar with the Arab history before the advent of Islam, it may look like an irony that the great religion of peace called Islam originated from amongst such people. But those who understand the workings of Allah will readily know that revealing Islam to mankind through the Arabs was a deliberate divine policy. If that religion had not come into existence through a stubborn fraction of the Caucasian race like theirs, the Arabs would have constituted its most impregnable impediment and, thus, the relative peace in the world today would have been a mirage.

    Social Movement

    Allah’s design for Islam as a religion was to make it a social movement springing from the very grassroots and rising gradually to the topmost echelon of human aristocracy. That Islam came to mankind through a people with such Qur’anic description, therefore, could not have been an accident or a mistake.

    If Islam had been revealed to mankind through the institution of monarchy or that of aristocracy, it would have been turned into a religion of masters and servants. And, in that case, the operations of Mosques would have been according to human status while the whims and caprices of the rulers and the lords would have formed the bulk of the laws guiding that religion. Thus, justice would have been according to the wishes of those monarchs and lords in a situation of cash and carry just as it was in Christianity in the primordial time. In a nutshell, justice would have been a matter of nomenclature proclaimed in the name of Allah but implemented in the style of Satan.

    Stubbornness as a Trait

    It is not strange that the Arabs of today are what the Qur’an had called their ancestors about 1500 years ago. A leopard can neither change its colour nor give birth to a lamb.

    However, stubbornness as a trait is not peculiar to the Arabs. It is a common trait of all dwellers in desert areas. Even animals like camels and donkeys share that trait with them. The divine logic in driving Islam into the world though the desert Arabs is therefore to convince mankind that even stone-hearted people like the Arabs could be tamed by the non-such sacred message called the Qur’an. Meanwhile, despite the emergence of Islam through them, the Arabs have never been able to part with their natural obduracy which was the premise from which Prophet Muhammad (SAW) began the propagation of his divine mission.

    Judo-Arab Relationship

    Arabs and Jews are brothers from the same father (Prophet Ibrahim) but different mothers (Hajarah and Sarah). They share many traits of recalcitrance and obduracy in every aspect of their lives. Just as the Jews rejected Prophet Isa (Jesus) who emerged from amongst them so did the Arabs rebuffed Prophet Muhammad (SAW) even after they had convincingly   accorded him the status of a truthful and trustworthy personality, based on his exemplary character before he became a Prophet. But for the fact that his message eventually brought fame to the Arabs and elevated their status in the comity of nations they would have totally rejected the divine message called Islam theoretically and practically.

    The only Prophet from Arabia

    Incidentally, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was the only Prophet from the Arab line. All other known Prophets after Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) came from amongst the Jews. Thus, the Jews can be said to be the world’s most luxurious race in divine prophet-hood. Yet, no Prophet was ever really accepted by them. The fact that a few of them still hold on tenaciously to Torah (now called Old Testament) which was revealed to Prophet Musa (Moses) is only due to an historical prophecy which enabled them to hope for a possible return to the land of Judea.

    Like Jews like Arabs

    The Arabs are hardly dissimilar from the Jews in their thoughts and actions. That the idea of the on-going global terrorism originated from among the Jews but became the heritage of the Arabs cannot be strange.

    Of the four rightly guided Caliphs who succeeded Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as Heads of State and leaders of the Muslim Ummah, only one (Abubakr Siddiq) was not killed in office and that was probably because he ruled for only two years. The other three: Umar Bn Khattab, Uthman Bn Affan and Ali Bn Abi Talib were all murdered gruesomely in cold blood as Heads of State by no other people than fellow Arabs. The Jews had done same to their Prophets long before the Arabs did.

    Arabs in Spain

    At least, it remains an historical fact that the Arab Muslims ruled Spain for about 500 years from 750 CE to 1258 CE. It was   during that period that countries like France, Italy, Germany as well as Britain and others had their first contact with intellectual civilisation. If propagation of Islam was genuinely the Arabs’ objective of struggling for power, what Islamic achievements did they make during their half of a millennium rule over Spain? And why were they eventually evicted with ignominy from that country?

    If the Arabs ingenuity had not been encapsulated in greed and self-centeredness, the intellectual hierarchy of the world today would have been different. In their lifestyle, even before the advent of Islam, the Arabs were notoriously known for three obnoxious engagements. These were WAR, WINE and WOMEN through which they often engaged one another with relish. But Islam came to condemn each of those primordial   engagements which can be described as the main causes of self-destruction.

    Islamic Leadership

    It is because Islam originated from the Arab domain where the two foremost Islamic sanctuaries (the Ka’abah in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah) were situated. The fact that the revelation of the Qur’an was in their language encouraged Muslims of other tongues and tribes to concede leadership of Islam to them even if   tacitly. But rather than rising to that privileged status, the Arabs placed premium on Arabism and turned Islam into a pun on the chessboard of their racial, greedy politics.

    Today, what matters most to the Arabs is Arabism rather than Islamism.

    That is why virtually all the Arab countries are more related to Arabic than Islamic names officially.

    Islamic Bodies

    Some well-known topmost Islamic bodies like Muslim World League and the likes which came into existence for the Unity of the Ummah some decades ago are now moribund because the Arab Muslim leadership that is supposed to nurture and pilot them is virtually none-existent. The only global Islamic body known to be functional today is the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and that is because the Arabs need the population of that body to checkmate certain unpalatable Western policies formulated against the Arabs at the United Nations level. Incidentally, to counter the Arab agenda, the Westerners have infiltrated that body through a surreptitious incursion into it. Many of them, including the United States, are now members of OIC even if in observer status.

    Arabs Business Mentality

    To the great delight of the West, the wealthy Arab nations and individuals of today are spending their enormous resources in purchasing and acquiring football clubs in Europe even as their brethren in non-Arab parts of the world are wallowing in abject penury, squalor and degradation. What a peculiar conundrum?

    Enemies of Islam

    The summary of all the assertions here is that the Arabs, and no other group of people, are the real enemies of Islam. They are the ones using their wealth to boost the various economic activities of the West including stock exchange, manufacturing, farming, Hotel businesses and tourism as well as sports and games at the expense of the lives of Islamic adherents. Considering all factors militating against Islam, it seems that the greatest puzzle about the Arabs is their mutual enmity in which no Arab country wants to tolerate another. Egypt and Algeria are sworn enemies just because of rivalry in soccer game. Saudi Arabia and Yemen are in perpetual warfare merely on some primordial issues which had pitched the one against the other before the advent of Islam. Iraq and Kuwait are two neighbours that can never sleep with their two eyes closed due to mutual suspicion.

    Syria and Lebanon seem to have permanently designed an indelible demarcation line between them just for the reason of material gains.

    Libya and Sudan have had to go into military conflicts a number of times, across their common border, for no reason other than material benefits. Morocco and Algeria will rather choose the gallows than settle a seeming permanent rancour between them over the questionable ownership of Western Sahara. How can there be unity? Yet, some Nigerian Muslims often blame the problems in the Arab world on Western conspiracy. If that is truly the case, what prevents the Arabs from conspiring together to resist Western conspiracy against their unity?

    Nigerian Factor

    Based on sheer religious sentiment, many Nigerian Muslims think that by pitching tent with the Arabs against the Jews on the Palestinian issue they are pitching tent with Islam. This is far from the truth.

    The problem of the homeless Palestinians is purely political and humanitarian rather than religious. And that problem is more fuelled by the Arabs who play hypocritical role in it than by the Jews who are directly benefitting from it.

    How many Nigerian Muslims know that the siege on Gaza Strip which began in January 2009 was not by Israel alone? It was a clandestine connivance between Israel and Egypt with the military support of the Western countries and financial backing of some Gulf Arab countries.

    Are Egyptians and citizens of those Gulf countries not Arabs? Why should they tighten the noose of death on their fellow Arab brothers?

    But that is the Arab nature for you. If you see them in any solidarity, it is for the purpose of hatching a treachery against a fellow Arab country or Islamic interest. The recent senseless imbroglio between a mischievous tripod in the Gulf region and Qatar is a sufficient example of what the Arabs can do to contradict what Islam preaches.

    Islamic Relevance

    Arabs love power and they will do anything, including suicide bombing and cold blood murder to cling to power directly or indirectly. That is why democracy in the Arab world knows no  voting in a democratic sense. It is a mere matter of nomenclature. Once installed, an Arab Head of State will remain in power till his death. He will even want to be succeeded by his son. Syria is a typical example. And, except for the sudden insurgency that led to the infamous Arab spring, Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya would have been succeeded by their children respectively despite their claim of democracy.

    By this assertion, ‘The Message’ column is not opposed to leadership by succession if that will ventilate a peaceful atmosphere but it should not be by imposition. That will grossly contradict the position of Islam which was why the second Caliph, Umar Bn Khattab, rejected a suggestion that one of his sons be made his successor. He even cursed the man who made the suggestion and accused him of nursing an ulterior motive aimed at causing a dissension withing the Muslim Ummah. The analysis here is just to show the extent to which the Arabs have returned to the love of power, even at the expense of Islam, after the first four Caliphs.

    Today’s Muslim world is like a mighty stream in which everybody drinks water. But those who position themselves at the upper side of that stream are the ones polluting it for the others. And if something drastic is not done to change the cause of pollution in that stream, it may eventually become a poison for all its drinkers. In the interest of their future and that of Islam, the Arabs are strongly advised to do something positive about Islam before Islam does something negative to them.

  • Progressive initiatives

    The Progressives Governors Forum (PGF) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) recently inaugurated two committees, the Governance Programme Steering Committee and the Legislative Programme Steering Committee.

    Why is this important? First, I confess my bias for genuine progressive governance, not one that appropriates the appellation without appreciating the substance of what progressivism entails. I supported APC in 2015 because while sixteen years of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had been good for the men and women in the corridors of powers and their hangers-on, it produced untold misery for the development of the nation and thus for the masses who ought to be the beneficiaries of governance.

    In 2015, I thought that with a progressive government in power at the federal and state levels, there was a good chance for initiatives that put the masses at the center of governance. Naively, I expected those who subscribed to the manifesto of the victorious party to be all in with its requirements. I was wrong. For as it turned out, many were Progressives in Name Only (PINO).

    What with the hustle for personal advancement at the expense of collective achievement on behalf of progressive ideology? Or the open confrontation on the part of a hostile National Assembly against party initiatives? Or state executive misfits whose penchant for profanity outweighed and compromised the good they were capable of doing? Unfortunately, the paint brush of shame and dishonour that is justifiably applicable to a few ended up smearing the collective. Until the dam broke and the shameless lot got blown away by the storm.

    In 2019, I also supported APC for two reasons. First, it occurred to me that the challenges the party had between 2015 and 2019 were principally because its rank was infiltrated by strange bedfellows with a retrogressive mindset. Rid of that element in the runup to the 2019 elections, I surmised that the party could muster the combined strength of like-minded progressives for the good of the country. Second, I deeply resent PDP as a party which so egregiously betrayed the trust of the nation for sixteen years. The breach of trust was so glaring that the party itself felt the need to tender an apology to the nation, and even contemplated changing its name. How could such a party dare to come back within four years to seek another mandate to rule? Was that a test of national memory?

    Compare our situation in 2019 with the US presidential election of 2012. In 2008, Barack Obama won the election mainly because of the coherent policies he laid out to rescue the nation from the great recession into which it was plunged in the eight years of Republican administration. Obama and his team worked so hard that in 2012 the economy was on recovery mode. Yet the Republicans who ruined it in the first place had the gut to complain that the recovery was too slow! Of course, the people knew the facts and they gave Obama a second term to continue his recovery efforts. Nigeria was in a similar situation in 2019. And the people knew which party ruined their lot and which party had tried its best to focus on recovery.

    However, the people also want a consistency of policies and programmes from the ruling party at federal and state levels. But since all politics is local and the greatest impact of governance will most likely be felt at the state level, the new initiatives by PGF are timely and heartwarming.

    From the snippets provided in its media briefings, a few elements of the Governance Programme Steering Committee initiative are clear. For the Committee, the goal is uniformity of policy initiatives, with a focus on strengthening the capacity of APC states for implementing approved initiatives. Since it is their initiative, there is a buy-in by the governors, and the target is party manifesto and campaign promises. There will be peer review of states’ implementation of party programmes.  Finally, the need is recognised for ultimately highlighting the distinction between APC on one hand, and PDP and other parties on the other hand in terms of policies and programmes. It is all well and good.

    On its part, the Legislative Programme Steering Committee will synergise the interactions between the executive and the legislature across the country; help contextualise government processes and decisions in terms of the legal frameworks governing them; monitor government operations, gather and evaluate information and recommend action to PGF; promote the interest of PGF member-states with regard to laws, regulations, and policies that may affect them; and promote cordial relations between legislatures and executives in APC states.

    The two initiatives are certainly timely and proactive. But what will it take for these initiatives to succeed? It will take discipline and it will take fidelity to progressive governance ideas.

    First, the requirement of discipline is a no-brainer. We saw what havoc indiscipline wrought between 2015 and early 2019. When party members appear to be laws unto themselves and the supremacy of the party as a sine qua non of party success is thrown out the window, it won’t matter what progressive ideas have proved effective in other climes. Self-interest and hubris will always ensure that such ideas get pushed to the back burner of governance to the detriment of the masses. And with ego-driven conflicts between the executive and the legislature, progressive legislation designed for the good of the state is bound to suffer. Therefore, while the initiatives are great, what comes out of them will depend pretty much on the self-discipline and commitment on the part of actors.

    Second, the requirement of fidelity to progressive governance ideas is self-explanatory. A progressive party in government must set its eyes on the prize of implementing progressive policies for the development of citizens as human beings with inherent dignity, a priceless possession that has been unfortunately devalued and abused in a nation that glorifies material possession at the expense of human dignity.

    Three areas promised in the party’s manifesto and campaigns are worthy of attention for a common agenda across APC states. Education is key to the development of human talent. Unfortunately, the nation has ceded its responsibility to educate citizens to the private sector. The result is that only those with the resources that the private sector demands in return for good education have access to it. Thus, we now have two classes of citizens, contrary to the progressive ideal.

    Health is another agenda item. States have shared responsibility with the federal government on health and education. It is unfortunate, however, that this responsibility has been shirked over the decades since the inception of military rule. Public health is neglected. Basic health is not adequately funded. The masses lack the option of medical tourism; so, they end up dying in large numbers because of inadequate facilities and wrong or late diagnosis.

    Infrastructure is the third area. Rural poverty is largely related to lack of infrastructural development. The Buhari administration has prioritized economic diversification with a focus on agriculture and mining. But many rural roads are in terrible shapes. And though the federal government is investing heavily on road infrastructure, APC states must also do their part.

    Of course, security and revenue are two preconditions for the success of any initiatives on the progressive agenda. Both are related and intertwined. Revenue cannot be generated in an atmosphere of insecurity. And adequate revenue is essential for the implementation of programmes.

    APC states must work extra hard to ensure that security of life and property is guaranteed. Governors must invest their security votes wholly and effectively on tested and proven security measures. They must strenuously seek foreign direct investment in agriculture and mining as the multiplier effect of such investments will generate revenue for the implementation of various progressive programs in education, health, and infrastructure.

    In the next four years, if APC states can focus attention and invest heavily on education, health and infrastructure, and the federal government takes its signature social investment programs to the next level, the nation would have taken some giant steps towards the reduction, if not elimination, of poverty across the land. That’s progress.

  • On citizen corruption

    IN the past week, social media was on fire with two cheerless and shameless stories that appear to, perhaps unwittingly, trace the roots of corruption to ordinary citizens. While one of the stories may have been a fiction created to serve a moral purpose, the other is strikingly authentic. Fiction or reality, both stories point to what we have always known, that citizen inordinate demands, whether out of poverty or greed, fuel political corruption, which destroys our national potential for greatness.

    In the first story, Honorable Akin Alabi, a member of the House of Representatives representing Egbeda/Ona Ara Federal Constituency in Oyo State declares as follows: “I bought a transformer for a community that requested for it in my constituency. When the delivery people got there, the “youths” there said they must “settle” boys before they drop it. They called and I told them to take it to another community that asked as well. Their loss.”

    As should be expected, many responders on social media applauded the reaction of the Honorable member. If the youth population who are to benefit more than their elders from the donation of a transformer could be so blatantly unappreciative and downright depraved in their demand, they do not deserve the help. Besides, the donor demonstrated fidelity to principle by refusing to be blackmailed by the youth. He refused to compromise.

    The second story does not appear as genuine; but it is by no means implausible. The writer, Honorable Aiyekooto, a “member of the State House of Assembly”, exemplifies the “join them if you can’t beat them” philosophy of life. He started out acting out his vow “to live within my lawful income and fight for the masses with the last drop of my blood.” He gave as much as he can within his modest means to charity, including his father’s mosque and his mother’s church. He angered his parents who resented being humiliated by his small donation.

    Aiyekooto was suspended for fighting corruption in the House. The masses mocked him, calling him “a useless politician that can’t spray money.” He finally buckled. He joined the race and he instantly became famous again. ‘I regained my “dignity”, he declares with a straight face. “I am a corrupt politician. Don’t blame me for becoming one. I am just another politician with good intention that became a monster due to the masses’ unreasonable impression about politicians.” Even if this second story is fictitious, it is instructive because it reflects reality as we know it.

    We are aware of official corruption by public servants and politicians through the work of EFCC, ICPC, and other agencies. These two stories point to the reality of citizen corruption. Is there a cause and effect relationship between the two? Aiyekooto thinks so: I am just another politician with good intention that became a monster due to the masses’ unreasonable impression about politicians. In other words, citizen unreasonable impression and corrupt demands fuel politician corruption. The two stories, which are by no means outliers, confirm this conclusion.

    So does an old account that just resurfaced as I was finishing this article. John Zibiri agonized over the state of corruption in Nigeria, insisting that it is unconquerable by humans except God is ready to deliver Nigeria: “Everything in Nigeria revolves around corruption. Nobody cares about anybody. No law and order. I looked from my left to right, everybody is only desperate about one thing “money”. They will kill anybody and anything that stand between them and money. Try starting a gate house in your village, everybody wants to profiteer from it. The bricklayer, the carpenter, the mason and even your brother who claim to be supervising on your behalf. They are corrupt, morally bankrupt and selfish. Everybody there thinks about himself and nobody is thinking about Nigeria.”

    In “The Challenge of Citizenship” (The Nation 14/12/2011), I observed that it used not to be so; that citizens had once been the bedrock of our democracy even at its infancy in the early sixties. I asked what went wrong with responsible citizenry. I identified two factors: “First, the period before the first military take-over of the country was the golden era of this country in many respects, the most important of which was the educational system which promised every child a proud future with a decent means of livelihood. Parents only had to worry that their children stayed in school and worked hard. Civil servants and professionals were contented with their salaries and whatever loan amount they received to buy a car. House loan was an additional benefit.

    “Communities were proud of their educated indigenes. Inter-community competition centered on the number of university graduates produced and the quality of the job offers their sons and daughters received. The young ones chose role models from the rank of the educated professionals. And many of the politicians of the First Republic era were the first educated folks from their communities with a heightened sense of the gravity of the burden they carried.

    “That period with its value system is no more. It was violently destroyed by the military, ironically not with the gun but with the destruction of the educational system, and its replacement with the emergency contractor system and a “new breed” politician model with tons of money to lavish. The idea now is that everyone has a price. This has been a most effective strategy in the business of politics since the Second Republic.” Military misrule sowed the wind. As citizens, we are harvesting the whirlwind.

    In that 2011 piece I also referenced a second factor which had to do with the contamination of cultural values. It used to be the case that in many of our communities, a young person that brought shame to the community through greed was treated as a leper. But that was the case when the community held sway over its value system. Local communities are no longer in charge of anything, when even a traditional ruler often finds it challenging to summon erring politicians who may exercise the power to embarrass him. Our republicanism thrives on alien value systems which are unknown to genuine republican political systems. Other republican systems are undergirded by the rule of law. Ours subscribe to the rule of powerful men and women. Young ones quickly learn to also beat the system, or they may have to resign themselves to looking up to those “God” has selected for the crumbs from their table.

    There is a deficit of uplifting values in this country, a disease that afflicts both leaders and followers. There is no use debating which of chicken or egg comes first. The challenge is for both leaders and followers to see declining values as suicidal for both. The country desperately needs a citizenry that takes seriously the responsibility of citizenship to serve as the gadfly perched on the back of selfish and greedy leaders. It is time to confront the misplaced value we place on a corrupt system that threatens our future; come together state by state, local government by local government to redeem the future.

    In “Creating citizens” (The Nation, 4/12/2009), I observed that citizens are neither saints nor Satan; they are neither perfect beings nor irredeemable devils. But they are morally conscious. “Citizens are aware of their responsibilities to fellow-citizens and to the state…. They are conscious of the moral wrongness of breaking the law; evading taxes; aiding and abetting corruption; and violently thwarting the will of the people in elections. A citizen will also put the good of the country above everything else because he or she identifies that good as his or her own good as well.”

    Whatever their vocation, gender, class, status, religion, or cultural nationality, citizens must be active participants in the desirable struggle for the realization of the country’s greatness. Cutting corners and demanding graft from politicians, or politicians giving up on principle and joining inordinate ambition that compromises integrity in pursuit of scandalous wealth will not get us there. We must know that the path we have taken thus far is unsustainable because it leads to a ruinous end for everyone.

     

  • Muslims’ use of water

    In their deep-rooted research, scientists decided to coin a formula (H2O) and use it to analyze the natural contents of water. From such analysis, they identified the various types of water and their uses in an environment. They then concluded that water is actually the source of life for all living organisms. That is a way of agreeing with Qur’anic revelation about creation. Water is ubiquitous in the environment. It comes from both the sky and the earth.

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

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

    This process called hydrolysis goes on continually in living cells.

     

    Composition

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

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

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

    Waters from deep wells generally contain only minerals in solution.

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

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

     

    Rainy season

    Now, in Nigeria, like in many other non- Sahel Ian African countries, we are in another season of rains when, as usual, water is found everywhere but mostly unavailable for drinking. This is the season in which the sky opens up its generous bowl to pour down water in abundance. But the earth has only a small room to accommodate the gesture hence there is deluge everywhere.

    This is a period when plants and animals feel that their needs for survival have been grossly exceeded. In this season, most countries are flooded with water and humanity becomes restive. Thus, this stands out as the season in which the bounties of Allah seem to be too much for the water need of man. In Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Australia, the story is one and the same. The world is grappling with a deluge.

     

    Blaming nature

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

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

     

    Ritual baths

    One basic lesson to learn in Salat is hygiene. As a new convert to Islam, you have to undergo a ritual bath called Ghuslu-s-Shahadah or Ghuslu-d-dukhul fil Islam otherwise known as convert’s ritual bath which is performed with water. When you want to observe any Salat, be it obligatory or supererogatory, you must perform ablution with water.

    This is called Wudu’. If there is no water, you resort to dry ablution called Tayammam. As a Muslim, after an intercourse with your spouse, you must perform a ritual bath called Ghuslul Janabah before you can observe any Salat.

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

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

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

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

     

    Unique hygiene

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

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

     

    Muslims’ attitude to dryness

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

     

    Seeking rain water

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

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

    Most of the time, the effect of Salatul Istisqai is immediate. But there are occasions when it may take as long as one week or more before the rain starts pouring. However, if, after some time, following the observance of Salatul Istisqai, rain does not come, Salatul Istisqai can be repeated. Allah has a design for everything.

    He knows when rainfall will best serve the need of man. And in seeking such a favour, Muslims must not try to jump the queue.

     

    Manner of observance

    Any participant in Salatul Istisqai’ is expected to be in a sober mood and be absolutely confident that the prayer would be accepted by Allah. The essence of raising one’s hands to Allah in prayer is to further confirm that there is no intermediary between man and Allah in worship and in prayer. Allah Himself emphasizes this in the Qur’an by saying to Prophet Muhammad thus: “When my servants ask you about Me, tell them that I am very close to them. I accept the prayers of those who seek from Me but let such seekers expect the giving from Me alone; let them be confident in My ability to accept prayer so that they may be guided aright”. However, there is need to correct the wrong notion being spread around that dresses must be worn inside out by those who will partake in Salatul Istisqai. There is no such rule in Islamic jurisprudence.

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

     

    The role of water in Hajj

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

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

     

    Conclusion

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

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

  • Engaging the diaspora (2)

    “…as I face Africa, I ask myself: what is it between us that constitutes a tie which I can feel better than I can explain? Africa is, of course, my fatherland. Yet neither my father nor my father’s father ever saw Africa… My mother’s folk were closer and yet their direct connection, in culture and race, became tenuous; still, my tie to Africa is strong. On this vast continent were born and lived a large portion of my direct ancestors going back a thousand years or more. The mark of their heritage is upon me in color and hair….But the physical bond is least and the badge of color relatively unimportant save as a badge; the real essence of this kinship is its social heritage of slavery; the discrimination and insult; and this heritage binds together… It is this unity that draws me to Africa.”—W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn

     

    AS important as the new diaspora is, the passion of the old and established diaspora, symbolized by the passion of pioneers of pan-Africanism from Marcus Garvey to W.E.B. Du Bois, to Afrocentrist scholars and Congressional Black Caucus, must be recognized, revisited, and appropriated for its indisputable role in the repositioning of Africa. Enslaved Africans were forcefully snuffed out of their African homeland, snatched from their culture and language, sometimes with the forced connivance of their own kith and kin. They suffered untold hardship in the hands of their captors, condemned to relentless suffering and the harshest discriminations by those who saw them as expendable objects. For 400 years.

    Yet descendants of those enslaved Africans have the presence of mind to see Africa their homeland. They mobilized their intellectual and political resources to develop a linkage with Africa. Garvey started a movement of Africans to Africa. Du Bois organized the first pan-African conferences. While actively pursuing the improvement of the conditions of Africans in America, he and others felt the need for a transcontinental effort to bring Africans from across the world together for the common purpose of African emancipation. African nationalists joined forces across the oceans in remarkable demonstration of African peoplehood. One by one, African nation’s achieved independence, starting with Ghana.

    Committed to the ideal of pan-Africanism, Nkrumah forged ahead with Ghanaian national institutions to promote his pan-African agenda. His first educational agenda was to give scholarship to Africans anywhere on the continent. His passion for Africa was misconstrued by others, and the dream was short-lived. Imperialist forces got him overthrown and the rest is history.

    During the struggle of Nigeria for democracy, Africans in America, from Jesse Jackson to Congressional Black Caucus Presidents, including Kweisi Mfume, Donald M. Payne, and Maxine Waters, were all in for our struggle, identifying with the cause with eyes to a better future for Africa, given Nigeria’s status as an African giant. Their contribution contributed immensely to the achievements of the struggle. The struggle was over, and hardly was any of them recognized for their contribution.

    The new 1999 administration personalized recognition to their friends who fought for the new president behind the scenes while those who risked their reputation and lives were left in the cold. Till now, I do not know of any formal recognition accorded our partners in the struggle, including Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica, who went beyond the call of duty in his contribution to the struggle against apartheid and the Nigerian prodemocracy struggles leading to his self-exile to St. Kitts in 2001 in protest against US domestic and foreign policies. Does any South African or Nigerian in authority ever hear about him?

    Yet our ageless wisdom suggests that when a hunter makes a ritual sacrifice after a good hunt, it is not necessarily because of that success; rather his prayer is for future successes. In our failure to acknowledge our brothers and sisters in the diaspora who have always stretched to us warm hands of cooperation because they know we are in it together, we fail to recognize that there are many tomorrows and we cannot expect to live through them in isolation. The African predicament from the last 400 plus years reminds us that the enemies against us are not going to relent in their pursuit. Our diaspora brothers and sisters recognize that we must combine our human resources to overcome.

    Apparently, the African Union has come to this realization even if late in the game. In its Article 3 of the “Protocol on Amendments of the Constitutive Act of the African Union, it now “recognizes the role the African Diaspora has to play in the development of the continent, and it further states that the Union will “invite and encourage the full participation of the African diaspora as an important part of our Continent, in the building of the African Union.” To this end, the diaspora division’s main task is “to serve as a catalyst for rebuilding the global African family in the service of the development and integration agenda of the continent. (my emphasis)” This is a welcome position.

    Needless to add, this African Union position must (1) be translated into actionable policies and programs with a buy-in by all stakeholders with seats at the table of initiation, and (2) be incorporated into the policies and programs of member countries of the African Union. To this end, it is not enough for the Nigerian diaspora policy agenda to focus on Nigerians who are mostly recent diasporans. There must be a serious effort to mobilize all our peoples who identify with our being, cultures, and ways of life.

    Diaspora Africans long to not only visit Nigeria but also to be welcome as sons and daughters of the land of their forebears. Many of us have watched the viral video of young African-American college students on Yoruba Summer Study program at the University of Ibadan hilariously singing “dodo ati raisi ko gbodo jina….” Who isn’t moved by that? At a time when this generation of Yoruba parents prohibit their children from speaking the Yoruba language in their homes! Doesn’t it pick our cultural conscience that we must embrace these brothers and sisters as our children who have traced their roots back to their source? Our policy positions must align with our emotional reactions to such moving stories. As I discussed last week, Ghana has been a trailblazer whose policies and programs bear studying and emulating.

    Turning now to PwC advocacy of a “coherent policy framework to harness remittances for development”, I just have a simple observation. When our focus is on economics of development, we surely have a great interest in wherever funds come from. And it is icing on our economic cake when such funds come from our own nationals in foreign territories. But we should be shirking our responsibility as a nation if we are also not focused on the totality of development, not just of the nation, but also of its diaspora populations.

    In the wake of the PwC advocacy, we were treated to the sad story of diaspora Nigerians indicted for various economic offenses, including money laundering and wire fraud. In retrospect, some, if not most of the funds they stole, have found their ways into the country. What is the obligation of the receiving nation? Certainly, to cooperate with the investigation. But even more than that, we have an obligation to interrogate the foundational values that appear to sustain the model of life that our young ones export to their land of sojourn.

    We may be deceived into thinking that they got those greedy and criminal dispositions from elsewhere. But we should not fall for that deception. Between our private and public sectors, between our places of worship and institutions of learning, between the rich and the poor, we glorify conspicuous consumption and material acquisition. We praise-worship vanity and are contemptuous of honest moderation. Our children learn from our loins and only take it to the next level with the abuse of modern technology. A continuous emphasis on economic development at the expense of moral rejuvenation will bring no improvement in our condition. Productively embracing the African diaspora requires our jettisoning that mindset.

     

  • When Tomorrow Comes

    “Let there become of you a nation that shall call for righteousness, enjoin justice and forbid evil. Such are people that shall surely triumph (in the end)”. Q. 3: 104.

    This is not just an article. It is rather a letter of admonition coming from ‘The Message’ column to Nigerian politicians. Similar letters had been written through this column to this same generation of politicians in the recent past. But letters of this type seldom come to an arena of politics where conscience is banished and virtually everything in Nigeria’s political life is based on whim engendered by self aggrandizement which is considered to be the ultimate goal. Coming up at this precarious time of political labyrinth in Nigeria, this letter is necessitated by the current frightening political tension that is fast becoming a bubble that may burst anytime from now unless the Almighty Allah comes to the rescue of our country with His divine mercy.

    If, Nigerian politicians think that they can escape any calamitous consequence of their ceaseless political machinations which they are tendentiously weaving around Nigeria without an iota of remorse, they may be day-dreaming. The evil plans of those who engaged in similar machinations before them in the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s had ended up in a forlorn. There is a lesson in that for those amongst them who are wise enough to seek the guidance of Allah.

     

    Functions of Conscience

    “Conscience”, according to Uthman Dan Fodio, “is an open wound which only the truth can heal”. But one can talk of healing a wounded conscience only where and when it has not become cancerous.

    Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once gave a vivid description of the signs by which hypocrites can be identified.

    He said “hypocrites are known by three signs: When they talk they lie; when they promise they renege and when they are trusted they betray”.

    In other words, conscience is not a befitting garment for any hypocrite to clad in.

    Most of Nigerian politicians so much typify the above Prophetic description of hypocrites that one wonders if the Prophet had Nigerians in mind when he was expressing that axiomatic Hadith.

     

    Deceptive Motive

    It will be recalled that when most of those politicians started agitation for a return to democracy for the fourth time in the late 1990s while a despotic military demagogue held sway, their seeming focus was on liberation of the Nigerian citizenry from the crushing claw of military despotism. And you did that in the name of freedom fighters or human rights advocates. But hardly had you succeeded in leading the masses to drive away the military boys than some of you began to agitate for your own negative political enclave through your selfish interest by claiming to want ‘to serve your people’.

    Thus, based on that claim, your godfathers or godmothers warmly embraced you not minding your hidden agenda especially when such agenda did not contradict theirs. That claim, which was the bait with which you deceptively lured ordinary Nigerians into the struggle that ended up in raising your own political pedestal to the height upon which you stand today was a covenant. And that covenant was not just between you and the people you claimed to want to serve but also between you and the Almighty Allah who knows every manifest and hidden agenda. Allah will surely hold you accountable for whatever agenda you adopt to exploit the innocent masses of this country.

     

    Fraudulent Constitution

    To you, it does not matter whether you were genuinely elected or surreptitiously smuggled into office through the back door by your godfathers thereby  depriving others (who are more qualified than you), of their legitimate rights. Such could not have mattered to you since the constitution under which you operate politically is, itself, fraudulent. Here is a military constitution imposed on the populace without any impute from the same populate who constitute the electorate. In that constitution is the immunity which is exclusively reserved for some political demagogues to fraudulently authorize them to steal public funds unlimitedly and commit any unquestionable crime with impunity in the name of governance. What else is called despotism?

    And now, an addendum has been added to that fraud with the promotion of ‘Not Too Young To Rule’ bill into a law which is actually meant to replace yourselves, as   politicians, with your own children. That is a way of empowering those children to utilize your massively stolen wealth to continue your rule over Nigerians.

    Whether you knew it or not, you are hereby reminded that your original claim before you were smuggled into whatever position you occupy today will be weighed against your action or inaction in that position after you eventually vacate the stage by displacement or by death. And you will be judged not just by history but by the Almighty Allah whose divine judgment cannot be appealed.

    Remember that just as you will call on Allah for justice if you were in the shoes of the deprived ones so will those you deprive take your case to Allah’s court in quest of justice. And the prayer of a cheated person, according to Prophet Muhammad (SAW), never suffers a denial.

     

    Reminder

    As some of you once shamelessly graded figure 16 higher than figure 19 sometime ago and audaciously classified unbridled theft as a lesser crime than corruption, all in the name of politics, you must remember that Allah’s justice can neither be manipulated nor subverted. And no matter how long it may take, Allah’s justice will take its course perhaps when you least expect in life.

    When some of your colleagues were made to face the music of their criminal acts recently, you were expected to learn a lesson from their plights. But since a dog that will die in perdition will never heed the warning whistle of a hunter, it is not surprising that despite your conspicuous political misdemeanour, you are still arrogating the nation’s leadership to yourselves without thinking of the lessons that the younger ones including your own children can learn from your conduct on their way to the top. In words and in actions, you have evidently demonstrated that you are not in anyway, qualified to bequeath any sensible legacy to the future generations, an indication that once you can satisfy your satanic greed, the future is of no relevance to you.

    If anything, your thoughtless public utterances, your shameless public actions and counter actions as well as your devilish body language are more destructive to Nigeria’s future than ever imagined. In fact, you can be called any name other than patriotic gentlemen and women of honour that you deceptively call yourselves. As a result, you are unprecedentedly a disgrace not only to Nigeria as a country but also to the entire civilized mankind. However, since you have permanently enlisted immorality as a vital political instrument without thinking of its consequences, you are free to behave like typical intoxicated horses gallivanting aimlessly around without reins.

     

    Life without Justice

    In Islam, three issues are fundamentally sacrosanct, none of which Allah takes lightly. These are non association of anything with the oneness of Allah, sacredness of life and dispensation of justice. It is almost an unforgivable iniquity for any human being, especially Muslims, to associate anything with Allah or engage in murder and injustice under any guise. Thus, anybody who kills fellow human beings extra-judicially in the name of religion, ethnicity, politics or even economy is nothing but an agent of Satan. In Islam, killing a fellow human being deliberately under whatever guise, without passing through a due process of law, is such a grievous sacrilege that cannot andshould not be perpetrated without commensurate penalty. If such a penalty is not applied here on earth, it will definitely be applied in the hereafter. Yet, killing fellow human beings directly or clandestinely is the major political means of gaining power and access to illegal wealth by you Nigerian politicians.

     

     

    Legislative Duty

    In Islam, rule of law is the foundation of justice but legislation is the material with which that foundation is built. Those of you who voluntarily chose to legislate for the rest of us hardly see yourselves as the foundation layers of justice who should not betray the course of justice. As legislators, you are looked upon by most Nigerians as honourable leaders neither because you are more qualified intellectually than those for whom you legislate nor because you are wiser and more experienced than them. What makes most of you legislators in the lower or upper chamber of the legislative arm of government is sheer expediency arising from queer inadequacies sadly fostered by our so-called political system which gives room for open gerrymandering and audacious manipulation. If such opportunity comes your way illegally, let it not be mistaken for good luck. It may rather be a calamity waiting to strike your lives in the near or far future.

    And when it strikes, no one except Allah can tell the extent of its effect. At least you can see how the consequences of the heartless annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election have become a draconian spectre chasing the ghost of every Nigeria today even more than two decades of licking the political wound inflicted on our country by that satanic annulment.

     

    Executive Duty

    As members of the Executive arm, when some of you travel abroad officially, at people’s expense, you are never alarmed by the way the systems work in those countries. You never bother to ask questions about the effective functions of electricity, the smoothness of roads, the flow of portable water and the excellent educational system that promotes probity and decorum in those countries. Rather, your primary concerns are the personal ephemeral gains accruable to you at the expense of the Nigeria’s present and future. For the past 19 years of Nigeria’s fourth republic most of you have been at the saddle of government directly or indirectly without being able to show in concrete terms what value has that length of time added to the lives of ordinary Nigerians. Your emphasis is on power with impunity rather than good governance and you often go about it in such a manner that gives the impression that government is much more about destruction than construction. Your brutish law breaking rather than clement law making is an attestation to this fact.

     

    Nigeria as an OPEC Country

    As political leaders that you call yourselves, you do not even feel ashamed that Nigeria has remained the only OPEC country importing refined petroleum products for domestic consumption simply because you are beneficiaries of the corrupt device which you deliberately put in place to ensure the workability of that device.

    Even if Nigeria never had electricity before 1999 but decided to start one at the commencement of the fourth republic to boost her economy, is a period of 19 years not enough to provide a functional electricity especially given the enormous amount of wealth with which this country is endowed? In modern time, no technological device provides as much opportunity for jobs and economic growth as electricity. Yet, it is that major device that you deliberately hold down to deprive the populace of the wherewithal to rise mentally and intellectually. And that is to enable you to the citizens of your country into perpetual slaves to be ruled forever. In such a situation, why wouldn’t corruption be unconscientiously legislated into legitimacy? And now, Nigeria is held to a standstill because every one of you must personally have a chip of juicy future now without caring about what may even become of your own children in that future.

    As fathers and mothers, most of you will say amen when people are praying for responsible men and women, yet, you have nothing in you that can serve as good examples for your children that can accentuate your cry of amen..

    You tell lies with relish. Yet you want your children to be truthful.

    From where do you expect them to inherit truthfulness? You steal public funds with unbridled audacity. Yet you do not want your children to be called thieves. What other names should the children of thieves bear other than thieves?

     

    Sermon

    From the pulpit of genuine conscience, ‘The Message’ column hereby implores you Nigerian politicians to search your conscience if you have obe at all and fear the Almighty God in your own interest.

    Remember that some people had governed this country in the past. Among them were those who tried to combine the roles of the executive, the legislative and the judiciary arms together, in the name of military rule, made possible by coup d’état and the barrels of gun. Where are they today?

    Governance has its tenure. At the commencement of a tenure, four years may look endless, but for the wise, it is not more than a flash of lightening  which only a fool will rely upon to walk his way through the darkness of the night. You are in government today. But remember that you will soon become former this or former that just like those before you.

     

     

    Observation

    Some of you, legislators, think or talk of impeachment only when your salaries, allowances or extra budgetary largess suffers a reduction or delay. And some other times, your thoughts along that line are devilishly influenced by blind ambition for power grabbing.

    It does not matter to you whether or not the entire workforce in Nigeria remains unpaid for years. Once you are able to amass whatever comes your way legally or illegally the rest of the populace can go on hunger strike forever. It is rather shameful and disappointing that even some of you who claim to be Muslims are participating in such an evil charade despite your proclamation of Islam.

    Conscience, though invisible, has a mirror which only a few people know of. That mirror is shame. A person without shame is a person without conscience. And that is the main distinction between a genuine Muslim and a nominal one.

    Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once admonished the Muslims thus in respect of shame: “once you are bereft of shame, you can go ahead to do whatever you like”. This means that without shame you are a nonentity who can even strip naked in a market place in readiness for a brawl. We can all see the example of this in a former President of this country who is now menstruating through his mouth at any public place even as an octogenarian.

     

    Admonition

    Dear Nigerian politicians, let it be kept permanently in your brain that the only thing which keeps people alive in history even long after their demise is service to humanity. Prophets Isa (Jesus), and Muhammad (SAW), had neither bank accounts nor estates to bequeath to anybody. Their legacy is more than any material wealth inherited by the entire world today. That heritage is service to humanity. What is your own planned legacy if only for posterity? That is a big question which only people with conscience can answer. And, as Muslims or Christians, you should be able to answer it if you truly follow the right guidance of those noble men of impeccable character.

    Remember that you are in a ship already cruising actively on the high sea towards the shore. And at that shore are fierce customs officers waiting to check the contents of your luggage and your cargo. Remember that if you cultivate friendship with Satan he will favour your wish.

    But if he grants you one favour, he will surely take ten from you in return. Be Muslims by name, conduct and mannerism. Whatever you do as Muslims will affect the image of Islam in one way or the other. I hope you will return home from your political odyssey as Muslims and not as renegades. Remember all these and adjust now that you may be able to raise your head aloft when tomorrow comes.