In their response to the bloody Shi’ites/Army clash in Zaria on December 12, the Northern Governors’ Forum led by Borno State governor Kashim Settima expressed confidence in the way Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State handled the crisis. They were hasty in their pronouncement. The 19-member forum, all of whom were anxious to prevent a reenactment of the kind of religious cum socio-economic revolt that morphed into the intractable Boko Haram insurgency, praised all the steps taken by el-Rufai in responding to the clash. But rising from the meeting, and perhaps emboldened by the vote of confidence passed in him by his colleagues, the Kaduna State governor indicated that the Shi’ite leader, Ibraheem Yaqub el-Zakzaky would be prosecuted.
Then, in a statewide broadcast in which he announced his decision to set up a judicial panel to investigate the clash, Mallam el-Rufai addressed some of the issues that triggered the horrific Zaria killings. Incredibly and insensitively, he attributed all the triggers to the serial malfeasances of the Shi’ites. He accused them of forcibly appropriating the lands of their neighbours, attempting to take over mosques they had not built, and building without permits at their Hussainiya headquarters. He appeared unwilling or impatient to let the judicial panel probe the remote and immediate causes of the clash, and to come to independent assessments and conclusions. Indeed, as a spokesman of the Shi’ites said, the governor had appeared to take sides, and had indicated which of the two parties was guilty.
There is hardly any commentary on the clash that has not accused the Shi’ites of strong-arm tactics, of disrespecting, flouting and circumscribing the law and the constitution, and of provoking and inconveniencing their neighbours, far and near, within or outside their city base. These infractions cannot be glossed over, and must of course be comprehensively addressed by the judicial panel. But it was not only unwise of Mallam el-Rufai to have made the kind of insensitive broadcast attributed to him, he was even more shockingly insensitive to the scale of the tragedy that had befallen Zaria in particular, and the state as a whole. If he knew he had all the facts of the clash and possessed the courage to declaim on the crisis as peremptorily as he did, and did not need a panel to probe it, he should have gone the whole hog to talk of the casualties sustained essentially by one party to the clash.
The Northern Governors’ Forum should have avoided passing a vote of confidence in the Kaduna State governor. They had responded well to the crisis by summoning a meeting to address the matter in Kaduna. And they did well to fear the worst. But they should have limited their involvement to empathisisng with the state and the victims, and warning of the need to avoid a replay of the Boko Haram crisis. Unfortunately, both the governor and his sympathising colleagues failed to address the two most crucial parts of the crisis — the need for justice; and the need to divorce the provocation by Shi’ites from the content and character of the army’s response. On these two aspects hang the future of Nigeria and the integrity of its constitution.
Mallam el-Rufai’s broadcast should have been more nuanced. He needed rightly to be worried about the Shi’ite provocation, but to begin railing against the sect’s lack of building permits and their constant disagreements and frictions with neighbours seems to make the governor anxious to justify the mass killings. In the broadcast, the governor did not give indication he knew much about the concept of justice, its beauty, its many sides, and its contribution to stability and peace, let alone understand how to achieve that peace. The northern governors may have connived at his style, and underscored their anxiety not to worsen the crises in the North by their adulatory statements; but neither they nor the governor seemed to appreciate that the brutality that hallmarked Boko Haram and the conflagration it triggered were given fillip by injustice.
Importantly, too, while the Shi’ites could not by any stretch of the imagination be absolved of blame, it was however more crucial to worry about the nature and temper of the army’s response. There will always be provocations and infractions; but the security agencies and other law enforcement bodies must respond according to the dictates of, and within the confines of, the provisions of the law and constitution. It is that kind of sane response that sets the civilised community apart from violent and anarchic groups. In the Boko Haram case, extra-judicial killings were initially the order of the day, with the army citing the extenuating reasons of the insurgents’ own cruel and barbarous standards. Against the Shi’ites, surely the country has learnt enough lessons not to countenance, in any circumstance, and no matter the intensity of provocations, a resort to self-help. No one is sure of the casualty figures. But estimates range from 60 or 70 to a couple of hundreds, some say as many as about 300. Neither Mallam el-Rufai nor the northern governors showed appropriate concern over such an alarming figure, nor what it portends for the region.
Worse, even the presidency has been bewilderingly reduced to prevarications and whispers. It was of course not expected that they would condemn outright Malam el-Rufai’s faux pas or his intemperate reaction, but given the involvement of the army, which controversially went beyond the rules of engagement to reinforce its troops and launch fresh attacks against the Shi’ites, the presidency should have paid more than a passing interest.
And so while it is incontestable that the Shi’ites habitually infringed on the rights and privacies of others and disrespected lawful authorities, it is even more damnably true that Mallam el-Rufai was insensitive and unwise in his broadcast, the northern governors curiously detached and ingratiating, and the presidency slow, unresponsive and unable to properly deconstruct the issues involved. Nigerians must have no doubt about what should be done. The Shi’ites must be made to answer for any law they break on a general basis. But in the case of the Zaria killings, in which unlawful and disproportionate force was applied, the judicial panel must separate the provocation from the response, and everyone, including the top brass of the army, found culpable must be made to face the law.
Nigerian laws expect infractions, including very severe and horrendous breaches; but they also recommend that punishment must be aligned with legal and constitutional provisions in order not to promote anarchy. The Zaria killings must be made a test case, notwithstanding the aloofness of the presidency, the connivance of the northern governors, and the churlishness of Mallam el-Rufai. Public focus on the judicial panel must be intense and unrelenting. If the panelists do not have the character, wisdom and temperament to ensure justice, the public, both local and international, must force the reconstitution of a new panel until justice has been done and seen to be done. The scale and one-sidedness of the killings demand nothing less, for it may be any other group’s turn tomorrow in the hands of nervous and excited security agents flouting and dishonouring the constitution under the guise of punishing crime and promoting peace and order.
