Tag: Jonathan

Last Wednesday, the Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar III, in company with Muslim leaders visited President Goodluck Jonathan to complain of underrepresentation of Muslims in the composition of the national conference. This omission, they argued could jeopardise the interests of Muslims in both the deliberations of the conference and its outcome. One of those who accompanied the Sultan, Ishaq Oloyede, a professor of Islamic Studies and Secretary General of the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, told the media that the president assured them no malice was intended by the apparently skewed composition of the conference. Said he: “We are happy we consulted with him, and he has given us reasons to re-assure the Muslims that Muslims in Nigeria are not deliberately marginalised and he has asked us to convey the feelings of the government, the genuineness of the government, the fairness of the government to the entire populace…”

It is unlikely Dr Jonathan deliberately meant to discomfit Muslims, for though the integrity of his Christianity can be questioned, it is precisely these doubts about his Christianity that make him less vulnerable to accusation of unfairness. He may curry Christian votes unreasonably and even recklessly, but he often behaves so irreligiously that he does not appear capable of being a fanatic of anything. Whether the Sultan and Professor Oloyede understood this Jonathan persona or not is hard to say. But at least they feigned some understanding.

On the other hand, the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) has been less timid in its opposition to the composition of the National Conference and its understanding of Jonathan’s motives. The Secretary General of the JNI, Khalid Abubakar Aliyu, argued at a news conference in Kaduna that not only were Muslims being marginalised, the selection of delegates to the conference was also not free and fair. Citing statistics, the JNI revealed the following: “We find it as disrespectful to the conscience of the Muslims that of the 20 delegates of the Federal Government, only six are Muslims. No Muslim is deemed fit to make the list of delegates from the Nigerian Economic Summit. In fact, in the representation of the security agencies, Muslims have been so unimaginably short-changed, with only one Muslim out of the six retired military and security personnel, one out of six retired security and NIA officers, and two out of delegates of the Association of Retired Police Officers. This means, of the 18 security experts belonging to these three groups, only four (22.2 per cent) are Muslims.”

If more disturbing proof of the complicating role religion is bound to play in Nigerian politics is required, the Southwest Muslim Ummah gave an adequate one in a publication on March 20. For those in the Southwest who had thought and argued that the unifying core of Yoruba culture, not to say its distinctly secular forms, transcended the divisiveness that religion constitutes in modern Nigeria, the said publication controverts that hope. First, it argued that the Southwest Muslim Ummah was not impressed by what is believed to be the Yoruba’s persecution complex, a major plank of the Yoruba agenda in the conference. Then, secondly, it argued that it did not subscribe to nor require the help of any cultural icon, let alone that of Oodua, in order to have a sense of being or for the Yoruba to fight for their place in the sun. Thirdly, it spoke out vehemently against the nuanced separatist request included in the Yoruba agenda to the conference, arguing that democracy needed not be based on ethnic nationalities.

There were many more arguments in the publication, especially ones promoting the superiority of religious identification over ethnic identification. But in sum, the Southwest Muslim Ummah attempted to debunk the essential underpinnings of the Yoruba agenda by forcefully rejecting any assertion that implies either the superiority of the Yoruba to any other ethnic group or the exclusivity of the Yoruba in a world where other forms of identities, especially that of Islam, is said to be more desirable. They, therefore, rejected the Yoruba agenda, and declared their opposition to its objectives. In other words, if in the foreseeable future Nigeria should fracture, as the Lamido Adamawa, Muhammadu Barkindo Mustafa, insinuated, the oneness of the Yoruba could not be taken for granted. It is not clear to what extent the Southwest Muslims’ position can be sustained, in view of the demonstrable antagonisms between and within Muslim states in the Middle East and elsewhere, not to talk of the brutal conflicts between Christian states in Europe and elsewhere. From all indications, indeed, the Southwest Muslims’ position is somewhat idealistic.

But whether the reference is to the Sultan’s protest group, or the JNI complaint, or the Southwest Muslims’ rebuff of the Yoruba agenda, it is obvious that the Jonathan national conference, with its overwhelming number of handpicked delegates, clearly reveals a grave and urgent threat simmering below the surface of Nigeria’s contrived unity. (See Box). That threat was barely subdued in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s 1977 Constituent Assembly. It, however, began to flare up under the Shehu Shagari presidency, with its many religious uprisings, and became subdued again only when the country was confronted by graver problems of regime tyranny such as was experienced under the Sani Abacha military dictatorship. Under Chief Obasanjo’s second tour of office, elite irresponsibility pushed religion dangerously to the front burner until it produced the Boko Haram monster.

A careful consideration of the past, and a deep appreciation of the surface currents of national affairs, not to talk of its salient but potentially more explosive undertow, should have led the Jonathan presidency into adopting a different approach to constitutional amendment, whether fundamental and far-reaching or not. Dr Jonathan will now have to find practical means of moderating and tailoring a conference that could very well become a Frankenstein monster. He will also have to be engaged, even if in the background, in mediating what is certain to be an avalanche of procedural and policy conflicts in the conference, if it is not to miscarry before it reaches the halfway line. Whether the president can manage this tightrope walking is not certain, but his presidency will doubtless be severely challenged.

By their positions, the Sultan-led elders, JNI and Southwest Muslims present a comprehensive wake-up call to closet irredentists, potential separatists and politicians who have become so theoretical and so impractical that if they do not force themselves into unity of purpose along beneficial values of tolerance and liberalism, they will surely either hang separately, as one of America’s founding fathers once said of the political class of his time, or dissolve into a maelstrom of war and conflicts. Dr Jonathan ought to have recognised the dangers manifested by the denudation of values in the country he presides over, and the worsening of relationships between groups. He has chosen not to. But now he will have to grapple with new disagreements and conflicts in the conference requiring more boldness and sagacity than he has ever had to muster all his life, or that he is even capable of mustering.