Why Nigerians should thank Peter Obi

 The 2023 general elections have come and gone and like every set of elections there have emerged winners and losers. Typical of Africans, those who lost allege rigging and those who won hail the process.

In addition to winners and losers, there are other people we should cheer for their roles in the elections. First, we should give credit to President Buhari for being true to his promise of organizing free, fair and credible elections. The President himself has observed that Nigerian voters have become more sophisticated. One manifestation of this sophistication is that voters no longer vote along party lines. It doesn’t matter if he is a card-carrying member of a political party, once a Nigerian voter sees a better candidate in another party they go for them. That is the new normal if you like and it is a good lesson for our politicians.

We must also hail the INEC Chairman. Just like his colleague Attahiru Jega, Mahmoud Yakubu has shown an uncommon tolerance in dealing with politicians even in extreme cases in which an ordinary person would lose control.

My man of the day is His Excellency Peter Obi, a former Governor of Anambra state. I have never met Peter Obi and he did not attract my attention until he began to claim that he wanted to become Nigeria’s president. From the way he started up to the time he crashed, I knew that Obi didn’t have a good understanding of the country he wanted to govern. First, he wanted it under PDP. Despite being a failed party, a PDP ticket would have earned Peter Obi a distant second regardless of the part of the country he is coming from. When he could not clinch its ticket he jumped to the Labour party. Then he started his campaign the method of which we all saw.

The part of his political activity that we should thank Peter Obi for is his ability to solve one of the greatest puzzles of the Nigerian census. I mean the question of religion.

Nigeria is a big country with a Muslim majority and a minority that includes a good number of Christians and some pagans. The last Nigeria’s census that collected data on religious affiliations was the 1963 census. According to the 1963 census results, there were 47.2 % Muslims, 34.3% Christians and 18.5% others. In the North, the ratio was 71.7% Muslims, 9.7% Christians and 18.6% others.

Talking about South West, the 1963 census figures identified the present day Oyo, Lagos, Ogun and Osun as Muslim majority states with only Ondo and Ekiti as Christian majority states.

Subsequent censuses either did not capture religion like the case of 1991 and 2006 censuses or were cancelled due to controversies surrounding its conduct which was the case with the 1973 census.

Demographic experts make projections based on past trends, fertility and mortality rates and in the case of religion proselytization, migration, etc. The Babangida administration decided to remove religion in the 1991 census due to bogus claims of being majority especially made by the church and since then, the Nigerian Population Commission has avoided conducting standard projections involving religious affiliations.

Without a head count and/or an unbiased, professionally made projections, Nigerians are continuously bombarded with unrealistic population figures. At a point in time, Christians claimed that they constitute more than 45% of Northern Nigerian population, a claim ignored by Muslims for being ridiculous.

While ordinary Nigerians can be misled by propaganda, politicians looking for votes have always been calculative in their determination of who constitutes the majority and should attract their campaign and who is a liar.

And it is not difficult to figure out. Political affiliation in Nigeria is a good pointer to religious affiliation. For example, it is well known that Northern Christians do not vote for Muslims where the former are in majority. The examples are many and well known. Thus, the number of Christian elected politicians in a particular state would approximately tell you the percentage of Christians in that state. In addition, the number of predominantly Muslim states with large population like Kano and Katsina makes the population of the two Christian majority states of Plateau and Benue a joke.

As a politician who needs votes of the majority to win a National election, Peter Obi should have known all these and use it to gauge his level of preparedness. Unfortunately he lost it and was going from one Church to another vividly falling into the propaganda trap of the Church. He was carried away by the belief that Middle belt is Christian. But where is the middle belt? Is it the North Central? Who, among the Governors of Niger, Kwara, Nasarawa and Kogi is a Christian? Peter Obi was simply too naïve.

However, it is not bad at all. The clergy campaigned for him. Christians were mobilized nationwide. The outcome is what the NPC could not achieve in its censuses. Christians overwhelmingly voted for Obi. The number of Muslims who voted for him was simply insignificant just like the number of Christians who voted for the Muslim-Muslim ticket of Tinubu-Shettima. The few Christians who did not vote for Obi were seen campaigning for PDP. Overall, more than 14 million voted for either Tinubu or Atiku both of whom are Muslims. Even if we take 10% of that and add to Obi, Christians are still a small minority.

As Muslims, we have avoided these arguments as we consider them unhealthy, since after all, our eternal prosperity in Islam is not dependant on whether or not Muslims are in majority at a particular time or location. But we have been boxed into it and it is helpful.

Letter to my Igbo Compatriot

It is not a coincidence that I am writing you three weeks to general election. The prevailing atmosphere in Nigeria is such that any Nigerian who can call on any other Nigerian to reason should not fold arms and watch as we not only disagree but continue to chide, malign and suspect one another while aimlessly moving from a more certain to an increasingly uncertain union.

Some history.

On Saturday June 12, 1993 Nigerians went to the polls to elect one of them to become their leader. But even as they turned out to vote, many of them were not sure that the soldier in charge was ready to hand over power to the winner. The Minna-born General had earlier cancelled presidential primaries, dissolved political associations formed by politicians and banned a good number of them from contesting elections. The two parties of SDP and NRC were his creation. The candidates were his close friends.

The June 12, 1993 elections left numerous lessons for Nigerians. However, the lesson that is relevant to this writeup is the tribalization of its outcome. During and before the campaign preceding the election, Abiola had never mentioned Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo or any of those. Of course, different people had different reasons for electing him. To the average Northerner, MKO Abiola was a philanthropist, a Muslim and in fact, the Deputy President of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs. To Christians, MKO Abiola was a liberal Muslim who did not react to people based on their faiths. To the Yoruba, he was a Yoruba man, etc.

MKO Abiola won and the election was cancelled by the same person who banned core Northerners like Shehu ‘Yaradua and Adamu Chiroma from participating in politics. However, unlike other Nigerians who saw the cancellation as just one in the series of attempts by IBB to perpetuate himself in power, the Yoruba establishment saw it as a tribal war.

The Hausa man, whatever that means, was considered the enemy and was incessantly scolded on the streets of cities in the South West, especially Lagos. If they were seen with a good car or even a beautifully sewn agbada it was because their brother was in Government and was sharing stolen money with them. NADECO, OPC and human rights groups were used as tools to champion the tribal agenda. Democracy meant June 12 election. Either Abiola was sworn in or there will be no Nigeria.

For the five years that Abatcha wielded power he brutally tramped on tribalists and very much like his predecessor wanted to continue to rule for as long as he could. Unfortunately, people in the south viewed the power lust of IBB and Abatcha as a grand plan by Northerners to hold on to power. They failed to understand that if the Generals were following some master plan to retain power to the North, the 1983 and 1985 coups, the cancellation of election results by IBB even before June 12 1993 election and dissolution of political parties by him would not have taken place. There wouldn’t have been any problem with Northerners using their numerical strength to retain power unchallenged.

I was not there when decisions were taken to kill major players in the post June political scene; just like most other Nigerians, I only saw it happen. First, Shehu ‘Yaradua died. Then Abatcha. Then Abiola. I don’t know who took those decisions, but I still believe that those deaths are too organized to be a coincidence. You would agree with me, however, that just like the Nigerian civil war those deaths brought about some degree of stability in the polity. It is better to lose just three people than to lose two million people like it happened thirty years earlier.

The biggest mistake came in 1999 when a Yoruba man was picked from prison, granted a presidential pardon and given the presidency on a platter of gold. While it appeased the June 12 propagandists, it motivated other nationalities to seek power using the same method Yoruba people used. It gave the impression that the Northerner is a timid coward who would accept anything when threatened with the dissolution of the colonial marriage called Nigeria. It was perhaps to confirm this that Yoruba tribalists under the aegis of OPC launched the massacre of Northerners in which tens of them including women and children were killed on the streets of Lagos and Sagamu not long after Obasanjo took over power in 1999. As expected, nothing happened. OPC got away with it and Northern leaders turned a blind eye for fear of breaking up the country.

Finally, another battlefield is here. The 2023 election. Unlike before, the Igbo nation has avoided the mistake of fielding multiple candidates. There is only one candidate. He is the candidate of Ohaneze. He is the candidate of the people. All Igbo people, with the exception of those benefitting from Government will vote for him. At least this is the conclusion I have drawn from my personal interaction with Igbo friends and closely following discussions in both the regular and social media.

However, it is obvious that the Igbo candidate cannot make it due to problems created by himself and/or his kinsmen like you.

First, while similar groups like Afenifere and the ACF refused to outright endorse candidates from their regions, Ohaneze did not mince words in telling everyone that it has only one candidate that it is supporting with all its resources including a few billions of Naira for campaign. While it has asserted its right, it has failed to learn from history. No regional candidate has ever won a national election in Nigeria. Obasanjo won the 1999 election only after being disowned by his people. The southwest overwhelmingly voted for Falae and he lost.

Despite being elected by Northern majority in 2003, 2007 and 2011, Buhari did not make it to Aso Rock. He did so only after entering into an alliance with the South-West. That is exactly what NPC did in 1963 and NPN in 1979. I am surprised that despite the calibre of people who constitute Ohaneze it cannot see this. My hope is that it has a plan to manage the imminent defeat which, due to its approach, shall be seen by many as a defeat of the Igbo people.

Since the other major candidates are considered to be either Fulani or their protégés, the Igbo candidate and his handlers are seen busy courting groups considered to be against the so-called Fulani hegemony. Unfortunately for your candidate, Nigerian politics doesn’t work that way. Many non-Fulani Nigerians prefer working with Fulani because they know from experience that it is only the Muslim Northerner (politically referred to as Fulani) that disadvantage their people to appease others. That is the very reason why Muslim Northerners are suffering more than any other people despite being seen as the most influential political group in Nigeria.

My Igbo compatriot, why don’t you come out of this and open-mindedly look at the Nigerian union? I would like to observe that you have more advantage than any other person in Nigeria. You have more investments in all parts of this country more than any other person has. Thus, in the event of a political riot or dismembering of Nigeria you stand to lose more than I do.

Moreover, assuming Nigeria ceases to be which you and only you seem to be interested in, have you considered living in a landlocked piece of land not as big as a combination of any two states of Northern Nigeria? The southern minorities are not interested in Biafra this time around. Thus, the new Biafran would need a Nigerian visa to travel to any part of the world or at least permission for a Biafran airline to pass through the Nigerian airspace. Don’t you think that will be more disgraceful than losing an election?

Again, as things stand, no group of people or tribe can be said to own this country. Since the coup against Ironsi, subsequent Nigerian leaders have worked to make sure that each part of the country is carried along in governance. It was eventually entrenched in the constitution. Both APC and PDP Governments have not only maintained the provisions of the constitution in appointing at least a Minister from each state, they have also made sure that appointments to strategic ministries are shared among the six geopolitical zones. That is why it is difficult to convince Nigerians to accept an obscure party especially one being promoted by tribal champions.

Talking about an obscure party, I live in a state in which another politician has left the mainstream to join a party not more popular than the party of your candidate. What has made his previously unknown party popular in this state is what made the party of your candidate popular in the South East, i.e. the personality. Just like your candidate, he has supporters who are ready to live and die for him.

Although given his pedigree he knows what he wants, his cult-like supporters do not. Even if they do, their vision is not clear enough to see that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. That is another extreme, but better than yours. At least there are indications that the Kano politician will throw his weight behind one of his friends vying under a major political party. They are, after all birds of the same feather. It is commoners who are deceived into believing that there is a difference.

If I were an Igbo man, I would raise my voice to call on all Igbo people to eschew tribalism and refuse to vote for an unpopular candidate just because he is Igbo. I would advise Igbo people to learn from history and avoid anything that would lead to a repeat of the 1967 bloodshed just because someone is interested in power. Elections come and go and losing an election is not a death sentence.

If I were an Igbo man I would advise the Igbo candidate to retract his steps and come back to the mainstream political groupings. If he left PDP because he doesn’t want another Fulani man to become the President I would advise him to look for Asiwaju and pledge support. This would surely bring peace and harmony in the political arena and pave way for all Nigerians including Igbo to fully participate in governance including a future Nigerian president from the South East.

By the way, how much difference is there between Asiwaju, Atiku, Kwankwaso and Obi? Each of them knows what is right even if he does the wrong thing.

How did Keyamo arrive at N1.2 trillion for ASUU?

It is well known that members of the Academic Union of Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body of academic staff in Nigerian Public universities have been on strike for some six months. Specifically, the strike began on February 14, 2022. Typical of the union of academics, it made sure that all means of avoiding the strike were exhausted before declaring the industrial action. Other university unions followed suit to avoid being left out in case ASUU emerged successful.

 

The issues are many and not all of them have to do with money and in fact not all the money mentioned in the dispute between ASUU and Federal Government goes to the pockets of ASUU members. No money goes to the union at all except the monthly dues it collects from members. It is not the duty of a trade union like ASUU to collect and disburse funds. That is the duty of university administrations.

 

Let me explain in plain language. But before I do, certain facts are important.

 

Although licenses have been given by the Federal Government for the establishment of many private universities in Nigeria, only about six percent of Nigerian university students are currently in private universities. More than 90 per cent of university students are in public universities owned by both states and Federal Governments.

 

Another important note is that there are currently more supporting staff in public universities than operational (academic) staff.  Consequently, there are three other unions in public universities apart from ASUU. People usually do not differentiate between ASUU and others, largely due to Government propaganda. All of these unions are now on strike.

 

Nigerians may also wish to note that undergraduate students in Federal universities do not pay a Kobo as tuition fees as long as they are Nigerians. The very little they pay as registration fees are for services like ID card, Games, hostel, etc.

 

The issues for which members of ASUU are on strike are the same issues for which the immediate past Government of Jonathan Goodluck commended the union for being patriotic and selfless. One of them is the proliferation of public universities. Does it make sense that the same Government that persistently complains of not having enough funds to run its existing universities is continuously establishing new universities in every nook and cranny of the country?

 

Revitalization of public universities for which an agreement was reached by the immediate past Government to release N1.3trn in six installments is what the Federal Government has been using to misinform the public that ASUU is looking for too much money. Thus, any time the FG releases some paltry sum of N30bn for example, it tells the world that it has given additional money to ASUU. I think that is why some patriotic Nigerians once agreed to “donate the sum of N18b to ASUU” to call off its strike. This money does not go to ASUU. It is used to carry out projects by contractors appointed by Federal Government or its appointee Governing councils.

 

The only other thing that involves cash is the renegotiation of 2009 agreement. In case you do not understand this, it is about the condition of service (SALARY AND ALLOWANCES) of academic staff which the Government promised to review every four years and the promised was not fulfilled for 13 years. In 2020 after an ASUU strike, the Federal Government set up a committee to renegotiate with ASUU and other unions. The committee finished its work and submitted its report in May 2021. The report was dumped and, despite ASUU’s constant reminders and follow-ups, was only dusted when ASUU began its strike in March this year. That is when this Government realized that it could not pay what was recommended by the committee. The same Government set up another committee the report of which it is not willing to disclose.

 

As a student or parent you are aware of all of the above if you have been following engagement of ASUU with Federal Government. I am only reminding you in case you have forgotten.

 

I am particularly shocked to hear the Minister of State Labour calling on parents to appeal to ASUU to end the strike. The reason is that they cannot afford N1.2tr ASUU is asking for. When did ASUU ask for this amount? Is it the revitalization fund Keyamo is talking about which ASUU never requested the FG to pay in bulk? If that is the case, why does it have to take FG six months of ASUU strike to state it? Or is it the result of renegotiation for which the FG never called ASUU and stated what it can pay? It just doesn’t make any sense.

 

What about other issues like the UTAS for which the FG has been meeting with ASUU and making claims of having conducted tests with xy results? Is Keyamo also appealing to parents to beg ASUU on it?

 

And who are these parents? Please let all the Government officials involved in this ASUU/FG negotiation mention the number of children they have in public universities and the programmes they are following. Of course I know the children of Mr. President, the person we elected, were schooling in UK. I wrote to advize him against it when his family celebrated the graduation of one of his daughters in December 2019. Whether or not the advice of nonentities like me matters is a different thing. It is the ordinary we that casted the votes anyway.

 

Finally, let me remind Mr. President that he has only less than a year to leave office. Unfortunately, nearly all his diehard supporters I know have been disappointed. This is largely due to the people he entrusts with very important issues like Security and Education.

 

On the particular issue of ASUU and sister unions, Mr. President seems to be overconfident in the Labour Minister, a southeast politician who was expecting you to anoint him to take over from you next year. When you refused to do it, one of them who is also in your cabinet stood before you in the last convention and accused you and your party of injustice. With that, can you rule out sabotage?

 

Mr. President Sir, please use the little time left to correct the mistakes made and avoid making another regrettable blunder. Nigerians did not elect Ngige, Keyamo, Zainab or any of those. In fact, if not for you these names would have long disappeared into obscurity. Please remember, Sir, that most of the APC politicians who won 2015 and 2019 elections especially in the North won because of you. So, the expectation is high and the performance is dismal.

 

I hope Mr. President reads this.

Remembering Dr. Ahmad Bamba

 It was a Friday, specifically the seventh of January 2022 in the official salary calendar of Nigeria. Even if you are not Gregorian in your personal timings once you are a salary worker in Nigeria you cannot afford to ignore the Gregorian calendar. Even Islamic schools use it to pay their workers. Traders are always conscious of it because their sales are higher at the end of the month. Employers feel relieved when they are able to pay their staff before or on the last day of a Gregorian month. Nigerian politicians list payment of monthly salaries as one of their achievements.

 

But this piece is not about salary payment or the Gregorian calendar.

 

In one of the Whatsapp groups I belong, someone had just posted that Dr. Ahmad Bamba was dead. Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim was, until sometime in the late 1990s, a tenure staff of the Department of Islamic Studies Bayero University Kano. After some misunderstandings with the then administration of Bayero University Kano, which he narrated when he was alive, he voluntarily withdrew his services from the university only to be reabsorbed many years later when Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed assumed the Vice Chancellorship of the University.

 

Before I could react to the news of Sheikh Ahmad BUK as many people called him, I must verify its correctness. In 2020, I went to the extent of calling the Deputy National Chairman of the Izala group to condole him about the death of Sheikh Abdullahi Bala Lau announced by an online newspaper and it turned out to be a fake news. Before he died, fake news reporters had once killed Alhaji Bashir Tofa, the erstwhile Presidential candidate of the defunct NRC and publisher of the first Nigerian Islamic newspaper, The Pen.  Much earlier, Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe was killed many times before his death, even without social media at that time. With all these in my mind, I decided to verify, and I thought the best person to ask was my neighbor and one the most senior students of the Sheikh, Professor Ahmad Murtala. After the confirmation, I began to pray for Dr. Ahmad.

 

I do not personally know any of Dr. Ahmad’s children except for one of his daughters who is a classmate and a close friend of one of my two wives. But my wife was in Bauchi for the marriage ceremony of a cousin in her mother’s family. So she could only immediately phone. Of course, she visited Insaaf Bamba after her return. As for me, the best thing I could do was to pray. As an ordinary person, I have always avoided gatherings of people who matter in the society. Allah answers prayers from whichever location and even from ordinary people like me. So, in sha Allah we shall continue to pray for Islamic scholars like Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim. Of course, the best way to remember a scholar is first, to practice the message he propagated and to continue to spread his teachings. The Messenger of Allah (May blessing and peace of Allah be upon him) listed a knowledge taught by a Muslim as one of the acts of virtue that continue to fetch them rewards after their death as long as the knowledge continues to be practiced.

 

But who is Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim?

 

Baby Ahmad was born in 1940 in Kumasi, Ghana to a migrant family of Islamic scholars. Migration from Northern Nigeria to Ghana is age long and Dr. Ahmad’s family is one of those Nigerian families who migrated to join the Hausa community of Ghana.  The child of Fatima and Muhammad began his early Islamic education from home and at the age of 14 he was taken to a tailor to learn the art of making clothes while still attending his Islamic lessons.

 

The turning point in Sheikh Ahmad’s life came with his journey to Saudi Arabia to study. I heard him confess several times that before he made it to Madina where he met world class Islamic scholars he had begun to see himself as a leading Islamic scholar. That was understandable given the environment in which Sheikh Ahmad was brought up. However, according to him when he arrived Madinah he was reduced to a beginner struggling to learn.

 

And he learnt well. Soon after collecting his letter of admission and registering as an undergraduate in the prestigious International Islamic University of Medina, Ahmad Bamba excelled to become one of the best students of Hadith. That was the time when the University was headed by the famous Sheikh AbdulAzeez Bn Baaz, and had lecturers like Sheikh Nasiruddeen Al-albani and Sheikh Hammad Al-Ansariy. These are some of the best Islamic scholars of their generation and it is a pride for any student of Islam to come in contact with them even if they didn’t teach him. They directly taught Sheikh Ahmad.

 

Ahmad’s scholastic aptitude earned him a good degree in Hadith before he left the Prophetic city of Madina. He assumed duty as a lecturer in the well respected Department of Islamic studies of Bayero University in 1981.

 

For the first one decade of his sojourn in Bayero University, the people who mostly benefitted from his vast knowledge of Islam were the students of his Department. For the rest of us in other faculties of the same University, we only heard about him when we discussed with his students. This is not to say that other people did not discover him early enough. In addition to teaching at the Aminuddeen’s Da’wah Islamiyya School many people, including some influential businessmen, privately visited the Sheikh’s house for Islamic lessons.

 

After the death in 1992 of Sheikh Abubakar Mahmoud Gummi who served as the de facto leader of the Salafis in Nigeria, the private students of Sheikh Ahmad Bamba thought that there was the need to raise their not well-known teacher to serve as a replacement. And it worked perfectly well. The first open lessons of Hadith by the Sheikh began at a location provided by one of his students in Gandun Albasa Quarters, Kano.

 

The lessons in Gandun Albasa did not last long. The promoters of the Hadith lessons thought further that better results could be achieved if the lessons were moved to the University, after all Dr. Ahmad was a staff of the only University in Kano at that time. That is how Dr. Ahmad began his Hadith lessons in the Bayero University Old campus Jumuah mosque. And because the lessons were holding in BUK and Dr. Ahmad was a staff of BUK, he came to be known in many circles as Dr. Ahmad BUK.

 

As planned by his students and with Allah’s permission, Dr. Ahmad within the blink of an eye became the scholar everyone respected in Northern Nigeria. Many people from all over Kano state and the neighbouring Katsina and Jigawa states made special arrangements to attend his weekly lessons in Kano. Those who could not attend would not miss the cassettes. He was teaching the Nigerian public a knowledge that was hitherto restricted to the circle of select Islamic scholars. He was questioning unIslamic traditions of Sheikh-worshipping. He openly exposed disbeliefs packaged and given to Muslims as Islam. Naturally, this would not go down well with those who benefitted from the status quo; hence the many enemies of Dr. Ahmad.

 

Younger Sunni scholars accepted Dr. Ahmad as their leader and respected his interventions. For example, he prevailed on the Late Sheikh Ja’afar Adam to rescind his decision to impose niqab as part of the compulsory uniform for girls in Uthman bn Affan College. For those of us who attended various lessons of different Salafi scholars in Kano, we noticed that salient issues raised by Dr. Ahmad were always amplified by other scholars as a mark of respect for the late leader scholar.

 

Books of Hadith are categorized. The best are the collections of Bukhari and Muslim. Any hadith reported by both scholars is considered as unquestionably authentic. The next set of books are the Sunan. These are the collections of Abu Daud, Tirmidhi, Nasa’i and Ibn Majah. The six books put together are known as “The Six Collections (Al Kutubus Sitta)”. The six collections plus the collections of Imam Ahmad (Musnad), Imam Malik (Muwatta) and Imam Addarimiy (Sunan) are known as “The nine collections (Al Kutubut tis’ah)”.

 

In case you don’t know the level of Dr. Ahmad’s contribution, he is the only African scholar known to have read, translated and interpreted the nine collections to public.

 

Dr. Ahmad was charismatic. Perharps that was what made many people feared approaching him thinking that he would be too tough to deal with. They were always surprised when the Sheikh received them with smiles and an open mind.

 

Like the Late Sheikh Abubakar Gummi, Dr. Ahmad was generous. As donations kept coming, he kept giving. This has been attested to by people very close to him. At a point when someone spoke to him about it, he said, “keeping this one will prevent another one from coming”. This is a statement that could only be discerned by a person who understands the saying of Allah, “Whatever you spend (for Allah’s sake), Allah will provide its replacement” (Q34:39)

 

If your habit is to carry gossip from one point to another, Dr. Ahmad would never welcome you. His time was for teaching and learning. He encouraged productivity and urged youth to be focused until they excelled in the one thing they choose to do in life.

 

When some people began to question his nationality, Dr. Ahmad stated in his characteristic smile that he had a “productive nationality”. And it is so. After he temporarily withdrew his services from Bayero University in the 1990s Sheikh Ahmad accepted to teach in the Islamic University of Niamey. Soon after, his Nigerian students arranged for him to come back and continue with the work he started. There was a mild rejection, by his Nigerien students. The Nigerians had their way and our neighbours gave up when they understood that more people stood to benefit from his knowledge in Nigeria.

 

May Allah have mercy on His servant Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim. May He forgive his shortcomings and admit him into the highest level of Firdaus. May Allah give this Ummah more of his kind. Amin.

So what if Kanu is arrested?

On Thursday June 24, 2021 I stumbled on a viral video from Zamfara state. In the four minutes clip, a notorious bandits’ kingpin could be seen boastfully confessing in front of senior security officials of the atrocities he committed against the Nigerian state and its people. The man, popularly known as Dan-Karami is said to be one of the senior gang members of the deceased Buharin daji, a bandits’ general who controlled the rural areas of Zamfara until his death in 2018 in the hand of one of his other gang members, Dogo Gide. Dogo Gide had ‘repented’ and submitted himself to the Government of Zamfara state under Abdulazeez Yari and Yari decided to use him to kill his boss. Gide had since resumed crime and is operating from his base in the vast forest reserve spanning several North Western and central states. He and Dan-Karami were among the many gangsters that sealed and breached several peace agreements with Governments of Zamfara and Katsina states.

I watched the video clips several times and upon enquiry I came to know that the senior Government officials were there to beg him to allow people to go to farm in the areas he controlled now that it is rainy season. The areas he controlled, as he stated in the clip are south of the Jibia-Gusau highway where he claims to be responsible for “any crime you hear of”. It is noteworthy that a week earlier 53 people were killed in the area. That is many times the number of Nigerians killed due to IPOB activities since it started.

Going by what he stated, the Nigerian Government has no other option except to go and beg him since, according to him, he has victoriously repelled all attempts by the Nigerian Army to defeat him. In one of those attempts, he stated, he was attacked by a combined team of Nigerian and Nigerien security forces and he defeated and killed more than half of them. He also confessed of kidnapping forty children from Zurmi township at another point in time.

Another thing he stated worth examining was the initial rejection by the now deposed Emir of Zurmi to dialogue with him or any other terrorist for that matter. If what he said was true, the Emir only agreed to speak to him after it was clear to the Emir that Government could not defeat him. The question to ask here is, if the Emir decided to be communicating to the outcast in order to protect his people, was he doing or not doing the right thing? Why was he deposed by the same Government that now decided to go and smile with a confirmed criminal who has admitted killing several people including our soldiers? When has the Nigerian Government become a coward that aims only at soft targets?

After watching that video, I began to wait for a statement from Federal Government. None came, at least not to my knowledge. The expectations of any citizen who watched that video would be the Government would now launch a major manhunt for the criminal to face charges of murder, treason, kidnapping, etc. Alas! The attention of the leaders of APC and PDP is not there. Their concern is not how Nigerians can sleep with their eyes closed or how many criminals are brought to justice but how many politicians from one party defect to another. Unfortunately for the people of Zamfara state the next thing they heard is that their Governor was now defecting to ruling (sorry “governing”) party as if that is what would solve their problem.

But there is one thing I did. After watching that video I decided to send it to the media aide of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice and requested him to give it to his boss in case he had not seen it along with our message of disappointment.

My choice of Abubakar Malami is deliberate for two reasons. One. He is not one of those opportunists who only began to support Buhari with the windstorm of 2015. He has been the supporter of Buhari from day one and is thus a witness to all the promises his Oga made to Nigerians. Two. He is the Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

Nothing has changed. The Sheikh Gumis are busy going from one bandits’ camp to another and calling on Buhari to give salaries to Fulani criminals. The Kabiru Gombes are all over the place telling masses that Saint Buhari is not responsible for the protection of their lives and property since he has appointed Northerners to take charge of security. The Masaris are there blaming the masses for waiting for Government to give them protection. That is the very sad predicament Northerners have found themselves. You are on your own if fate makes you an ordinary Northern Nigerian.

On Tuesday June 29, while the rest of us were still waiting for action (although sincerely speaking most Northerners have lost hope), Malami appeared on our television screens to tell Nigerians that Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB was arrested “through the collaborative efforts of Nigerian intelligence and security services”. That is a good news, I thought, but it is no news. Kanu has never been the major problem of the rural farmers of the North. His arrest will never make Kaduna-Abuja, Kaduna-Birnin Gwari, Jibia-Gusau, Kankara-Sheme or any of those highways safe. It will never stop the harassment of our people killed, kidnapped and raped by bandits on daily basis. So what if he is arrested?

But Kanu is being “accused of instigating violence especially in the Southeastern Nigeria that resulted in the loss of lives and property of civilians, military, paramilitary, police forces and destruction of civil institutions and symbols of authorities.” Here is someone right here on the Nigerian soil boasting of having committed all these atrocities and daring Government. Yet, the Government is going there to smile at him. Is that not an irony?

Prof Abdussamad Umar Jibia

30/06/2021

 

 

Banditry: My disappointments with PMB’s approach

Like many other weeks before it in the past several years, the past one week has been very tragic for the people of Jibia LGA. It was during this period that bandits sent a notice to the people of Jibia of an impending attack. Such notices are not unusual since banditry became the order in the North Western part of Nigeria. The criminals do normally not fail in their promises although it does not have to be on the day they mention. Thus, since Thursday the 10^th of June 2021, the people of Jibia town have known no sleep. I partly blame them because when banditry was restricted to the rural areas, most people in the local government headquarters did not give it a damn. Some of them who were fanatical in their support for Buhari even claimed out of mischief that we were only speaking to show the failure of his Government even though they could not deny our support for him throughout the period he was doing everything he could to get to the Presidency.

 The message here is, if you are reading this from the comfort of your room in the city or any other part of Nigeria and you think banditry is not your problem or that it is a problem already solved by PMB, I pray you never get disappointed.

 A day before bandits sent notice to Jibia, they killed two people near Bugaje. Their offence was that they were driving from Bugaje to Katsina in the early part of the night and their headlight hit a group of bandits coming on their motorcycles. This was seen as an act of contempt by the criminals and they opened fire on the people in the front seats of the firewood carrying van. The two of them died immediately and life continued. The blood of Nigerians is not any more sacred than the blood of mosquitoes these days. Many people in Bugaje ward are now moving their families to Katsina town for fear of molestation by bandits. Resist the rape of your wife and you lose your life and your wife is beaten up and raped anyway.

Two things happened to the Jibia town people on Sunday the 13^th. One. Three people travelling down south were kidnapped around Kankara and their abductors later called to ask for a ransom of N300m. Two. Due to their desire to go to farm and cultivate what they eat like they have been doing even before any politician came to advise them, four young people went to farm around Shabba village North west of Jibia town. Themselves and their two cows were later abducted from their farms and moved to the bush. Concerned community members later called in the Nigerien police who moved in swiftly to kill two and arrest one of the bandits. The abductees were freed to join their families. With many friends and relations in the Nigerian Army, Police and Air Force I cannot be against the Nigerian military. But they should not be angry if I say, and rightly too, that the local people around the border now have more confidence in the Nigerien military than they have in their Nigerian counterparts.

 What is happening in Jibia LGA is virtually what is happening in other frontline LGAs in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, Kebbi, Niger and Sokoto state. In reality, worse things are happening in some other places. For example, in the past two weeks mass killings have taken place in Zamfara, Kebbi, Niger and Kaduna states. I only mention my local government to tell you that I am directly affected and this is not hearsay.

 But when will these things be over? I listened to Mr. President’s interview on Arise News and I have no doubt that Mr. President is sincere in his intention to bring an end to the security challenges bedeviling the North West and other parts of the country. I have no doubt, too, that Mr. President is doing everything he can to solve the problem of insecurity in the country.

As a teacher, I have come across many students who worked hard to answer an examination question and filled so many pages with their beautifully written answers only to score a zero at the end. There are usually two reasons for this. One. The student did not take time to read and understand the question before he begins to answer it. Two. He read and understood the question but he didn’t know the answer. However, since he has registered for the course and told examiners that he is qualified, he has to provide an answer even if it is the wrong one. This phenomenon manifests itself among politicians who campaign and win elections. The second analogy is that of an unqualified and incompetent politician.

 The first analogy is that of a very competent and experienced person like President Muhammadu Buhari who does not take his time to understand the problem and provide a solution based on current realities. Instead he only uses his experiences of the 1950s and 1960s to provide solutions to twenty first century problems.

 Mr. President seems to have the erroneous belief that the corrupt-free military of the 1960s or even 1984 is the same institution today. That is why after the Kankara students’ abduction of last year when he was asked for his reactions by the NTA, the first thing he did was to thank the Nigerian military. There was nowhere in that interview he mentioned Miyetti Allah group, who according to the Governors of Katsina and Zamfara were responsible for the freedom of those children.

Again in the Arise News interview he emphasized on his meeting with security chiefs, the marching order he gave them and the reports he received from them. And I ask, does Mr. President have no other way of knowing what is on the ground except through those security chiefs? As a politician, Mr. President has his party leaders and ardent supporters in every ward of the 774 local governments of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Is this structure not an alternative for the president to confirm what is on the ground and use it to surprise and issue orders and praise or rebuke his security chiefs?  His claims that bandits are being decimated in the North West and that people are now going to farm show that he is not getting the correct feedback. The example I gave on people abducted on their farms is only one of those incidences. There are villages I know where people are paying taxes to bandits to allow them to go farm and nothing is changing.

Now, does the President understand the identity of our bandits at all? Mr. President was in power four years before Zulum became the Governor but it was Zulum who told him that Boko Haram members are Nigerians. I thought even as he was campaigning for elections he had a very good idea of the identity of Boko Haram membership, how they started and where they were. Those pieces of information were necessary for him to “hit the ground running” as he promised in 2015.

 Now, coming to the herdsmen, he told Governor Ortom that the herdsmen operating in Benue are not Nigerians. Did PMB reflect over this statement? How did they come into Nigeria? Does Ortom have control over our borders? How many immigration officers were punished for allowing foreign herdsmen to cross our borders in large numbers and begin to destroy our farms? Again, MACBAN has been speaking for herdsmen in Benue. Doesn’t he think that the group should be investigated to verify whether or not they are directly involved in crime? Note that it was not only Ortom who once accused MACBAN of complicity in crime. An erstwhile Zamfara Commissioner of Police Nagogo once did it while you were sitting in the villa.

 Are those “foreign” herdsmen the same as bandits operating in the North West? I would disagree with Mr. President if he says yes. The leaders of bandits in the North West are well known to Government. At different points Katsina and Zamfara state Governments held meetings with them in open spaces and none of those criminal gang leaders came from Niger Republic or some other country. They were all Nigerians. Katsina state Governor, who said ab initio, that he was going into peace accord with them at the instance of PMB, has since withdrawn from the peace accord and claimed that the bandits had breached the terms of the agreement. Yet, none of them has been arrested up to this time I am writing.

 But I see. The President does not believe that those bandits are foreigners. In fact, if his statement is anything to go by, there is no banditry as we claim. It is “people with the same language and culture .. killing themselves, stealing each other’s properties.” Haba Mr. President! Please look for another means of getting your reports. You are vividly being misled by some mischievous aides. Banditry in the North West is real and it is not a communal clash. It is a section of an ethnic group unleashing mayhem on the rest of us.

 Another area of my disappointment is the attempt by the President to push blame on the Governors. If he does that for non-APC governors I can excuse him. But President Buhari should remember that ahead of 2015 elections he went round telling the electorate to vote APC candidates because he had a mechanism to make sure that they did the right thing. Now, that we are being killed, kidnapped, scared away from our farmlands and our dignity is being attacked, where should we shift our blame?

How Daura people are being misrepresented

 

This morning (09/12/2020) I was confronted by a video clip of a legislator from Katsina state. The young man, who may be in his thirties or forties depending on his body type is supposed to be representing Daura/Maiadua/Sandamu Federal constituency in the House of Representatives. By implication, this man is one of the two people representing President Muhammadu Buhari in the National assembly. Without doubt, like most of his types from the North, Fatuhu Muhammed rode on the back of Buhari to convince the unsuspecting people of Daura, Maiadua and Sandamu that he will support Buhari to change their lot.

The man, who unfortunately is a member of Committee on tertiary education in the house rose to ask his colleagues to agree to tell the executives to sell public universities and retain the Polytechnics. His reason is that “we are having so much problems with ASUU”. He did not elaborate on the word, “we”. Is he referring to the people of Daura, Maiadua and Sandamu, in which case we should ask him the method he used to determine their opinion? We know that ASUU had recently embarked on nationwide parleying with Nigerians at which it explained it’s position and listened to parents’ views as major stakeholders. How many parleys did Fatuhu hold with the masses of Daura, Sandamu and Maiadua to have arrived at this opinion?

Or did “we” in Fatuhu’s submission refer to the committee in which he is only an ordinary member? We shall then ask, where is the report of the committee which would show the homework it has made to arrive at this position? Why is he the one presenting it, when, like he acknowledged in his incoherent submission, the Committee chairman was present?

While reacting to the clip, a colleague from Daura noted that Fatuhu is a nephew of the President. If that is true, the rest of us may wish to know, does “we” refer to the extended Buhari family? We know that some of Buhari’s children were educated outside Nigeria even when he is sitting in the villa as an elected President. Is it the opinion of Mr. President that public universities in Nigeria be privatized so that the “edupreneurs” who buy them would make them as good as those attended by his children in the UK? PMB is a key stakeholder in Fatuhu’s constituency but he has only one vote.

What is the “so much problem” that the Fatuhus know about ASUU that the rest of Nigerians do not that led “them” to conclude that the “best solution” is to sell the universities? I know many Nigerians who criticize ASUU for one thing or another but none of them has spoken so strongly about “privatizing” public universities like Fatuhu did. I am sure that in addition to myself, other Nigerians would love to know this problem that can only be solved by selling our universities.

For any arising matter that requires the attention of lawmakers, I would like to note that there are three questions a member like Fatuhu would ask before taking a position.

The first question is, how will it affect my people? Did Fatuhu ask this question? Poverty is one factor that characterizes our life in the far North. Daura emirate is one of the worst hit places in terms of poverty, hunger and backwardness in formal education. For example,for many years people from other parts of Katsina state rush to rural local governments in Daura emirate to look for hajj seats as in most cases the people there cannot fill their quota of hajj seats due to the high level poverty. If Government closes down its primary and secondary schools in Katsina state, one can be rest assured that majority of our children, and especially those from rural local Governments like the ones Fatuhu is representing, will not go to school. Right now, many children from the North are at the mercy of their state governments to pay for their WAEC and NECO registration. Then, how can a person representing such people rise on the floor of the National Assembly and advocate for the commercialization of education? This is silliness at it’s peak.

The second question is, how has this problem been solved in similar climes? As a legislator has Fatuhu taken time to find out how Malaysia, for example, is able to run it’s public universities and make them among the best? Today, no one goes to a private university in Malaysia except those who are not academically good enough for public universities. Malaysian lecturers are among the happiest set of people in that country. Why are our politicians so lazy to simply read or travel in order to help their people?

For anything a person wants to say, whether or not such a person is a legislator, they would always ask, how will it be received by other people? Regrettably, Fatuhu is so inexperienced to even discuss with his colleagues a priori, which explained why many of them were shouting him down when he was saying it. Of course, there is nothing wrong in being controversial if one is sure of one’s position and has sufficient facts to support it. Unfortunately, the legislator did not prepare adequate arguments to back his position which explains why he immediately sat down the moment his colleagues began to boo him. Did he not ask his “we” of their reasons to believe that the problem of ASUU is so much that there should be no public university in Nigeria?

But who do you blame? Just Fatuhu? I blame the political parties who nominate and send people without preparing them. Although seminars and retreats are organized for legislators from time to time, the emphasis is usually not on the knowledge. Otherwise, we would not be having people like Fatuhu.

Fatuhu as an individual is not worth my pen. I don’t write to vilify individuals. My concern is for the poor people of Daura, Sandamu and Maiadua who are being misrepresented.