MONDAY QUARTERBACKING: A Lunch Date with Zamfara Governor Sani Yerima

By

Mobolaji E. Aluko, Ph.D.

Burtonsville, MD 20866

maluko@scs.howard.edu
July 10, 2000


Governor Ahmed Sani of Zamfara State, after delivering his paper at the symposium. [Picture by www.gamji.com]

 

Introduction

On Tuesday, May 16, 2000, there was a VOA program on Nigeria titled "Nigeria's Quest for Democracy: Governance, Sharia and Civil Conflicts" at the VOA offices in Washington, DC. Please visit the URL: http://www.voa.gov/symposia/nigeria.html for an audio presentation of it.  It featured, among several others, President Olusegun Obasanjo, House Speaker Ghali Na'Abba and Catholic Archbishop John Onaiyekan (all by phone from Nigeria), as well as youthful Governor Ahmed Sani Yerima Bakuru of Zamfara in person (Panel 2).  It was quite a lively program indeed, but no earth-shaking solutions emanated from it.

 

 

Anyway, during the program, a note was passed to some of us attendees by one Mr.  Sanusi Mohammed (of Africa 2020, resident in New York), inviting us to lunch with Governor Yerima at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. After some hesitation - at least on my part - we all obliged.  The lunch was to last from about 2 pm to 5 pm.

There were about a total of fourteen of us at the lunch - Sanusi, Governor Yerima, Zamfara State's Attorney-General and Commissioner of Justice, equally youthful Alhaji Ahmed Bello Mahmud and five of their courtiers; and six of us invitees - Dr. Julius Ihonvbere of Ford Foundation, Rev. Fr. Amaefule Nnorom of Virginia Commonwealth University; Prof.  Chudi Uwazurike of CCNY, Ms.  Oby Ezekwesili of Harvard and Dr.  Chima - all expenses paid apparently by Mr. Sanusi Mohammed.  Both Oby and Chudi had been on panels at the program.

There were quite heated discussions, sometimes rowdy as Nigerians can sometimes get even in a posh hotel such as Four Seasons Hotel! :-)

But first some historical background on Zamfara and Governor Yerima, in order to understand some of the politics of the state.


Historical Background

(Source: "The Lawmakers - Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 - 2003" by Chris N.D. Anyanwu) - page 224.


QUOTE

Zamfara is one of the three states carved out of the old Sokoto State (THE TWO OTHERS BEING KEBBI AND SOKOTO ITSELF.)  It was created on October 1, 1996 [DURING THE TENURE OF GENERAL SANI ABACHA] and occupies a land mass of 38,414 square kilometers with a population of 2,231,472 (1991 Census.) The state shares borders with Niger Republic, Sokoto, Katsina and Niger States.  Its capital is Gusau.  Five major ethnic groups dominate the state:  Fulani, Katsinawa, Gobirawa, Zamfarawa and Burmawa.  However they all have a common language:  Hausa.  Farming is the major occupation there.

The people of Zamfara had been for long agitating for autonomy and self recognition.  They felt overshadowed under the Sokoto emirate council.  In 1962 they pressed for the creation of Zamfara emirate council, but this move was aborted by powerful forces almost when it was yielding fruit. They started agitation for a separate state and indeed the defunct second republic National Assembly [WITH SHEHU AS PRESIDENT, 1979-9183] approved their request, but before the state could be created the military [UNDER
BUHARI, ON DECEMBER 31, 1983] took over government.   Their quest for a state was again taken through successive military administrations until it became a reality in 1996.

Zamfara, just as Kebbi and Sokoto, has always maintained a voting pattern which favours conservatives.  The Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) was in control in that territory in the First Republic [WHEN TAFAWA BALEWA WAS PRIME MINISTER] while NPN dominated in the Second Republic.  In the aborted Third Republic [UNDER GENERAL BABANGIDA], there was a replay of this through the conservative NRC.

The [CURRENT] Fourth Republic while true to the past inclination has seen the emergence of new factors which affected the election outcome. Prominent among these factors was the Shinkafi phenomenon. Whereas Shinkafi and his group were in APP [ALL PEOPLES PARTY], the old breed politicians were in the PDP [THE PEOPLES DEMOCRATIC PARTY, THE DOMINANT PARTY IN THE COUNTRY, AND THAT OF THE PRESIDENT.] At the local government elections, the two parties won evenly but during the State House of
Assembly, APP won overwhelmingly with 19 seats, leaving only five for PDP. Again at the gubernatorial election, youthful Alhaji Ahmed Sani of APP (40 years old) defeated more matured, experienced Malam Yahaya Abdulkarim, of PDP, a one-time governor of the old Sokoto State.  There was indeed a power shift from the old breed to the new.

Apart from the Shinkafi following which was very strong, especially since he was the vice-presidential candidate for APP [UMARU SHINKAFI WAS THE VICE-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TO OLU FALAE'S PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDACY ON THE JOINT APP-AD TICKET THAT CONTESTED AND LOST AGAINST THE OBASANJO-ATIKU PDP TICKET], Sani may have won easily because in addition to his goodwill he had a head start advantage over his rival.  Whereas it took PDP quite some time to choose a flag bearer, APP was never in doubt over the sole candidature of Sani, who was very popular among the talakawas (the commoners.)  The national assembly results were surprising as PDP and AD had no seat in the Senate.  The APP won the entire three seats.  At the House of Representatives, PDP won 1 seat, while APP had 6.

UNQUOTE


Discussions at the Lunch

After an awkward period of deciding whether we would have liquor or not (we settled for no wine, for religio-sensitive reasons), Sanusi Mohammed and the Governor thanked us for coming, and explained that they merely wanted to provide some information about the Sharia happenings in Nigeria to some of us.  We were equally delighted to meet with him, and quickly expressed the hope that he would explain his Sharia "mischiefs." Quite frankly, for the three hours that we met, the Governor and his equally youthful Attorney-General were very forthcoming with information:

(1)  About the PARTY dynamics and moves behind his declaration of Sharia

Governor Sani Ahmad stated that before declaring for candidacy, he found out that Sharia was most desired from his electorate;  he then promised them Sharia during his campaigns - he says that he has videos to prove it, including three shouts of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Great" at the beginning of each stop - and NO ONE in his party or the country took him up on it.  Therefore he state that Sharia was his weapon to beat the otherwise powerful PDP in Zamfara because they had money and he had none; even his own APP did not believe that he would win, and so did not support him financially.

After the election, he meant to settle down to the normal business of governing sans-Sharia, but was pushed into an early delivery on his Sharia promise by the PDP in Zamfara because they went around saying that he had promised something that he had no intention of fulfilling, and that he feared that he would have been impeached. So he quickly declared in August a Committee on Sharia; it was passed unanimously by his assembly, and he signed it into law;  on October 27 1999 (an event to which he invited the president, among others) he announced that he would commence in January 2000, and that since then, he has been executing it in his state without problem. In fact, he said he has VIDEO TAPES of his numerous consultations with all Christian and ethnic leaders before Sharia was introduced in Zamfara, and all were assured of the idea.

All this time, no one, including the President or the Attorney-General had talked to him or stopped him, and that if there had been a bone of contention, he would have been prepared to suspend action to wait for the
Supreme Court to have it resolved. [Attorney-General Agabi spoke to the conference by phone saying nothing in the constitution empowered the Federal Government to go to court against a state!] He said that his attempts to see the President one-on-one were frustrated by PDP aides, according to the Governor, and he finally "managed" to see the President only within the past month or so, when, to the surprise of the president, he narrated his past frustrated attempts to explain issues to him.

Sani Yerima was blunt in saying that NONE of the political parties has ANY VISION for moving the nation forward, and that there needed to be a re-alignment of political forces. He said that he was in support of a
national conference. One humorous aside: when we asked him who the new Chairman of APP was, he could not remember!  He had to appeal to his Attorney-General, who after mining his own brain, finally came up with the name: Yusuf Ali. And yet, Sani Yerima was the Chairman of the Convention at which the new Chairman of the party was chosen!  He gave me a high-five when I teased him that "You don't even know the Chairman of your party!"
 
When we asked him why Sharia was now been implemented just under the Obasanjo presidency when nothing like that was introduced under past presidents, for example, during Shagari's time, he said that it was because he was not the Governor of Zamfara then! Smart(-alec) answer. :-)

He gave each one of us a copy each of the full Sharia Penal code of Zamfara, featuring 408 sections, a number of which relate to "Criminal Breach of Contracts of Service", "Breach of Official Trust", "Offences by
or Relating to Public Servants", "Contempts of the Lawful Authority of Public Servants", "Forgery" and the like.  Pretty comprehensive.  The (barbaric - to my mind)  amputation is but one of 17 punishments in the
Code for specific crimes, and he insisted that amputation was no more barbaric than capital punishment by hanging, firing squad, electrocution or lethal injection.

(2)  On Amputation and Buba Bello Jangebe

Governor Yerima stated that except for the AMPUTATION, that all he did was move the Sharia criminal code hearings from AREA COURTS to Sharia courts.

The story on Jengebe was a little funny, if not morbid.  Apparently he was a known thief who boasted 'round town that he could steal any cow, and that once a cow got into his compound, it would vanish for ever, so that he could never be caught.  Anyway, he stole this particular cow, and it did not vanish; the owner came and identified his cow;  Jangebe confessed; and the punishment announced was amputation.  The rest is history.

Governor Yerima said he knew then that he had trouble in his hands, no pun intended. So he called Jangebe to his governor's mansion three times to plead with the guy to appeal the sentence, to no avail.  Jengede said that if that was Allah's will, so be it.  So the sentence was carried out reluctantly, [I might add, with milk, maltina and meat given to the hapless Jangebe.] Sani Yerima swore that "Wallahi tallahi", amputation
would NEVER AGAIN happen in his watch in Zamfara. [That evoked some head-shaking laughter, some gallows-humor, around the table.]

(3)  On what non-Sharia policies he was doing to benefit his state

After regaling us with the Sharia stories, we were ready to take him up on other matters:  "So exactly how are you impacting your state other than with Sharia?"

He gave an account of how he was cleaning up the corruption in Zamfara, addressing the woeful economic crisis there, and the serious problems that he is now facing both from the civil servants and the religious leaders in his state! He had set his state's minimum wage at N5,000 a long time before and had added N500 following the Federal govt's recent policy; Zamfara started a fertilizer subsidy project; he has started his poverty alleviation program to create jobs; he asked all those with certain property qualifications in the civil service to resign and go into business as there were no industries in the state.  He made arrangements
with a bank for a line of credit); he stopped the practice of giving money to religious leaders (he said that they now hate him for that); he reeled off figures of schools, hospitals, roads etc that have been built or
rehabilitated etc.

(4) For more information....

For example, to ascertain the account above, do contact Alhaji Ahmad Sani, Government House, P.M.B. 01050, Gusau, Zamfara State: Phone 063-204060; 201092; 203305.  Fax 202178.

That is what the card he gave to us read.  No email yet, but he happily said that he was working on it - and that I should call him when next I visit Nigeria!  :-)

Of course, you can also contact Julius, Oby, Chudi and Rev. Fr. Nnorom.


My Impressions from the Yerima Encounter

My Impressions from the Yerima Encounter
---------------------------------------

First, why did Governor Yerima want to talk to some of us?  Obviously, he wanted to meet some Nigerians in the Diaspora and make his case, and hope that we would state it as he said it and understand him better.
Personally, I have been struggling with whether to oblige him - hence this belated write-up.  In fact, I am reminded in Proverbs 23:1-3 of lunch with rulers:

              1   When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
                  Consider carefully what is before you;
              2   And put a knife to your throat
                  If you are a man given to apetite.
              3   Do not desire his delicacies,
                  For they are deceptive food.

And then I said, "Why not?  What benefit to Nigeria if we just had lunch and no one hears what the controversial governor told us?"

All in all, Governor Yerima gave all of us - me at least - a convincing show, but I closed the discussion by telling him that he should recognize that the world outside Nigeria sees expanded Sharia and amputations as a return to barbarism, and that using local politics to do things that have an international impact on the image of Nigeria was not a good thing for Nigeria. He seemed to agree that he would have to be more careful next time.  Julius Ihonvbere also pointed out during the discussion that it was improper, unfair, and unrealistic to want to be absolute in today's Nigeria on any issue, that trying to bring into play rules etc developed in the days of Prophet Mohammed or even Othman Dan Fodio to a new, complex, technology driven, and pluralistic society was unrealistic and undemocratic.

Bottom line?  Firstly, Sharia, at least for Governor Yerima, was an opportunistic election ruse that may have blown up in his face.  Secondly, he did not calculate the fact that it would be adopted by governors and states who did not campaign on that platform - for example he says that he was taken by surprise that Kaduna even CONTEMPLATED adopting Sharia, especially without due consultations with their constituents! Thus he felt that it was more political than religious since there was no problem in his Zamfara State.  Thirdly, this Sharia thing has evolved into a battle for political turf in the North between PDP and APP using religion. Neither of the parties wants the other to gain advantage using religion. Fourthly - and perhaps most importantly - the other equation is that this Sharia debacle keeps Obasanjo off-balance, and does not enable him to claim as much success in his presidency as he otherwise would.


And Since Then in Zamfara -  Elsewhere?

Sokoto (May 29) and Kano (June 21) have joined Zamfara (January 27, 2000), while Niger, Kebbi, Borno, Yobe, Jigawa, Bauchi, Nassarawa and Gombe are all "fixing" to start Sharia, with volatile Kaduna still threatening.   In fact, according to TELL Magazine of July 3, 2000 (page 23):

QUOTE

                       Their Date with Sharia

Kano State  


Sokoto State      


Zamfara State      


Niger State         

Kaduna State   


Katsina State     


Borno State  


Jigawa State   


Yobe State         


Is this a wildfire or what?

Some Closing Thoughts

Unfortunately, religion is such an emotive issue; the Sharia states have boxed themselves into a corner, and I don't see how they will go back on it.  The imposition of expanded Sharia by some of these Northern states is a big mistake that will set them back economically and socially in a federal Nigeria.  That President Obasanjo did not use the Courts to arrest the imposition , that he first thought that it would "fizzle away," and relied on an ADVISORY Council of State to appeal to the "gentlemanliness" of these states - was a big mistake.

But the genie is now out of the bottle, and we will have to live with it.

The best we can do right now in the face of Obasanjo executive pusillanimity is to ensure that those who are still thinking of imposing Sharia should know the social and economic penalties that they face, so that they might think twice about adopting the expanded Sharia system in the same manner as Zamfara and the others.

The other non-Sharia states will probably use EVERY OPPORTUNITY within the law to isolate them SOCIALLY and ECONOMICALLY. For example, I am in full support of unwilling NYSC corpers DEFERRING their service indefinitely, while being employed for that year (but not in lieu of the service) by their states of origin, or other states who are willing to do so (again not in lieu of the official service.)

The Sharia states will eventually feel economic pain; unfortunately, because they are still in NIGERIA, it will also be Nigeria feeling economic pain, and one part of the body inflicting pain on another.

It is unfortunate - and ridiculous - that it might turn out this way.

I continue to STRONGLY believe in an SNC, but the fact of the matter is that the Sharia people WILL now fight HARDER against a National Conference, because they have gotten what (according to them) is uppermost in their minds, and the other states can only come level with them at such a conference. Those states are now bound to come with a strong anti-Sharia agenda, so why give them a chance to beat up on them?  So this Sharia saga ups the stakes for a National Conference.

Consequently, I am now of the opinion that those states that do not like the present Constitution and the present Nigerian polity must FIND WAYS of chipping, chipping, chipping away at the edges of this 1999 Constitution until we all force ourselves to the table. That is why this NYSC issue is very timely, and one can imagine that many other such issues will come along the way - or should be seriously given thought to.

Best wishes all.


Some useful links on Zamfara:

http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia1editorial
http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia2begins Sharia

http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia3APP Oks

http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia4schools

http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia5contracts

http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia6start

http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia7softpedal

http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia8fears defeat 

http://www.gamji.com/news/sharia9jobs

http://www.gamji.com/news/shariapviolates Sharia

http://www.gamji.com/news/shariaqcut hand

http://www.gamji.com/news/shariarschools

http://www.gamji.com/news/shariaseditorial

http://www.gamji.com/news/shariatObasanjo

http://www.gamji.com/news/shariauKano