Jihad Threat: Is Obasanjo's Administration Anti-Islam?

By

Rev Dr. Danjuma Byang

shekinahjos@yahoo.co.uk

Muslim leaders in Nigeria under the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and Jama’atu Nasril Islam arose from their meeting in Kaduna recently to declare a jihad against the Obasanjo administration for marginalizing Muslims in Nigeria. The threat was not taken lightly by the Governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi (himself a Muslim), who immediately deployed soldiers to all strategic areas of the state capital to forestall any eventuality.

There have been many expletives by Muslim leaders on their claims of Muslim marginalization by Obasanjo since the meeting through publications and actual meetings with the President by some Muslim leaders led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Mohammadu Maccido on one occasion and by the Emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero on another. The Sultan even claimed at one of the meetings that he represented Muslims who constituted 65% of the Nigerian population!

While many peace-loving Nigerians ruminate on the implications of the call for jihad by Muslim leaders they wonder if it is true that President Obasanjo and his administration has indeed marginalized Muslims in Nigeria. How true is this claim? How can Muslims who sang the praise of Obasanjo only a couple of months ago for the unpopular, and some would even say, illegal declaration of the state of emergency on the Plateau and the humiliating suspension of Governor Joshua Dariye, not to mention the recent unilateral and arbitrary mortgage of Nigeria’s economy and future to the Arabs by Nigeria becoming a member of the Islamic Development Bank, turn around today to say that they are being marginalized? Their antics are very clear. They succeede d to “arm twist” Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency on the Plateau through similar threats, and since the strategy worked like a magic wand then why can’t they try the same strategy  now?

Before we come up with our arguments about the provocative, jaundiced, hypocritical and entirely false claims, let us hear what some Muslims have said to discredit the claims.

Col. Abubakar Dangiwa Umar (rtd), the former military Governor of Kaduna State and a scion of the Sokoto Caliphate said in his reaction to the Muslim claims of marginalization especially as it has to do with the composition of the National Political Reform Conference, and Obasanjo’s cabinet that such apparent lopsidedness is “not unprecedented” and in any case, it did not warrant such “inflammatory” utterances. Moreover, Umar said it was not only Muslims alone that have been marginalized, “both Northern Muslims and Christians are marginalized because of the Region’s backwardness in educational development, poor infrastructure, low internally generated revenue and of course social instability”. Is any one listening?

Muhammed Salih Bhadmus has asked a couple of pointed questions relating to the issue at hand, “Between 1979 and 1999, five Muslim presidents had ruled the country. During their days, what were the lots of religions harmony and equality? Can the Muslims boast of the roles they played either individually or collectively against the injustices perpetrated in the past years? There were persecutions, corruption, hypocrisy, nepotism, graft, and wickedness to mention but few. Not only fellow Muslims were clamped in jail and murdered, election results (won by Muslims) were thwarted (by Muslims!) Intellectual indolence and mediocrity were favoured while wickedness and anarchical tendencies were encouraged. What did the Muslims do about these?”

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, a Prince of the Kano emirate and a Muslim intellectual, writing on the topic, “Muslim leaders and the myth of marginalization” held that “Muslims have not been marginalized because no one has stopped them from practicing their religion or organizing their personal relationships according to Sharia. What is more, the have even been given the right to implement Muslim criminal law, regardless of the controversy surrounding that right”. Also he seems to concur with Umar that if there has been marginalization it is not Muslims only that are victims, “we are marginalized because we are weak and divided and our weakness comes from the loss of our solid and negotiating base as a u united, multi-cultural and multi-religions North.”

Mallam Shehu Sani, leading several Muslims elites from the North had this to say, “It is subversive at this time and it is not in the interest of peace or democracy, unity or stability of this country for the Supreme Council for Sharia at this very time, to use this issue as a bargaining chip. We are aware that the leading elements that are calling for this boycott were also the leading light that called for the boycott of the polio vaccination last year.” Mallam Sani queried the motive behind the call when the Muslim leaders had, in the past shied away from condemning the infringement of the fundamental rights of Nigerians, including leading Northerners and Muslims. Listing such cases under previous administrations, the civil rights campaigners said “we want to make it abundantly clear that the region, the North, that is making claims to the politica l leadership of this country in 2007 will be sending a wrong message by this kind of intolerance. We do not believe that this is the best time to raise such issues. We also intend to raise the question why they are publishing the statistics of political office holders under this administration. Why didn’t they publish such statistics under the Buhari, IBB, Abacha and Abdulsalami administration? Where were the leaders of the Supreme Council for Sharia when the late General Sani Abacha threw thousands of followers of El Zaki Zaki into jail? Where were they when Sultan Dasuki was deposed? Where were they when the late General Shehu Yar-Adua was arrested and thrown into cell? They didn’t say anything about it. We know there was a time that Buhari regime introduced licences for Muslim preachers. We know that there was a time that regime increased the fare for going to Mecca by about 300 per cent, they said nothing then. We know that there was a time that bulldozers were rolled out to demolish mosques described as illegal structures. So why must they do that now? They should leave members of the National Political Reform Conference alone”.

Yusuf Dauda, also commenting on the claims of marginalization and general situation in the North had this to say, “Alas, I must admit that religious bigotry and fanaticism are still a flourishing industry in Northern Nigeria. In fact, at times, it seems more economically beneficiary than the conventional industries, which are spreading in the more conducive south. Indeed, because of the Gimis (and the likes of Datti Ahmed, Mohammed Haruna and Mustapha Jokolo, some of the men breathing threats), religion seems to have become an insurmountable barrier between the North and progress; they make the North at times look perpetually and inextricably wedded to religious intolerance with the attendant backwardness. While every other Region or part of the country is fastly achieving unpreced ented internal cohesion, the North, blinded by the thick darkness of religious sentiment, is avoidably floating in a mind boggling limbo and at times, it seems to be on the verge of plummeting into a bottomless pit simply because the Gimis (and his likes) have turned the erstwhile prosperous Region into a den of tension, agitations and conflicts”.

Apart from these heart-searching comments and observations by Muslims, we want the reader to see the falsity of the Muslim claims of marginalization. We shall approach this section by section.

National Political Reform Conference

Muslims have accused the President of deliberately appointing more Christians than Muslims to this confab so as to put Muslims at disadvantage seeing the importance of issues to be decided there. Out of the 382 delegates the President nominated 50 to represent special interest groups. The respective State Governors nominated the rest. Even if all the 50 nominated by the President were Muslims there would have been more Christians in the confab. The Governors know the political/religious reality on ground in each of their respective states and nominated delegates accordingly. So if the majority of those nominated by the State Governors are Christians is that not a proof of the numerical superiority of the Christians over the Muslims in Nigeria ? It is he bad enough that the President had to be coerced to appoint a Muslim co-secretary  and even co-chairman to the confab, but to say he must arbitrarily appoint only Muslims to achieve parity with Christian is a call with portentous consequences.

On Ministerial and other Appointments

Muslims also allege marginalization in the way President Obasanjo has appointed Ministers, Ambassadors, Service Chiefs and others in his administration. It is shameful that Muslim faithfuls had to rebuke and remind these agitators that the apparent lopsidedness was not unprecedented. The regimes headed by Muslim Heads of State including those of Shagari, Buhari, Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalam were also dangerously lopsided to favour Muslims. Let us show for example, the Federal Cabinet of Gen Ibrahim Babangida in December 1989.

(Source: The Whole Truth, 1990: pp 1,7).

Out of 29 positions Christians occupied only six! The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) protested this imbalance and called President Babangida’s attention to it but he simply dismissed it by saying that appointments were made on merit! It is important to say that Christians did not threaten crusade against the Babangida regime nor did they boycott the 1991 census or indeed the “AIDS infested” Political Bureau Babangida constituted. So if a Military Head of State with absolute powers like Gen Babangida, who had no legal obligation or constraints to spread his appointments to reflect geo-political, tribal, professional and other social variables and yet he was so insensitive to appoint only six Christians in a Cabinet of 29, how can any one begrudge a Civilian President, elected by the people, under girt by a Constitution, to disregard these variables and consider only religion in his appointments? This is the time to really talk about merit in appointments. And to a large extent, appointments in this administration have been strictly on merit, within the context of our Federal structure. To temper with this pattern of appointments is to call to question the Federal structure as obtains. Under successive Military regimes this structure has been so bastardized that many segments of the country want the structure redefined. The Fulani hegemony is adept at using religion to extend their sphere of domination. The so-called Danfodio jihad of 1804 was nothing more than the Fulani revolution against the traditional and/or indigenous Hausa kingship. The Shehu of Borno resisted this revolt successfully and is about the only traditional institution today in the far North that is not under Fulani domination. Nigerians are not asleep anymore! Gari ya waye!(The dawn is here!).

Army and Security Personnel Composition

They also claim that having purged the military of Northern Muslim officers President Obasanjo has now left the military and indeed the entire security services in the hands of Christians. We are surprised that anyone in Nigeria would fault what the President did by retiring all officers who had political postings. This action was a deft move by the President that was lauded far and near because without doing so every one knows that the current democratic experiment would have long been scuttled. To date, this action is one of the wisest political decisions ever made by this administration, which even the President’s political enemies have acknowledged is a good move. It must be said that the retiremen t was without prejudice to tribe, place of origin or religion. Officers from all parts of Nigeria that fell into this category were affected. It is embarrassing not only to the President but all Nigerians that some people will try to impute religions motives to the purge. If the majority of those affected were northern Muslims we think it is evidence of the lopsided way in which past Military leaders patronized their northern Muslim brothers to the chagrin of others from the rest of Nigeria.

We recall that such subterranean religions considerations have been done in the past to favour Muslims, like when in 1977 the then Lt Gen Olusegun Obasanjo went backwards to pick Lt Col. Shehu Yar’Adua and promoted him overnight to Brigadier General and made him Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters over the likes of Lt Gen TY Danjuma. And when in 1998 Maj Gen Abdulsalam Abubakar was promoted to General and made Head of State when his seniors like Lt Gen JT Useni, the de facto  second-in-command to  Gen Sani Abacha then, were around. No one cried foul then. Nor did Christians threaten war when Maj Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim, appointed Brig. Gen. Tunde Idiagbon, also a Muslim, to be his second-in-command or deputy in 1984.

May be because all these were done and Christian tolerated them, the likes of Datti Ahmed, Sani Yerima, Mustapha Jokolo, Muslim apologist Mohammed Haruna and the Sultan of Sokoto have seen it as an inalienable right for Muslims to predominate in our Military and Security Services Leadership structure. We must maintain that it will be dangerous for the President or the Military High Command to appoint officers to lead their senior colleagues just because they are Muslims. Nigerians have not been blind to some of the sharp practices successive military regimes with Muslim Heads of State have done during recruitments, appointments, and promotion exercises in attempts to Islamize the military. The presidency of Chief Obasanjo has afforded the opportunity for due process in all ramifications of appointments and award of contracts, which is rubbing these people the wrong way. Let us allow things be done properly for the good of the nation.

In order to escape the enormous pressure Muslims have exerted on the President he has taken some very unpopular measures that are ruffling feathers among Christians right now. Let us see some few of them. And it will be seen at the end of it all that Christian and not Muslims are the ones being marginalized by this administration!

Denial of NTA Zonal Network Centre to North Central/Middle Belt Region

There are six NTA Zonal Network Centres apart from Lagos and Abuja, across the federation with one in each geo-political zone, except North West and North Central Zones, where the former has two and the later has none! This writer has written a letter to the NTA Director General, Dr. Tonnie Iredia, calling his attention to this anomaly. (see letter to NTA Director General on this website published recently). It is instructive to know that n o acknowledgement of the receipt of the letter has been given, let alone addressing the issues raised in the letter. How could a Christian President, with a Christian Minister of Information and a Christian NTA Director General deny the Middle Belt an NTA Network Centre with all that this portends? Could it be because none of the afore listed is from this geo-political zone?

Demolition of Churches in FCT and Elsewhere   

Are Christians and indeed all Nigerians aware that in Abuja and its environs alone, right under the nose of President Obasanjo that not less than 700 churches have been demolished since 1999? And we are reliably informed that many more churches have been earmarked for demolition in the foreseeable future. All this has been done under the pretext of following the Abuja master plan. And this number does not include the ones that have been demolished in Sharia controlled states, like Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano and Niger. The President cannot claim ignorance of this. As Christian Governors of the likes of Governor Kalu of Abia State are busy building mosques with public funds to appease Muslims, his counterparts in the North are busy mapping out which churches to pull down or convert them to mosques!

Unprecedented Censorship of Christian Broadcasting in Nigeria

Never in the history of Nigeria have Christians experienced the censorship being felt during this administration. Whereas no Christian programmes are allowed at all in some Sharia States, in the Christian dominated states and in the Federal government owned broadcast media houses only such Christian programmes that have no claims of miracles are permitted to be aired. To claim that Jesus healed you of cancer or any other sickness or disease, or that he used you to heal someone else, despite the evidence on ground is now considered by government to be suspicious and must not be aired within Nigerian air space! Apart from the weakening division this censorship brought to the Christian community (division between those for and against miracles), this is a calculated move from the pit of hell to emasculate effective Christian witness in Nigeria. Just for the argument, what is a miracle and what is not a miracle in Christianity? President Obasanjo claims that be got converted in prison, if that is true, is that not a miracle? Successive Muslim presidents who lived in Aso Villa had a mosque to pray there, their Christian deputies had to go elsewhere to worship their God. But upon Obasanjo’s arrival there he built a Chapel, with lots of tongues wagging. Is this not a miracle? There’s not a single person who claims to perform miracles. It is God who does. And if God has healed someone of a sickness and government says that cannot be testified in Nigeria’s airwaves, then let it be known that Obasanjo is not fighting against Pentecostal preachers as is supposed but against the God who alone can and does perform miracles.

Is Nigeria back in OIC?

It was Gen Ibrahim Babangida who stealthily attempted to smuggle Nigeria into the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) in January 1986 when he sent a secret delegation to register Nigeria as the 46^th member of the body without the knowledge of even his second-in-command. Some western press reported it. And when Nigerians began to ask government officials if the news were true, the secretary General of OIC, Sharifuddin Pirzada, confirmed it by sending congratulations to Nigeria on her successful admission as the 46^th member. What followed made Babangida realize that he could not take Nigerians for a ride. Except for some few Muslim apologists who tried to justify what Babangida did the whole Nigerian people stamped their feet against it. Babangida had no choice but to withdraw Nigeria from OIC.

Since then no president or head of state has revisited the OIC imbroglio, that is, until when Chief Obasanjo came! During much of his first term in office he kept Nigerians wondering what the attitude of his government was to OIC. Unknown to Christian and the stakeholders President Obasanjo had secretly re-registered Nigeria in OIC. Mallam Kabiru Yusuf of Weekly Trust, writing on “Nigeria in OIC” has revealed, “Ironically, Nigeria has become more active in the OIC since this government, led by a born-again Christian, came to power. May be this is because President Obasanjo understands and is pre-occupied with international relations more than most Nigerian leaders. Also he has greater freedom for action, for who can suspect him of any attempt to islamicise Nigeria!” It is not that Obasanjo knows more international relations or has more freedom than the others; it is just that he thinks he can take Nigerians for a ride.

The first signs of concession the President made in signing Nigeria away to Islamicists was when he looked away as Governor Sani Yerima of Zamfara introduced full scale Sharia in his state. Even the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mohammed Bello, said that so doing was a breach of the constitution. Many well-meaning Nigerians expected Obasanjo to stamp his feet and say no to Governor Sani Yerima. But when he put his head in the sand and pretended not to see that was coming, that emboldened the other Governors in the North to follow suit. Sharia related riots have claimed up to 200,000 lives in the North by conservative estimates and immeasurable quantities of properties gutted or looted.

The in February 2001 Obasanjo threw caution to the air and attended the D8 summit in Cairo, Egypt. When Nigerians started asking why, he asked his then Minister of External Affairs, Alhaji Sule Lamido to insult the intelligence of Nigerians by claiming that the D8 was not an Islamic organisation. But all arguments about whether or not Nigeria is in the OIC have been put paid with the recent registration of Nigeria as a member and shareholder of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), an affiliate of the OIC. Indeed the two conditions for becoming a member of the IDB according to the charter establishing IDB are: “The prospective member country shall be a member of the OIC, and the member should pay its contribution to the capital of the Bank and be willing to accept such terms and conditions as the Board of Governors may decide”. As things stand today it will be even childish for anyone to suggest that Nigeria is not a full fledged member of OIC. So Obasanjo has done for Muslims what the combination of Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalami could not do.

Selective Punishments for Christian Minority Communities

No one has forgotten how President Obasanjo sent soldiers to wipe out the inhabitants of Odi in Bayelsa and Zaki Biam in Benue States because these communities were trying to defend themselves from external aggression. May be in the process a few law enforcements were killed. In the case of Zaki Biam it was a case of mistaken identities. It has become the in-thing now for people fighting Christian communities to wear army uniforms, sometimes even with army weapons! So the people thought it was one of such tricks. But the residents were nearly annihilated by the Federal might. However, worse things have happened in places like Kano, Kaduna and Wase where hundreds of law enforcement officers have been murdered in cold blood with impunity. One of the glaring cases of selective punishment was when a state of emergency was declared on the Plateau and the State Governor suspended, when worse things had happened in Kaduna and Kano states. In the case of Kano we gathered reliably that the State Governor, Alhaji Shekarau, personally supervised the killing of innocent citizens, and the looting of their property. Yet the Pres ident only sent him a warning letter! It will remain a mystery how the Federal Government sold Benue Cement Company, the only economically viable company in the whole Middle-Belt region to Dangote (or is it Atiku?) amidst complaints from the indigenes of the state. Can the Federal Government sell Sokoto Cement or Ashaka Companies to a Christian, particularly of Middle Belt origin?

Selective Imprisonment of Officers of Middle Belt Origin

When President Obasanjo assumed power in 1999 he arrested soldiers mainly from Middle Belt origin, the prominent among whom is Gen Ishaya Bamaiyi, former Chief of Army Staff under Abacha. These people are supposed to have committed various offences during the dark days of the Abacha regime. All the offences are not unrelated to the way Abacha used them to try to perpetuate himself in office. Today not one person of the Abacha family for whom the offences were committed is held in detention. One of the sons who was initially held with them has long been released due to pressure, not to say threats, from Kano. And all these people have been wallowing in prison. All their efforts to get justice have been frustrated.

So who is marginalized?

It becomes clear therefore from the foregoing that if any one were to complain of marginalization it would have to be Christians, especially those in minority communities of the Middle Belt region. We hope therefore that Obasanjo will remember that God brought him to power at this season for a reason. Has be fulfilled the purpose of God? Or does he think he is here to mortgage Nigeria is Islamicists? He should beware! For he has a date to keep with posterity.

Rev Dr Danjuma Byang