The recent removal of Arabic script from some of our currency notes has
provoked angry, vehement protestations here in Nigeria's Islamic North.
The protests have been largely pretentious as several of the Arabic
Naira protagonists unconvincingly try to dissociate the issue from
Islam. In the minds of most Nigerians - Muslim &
Christians alike - the Arabic script is virtually synonymous with Islam,
hence any meaningful discourse of this issue must acknowledge the
pertinence of Islam to the Arabic Naira debate.
As far as most northern Muslims are concerned, the de-Arabization of our
national currency is just part of the Christian conspiracy to
de-Islamize our polity. If they could get their hands on Professor
Charles Soludo; the CBN governor, would probably end up like his late
his kinsman, Gideon A kaluka who was beheaded for allegedly wiping his
ass with the Quran. Wetin concern Gideon Akaluka with Arabic Naira?
Gideon Akaluka's unfortunate demise over a decade ago underscores the
slavish veneration of the Arabic script by our northern Muslim
compatriots that is the crux of this Arabic Naira brouhaha. Given the
fact that Muslims guard their Arabic Quran very jealously - non-Muslims
are unclean and can't touch it - it is unlikely that poor Gideon could
have gotten one, let alone wipe his smelly ass with it. At worst some
Almajiri or Yandaba saw him with a paper having
Ajami (Arabic script), which for them is synonymous with the Quran.
Even then, did they accompany him to the toilet to see the paper he
wiped his ass with? Or perhaps after defecating and cleaning his
yansh, Gideon brazenly brandished the incriminating faeces soiled "Quran".
Similarly Professor Soludo has perpetrated the abominable crime of
removing "Quran" from our Naira, hence our Muslim compatriots are so
upset.
For those of us living
in Nigeria's Islamic north, this isn't as farfetched as it might sound.
There is also the case of a printer who had to flee for his life from
Kano because he was caught burning some waste paper while tidying his
printing shop. You guessed it...some of the waste paper had Ajami.
Ajami is also believed to have supernatural powers, hence here
in the North it is common practice to write Quranic Arabic script on a
slate, wash off the Arabic writing and drink it ostensibly to benefit
from its supposed miraculous powers. Such is the idolatrous infatuation
with not just Arabic script but Arab culture up here in the Islamic
North - Islam being a tool of
Arab cultural
imperialism.
A small digression here to reiterate this de-Africanizing, Arab cultural
imperialism here in Nigeria's Islamic core North that motivates the
Arabic Naira protagonists - At child-naming ceremonies, Hausas never
give their children Hausa names - only Arab ones - even though Islam
does not require it. At least many of our southern compatriots still
retain this important aspect of African culture and identity - African
names.
Thus, despite all
politically correct pretences otherwise, it is this Islam-induced
deification of Arab culture and written script in northern Nigeria that
informs the pretentious sophistry, spurious rationalisations and futile,
intellectual somersaults by the northern protagonists of Arabic Naira.
Their feigned concern for the northern masses who are supposedly only
literate in Ajami, is
self-indicting and incriminating.
If northern
establishment is so concerned about the plight the northern masses, why
are these Talakawa illiterate in the Latin alphabet, which is
the official written script at all levels of education throughout
Nigeria, including the Govt Arabic Colleges in the North where both
Arabic and Latin alphabets are used ? Bearing in mind that the Muslim
northern oligarchy has dominated our polity for most of the nearly 5
decades of independent Nigeria, and purportedly invested billions of
Naira on education.
Only the informal
Islamiyya schools run by semi-literate, poorly educated Mallams
teach exclusively in Arabic script. Are these supposedly concerned
northern elites telling us that 47 years after independence with
billions of Naira invested in Education budget, most northern Nigerians
still obtain their education solely from semi-literate, roadside Mallams
? Shouldn't these culturally disoriented, Arab wannabes be more
concerned with proper education and intellectual emancipation of our
people rather than this poorly disguised, misguided adulation of Arab
culture ?
Other Arabic
Naira propagandists admit to a religious agenda, contending that the
Latin alphabet is Christian (or Western) and should be balanced by
Arabic script for Muslims since Nigeria is multi-religious - sorry
bi-religious; we traditionalists (true Africans) don't count. Only the
two bogus alien dogmas (Christianity & Islam) that polarise our nation
and are tearing us apart, matter. As if this isn't bad enough, they
teach us to glorify alien races (Arabs & Jews), hence our cultural
disorientation that has resulted in this dim-witted squabble over Arabic
Naira.
Far from being "Christian writing", the secular Latin alphabet - like
several other forms of writing - has it origins in "pagan" African
hieroglyphics several millennia ago. Today it is the most widely used
form of writing, and is gradually becoming universal, as it is embraced
by even nations that have their own indigenous forms of writing.
Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Greeks and even the Arabs - whom our
Northern Muslim compatriots love to ape - all teach and use the Latin
Alphabet in addition to their own forms of writing.
Outside Arabia, the Arabic script has been and is mainly for propagating
Islam, Nigeria being no exception. Most non-Arab Muslim peoples
(including northern Nigeria) that hitherto used Arabic alphabet as their
standard form of writing, have now confined its use to Islamic
indoctrination and gradually adopted the easier and more universal Latin
alphabet for other purposes. Herein lies the gist of CBN's explanation
that Ajami is no longer the major medium of literacy in
northern Nigeria, having been reduced to an instrument of Islamic
brainwashing. Therefore this Islamic writing has no place on our secular
national currency.
At this juncture it is pertinent to mention Nsibidi, the
ancient indigenous writing of the Efiks, Ibibios & Igbos in South
Eastern Nigeria, which we could develop as a national written script and
inscribe on our currency, rather than this inane bickering about
shamelessly aping another alien culture.
The Nsibidi script, the ivory mask of the 16th century Benin
warrior Queen Idia and the Dagin Arewa - a traditional motif
that is extensively used in the North and West, at least as evidenced by
its embroidery on Yoruba Agbadas - are just some of the
indigenous Nigerian icons that should be on our currency, not Arabic.
Even the local word for Arabic script, Ajami translates as
"foreign", yet some of the misguided Arabic wannabes - who want to foist
on us their shameful, idolatrous deification of an alien culture -
erroneously proclaim it is "our culture".
The Arabic Naira agitators can however take solace in the fact that come
May 29 2007, a northern Muslim is likely to emerge as President who may
then re-Arabize our currency notes. Thus may begin an interminable,
alternating 8-year cycle of de-Arabizing and re-Arabizing our Naira.
Nafata Bamaguje
Gargajiya quarters
|