'Religion, Land and Population'
By
Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u
mjyushau@yahoo.com
The title of this piece is not mine. It is
the product of a discussion in
Boston,
United States
when by coincidence I met a former Nigerian military General on March 11,
2012 as I visited my friends in the city. As usual with every meeting of
Nigerians, nothing attracts attention more than the affairs of our
country. While we were having this conversation this military General
remained quite, however after about two hours he finally intervened in our
discussion. He said as the youths you have to think about the future of
Nigeria,
and for those of you from the north three things stand out and he
mentioned "religion, land and population".
According to him in the north we have the
largest population in
Nigeria, we have the
most fertile land that can almost feed
Africa, yet we still live in poverty, and
our population is becoming a problem to us because we refuse to turn it
into an asset for economic development. Religion is no longer taught by
the scholars who have a versatile knowledge; rather to both Muslims and
Christians becoming an Imam and a Pastor is so easy that people can just
develop an army of followers even if they don't have sufficient knowledge
to guide the people. This actually reminded me of a discussion I heard
recently with one of the leading Islamic Scholars in Nigeria who said that
in Ramadan, with just little understanding of the Arabic language, without
a deep understanding of the expertise needed to provide exegesis of the
Qur'an, people just start giving Tafseer (interpretation of the Qur'an) in
various Mosques. Similarly a teacher of mine once expressed concern on how
some of his former students abandoned their studies and decided to become
Pastors. I hope in the nearest future this General will find time to write
in detail what he meant by his thesis of 'religion, land and population'
as I believe he is more than intellectually equipped to do so.
However this piece is a minor contribution
on what in my opinion should constitute why we should think critically on
how to utilize religion which defines our identity, land which can sustain
the economy and population which should turn the two around. A review of
the economic development of China in the last thirty years suggests that
the vision of its leaders to utilize their population and land to boost
agriculture, led to industrialization and urbanization, and today China is
the second largest economy in the world, and in the nearest future it will
overtake the United States as the strongest economy in the world to be
followed by India, another country where population has become an asset
rather than a burden, despite the challenges it is facing. You only need
to look at the fields of medicine and information technology to know how
India utilized its
population to become a source of strength, not for
India alone, but the
entire world.
How did the population of northern
Nigeria become a
burden, religion mismanaged, and land under utilized? Possibly the answers
could be found in five key issues; colonial legacy, the curse of oil, lack
of respect for the dignity of labour, exploitation of religion and the
selfishness of northern elites.
Since the conquest of northern
Nigeria by Frederick
Lugard and the colonial policies that followed in the region, northern
Nigeria has not
recovered. Muslims in particular were the heavy casualties of this
conquest as expertise in religion and knowledge of other fields of
knowledge studied in Arabic or ajami (writing in local language using
Arabic letters) was no longer considered a skill that provides employment.
The ajami script was substituted with roman script thereby rendering the
largest segment of the population illiterate as the knowledge they
acquired in Arabic doesn't provide employment except for few individuals
whose services are required to serve as judges, school teachers etc. this
was further complicated by the perception of the people in the region that
Western education is meant for proselytisation rather than economic
development. The effect of this is still being felt.
While the effect of this was still biting,
the discovery of oil did not help the population of northern
Nigeria as the land
used for agricultural production, which was sustaining the region and
contributing to the federal government was abandoned. The same population
that has been robbed of its intellectual capacity has now lost its
economic strength because its population decided to engage in rural-urban
migration in search of easy money. Neglecting agriculture is not exclusive
to northern
Nigeria; it’s the
problem of the entire country. The example of
United Arab Emirates
will be relevant here. When oil was discovered the leaders of the country
came together and assembled their intellectuals to advise them on what to
do with it. They were advised that they have two potentials, the Sun and
the Sea; what that meant is they have two great assets that can be used
for trade and tourism, and the oil money was used to develop these two
sectors. Today UAE can survive without oil. Think of northern
Nigeria, how can the
population of the region be transformed into what
India and
China have done with
their people, and for the UAE parable what can the region do with the Sun
and in place of the Sea its abundant land? Perhaps when there is 100%
resource control, and I am not joking, I heard a deputy governor from the
Niger-Delta talking about it at a business summit in
London.
Lack of respect for the dignity of labour is
a major issue that every reasonable person in northern
Nigeria should be
concerned about. People are happy to sit for ages under the shade of a
tree gossiping for hours and dreaming to become millionaires, yet they are
happy to laugh at a neighbour who used his energy in manual labour to earn
a living. A university graduate is happy to sleep at home waiting for the
job that suits his ego while his friend from the South has saved part of
his NYSC allowance and has already started transporting food items
produced in the same north to his home town without waiting for anybody to
employ him.
Exploitation of religion has become the
norm, religious leaders are happy to manipulate their followers to earn
government favour or in extreme circumstances even extort the congregation
to satisfy their personal needs. So why should the average person not
acquire the basic literacy to become an Imam or a Pastor? And finally, our
leaders have to remember that the children of the poor are also human
beings who deserve a decent life. If they fail to uplift their condition
somebody will recruit them to make life unbearable for everyone.
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