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In Defence of Reverend Father Kukah By Sanusi Lamido Sanusi LAGOS, MARCH 8, 2005
I am deeply concerned by two recent articles written by my friends and brothers, Garba Deen Muhammad and Kabiru Yusuf in the Trust newspapers, criticizing Reverend father Mathew Hasan Kukah for his recent criticism of those who questioned his appointment as secretary to the National Political Reform Conference (NPRC) in view of his religious affiliation. Deen’s paper was entitled “The Manipulation of Religion” and appeared on the back page of the Weekly Trust on Saturday, March 5, 2005, and Kabiru’s piece, entitled “The Kukah I didn’t know” appeared almost immediately thereafter on the back page of the Daily Trust of Monday, March 7, 2005. An urgent Muslim intervention is required before the debate becomes one between Muslims and Christians.
Both Kabiru and Deen are gentlemen for whose views I hold the greatest respect. More important, they are highly respected journalists whose views are influential particularly among those who have become the principal constituency of the Trust stable, Muslim northerners. Neither of them is, by any definition, an ethnic bigot or religious propagandist. However, the two articles above risk falling into the trap of serving reactionary northern elitist interests, bent on appropriating religion as an obstacle in the way of any meaningful progress towards constituting a true national consciousness. Moreover, each of the two articles under discussion, beneath the veneer of common sense, contains logical leaps, unfair deductions and dangerous conclusions, none of which serves the best interests of the nation, or even any particular constituency however defined.
Let me begin by admitting that I do not know father Kukah as well as Kabiru does, and certainly never had the opportunity to visit with him in his rooms at the catholic secretariat or elsewhere. I have also never attended a church service at which he officiated so I do not even know if he is a competent priest and theologian. I have met him on a few occasions and have had brief discussions with him, but what I know of him comes from my reading of his articles, presentations, and one book based on his Ph D thesis at SOAS. In other words, I know Mathew Kukah not as a Christian, or a priest, or a theologian (although he is all of those), but as a Nigerian intellectual who writes on matters of national importance and who has shown a deep and sincere commitment to addressing the problems of developing nations.
I do not necessarily agree with everything Kukah writes or says. I also do not believe that Kukah, or any social scientist, can be completely neutral or objective in his interventions in social discourse. The man is an intellectual engaged in knowledge production in a specific social and historical context in which he is implicated. That implication comes with a consciousness of a real or imagined adversity suffered by northern Christians at the hands of northern Muslims in Nigerian political history, and a commitment to address that adversity and alleviate it. I may not agree with him on his perceptions of the nature and true extent of this supposed adversity, but I do not necessarily link his views as an intellectual to his calling as a priest or his choice of the Christian religion. I have been, to give a personal example, perhaps more critical of the northern Nigerian Muslim elite than Father Kukah, even though I am Muslim (although admittedly, a leading Wahhabi scholar in Kano, Ja’far Adam, literally questioned my Islamic credentials in a radio program during the last Ramadhan). I agree with most of what northern Christians have to say about the northern Muslim elite. I only differ with them on two fundamental points. First I believe that not only northern Christians, but-and perhaps more so-, the northern Muslim poor, have been visited with adversity by the northern elite. Second, many of the Christian elite at the forefront of the attack on Muslims are no better than those they criticize. But I digress.
The point I make is that Father Kukah is a northern Nigerian Christian priest, but he is also an intellectual who is appointed to a position on personal merit. As a liberation theologian, he finds in his religion resources to oppose instances of injustice and, unlike many “men of God” on both sides of the religious divide in the north, restricted his public utterances to social and political issues, as opposed to attacking other faiths. To this extent, Kukah is perfectly within his rights to consider as irresponsible the attempt to ignore completely his role as an intellectual and focus on his private choice of religion and profession. He is also perfectly within his right to point out that there are people for whom religion is a business and they will always find something to say in these matters. I remember some months ago a discussion with a Christian friend on the decision by President Obasanjo, a Christian, to suspend Joshua Dariye and declare a state of emergency in Plateau state during the crisis that engulfed that state. I remarked that, had Obasanjo taken that step in a Muslim state like Kano or Zamfara, all hell would have broken loose as Muslims, who were commending him over his action in Plateau, would have come out with conspiracy theories to show how this was all a grand design to wage war on “Islam” or “Muslims” or the “Shari’ah”. What I was not prepared for was the response I received. My friend said Obasanjo was a “stooge” of the Muslims and that he was “acting out a script” written by the Caliphate in Sokoto. OBJ, this friend continued, was not really a good Christian and he was victimizing a Christian to please his “Muslim paymasters.” This is the level to which Nigerians, Christians and Muslims alike, have allowed themselves to be dragged, a level at which all issues disappear and everything is seen through the prism of the constant process of construction of identities and manufacture of difference. The concern I have is that this process, long associated with scholars steeped in mediaeval political literature, has sucked in progressive intellectuals who should know better. Now what are the issues, and where did Kabiru and Deen go wrong, in my view?
First, an issue that should be central to any argument of this nature was not addressed, not even tangentially, by either writer. What are the functions of the chairman and secretary of this so-called NPRC and in what way can they determine the outcome of the dialogue and impose their view on the participants and the rest of the nation? If the conference is hijacked by vested interests, are the Muslim participants under any compulsion to hold their peace, to passively acquiesce to the subversion of the interest or their constituency? In any event, for a conference whose legality is doubtful and which is yet to receive the backing of the federal legislature, not to talk of the general skepticism with which it is viewed by most Nigerians, what is the significance of its conclusions and in which way can they undermine Nigerian Muslims? Finally, in the event that Kukah may have an influence on the outcome of the conference, who says he will exert that influence in the name of his religion? Why not in the interest of the North, or the country, or a radical political ideology? And if religion is what Kukah seeks to promote, is he going there as a representative of Christianity as a whole or of Catholicism? What is the basis, from his work, his writing and his actions, for drawing these conclusions? They were reached through a series of logical leaps with little effort at substantiation.
Second, underlying the criticism of Kukah is a presumption that there is something legitimate about the concerns expressed in some quarters on the lop-sidedness of the conference. This in turn assumes that there is something like a “Christian” or “Muslim” position in a national conference about to be hijacked by bigots and converted into a confrontation between two religions. Are the Muslims at this conference representing an “Islamic” position? Who defines it and on whose authority? How do we know that those who are at the conference are not there to serve an agenda driven by the interests of their sponsors and totally unrelated to the people of this country, as a whole, or their ethnic and religious “constituencies” in particular?
The myth that there is anyone speaking for popular Muslims or Christians at a conference is, at least philosophically speaking, highly problematic. The discourse of religion is never monotonous. There are so many conflicting issues within a single religion, issues growing out of say, ethnic and class interests, questions of gender and the limits of personal liberty, the relationship between religion and state etc. that the only way to approach this discourse is by displaying a certain simultaneous, contrapuntal sensibility to the various (sometimes harmonious, often discordant) notes of its polyphony. To pretend that a group of Muslims-irrespective of who, or how the group came into constitution- speaks with a single voice for an undefined Muslim interest under threat from an equally undefined non-Muslim one, is to fall into the trap of complicity with the opportunistic purveyors of superficial panaceas for deep-seated socio-economic and political maladies. The duty of the intellectual is to warn and advise against such characters, not defend and support them. This is what makes the position taken by my two friends a source of concern.
I must stress at this point, that both Kabiru and Deen engaged Kukah with the utmost respect, and criticized him without the use of aggressive vocabulary. However, I must take up issue with a few specific arguments, to underscore the main thrust of this intervention. Take for example, Garba Deen’s surprise at Kukah’s expression of “rather strong opinions on matters over which he has little or no knowledge.” The matter in question is the comment made by Kukah that “if you go to Saudi Arabia they will mess you up as a Muslim”. Garba Deen’s only evidence that Kukah is ignorant of events in Saudi Arabia is that if “Kukah had ever been to Saudi Arabia, it couldn’t have been as a Muslim.” This is what philosophers call a “genealogical fallacy”, the refutation of an argument not based on its truth but on who its advocate is. Kukah, because he is a Christian (and, one may add, a man in a cassock!) simply cannot know about what happens in Saudi Arabia! Moreover, if he makes a comment as to what happens there he is speaking out of ignorance. I am a Muslim, and I bear witness that Kukah is correct that many Muslims do receive humiliating treatment at the hands of Saudi Authorities, and that for many non-Arab and non-white Muslims, the only reason they will not stop going to Saudi Arabia is because of the Kaaba Mecca and the Prophet’s mosque and tomb in Madinah. Many people have had personal experiences of humiliation in so-called Muslim countries, with Saudi Arabia being a leading example, by virtue of the colour of their skin or their nationality. Most sincere Muslims who have traveled or lived in Saudi Arabia will openly acknowledge it, so it is an open secret even to those who have never been there. Deen does not deny this, but he argues, in effect, that Kukah cannot know it since he is Christian and thus cannot claim knowledge of how Muslims are treated there!
Similar examples of unfair arguments can be drawn from Kabiru’s piece. Kabiru discusses “complaints” to the effect that there is “an unwritten rule of our coexistence (not) to appoint two Christians (one of them a reverend father to boot) as chairman and secretary of the conference”, and then proceeds with arguments showing he finds this position reasonable. When did this unwritten rule ever exist, one wonders? This country has had its highest offices held by Christians and by Muslims in the past. Garba Deen has pointed out that General Gowon and his second-in-command, Rear Admiral Wey, were two Christians at the helm of affairs for nine years. Generals Buhari and Idiagbon were both Muslims and ruled Nigeria for about two years. In 1993, the Social Democratic Party sponsored two Muslims, Chief Abiola and Ambassador Kingibe for the presidency and Nigerians voted for them. So why are Muslims crying because of some silly committee without executive powers and whose report cannot be binding on anyone? Kukah is absolutely correct. It is irresponsible.
A second instance is the discussion of Kukah’s views on PRONACO. At the end of his discussion, Kabiru says “it is certain that if Datti Ahmed, AbdulKarim Dayyabu, AbdulKadir Balarabe Musa and other northern rejecters of the conference had decided to hold a parallel meeting in Kaduna and Kano, neither the government nor probably Kukah would have been so sanguine about it.” In making this averment, Kabiru does not adduce a single piece of evidence in the form of an instance in which Kukah took a position against such a group. Maybe he is aware from his intimate knowledge of the man and his views but he did not give his readers that information. There are more examples but these suffice.
Let me conclude. Reverend father Kukah is perfectly competent to defend himself against criticism and does not need any one to help him. Also, I have no doubt in my mind that many Muslims, particularly northerners, agree fully with Kabiru and Deen and their criticism of Kukah. However, it is important to say that many Muslim Northerners, the present writer included, do not care about the religious identity of competent Nigerians appointed to any office whatsoever, so long as they consider their constituency to be the whole nation in the conduct of their official functions. We owe it to ourselves, and to this country, to announce our faith in one Nigeria, a nation in which we can be Muslims without being enemies to fellow nationals. We have had decades of Muslim leadership that brought no benefit to Muslims and the false promises and fears that are raised to deceive Nigerian need to be exposed. For me, Father Kukah as a person is neither here nor there, but the principle counts, and the principle must be defended. That principle is one that stresses the plurality and multi-vocality of the discourse in the “Muslim North”, and resists the attempt to manufacture sectional/religious identities that undermine the unity of the nation. This view is one that, I am sure, I share with Kabiru and Garba Deen, but I believe that, in fighting the “northern Muslim corner” and criticizing Father Kukah, they risk giving credibility to the crass opportunism of the northern elite.
In the final analysis, and for the avoidance of doubt, I do not believe this conference has any meaning or use, and I predict that it will be a political jamboree at which alliances are formed to promote some selfish political agendas. Let us focus on what they are saying and doing, and forget their personal choices in matters of faith. In any event, it promises to provide the nation with some hilarious entertainment.
SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI LAGOS, MARCH 8, 2005
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