FEATURE ARTICLE

Femi Awoniyi
fawoniyi@web.de
Speyer, Germany

Sharia in the House of Oduduwa

n May 1, some Nigerian newspapers reported that one Ishaq Kunle Sanni, the leader of an organization called National Council of Muslim Youths (NACOMYO), had launched the "Oyo State Independent Sharia panel", at a press conference in Ibadan the previous day.

Mr. Sanni said he and his organization took the decision because of the refusal of the Oyo State government to introduce the Islamic legal system in the state. "The state government has continued to deny us of our rights to practise our religion ........... informed this decision," the Vanguard of May 1 reported Sanni, a well-known trouble-maker, as saying.

The legal code of Sanni and his NACOMYO Muslims would affect civil matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, succession, contract and land disputes.

"A panel of Islamic scholars" would sit on these cases, Sanni explained, assuring that only Muslims who voluntarily submit themselves to the jurisdiction of the court would be tried before it. He however added that Muslims who refuse to abide by the verdict of the panel "may be ostracized by the Muslim Ummah; their children may not be given names of (sic) Mallams, their marriages may not be contracted by the Mallams and they may not be prayed for in their graves by the Mallams." "There could be other extra-legal punishments as may be determined by the Imam in council of Oyo state," the notorious Muslim charlatan warned.

Yet the state on which Sharia is being unilaterally imposed has enough prominent Muslims to speak for Islam. Its governor, Alhaji Lamidi Adesina, and the speaker of its House of Assembly, Alhaji Asimiyu Alarape, are Muslims. Until the retirement of Justice Moshood Adio, late last year, the state also had a Muslim chief judge. Even the leader of workers in the state (Oyo State NLC chairman), Comrade Ibrahim Bolomope, is also a Muslim.

All these show that Sanni and his organization lack the status to speak for the generality of Oyo Muslims. Those behind the Ibadan event know too well that there is no basis for Sharia in Yorubaland, but their objective is to cause trouble in the region, polarize it and thereby weaken Yoruba nationalism. The Fulani elite would like to weaken Yoruba nationalism in order to defeat the popular clamour for fundamental changes in our polity which will bring to an end their undue privilege in our land.

The latest incursion of Fulani political Islam into Yorubaland, which is an indictment on the quality of Yoruba political leadership, shows that those who sponsored the murder of Chief Bola Ige had correctly speculated on our capacity to understand the import of their evil action and react to it.

The despicable Ibadan event, which represents an institutional intrusion of the state in a most damning manner, should not come as a surprise.

On January 17, the National President of the so-called Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, Dr. Ibrahim Datti Ahmad, announced in Minna, Niger State, that he had been invited by Muslims in Kwara and Oyo States to bring Sharia to them. For days and weeks after, one had expected Yoruba politicians to respond, but no, there were no words of caution directed at the Fulani rabble-rouser.

Last November, NACOMYO staged a public protest, obviously sponsored by Ahmad, in support of Osama bin Laden in Ibadan. And seeing that the authorities did not take them seriously they upped the ante. Two weeks later, on November 29, a group of Muslim thugs carried out an anti-Christian riot in Oshogbo which led to massive destruction of property and during which Sunday Aransi, a 24-year-old young man, was killed.

After the ritual expression of outrage and the usual attribution of the evil to "enemies of Yorubas", "enemies of democracy", "retired military officers", etc. nothing concrete was done by Yoruba politicians to prevent a reoccurrence and no measures were adopted to make it difficult for those determined to polarize Yorubaland along religious lines from gaining a foothold in the region.

And although a meeting of the Alliance for Democracy governors took place in Ibadan on April 30, the day the NACOMYO Sharia was unilaterally declared there, the dangerous novelty in law-making didn't merit the attention of these governors who seemed to be much more concerned with their re-election strategies. No official statement has been issued by the Oyo State government on the matter as of writing this article on May 9, 2002.

The role of Datti Ahmad

That Datti Ahmad, who is the ideologue-in-chief of the Fulani Sharia project, could make a public appearance in Ibadan (according to news reports he was present at the Sharia launching) in an illegal undertaking is outrageous. It may be recalled that Ahmad openly instigated violence against Yorubas in the North last year.

This Day reported in its issue of August 27, 2001, under the caption: "North threatens to retaliate killings of Hausas", as follows:

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"The Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN) has re-affirmed its threat to avenge the killing of some northerners in last year's violent clashes between the Oodua People's Congress (OPC) and sections of the Hausa communities in Lagos, Oyo and Ogun states.
This, according to the president of the council, Dr. Ibrahim Dati (sic) Ahmad, is because neither the Federal Government nor governments of the states concerned have agreed to pay compensation or Diyya for those killed in the incidents, despite numerous appeals.
Ahmad handed down the warning yesterday during the first annual national convention of the SCSN in Kaduna. Present at the Arewa House auditorium, venue of the convention were, among other dignitaries, former Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, Niger State Governor, Alhaji Abdulkadir Kure, the Emir of Suleija, Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim as well as former All Peoples Party (APP) presidential aspirant, Dr. Lema Jibilu."
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On October 14, heeding the voice of Ahmad, mobs of irate Muslim youths, under the guise of protesting against American attack on Afghanistan, went on a murderous rampage, wantonly killing hundreds of Southerners, mainly Yorubas but also many Southerners and Christian Northerners in Kano.

During the unrest many Yoruba Muslims were killed, among whom were a butcher, Alhaji Kamorudeen Olawore from Offa, Kwara State, who was literally cut down in cold blood by his Fulani and Hausa colleagues, while Alfa Ali Dawodu, a Koranic teacher from Epe, Lagos State, was clubbed to death by his Hausa and Fulani neighbours.

After the riot, Ahmad was reported by the press as supporting the senseless killings, blaming President Olusegun Obasanjo for them!

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The Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN) has blamed the Kano riots on the Federal Government's "hasty" support for the United States of America's anti-terrorism effort.
Its president, Dr. Datti Ahmed, told journalists in Kaduna that ... the Federal Government was insensitive to the feelings of the various adherents of different faiths, especially Muslims, in announcing its support for the US attempt to apprehend the chief suspect of the recent terrorist attack on America, Osama bin Laden.
(Vanguard: Kano: Obasanjo goes tough, Sharia council blames FG, October 17, 2001)
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Muslim Yorubas were killed because Obasanjo was insensitive to the feelings of Nigerian Muslims!

That Ahmad, a genocidaire, who in a civilized society would be facing trial for incitement to mass murder, could come to Yorubaland and openly engage in illegal activities capable of causing a breach of the peace is a slap on the face of Yorubas. And it shows how inattentive our leaders are to their job.

Curtailing Fulani power in Nigeria

Fulanis are always causing trouble in Nigeria by sowing seeds of hatred and demagoguery every where in their perpetual politics of divide-and-rule. The proliferation of ethnic and religious violence all over the country (Bauchi, Jos, the Mambilla Plateau, Ibadan, Kaduna, Lagos, Shagamu, Kano, etc.) in the last three years is a result of a grand Fulani conspiracy to cause disorder in our land.

And Fulanis could afford to be instigating Hausas to fight to be made Sarkin Jos in Jos or helping to establish Sharia in Yorubaland simply because they are sitting pretty comfortable in their empire.

Let us focus political debate on Fulani privilege in the North because it is the source of the evil plaguing our land.

The group solidarity in the Muslim North is the pillar on which Fulani privilege rests. The Muslim Northern identity has been so constructed by Fulanis as to be systematically antagonistic to the rest of us; Yorubas (irrespective of their faith), non-'Core Northern' Muslims and Christian Nigerians. This Fulani politics requires that "external" enemies must always be found against which to define the common identity they seek to share with their chosen allies. In this virulent separatist, though not secessionist, cultural nationalism lies the danger of perpetual sectarian crisis in Nigeria.

Through this ingenious identity politics, Fulani leaders convey the impression that race and ethnicity don't matter in their domains because their common religion is greater than any differences.

But race and ethnicity matter between Muslim black Africans and Muslim Tuaregs in Mali and Niger; between Arabs and Berbers in Muslim Algeria and Morocco, and between Pushtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks in Muslim Afghanistan; between light-skinned Arabs and their dark-skinned compatriots in the Muslim Arab society. In fact, in the Arab world, while dark-skinned people are treated like a citizenry apart, those with "Negroid" facial features among them (and there are millions of them) are the underprivileged of an already underclass.

Ethno-national consciousness is the only countervailing cultural force capable of weakening Fulani hold on our Muslim Northern peoples.

It is time for Yorubas to reach out to their Kanuri kin folk and reactivate the First Republic alliance between Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Alhaji Ibrahim Imam.

Let us make the Nupes realize that their Etsu Nupe is a Fulani man.

It is time to promote Hausa nationalism in Nigeria. It is time to make the Hausaman understand that his ancestral homes; Daura, Kano, Katsina, etc. are all ruled by Fulanis. That he should look around him, Tuaregs are not ruling Igbos and Shuwa Arabs are not ruling Beroms. That he should liberate himself and before he fights to be made Sarkin Jos, he should first fight to be made Sarkin Katsina and Sarkin Kano.

Let us make the Hausaman aware of his marginalization by Fulanis, of the fact that every aspect of his life is dominated by Fulanis. Hausaland's prominent emirs (of Daura, Gwandu, Kano, Katsina, etc.) are Fulanis, its famous intellectuals (Bala Usman, Siddique Mohammed, Iya Abubakar, etc.) are Fulanis, its radicals who fight for the Talakawas are Fulanis (Balarabe Musa, Abubakar Rimi, etc.), even its Muslim fundamentalists (Ibraheem Zakzaky, Abubakar Mujahid, etc.) are also Fulanis.

We have never had an Hausa president or vice-president or even an Hausa petroleum minister in our history. Yet the Hausaman paradoxically is perceived as an oppressor in the popular mind in the South. He is not. Hausas are the most oppressed nationalities in the whole of the African continent.

Today there is no modern Hausa popular hero. Igbos have Zik, Yorubas have Awo and now Ige, Uhrobos have Mowoe, the Tivs have J.S. Tarka. If you ask an Hausaman to name his hero, he is likely to mention Ahmadu Bello or Aminu Kano, and both are Fulani men.

We must systematically promote Hausa ethno-fundamentalism which is the only way to defeat Fulani political Islam in Nigeria.

Finally

Al-Islami al-siyasi, political Islam, is anti-secular and it separates people. It is a threat to all us irrespective of our geographical location in Nigeria because of its absolutist-universalist claims. Let us take a look at Sudan, where more than 1.5 million people (according to UN figures) have died since 1983 in a conflict caused by the introduction of Sharia. The overwhelming majority of the victims are black Africans (adherents of African religions, Christianity and Islam) and the perpetrators are Sudanese Arabs, the cousins of our Fulanis. Sudan provides the scare picture of the terrible consequences of using Islam for the purpose of political power, for Sharia in Sudan is the weapon of Arab supremacy just as it is the instrument of Fulani privilege in Northern Nigeria.

The Ibadan unilateral proclamation of Sharia is an open revolt against constitutional order and sets in motion a dangerous process of de-legitimization of the state. This is not a matter for Oyo State or Yorubas alone. The Fulani power elite, sponsors of this ominous action, are only testing the waters for this latest act is part of a grand design to systematically undermine the secular order of our body politic and to foment disorder on a vast scale in Nigeria.

We underrate this unprecedented challenge to peace in our land at our peril.