My Ramadan expectations

Then the beep of the phone. “As I start fasting in this glorious month of Ramadan, I pray for peace and security in Nigeria and prosperity for all of us”, he texted.That jolted me awake. I had been threatening to use the commencement of Ramadan as a peg to address some of our nagging problems. […]

Then the beep of the phone. “As I start fasting in this glorious month of Ramadan, I pray for peace and security in Nigeria and prosperity for all of us”, he texted.
That jolted me awake. I had been threatening to use the commencement of Ramadan as a peg to address some of our nagging problems. Now the time had arrived. Surely there must be some lesson to learn for all of us in a season of fasting and abstinence?
Generally, medics concede that fasting is good for the human body. It helps detoxify the system. It also helps discipline the individual. Many people shed excess weight and generally experience an improved sense of wellness when fasting — that is the ‘ordinary’ secular fasting, not the one that is a religious injunction and Pillar.
I am told that Ramadan is the month whose beginning is mercy, whose middle is forgiveness and whose end is freedom from fire. Yes, we all pray God to have mercy on us. But do we have mercy on each other? Aren’t we at our vicious best when others seem not to be in the mood for attrition? If anyone had any doubt that what the Boko Haram is propagating is not religion but terrorism, the fact that the group signalled the beginning of Ramadan with its trademark bombing in Bauchi ought to erase any suspicion. Believed to be the month in which the Quran was gifted to humanity through Prophet Mohammed, Ramadan is also considered to be a period when the gates of heaven are opened and the gates of hell are closed and devils are tied up.
In the spirit of the season therefore, there is no better time than now to tie up the various devils holding us down, chief of which is the Boko Haram scourge which has sent thousands of souls to untimely graves. We have the authority of the Sultan of Sokoto and the declarations of many prominent Muslims who have disowned the Boko Haram militants as unIslamic. The terrorists kill Christians as they kill Muslims. Their bombs do not (cannot) discriminate. They would gladly eliminate an atheist as they would a rabbi if they had the chance. Theirs is killing for the sake of spreading terror. The word “anarchy’ must have been coined in anticipation of their emergence.
There are several wars going on in various parts of the world at the moment. In some of them the warring parties have agreed on ceasefire during Ramadan to show their mutual respect for their religion. Anyone who expects that kind of consideration from Boko Haram is but a dreamer. A group that could carry out the slaughter of a Muslim cleric by 6am after morning prayers would do worse during Ramadan if it had the opportunity. Vigilance, compatriots, vigilance!
In this season of spiritual rejuvenation perhaps it is about time we grew up and stop childish finger-pointing. What confronts us has the potential of destroying our cohesion and eventually smashing us out of existence. We have no choice but to come together to fight this novel form of depopulation before it extends its tentacles to knock on every door in the land. If we set our mind to it, we can bring back our Chibok girls and inflict mortal blow to Boko Haram before the end of this glorious month. But first, we must stop all recriminations and act as one.
See something? Say something!

The limit of profiling

I didn’t like the sound of the declaration coming from Imo State last week. One Faisal Lawal, described as Senior Special Assistant on Northern Affairs to Governor Rochas Okorocha announced that the state government was planning to embark on screening all Northerners resident in the state “to ensure their proper identity”. What is the meaning of that? Lawal said it was in consonance with the governor’s “Know Your Neighbour” campaign.
I think we have to be careful here. I concede that the government of Imo State has a right to protect all citizens resident in the state, especially with the discovery of a bomb planted in a church in Owerri. But the impression should not be given that every ‘Northerner’ is presumed to be a terrorist until proven otherwise.
The Imo State Government should not fall into the trap of those who do not wish the state well and are ever willing to misinterpret every measure taken by government to cause disaffection. That was what happened in Lagos when the Lagos State Government wrote its Anambra counterpart about the plan to send some destitute of Anambra extraction back home so that they could be properly catered for by their families. A similar exercise had been successfully executed with the Kano and Bauchi State governments. In the Anambra case, the then governor alleged that Lagos was ‘deporting’ Igbo. The governor did not address the issue of the letter earlier sent to him intimating him with the plan and his failure to respond one way or the other. Needless to say, the various armies without battalions on the internet took it all as a tribal war and seized the opportunity to celebrate their narrow-mindedness through name-calling and group-demonising.
That kind of scenario should not ever be played out again. The Know Your Neighbour initiative is good as a general call to vigilance but not as a discriminatory policy. I know some people of ‘Northern’ extraction whose families have lived in the Owerri/Okigwe axis for over 100 years. We must not send the wrong signals. Governor Okorocha should take another look at the planned screening before the situation gets messier with a possible retaliatory screening of ‘South-Easterners’ by Northern governors.