Praying for Enenche’s country

How Abubakar Sani, Falalu Dorayi, Fati Bararoji, Lawan Ahmad, Mudassir Haladu, Rashida Adamu, Shaban Ty, Tahir I. Tahir, and others marched in the Kano protests. How Hausa entertainers I spoke to told me the fuel subsidy removal was unfair to the masses of Nigeria and that they were supporting their fans on this issue. However, […]

How Abubakar Sani, Falalu Dorayi, Fati Bararoji, Lawan Ahmad, Mudassir Haladu, Rashida Adamu, Shaban Ty, Tahir I. Tahir, and others marched in the Kano protests. How Hausa entertainers I spoke to told me the fuel subsidy removal was unfair to the masses of Nigeria and that they were supporting their fans on this issue. However, with the devastating attacks on Kano and Bauchi over the weekend, it felt like the time for such a story had passed. It felt as though writing about celebrities, even activist celebrities, or the pleasures of film and literature would somehow betray the high seriousness of this horror-story in which we find ourselves—in which anyone might die by bomb or bullet for being on the wrong street, the wrong church, the wrong office at the wrong time.

In search for something to write, therefore, I solicited opinions from Facebook friends about how the threat posed by the so-called Boko Haram could be overcome. Suggestions included dialogue, government employment, community security groups, more police training and regionalization, replacing the almajiri system of education with conventional islamiyyas, and better intelligence gathering. Several pointed to shadowy forces behind Boko Haram. One reader told me that it would not be wise to write about them because “they are everywhere.” But surely, now more than ever, we must speak out.

Those claiming to be Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad have publically stated their latest grievances: the extrajudicial killing of their members, the attacks on Muslims during Eid el-Fitr, the cannibalism of Muslims performed by “Christian” youth in Jos. These are certainly valid complaints, and any reasonable person can and should condemn these horrible acts. Yet their rhetoric is self-contradictory: they claim a victim identity while calculatedly mass-murdering innocents. There is no justice in indiscriminately killing anyone who shares the same ethnic or religious features as the one who wronged you. What alarms me is that this sort of polarizing argumentation is not limited to Boko Haram. In the same way that Boko Haram blamed all Christians for attacks on Muslims in Jos and Zonkwa, the CAN president took out a full page ad to claim that “Hausa and Fulani Muslims of Northern Nigeria” are the problem with Nigeria, warning that Christians may be forced to “review peace building” efforts and “respond appropriately.” Such generalized assertions and veiled threats, which I’ve seen commonly made online as well, merely replicate the language of Boko Haram. Surely, particularly following the attacks in Kano, it must be acknowledged that the Muslims of the north whether Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, or Babur are also suffering the violence of this extremist organization.

In the midst of uncertainty, one thing seems clear: those behind the bombs are using their so-called defense of Islam to wreak havoc and to destabilize Nigeria. They cannot truly claim to be defending Muslims, for they kill Muslims and Christians alike. When Christians respond by typecasting an entire region, religion or ethnicity as responsible for the acts of an extremist minority and react with threats of violence, they not only play into the hands of Boko Haram but they risk becoming like them. It is essential that we do not allow this divisive strategy to succeed.

I am encouraged by the many Muslims who have denounced the group. Muslim organizations have taken out advertorials in newspapers saying that the terrorists do not speak for them. Islamic scholars have denounced the violence. Most of my Muslim friends have expressed their horror at the attacks. Novelist Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, for example, recently wrote, “‘And DO NOT kill yourselves, for Allah is most compassionate to you. And he who does this out of enmity or transgression will surely be admitted to HELL’ Q3:29-30. This is what the Qur’an says. It makes you wonder what some people are reading.”

I have also been moved by the mature responses of Catholic leaders following the St. Theresa’s bombing. After visiting the National mosque, Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja said in Sunday Trust that despite the extremists on both sides “the majority of Nigerians, Muslims and Christians alike sit down very freely with one another.” Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, in the Vanguard celebrated the solidarity of Christians and Muslims “protesting against bad governance and corruption beyond the falsehood of religion. Once freed from the grip of these dark forces, religion will be able to play its role as a force for harmony, truth and the common good.”

It is tragic that the intelligence, organization, and energy we see in Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad is being diverted to slay innocent people rather than to help improve their lives. Yet all hope is not gone. The inter-faith movement invoked by Bishop Kukah, Christians protecting Muslims while they prayed, Muslims protecting churches and even attending church services to demonstrate their unity, was a moment of light. Let us not allow it to pass. Let us instead stand en masse and say, “This is enough. We will not let fear and hatred rule us.” If Nigerians can rally together to protest the fuel subsidy removal, they can rally together to protest the evil of violence—whether committed by extremists or in sectarian crisis. And if a small group like Boko Haram can cripple the nation, imagine what the Nigerian masses could do if they unite to rebuild.

Nigerian progress was the dream of Enenche Akogwu, the daring thirty-one-year-old Channels TV reporter, who became one of the hundreds of victims in Kano last week when he was shot while covering the story. From the fragmented account of his life that he left on Facebook, it seems that Enenche was not only passionate about journalism but also about truth, justice, and Nigeria. Last November, he wrote as his status, “Oh God of heaven, […] Give me d ability to always know what’s true and to b fair to all manner of people.” On his profile he had written: “My love for Nigeria has been a compelling impetus charting the course of my life, courageous in the face of adversities, hopeful when confronted with despair and delighted when the society makes appreciable progress.”  Young as he was, this true son of Nigeria was a man we can learn from.

This week, as I stared at my laptop screen feeling too overwhelmed to write, I received a text from Kano-based director and comedian Isyaku Jalingo, who had only days before written about the bombs:  “Talatu, my wife gave birth to a baby boy,” he wrote in Hausa, in excited all-caps.

And, I realized that though we may mourn the passing of life as we knew it, though we may feel as if we are embedded in a horror story, the earth is still turning; there is still love, there is still hope, there is still joy. Although little Hamza Isyaku has been born into chaos, I pray that he grows up in a better Nigeria. I like to imagine that the bold spirit of Enenche Akogwu is still with us, praying that we be given discernment to see truth and the grace to be fair to our neighbors. I pray that Hamza will grow up to see the nation Enenche hoped for, where Christians and Muslims, children of the North and of the South join hands to overcome fear and hatred with love and courage, truth and justice, hope and joy.