Re: Modernity and morality in Northern Nigeria

Professor Moses Ochonu needs no introduction; he is an established scholar whose interventions on burning national issues bedeviling our country many of us look forward. He is a mentor worth being mentored by, and I am very grateful for the kind gesture he extended to me when I reached out to him to be my […]

Professor Moses Ochonu needs no introduction; he is an established scholar whose interventions on burning national issues bedeviling our country many of us look forward. He is a mentor worth being mentored by, and I am very grateful for the kind gesture he extended to me when I reached out to him to be my academic mentor. Miyetti, Allah Rene!

Ochonu’s latest essay, Modernity and Morality in Northern Nigeria, published by an online medium Pambazuka.org, is laced with some historical inconsistencies, not-so-subtle efforts to infer meaning where there is none, deliberate and outright distortions of history to satisfy a pre-determined narrative. 

I expect more from Prof. Moses. A little inquiry here and there would have saved the day. This essay is an attempt to correct some misconceptions and to set some records straight. 

Historical Inconsistency 

‘“…Sheikh Gumi was at the time studying and mastering the Wahhabi doctrinal canons in Saudi Arabia. He returned to Nigeria in 1987 to take organizational and spiritual control of the anti-Sufi reform movement…” wrote Professor Moses.

There was never a time Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi studied in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia let alone ‘mastered the Wahabbi doctrinal canons’. Late Sheikh Gumi was on the payroll of Nigerian government as its employee all his adult life until his force retirement in 1985 by Buhari led government. The 1987 episode mentioned by Prof. Moses was when he (late Gumi) received King Abdul Aziz [?] prize for his “Service to the religion of Islam”, Sheikh Gumi, as testified even by his diehard critics, didn’t spend a single kobo from the sum $94,000 he received. He rather shared it as was his norm.

For some inexplicable reasons, Prof. Moses, while reconstructing his-’story’ about Boko Haram, objectified thus: Sheikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam mentored Muhammad Yusuf, the Boko Haram founder. This is a factual error and outright historicism about the evolution of Boko Haram.

It’s a known fact that there’s no such person (dead or alive) that theologically and doctrinally engaged Boko Haram like Late Sheikh Jaafar. He paid the ultimate price with his life for his harsh stand against what Boko Haram represent[ed], then, when many didn’t even know of its existence and what it portends for the county.

It’s also a known fact that Muhammad Yusuf, the Boko Haram founder, was once a student of Sheikh Jaafar, so much that he did represent him on some occasions to lead Tafseer Sessions at the famous Indimi Mosque. However, it’s disingenuous for a scholar of high repute like Prof. Ochonu to arrive at a scholarly and definitive [?] conclusion by merely studying one or two episodes in the life of a certain figure. If truly Prof. Moses was sincere in his analysis, he wouldn’t have failed to study the trajectory of the late Sheikh. There are more hard evidences of the renunciation of any affinity, proximity, association, or support of what Muhammad Yusuf and his group represent[ed] by the late Sheikh than their previous romance. How that escaped the scrutinizing eyes of Prof. Moses begs for explanation. 

Granted that Literalists Salafism have contributed in no small measure in rousing tensions and elevation of extremists ideology in Northern Nigeria. But to attribute the mentorship of Muhammad Yusuf, the Boko Haram founder, to Sheikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam is to overstretch logic. 

Misrepresentations of truths

Contrary to the Prof’s insinuations that run throughout the essay (and for which there’s an authoritarian claim and forceful conviction) that the criticisms sparked by the release of the innocuous photos of Sheikh Lau and Kabiru Gombe in London was borne out of hatred the Muslim conservatives north habour for the West; the criticisms have less to do with Western-phobia and more with doctrinal contradictions. 

I have tried to exhaust all the possible explanations of why people were incensed in my essay When Absolute Literalism Pays Back. No matter how hard I tried not to doubt the sincerity of Prof. Moses essay I found myself incapable given the plethora of better imagined descriptions of the Muslim North and their views about the west that adorned the essay. For example, “…a city which is often portrayed in Salafi preaching, along with other Western domains, as a land of iniquity and heathenism..”; “… a staple of their teachings is hostility toward a plethora of modern and Western institutions, practices, and goods considered capable of polluting the piety of Muslims…”; “….the clerics routinely espouse a neat moral binary between supposedly Muslim material cultures and those of the West, which they condemn.” 

I am a Muslim, born and bred in the north but I have never been taught to hate the West, nor to be hostile to their practices (by the way, I hardly keep beard), yet I am an unapologetic Salafist. How do I and millions of Muslims in the north fit into Prof. Moses Ochonu’s descriptions? 

Again, there’s deliberate and outright misrepresentation of Izala and what it represenat. There’s never a time that Izala leaders, despite their penchant for populism, called or encourage its members to overthrow any government. Nowhere. I repeat, nowhere! 

I expect a balanced analysis from a scholar of Moses standing. The essay is mired by baseless insinuations and forceful attempt in generalizing what ought to be specific and vice-versa. All attempt is to create an image of Muslim majority North as intolerant lots with extremists tendencies and dispositions– a convenient truth that appeals to the popular sentiment.  

There’s a fundamental flaw with the essay that I found very unsettling, and a little bit surprising that Prof. Moses could make a case for it. The thesis of identity crises. 

Throughout the world, every society with an inherited heritage is battling the penetrating and swallowing effect of globalization. The mainstreaming and universalizing of American pop culture have set traditional civilizations, including that of Europe which by the way American culture traced its origin to, into self-introspection and development of mechanisms on how to counter it, and to re-exert its originality and maintain some level of purity while enjoying the fruit of modernity.  

Scholars, especially in humanities and social sciences are gauged by the potency of the influence of their own cognitive bias. Cognitive bias is real. The concept is well delineated and categorized by Buster Benson. Moses is a world acclaimed scholar of African history. Then it is pertinent to ask him thus: how he proposes the resolution of crisis of this identity laced with local cultural biases of Northern Nigerians? Or does Moses think that we should embrace western culture as a necessary ingredient of modernity? What are his thoughts about Afrocentrism?

While he may consider writing another essay about these realities, it is important to note that the essay under review, apart from it being riddled with below standard factual errors and avoidable historical inconsistencies, can also pass as an unrestricted advocacy of imposing western culture on Northern Nigerians in the guise of adjusting to the requirements of modernity. Professor, the stakes are high.

Tilde wrote this piece from Bauchi.