What the North needs now II

Last week, I argued that the crises of identity plaguing northern Nigeria over the past 25 years have run their course with one clear effect: mounting violence at the regional level and increasing political insignificance within the Nigerian setting. It doesn’t matter which side you think you are on, the North as a whole is […]

Last week, I argued that the crises of identity plaguing northern Nigeria over the past 25 years have run their course with one clear effect: mounting violence at the regional level and increasing political insignificance within the Nigerian setting. It doesn’t matter which side you think you are on, the North as a whole is the loser in this messy affair because southern political schemers play one part of the North against the other to swim to presidential victory, but govern mainly with, and for, their own people, while conflict and violence intensify across the northern region.

I said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s overall political strategy, aligning with northern Muslims to win in 2023 but now aligning with northern Christians for 2027, is the clearest example of this situation. But former Presidents Jonathan and Obasanjo did different versions of the same thing in 2011, 2003, and 1999, although to be fair, Obasanjo was a lot more national in both approach and action. The implication is the same, however: while the North has all the votes, it lacks all effective power; and policy-wise, it tends to be no more than a junior partner at the federal level because it has refused to put its own house in order. This overall picture remains true, even with a northern president.

I also suggested that most current political and socio-cultural institutions in northern Nigeria are ill-equipped to deal with the region’s problems at home or at the centre, and ended the piece by raising the question of what to do now?

The first part of my answer for how northern Nigerian can reclaim its identity and place within the Nigerian federation is to end its numerous conflicts. And the surest bet for that is to return to the rule of law in particularly three areas. First, we must put an end to blasphemy killings in northern Nigeria, and I mean an absolute end. If anyone anywhere in the North blasphemes against Allah, or God, or the Qur’an, or the Bible, or the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), or Jesus (Prophet Isah, AS) then the right thing to do is to report them to the nearest traditional leaders, who have better experience and more practical authority for dealing with such matters not for people to take the law into their own hands.

Blasphemy is a red line, but so is mob justice. People must know and be made to face the severest consequences of their actions under the law. To paraphrase the Sheik Usman bn Fodio on this, a society can endure in unbelief, but it cannot endure in mob justice because mob justice is the worst kind of injustice.

Second, we must return the rule of law into violent communal and religious conflicts in northern Nigeria. The dominant character of these conflicts, in my view, is that they are an endless trail of tit for tat reprisal attacks, whereby yesterday’s victims are today’s aggressors. The main reason they persist, therefore, is because they almost always never go to serious trial under the law. That’s a blank cheque for mob rule, and so what we get is what we see every now and then.

In the past 25 years or so of these conflicts, the dominant tendency is to approach them emotionally and politically, rather than legally. Sensational and quite often deliberately skewed media coverage befuddles the issues further, as if all that matters is to win the public opinion debate, not to seek justice for those who suffer loss. The result is that the rule of law ends up buried under all the noise, while dead bodies litter the streets and bereaved families are left to suffer their grief in silence. We must change course by bringing the rule of law back in.

One approach is to focus singularly on the rule of law. For example, the federal government, the National Assembly, or the northern states can establish a body, preferably a quango, whose only objective is to investigate and bring cases to effective trial in special courts including cases of blasphemy killings or violent communal and religious conflicts in the North. As a quango, such a body will be performing public functions, could receive public funds, but must operate independently of any influences, governmental or otherwise. Therefore, the most important thing for such a body is the transparency of its funding, personnel recruitment processes, activities, etc. Everything about it must be public record.

For any current or future incidents, the primary duty of this body is not yet another useless “peace mediation” between communities or an equally useless effort to determine “the root causes” of the incidents, but only to (a) establish whether or not there is even a single loss of life, significant bodily injury or loss of property of any kind to one or more persons (b) to investigate and determine those responsible to either one or all items above, and c) bring cases to trial in specialised courts appointed either by the Supreme Court or the National Assembly, such as those we use for election ligation or some corruption trials.

You could call it Communal and Religious Violent Offences Tribunal, draw expertise from various state agencies, and have it work in such a way that it is the officials of the tribunal who conduct investigations and also bring cases to trial. My point is that all the Nigerian state or the northern states need to do is to send a clear message that people can disagree however they like but no one has the right to kill, inflict injury, or destroy property, and that people will face the music when they do. A single successful and transparently conducted case will make that message quite clear.

Third, we must bring the rule of law or at least some serious due process to religious preaching. It is simply too easy for anyone to set up shop and start preaching about God and religion in Nigeria. But a society cannot be free if it does not also recognise the responsibilities and obligations that come with freedom.

In a society where millions of people are seeking answers to their impoverished material and spiritual conditions; in a society dominated by religious competition, rather than religious faith per se; in a society where religion follows the structural logic of social media whereby the more divisive and controversial you are against “them”, the more popular you are; and in a society where preaching about God directly brings social and political prestige and often millions in revenue of dubious means, allowing just about everyone to preach about God could prove dangerous for social stability and national cohesion.

This is simply the case with Nigeria today, and explains why there is far more political and controversial content coming out of our pulpits, across the religious aisle, than content about faith or religious ritual. This must change. We must regulate who gets to preach about God and religion and who does not because in a country of 230 million people of very diverse backgrounds, whatever you say, however outlandish, you are guaranteed an audience.

The Catholic Church, for example, has very clear and strict processes and procedures about how people rise to the level where they could minister to large congregations on regular basis, including many years of training and due diligence over personal conduct. Perhaps those processes have broken down in Nigeria today, and we see catholic priests, both short and tall, jumping from one government building to another dancing to the political tunes of the moment.

Also, to be called a “Malam” used to be an extraordinarily weighty social and religious distinction, and was applied to very few people in northern Nigeria. Even religious scholars of note who had earned the title by every conceivable metric, and whose own lives mirrored their teachings, like the late Sheiks Dahiru Bauchi, Abubakar Gumi or Ja’afar Ja’afar, etc, would cringe if you called them “Malam”. Nowadays, everybody is a “Malam”, even those who have not read more than a few religious pamphlets, and possibly still read those few pamphlets upside down.

For those who truly want to solve problems in the North or in the wider Nigeria, this is the fountain of dangerous religious indoctrination across the religious divide that must first be switched off.

Yes, I agree some of these suggestions would be difficult to accomplish in Nigeria, but where there is genuine will, few things are impossible. And in any case, the plausibility of what has not been tried cannot be denied. See you next week.