And the fate of the Hijab…?

And the fate of the Hijab…?

Only in the not distant past, in the heydays of the Boko Haram violence, it became a problem in Maiduguri for men to wear the beard, a Sunnah in Islam. This was as a result of military crackdown on suspected Boko-Haramists in the city. Many men who saw it a religious duty to grow beards, and those who just wanted to grow them either for purposes of convenience or of simple preference, were force to have to shave clean for their own safety. In fact even outside the epicenters of the insurgency, if security agents saw one with beards at checkpoints they looked at such a person twice; with suspicion that is. Today, the Hijab is gradually beginning to take over from the beard.

Only two days ago, there was another bomb-blast in Maiduguri which claimed about sixty lives. The blast took place in a crowded market in the city which was beginning to experience some relative respite from such occurrences, the last one being sometime in July. The twin bombing was said to have been carried out by women dressed in Hijab on a suicide mission. There is however a variant account which says that the first explosion was purveyed by a popular mad woman in the market who was apparently coaxed by the terrorist to deliver the bomb at the target spot. She did and died along. Then the second, carried by a woman in Hijab on a suicide quest, went off hitting the many first responders to, and onlookers at, the first.

The point here is that now, the terrorists have resorted to the use of women; and women dressed in hallowed garb. In the last couple of months, virtually all the bombings that have happened were carried out by women and all of these women were dressed in Hijab, the Niqab type; and one wonders quite realistically: how are women donned in Hijab going to be treated in our society now that a pattern has clearly emerged?

One asks this question because of the place of the Hijab in Islam, where it has been strongly emphasized in matters of decency and modesty especially as they pertain to interaction of women with members of the opposite sex and indeed strangers as a whole. True enough, when one considers the global cultural trend and its general level of permissiveness and license in the name of modernity, one cannot but accept the truth that a woman well clad or in the Hijab is an embodiment of dignity. This quest for modesty expressed through the wearing of the veil is not peculiar only to Islam. Long before the birth of the religion, the Semites – people of Southwest Asia, including the Arab and Jewish peoples, and the ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Phoenicians – had their women clad in veils, Hijab, and only women thought to be loose would not be so dressed. Christianity came and upheld that way of life and it continued to be a mark of women who have chosen consecrated life since the first century AD. One of the earliest recorded convent was around 292 AD, the Women of St Pachomius. The first woman recorded to profess as a nun in the Church was Marcellina, on Christmas day around the year 354AD. She received a veil from Pope Liberius. Her brother, St Ambrose, in his reflections on chastity and modesty, which his sister embraced marked by the veil, wrote: “behold how sweet the fruit of modesty, which has sprung up even in the affections of barbarians. Virgins, coming from the greatest distance on both sides of Mauritania, desire to be consecrated here.” This is just to demonstrate the commonality between Islam and other faith and cultural traditions in the pursuit of modesty. Islam, however, upholds the Hijab at doctrinal or dogmatic levels. Today, many countries in the west have taken harsh positions against the Hijab to the dismay of Muslims. They have advanced reasons largely bordering around issues of terrorism, safety and security. In fact other countries who had, before now, been most tolerant are gradually taking hostile stand to the Hijab. Muslims have considered such posturing as an affront on their protected rights to religious freedom and expression. However Muslims want to look at it, some among them have gone under the nobility of the Hijab and committed havoc of damning proportions, and people and societies who have second thoughts about how they countenance the Hijab also have their own justification. If one begins to sample opinions on our streets right now as to how people would react to a woman coming behind them in Hijab in the market, the result can only be left for one to imagine. Good Muslims must stand up and win this battle against elements among them who have dragged and are still dragging their religion into the mud before the rest of the world.

BLUEPRINT Newspaper, Thur Nov 27, 2014.

With Jonathan’s Hat in the Ring…

With Jonathan’s Hat in the Ring…

Last week, Tuesday the 11^th of November, 2014, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan officially declared to run for president in the oncoming 2015 general elections for a second tenure, or third, depending on who is speaking. In spite of his body language and every indication in that direction, he had prevaricated stating clearly his desire to run for reasons best known to him, but clearly political. The declaration came at the heels of a dastardly bomb blast, at the Government Science Secondary school in Potiskum during morning assembly which left about fifty persons dead with scores injured, barely twenty-four hours earlier. All fingers naturally point to the Islamist insurgents, Boko Haram, presently terrorizing the nation on the northeastern fringes and elsewhere.

Expectedly, the opposition, chiefly the All Progressive Congress (APC), sought political capital out of the situation. Alh Lai Mohammed the APC spokesman was quick to issue out a statement accusing Jonathan of insensitivity for going ahead with the planned declaration – which in Nigeria is usually a fanfare and jamboree of sorts – in the face of the unfortunate killing of the school children. In politics that is not strange, especially in periods of heightened electioneering such as the one we are now in. Political opponents will usually seek to exploit every conceivable, and inconceivable, opportunity to make the other look bad, and in most cases the ruling party gets the harder knocks as something will only naturally not go well in the state and responsibility lies on such a party’s head until it is upstaged.

Therefore, Jonathan had two options: either to have called of the already planned event or to have carried on, as he did. Either way would have been determined by his “good” judgment of the prevailing circumstances as the President and Commander-in-Chief, given the daily security briefings he receives. He decided to carry on. After all have we not heard the presidency blame the opposition directly and indirectly for the insurgency? Did we not hear supporters of Jonathan claim that the attack on the Potiskum School was calculated, twenty-four hours to their principal’s declaration, to disrupt or even stop him from making the declaration? If anyone held such a belief, why would someone elsewhere think that Jonathan would give detractors the pleasure of having their way? I, personally, would not. By the way, we must get used to the reality that if this insurgency continues the as it is going, which, by all indication, it will, regardless of who wins the 2015 election, this nation must be ready to defy the terrorists. What they want to do is to take away our way of life. We must not allow them have their way.

But, the politics of Jonathan’s declaration event aside, what should be more worrying is the kind of divisiveness the very person of President Jonathan has come to embody in the Nigerian polity. It was this division that brought about the post-election crisis of 2011 and, if anything, it has festered. Definitely, it was not Jonathan’s making ab-initio, but one cannot confidently submit that he has not grown to enjoy it or even take advantage of it in the light of comments that have emanated from his presidency and his supporters in the public space; and also in the light of clear policy steps that many have seen that he should have taken but fail or refused to.

We must not forget the events that threw up Jonathan to the presidency from the time Yar’adua took ill in November 2009 through to the 2011 elections. So much bile went round as it was clear the northern political gladiators of the time never wanted him to go on. He did go on but the north, particularly its Muslim streets, never has been able to muster even a modicum of goodwill for him. Thus, the cracks widened along regional and religious lines. I always argue that many of those who gave their vote to Jonathan in 2011 did not necessarily vote for him but voted in protest of the establishment that they perceived as wanting to have their way and only their way in the power game of Nigeria. Buhari and CPC then were only a collateral damage. Unfortunately, if Jonathan read the situation well, he cannot be said to have “dazzled his opponents” with stellar performance but rather, exploit it. The same scenario would appear to want to play out leading up to 2015.

Today, Nigerians do not seem to be capable of dispassionately appraising their leadership in order to make the kind of choices that democracy affords for progress of state and society. They seem only to be waiting for Election Day to turn round again so that they would troop to the polls to punish their perceived enemy. Alas, we have done ourselves in.

BLUEPRINT Newspaper; Nov. 20, 2014; p5.

What do they Want with Nigeria?

What do they Want with Nigeria?

Oga Peter walked into the common room and slumped into the expansive three-seater sofa. He didn’t say a word to anybody; quite unlike him. He just buried his face into his palms and stayed like that. We did not quite notice him, for we were busy talking politics rather animatedly, until we heard him take a deep breath and exhale rather noisily as he reclined in the sofa, his face staring the ceiling with a distant glassy look in them.

“Ol’ Soja lafiya kuwa?” one of us enquired if it was all well from our end of the room. Oga Peter had retired from the Nigerian Army in the mid 90s and since then has been helping out as a catechist at a local parish. He’s popularly called Ol’ Soja. He hails from Adamawa State. When he tried to talk, a treacherous tear snaked its way down his left cheek betraying him in spite of every effort he made to contain it in the eyes. He kept quiet; you could hear the lump in his throat. All four of us knew better than to probe further.

“They have slaughtered my younger brother,” he finally found his voice, “his two sons, and taken away his wife in Mubi,” he said quietly. We immediately understood what had befallen this lively old man and yanked the mirth out of him. When Boko Haram overran and took over Mubi last week, he said, they ordered everyone trapped in not to attempt to escape. They then “assured” them of safety and protection if they would convert to Islam. Ol’ Soja’s brother and his wife and two sons decided to sneak out of the town but they were not fortunate as they fell into the hands of the insurgents. After scolding them, they asked them to accept Islam but the captives refused, so after telling the three men what the fate of their wife and mother would be, they slaughtered them and made off with the woman.

This is only one out of the many atrocities that have become our lot in this country. Virtually everyone from the north-eastern axis of the nation that one meets has one tale of gloom or the other to tell of their relations living back at home. Many of their homes in safe towns are now bursting at the seams with displaced persons. The insurgents are clearly gaining more grounds. Only two days ago, news filtered in of how the town of Ashaka in Gombe state, along with its popular Ashaka Cement Company, has fallen into their hands. They are inching deeper and deeper into the hinter and expanding their territory with certainty and confidence. On that same day, the deputy governor of Borno state, while on a visit to his displaced citizens in Yola, was reported as having said that if efforts are not intensified, in the next three months the entire north-east would surely fall into the hands of the insurrectionists. That is a damning remark.

The curious thing in Nigeria’s engagement of this insurgency is that when it looks as if the armed forces are beginning to have an upper hand, talk about truce or cease-fire pops up, the military seems reigned in a little and then “boom!” the insurgents begin to inflict even more mortal blows on the state again. It happened last year when the state-of-emergency was first declared and it has just happened again. What is happening? The more we see and cry, the less we understand!

We are gradually but surely coasting to a situation whereby, in order to stay alive, many more people are left with no option but to pledge allegiance to the insurgents and infact join them in arms against the state. Does the Nigerian state really realize this? Because what we see more is politics and politicking everywhere: the president is withdrawing the security detail of the decampee Speaker of the National Assembly, Tambuwal; PDP governors are digging heels against the president; PDP legislators are using the Tambuwal decamp saga as bargaining chip against the president; Tambuwal himself has recessed the House of Reps that should not be sleeping at this time until his politically convenient December 7… wait a minute, do these guys know that this house is on fire?

Another disappointing dimension in all of these to most Nigerians is the role of the international community. Because of the #bringbackourgirls campaign they, like some pop affair, committed to helping us, at least to return the girls, but “whossai!” Instead, all we get from a country like the US is an embargo on sale of arms to Nigeria in the name of sanction for human rights violations by the military in the north-east: in time of war? With an amorphous enemy?

Let the Nigerian leadership and the international community come out and tell us what they really want for Nigeria. We are no longer sure.

Published on BLUEPRINT Newspaper; Oct. 6, 2014; Pg3