Lagos - A former military ruler of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, has
called for the introduction of ‘total’ Islamic law across the country,
reports said on Monday.
Buhari, who ruled Nigeria from a coup in December 1983 to his
ouster in 1985, told a seminar in Kaduna, northern Nigeria, at the
weekend that the strict Islamic law code known as the Sharia should
be introduced in full across Nigeria. “I will continue to show openly
and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is
sweeping all over Nigeria,” Buhari said, quoted in press reports.
“God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total
implementation of the Sharia in the country,” Buhari said.
A frica’s most populous country has been shaken repeatedly in the
past by religious unrest. In February 2000 between 2 000 and 3 000
people were killed by Christian-Muslim riots in Kaduna over the
introduction of Sharia.
Buhari’s comments were interpreted by the southern-based papers
as a call for the imposition of Sharia all across the country, even in
the mainly Christian south. “Buhari calls for Sharia in all states,”
was the headline of the respected newspaper The Guardian.
Buhari’s comments were defended by supporters as simply a call for
the full implementation of Sharia in areas where Muslims
predominated.But the comments are the second by Buhari that have
courted controversy after he called earlier this year for Muslims to
vote at the next presidential elections only for someone who would
defend their faith.
This was criticised by the press as a call for voting along religious
lines, as well as an attack on the current president, Olusegun
Obasanjo, who is a Christian. Buhari made the latest comments at a
seminar organised by the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, a
newly set up body attended by northern state governments and
Islamic scholars.
“What remains for Muslims in Nigeria is for them to redouble their
efforts, educate Muslims on the need to promote the full
implementation of Sharia law,” he went on. – AFP
In the main, Nigerians have been encouraged not to know their
history. Often this is at the root of the poorly thought through
decisions that are made by the citizens. My people suffer for lack of
knowledge says the holy book. The saying that half knowledge can be
worse than no knowledge at all equally speaks to the self-destructive
perfunctory knowledge of the history of Nigeria exhibited by many
Nigerians.
This impoverished background accounts for the superficiality
generally exhibited in the appraisal of contemporary Nigeria.
Understandably this trait is mostly discernable in the post-civil war
generation of Nigerians-for a number of reasons.
First is the spatial-temporal cognition distance from what took place
in Nigeria prior to 1970. Second is the social instability and
discontinuity that ensued from the latter part of the 1980-1990
decade including a dramatic fall in the standard of education, the
institutionalisation of corruption, precipitous decline in family values
and moral upbringing, frenetic acceleration of the culture of get rich
quick and corresponding lack of positive correlation between
productivity and reward, distinct lack in the appreciation of
education as intrinsic to self-actualisation and social development.
If it is not too late I will urge as many Nigerians as possible and who
are in a position to do so-to avail themselves the opportunity of
acquiring a working familiarity with critical phases of Nigeria’s
history especially the civil war (1966-1970) phase, the annulment of
the 1993 presidential election crisis (1993-1998) and the fourth
republic-from 1999-.
In 1999 Olusegun Obasanjo was elected as President of Nigeria-in
response to the pressure mounted largely by the South-West of
Nigeria against the philosophy that the political leadership of Nigeria
is vested in the custodial beck and call of the conservative wing of
the ‘Northern’ Nigeria political establishment-to bestow or denied as
it wishes.
I will not be able to characterise this interpretation here in view of
the space available and I do not believe it is necessary to do so. The
interpretation has been stated and restated repeatedly in prior
write-ups, which were not by any means limited to my pen.
In august 2002 I was appointed the Director of media and publicity
of President Obasanjo’s re-election campaign of 2002-2003. I
interpreted my appointment and role as providing intellectual
leadership to the campaign-in which capacity I was required to have
an expert understanding of his stewardship as President and
complement this with versatile knowledge of opposition candidates
and platforms.
The most tasking crisis of his presidency was the violent upheaval
instigated by the introduction and incorporation of the Sharia penal
code into the jurisprudence of the Moslem dominated states of
Northern Nigeria. In acknowledgement and discernment of the crisis
as orchestrated and directed against him by disaffected members of
Northern political elite, Obasanjo did not swallow the bait of being
lured into a divisive political confrontation.
He rightly formulated the purported Sharia religious fervour as
political ruse-he coined it political sharia; and predicted that if it
was not truly of Allah, the movement would fade away and it did.
The two personalities who personified the avant-garde of the Sharia
crisis were the Zamfara state Governor, Ahmed Sani Yerima and
former military head of state General Mohammadu Buhari.
From the Zamfara state localized ambition of the Governor, Buhari
took the baton and spearheaded its generalization and spread over
the far North Moslem sub-region. In the process, he rose to fill an
apparent leadership vacuum within the hierarchy of the Northern
Political elite. For someone of this background and given his
utterances on the Boko-Haram insurgency crisis (until political
correctness dictated otherwise) the logical observation that can be
made is that Buhari has acted true to type.
The enthusiasm to assume the regional warlord role was originally
motivated by the animus generated by the decision of Obasanjo to
institute an inquiry into the books of the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF,
established by the late General Sani Abacha and presided over by
Buhari.
Between former President Obasanjo and Malam Haroun Adamu the
story of this inquiry will be better told, suffice to say that the newly
inaugurated Obasanjo was sufficiently dissatisfied as to deem it
necessary to invite his erstwhile junior colleague to give clarification
and explanation. And most certainly, the encounter did not end on a
cordial note.
In characteristic sour humour and negative symbolism, Obasanjo
pointedly proceeded to reassign the PTF premises to the newly
established Independent Corruption Practises Commission, ICPC. This
may be an inconvenient reminder but I have certainly not said
anything that was not out in the public domain at the material time.
My personal opinion of Buhari is that he is a relatively corruption
free Nigerian leader but nobody should go around contrasting him
with his successors and predecessors as an isolated oasis of integrity
in an expansive dessert crawling with king termites of wanton
corruption.
The novelty in my first encounter with one of his much pilloried
successors was the revelation that he (the successor) secreted away
boxes of the reports of an inquiry into the countertrade policies of
his predecessor. In the generosity of his heart he would not be party
to washing the dirty linen of any of his colleagues in the public.
Again the successor military president is still alive and those who feel
rubbed the wrong way by this recall may want to have a word with
him. You see, fair is fair, and Nigerians are entitled to the
consciousness of all available records and information on their leaders
especially those trumpeting themselves and being trumpeted as a cut
apart from the rest.
The tiff over the PTF inquiry was the backdrop to what then followed
as nothing short of Buhari’s personal campaign of destabilisation of
the Obasanjo presidency. He did this by channelling the embers of an
ostensible Sharia fervour into a regional casus belli against the newly
installed president.
In the fullness of the insurrection and all too predictably he
emerged the regional hero and went on to nurture this status with
intermittent parochial outbursts pandering to the persecution
complex of untutored and religion-obsessed minds of a teeming
almajiri and talakawa populace.
And here lies my fundamental objection to the presidential ambition
of the APC candidate-any leader who attains to political prominence
through the instrumentality of dividing and polarising the peoples of
Nigeria should never be rewarded with the presidency of this
country.
And it is in this respect that a no less historical figure than the late
Ahmadu Bello was basically a much more honest leader than Buhari.
An avowed Northern irredentist, Bello did not make political virtue
of moral equivocation by claiming entitlement to the office of the
prime-minister of Nigeria (as expected of the leader of the majority
party by the norms of Westminister-parliamentary model). He
delegated that honour and responsibility to his more temperamentally
suited deputy, Tafawa Balewa.
The in-house argument within the Afenife-AD caucus against the
preferment of the late Chief Bola Ige for the national office of the
President rested on a similar plank-that the legitimate perception of
him as a parochial Yoruba champion is non-sequitur to Nigerian
presidential aspiration-hence the preference for his more
cosmopolitan rival, Olu Falae. Even though the late Chief Obafemi
Awolowo was not as explicit as Buhari in cultivating recognition as
sectional champion yet he was proportionately made to pay for his
national non-inclusiveness.
One area I am in accord with general Buhari is that he is not a
fundamentalist. The ascription of fundamentalism presupposes the
element of honest and sincere commitment to ‘the belief or
advocating of a conservative adherence to literal or traditional
interpretations of the Qu’ran and the Sunnah’-whereas a
demagogue is ‘a person, especially an orator or political leader, who
gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and
prejudices of the people’.
All manners of mindless claims of Buhari’s sainthood are being
circulated on the social media including a particular character
reference purportedly by Obasanjo-making the most improbable
claim that he and Buhari are the only two honest Nigerians!
Stupefied by callers wondering whether this could be possible true I
adverted the attention of the former president to the hoax. He
promptly and angrily disavowed the attribution. Nigerians please
shine your eyes well - lest you get sold a counterfeit.
SOURCE:THISDAY LIVE
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