Regulating Religious Preaching in Northern Nigeria
By
Ibraheem A. Waziri
iawaziri@yahoo.com
The idea of a nation since time is a representation of what is more of an ideological entity than a geographical entity. It is always a prerequisite for nations, to be truly born, to have serious and entrenched interest in the ideologies their subjects hold to heart. In fact for nations to succeed, they must be seen by their subjects as being the custodians of the ideologies the subjects adhere to. In western countries, and specifically USA even manifestos of political parties are rooted in civic society. That is, it is easy for a party to be heard making legality or otherwise of issues in policy as abortion based on the nation’s religious and cultural heritage. In essence even nations built around the concepts of secularism, can only succeed, if the secularism can be located within the rich heritage of the people.
It is based on this understanding that in my outings in the recent past, while discussing the circumstances of the Hausa-Fulani in Nigeria, I submitted with emphasis on Northern Nigeria, that Nigerian nation must be interested in regulating religious preaching for the restoration of peace, fair neighbourliness, economic and social progress of the region. My conclusion was not properly appreciated by some readers as others see it as a very tall order or even an impracticable suggestion.
I believe there was a time in our history when some of our political empires operated within the outlined requirement. I believe there was a time and especially at the creation of the Nigerian nation state and at independence when we departed away from the ordained norm, hence our present predicament. I believe it is not too late now if we have a committed leadership with the needed foresight and patriotism to impose this requirement on a win-win template for all.
According to the records of history Muslims in Northern Nigeria once lived under the political influence of the Saifawa Dynasty; then under Songhai Empire; then under Kanem-Bornu Empire. The most recent one before the Nigerian nation state was the Sokoto Chaliphate. In all of those empires the wisdom in the idea that nations are ideological entities first before any other thing was properly appreciated. In the Sokoto Caliphate in particular, the empire was Ash’arite in theology and Malikite in jurisprudence. That is, the focus was not only Islam but among the various stripes of Islamic theologies of which Mu’tazili and Ash’ariy were the dominant then, they settled for Ash’ariy theology. It was reduced to the best framework upon which all their social realities could be explained. On jurisprudence which provided the framework on which every action or speech was judged to be right or wrong, they chose Maliki among the three other most popular Sunni schools of thoughts which were Hanafi, Shafi’i and Hanbali. Anybody caught preaching using any other framework in the public space used to be ostracised from the society.
Fast forward to the British conquest of the region and its imposition of the criminal code as the framework for judging what is right or wrong among a people who never saw any social and religious connection between them and the new framework. To the days of independence and the Northern region which saw the imposition of penal code as the best framework by the then premier of the region. Penal code was actually, in the main, their Maliki jurisprudence. It only abrogated what it viewed as hard punishments for certain categories of serious crimes. It also accommodated the interest of the minority Christian population of the new ideological entity (nation), Northern Nigeria.
Ahmadu Bello seriously struggled with the intellectuals and opinion leaders of his first constituency, Muslims, to agree with him to give them a completely new and fresh framework of perceiving their realities. He of course had an unquantifiable state power at his disposal as the fact of his ancestral link with Sheik Usman Danfodio was used to justify his status as someone who could give the Muslims an undiluted but trusted interpretation of their realities.
But already within the window of British conquest and independence there came signs of division among the stakeholders that encouraged the preachment and spread of ideas that were completely foreign to the environment. His times thereby witnessed one of the ugliest and fiercest religious and social conflicts. The emergence of a group due to the campaigns of the popular Senegalese Scholar Sheik Ibrahim Nyass who preached that contrary to the Maliki tradition, people should hold their two hands to their chest while praying (Qabl) instead of the normal practice that suggests they leave their hands as they are normally kept while standing even when not observing prayers (Sadl). Ahmadu Bello worked hard and with the instrument of state he controlled the conflict and gave the people direction. Had he lived longer and in the same political structure more feelers and tentacles would have been entrenched to curb future occurrence of such unfortunate events.
Yet nature has a way of working as Ahmadu Bello did not live long and the Nigerian state had to be restructured with a stronger centre and weaker units. It was most unfortunate that this centre or its first operators did not have the deep appreciation that nations are first ideological entities than geographical entities.
Of course there were models in nation building that ignored these basic realities and were being experimented in the now rested Soviet Union. It became a source of inspiration to most nations of Africa that then recently attained independence from the nations of Western Europe. Soviet Union represented a departure from the norms of creating nations that neglected the history of its own people, their spiritual tendencies and those values that informed their underlying unity base. It made an appeal to high concepts and ideals that have never achieved any practical function anywhere before. The initial success of the Union then did not betray the fouled foundation on which it was built until early 1990s. So the architects of our unitary nation can be absolved of blames for creating a soulless system that neglected the outlined realities.
Since 1967 Nigeria and its system thinkers never saw the necessity of making appeal to the history and previous political organisations of its various units before its creation for guidance on how it would organise itself and launch the nation on its proper and ordained path of prosperity. It is within these periods that in Northern Nigeria different versions of ideologies under the name of Islam came through. And since there is the usual claim that everybody is free to preach and practice their religion, these ideas and ideologies, divisive as they are and antagonistic to the very idea of a multi-religious nation were sanctioned. Unfortunately sometimes, through the formal and government owned electronic and print media.
In the early 1980s the cost of such neglects manifested itself first in Kano State by the outbreak of the famed Maitatsine crisis that was premised on intolerant variant of Islam that contradicted our essence and history. During the times of General Muhammadu Buhari as a head of state and probably because of the lessons imposed on the Nigerian nation by the Maitatsine uprising, an effort was made to control religious preaching across the nation. But his administration was short-lived. The effort he made got thwarted by the subsequent regimes that did not appreciate the wisdom of such patriotic endeavours.
Since those times many foreign ideas and ideologies preached in the name of Islam encroached into our ideological borders and claimed a large chunk of loyalists. Many intra and inter religious crisis as a result of such new found differences among Muslims have been and are being recorded with serious casualties.
The reader here may ask what should have been done at the very point when the nation changed to a unitary state at the aftermath of the 1966 coup. It is my opinion that under the new arrangement, the government should have moved ahead to take charge of all aspects colouring the perceptions of the people. It should not have introduced National Youth Service Corps alone but imposed an entirely new curriculum for the nation. Compulsory subjects that would impress on the next generation of leaders and opinion moulders deep appreciation of their new social realities from different points of view, should have been taught at greater length. It wouldn’t have been bad if all who passed through tertiary institutions from anywhere across the new nation took lessons on the legacies of the 19th century Jihad in the North. Not just history but some details regarding frameworks within which truth of any kind was viewed and their implication on Nigeria past and present. To my mind even WAEC syllabi that had all West Africa in mind was too broad for Nigerians who needed to know themselves closely. Something narrower in scope should have been adopted.
Government should have established research institutions with focus premised on the appreciation of the diversity of the Nigerian nation considering all item details and complexities of the socio-cultural past. It would then decree that all clergies and clerics must have obtained training and certification from the institution before they are allowed a space for preaching in the polity. This has been the tradition in pre-colonial Muslim Northern Nigeria. A scholar who gave fatwa was a scholar whose mentors were known and certified by the political institution. It is also a long standing tradition in the principles of Islamic jurisprudence that no scholar no matter how informed can issue a legal opinion on matters of others whose culture and social composition he is not familiar with. Tradition of a people (Urf) is an important variable that informs legal opinion in Islamic jurisprudence.
To my mind if these two steps had been taken there would have been most appreciation of our history and ways among Nigerian graduates as much as tolerance. Nigeria would have had better clerics directed toward increasing the bond among different socio-cultural groupings in the country. It would have easily checked the encroachment of unwanted ideologies. It would have appropriately channelled for good use any valuable foreign idea.
My reader will ask here as to why concentrate on Islam, Muslims and Northern Nigeria when there are other religions and denominations? It is my belief that all that I did can be appropriated to any other social settings, people and religions. Why did I concentrate on what should have been done in the past when the problems are most glaring in the present? In response to my other essays, Emma Henda said: “Today might look late, but tomorrow shall be later”.
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