“We don’t believe in weapons. We don’t believe in killing. We are not ISIS or Boko Haram who call themselves Sunnis.” – Dr. Waziri Isa Gwantu, ABU, Zaria Lecturer.
“If you look at The Muslim Congress and other responsible Islamic organisations in the South West, you see that we have been able to give our youths proper education…So, it is very difficult to lure Muslims in South West to some of these criminal activities because all our organisations are registered by government”. – Mr. Luqman AbdurRaheem, The Muslim Congress.
After the Zaria massacre in December 2015, the Nigerian authorities have not produced official figures and identities of the dead. This problem is made more difficult as a result of the reported secret mass burial of victims by the army.
As private individuals, Nigerian families who are victims of state massacres add to these problems due to their wrong resignation and fatalism, by failing to speak up and name the dead. This is why the case of Waziri Gwantu whose family lost four children during the Zaria massacre is helpful and significant. Gwantu has spoken up, to put human faces and identities to some of the dead, which the authorities may prefer to remain un-named for fear of negative public national response.
According to Waziri Gwantu, his four children were university undergraduates. His account is that he and his children had gone for a programme at the Shiite headquarters to perform the Maulud ceremony on the first day of the month of the birth of Prophet Muhammad. Gwantu lost four children. They were killed by soldiers in El-Zakzaky’s house.
That was the last Mr. Waziri Gwantu would hear from and about his dear children because, for him, as reported in the newspapers: “What is even more painful is that after killing these children, they denied us access to their corpses so that we could pray for them and bury them appropriately. They were buried in mass graves. What offence have we committed to deserve this kind of oppression? Even Boko Haram that are known to be the worst killers in the world are not treated this way”, Gwantu mourned.
Sadly, Mr. Gwantu’s family story has become part of the tragic history of massacre and insensitive and inappropriate secret burial of victims by the Nigerian state. Gwantu’s family experience will remain a frightful one in Nigeria’s memory.
…for Nigeria to make progress and realise her potentials, as an aspiring modern, progressive, corruption free, liberal and democratic, Nigeria must be a federal state with a federal constitution that devolves political and economic powers to the state, local governments, towns, and cities such that states, local governments, cities and towns (rather than Abuja) become the centered civic spaces for the cultural, economic and political lives of people.
I am human and a parent, so I know and I feel it. Four children and siblings gone in one fell swoop to the guns of an army that is supposed to defend them! Gwantu’s case and others have added to the urgency for a permanent solution to avoidable strifes and clashes like these. May the souls of Waziri Gwantu’s children, and others who the Nigerian authorities must identify and make public, rest in peace.
But this recent Shiites/Army clash has added a dimension to the Nigerian condition which we must pay attention to and resist because of how this same issues have destroyed peace, love, society, community and family lives in the principal home countries of the Shiites and Sunnis – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Yemen etc.
The dimension is the exportation to Nigeria of the Shiites/Sunni rivalry and antagonism within global Islam. Besides other factors, the global rivalry between the Sunnis and Shiites is defined by their apparent different interpretations of aspects of the Islamic theology. Even when Iran and Saudi Arabia may deny this, their rivalry also has a subtext – the promotion of each country’s national interests and quest for global influence and leadership among Muslims.
And this is precisely why Nigeria must categorically and firmly draw the line between Nigerian national interests and those of any of the meddlesome Islamic states – whether Iran, her citizens, government, media and organisations. The Iranians and any meddling Islamic state need to be called to order and told unambiguously to stay off Nigeria, while we deal with our concerns and challenges. And this is the reason:
Nigeria and indeed any country, welcomes commentaries from foreign countries and bodies on issues of human rights for these are universal and global – they do not have ethnic, religious, or national coloration. But it is not the concern of busy body Islamic states, either in Mecca, Medina, Baghdad, Teheran, Beirut, etc. to press their own clannish, provincial, sectarian local politics into Nigerian affairs.
How can these Islamic states, who see law and justice through the lens of sectarianism, rather than the sanctity of life, pronounce on human rights and lives in other countries, with these blood chilling executions right on their own soils across the Middle East?
Lines must be firmly drawn between acceptable and legitimate empathy; defence of human lives, human rights, locally and globally, and hiding under such defence as Iran and other Islamic states do to promote narrow interests in Nigeria. Nigeria is not a theocratic state and will never be.
Put plainly, it is odd for the Shiite and Sunni states in far away Middle East to export their sectarian interests to Nigeria under the guise of defending human lives and rights, which they do not respect or guarantee in their theocratic states. Saudi Arabia – the home of Mecca and Medina – has just executed 47 people (some of who are said to be terrorists and some of who are also said to be Shiites), drawing comments on a sense of law that relies on sectarianism!
How can these Islamic states, who see law and justice through the lens of sectarianism, rather than the sanctity of life, pronounce on human rights and lives in other countries, with these blood chilling executions right on their own soils across the Middle East?
So, Nigerians – and especially Nigerian Muslims – should not allow any of these Shiites/Sunni Islamic states to recreate in the country the sectarian wreckage of their communities, and the destruction of community life which they have inflicted on their parts of the world through ideologies of hatred, extremism, separation, sectarianism, violence and exclusion. This is about national pride, dignity, honour, independence, and our sense of peaceful and loving co-existence in Nigeria. We are no Sunni or Shiite extremists, and we do not want to be. We are simply Nigerians.
Also, in providing local solutions to our problems, Nigerian people have not sufficiently shown an understanding of the nature of local strifes in a multi-national country like ours because of years of a centralising and militarised unitary structure, which always make Nigerians to wrongly look towards Abuja on issues that are primarily local. And this has to do with the federal question and the nature of our multi-national and multi-cultural society.
…sadly, Nigeria’s unitary state with its centralising military mentality, and a tunnel vision, which wrongly uses its central army to perform local civil duties (such as traffic duties) and which directs its guns on Nigerians cannot manage this multi-cultural and multi-national objective reality.
So, in continuing the re-thinking of the Nigerian federation in more specific terms in the New Year, we can learn from civic examples from other parts of the country which show our collective multiple and diverse experiences that should be turned into national strength. In this regard, the example of the account of the president and spokesperson of The Muslim Congress, Mr. Luqman AbdurRaheem on how the Muslims in the Southern part of Nigeria have used education to defeat extremism is useful. On Boko Haram, religious extremism, terrorism and criminality, Luqman AbdurRaheem said:
“If you look at The Muslim Congress and other responsible Islamic organisations in the South West, you see that we have been able to give our youths proper education…So, it is very difficult to lure Muslims in South West to some of these criminal activities because all our organisations are registered by government…There is need for collaboration and ideas sharing, that is why we are not limiting our activities to the South West. As we speak, we have established a branch in Abuja, a branch in Niger and within the last week we are also working with our brothers in Yobe State who have seen the need to associate with the responsible Islamic organisation.”
The Nigerian state, people and Nigerian Muslims need to learn from this civic example.
But sadly, Nigeria’s unitary state with its centralising military mentality, and a tunnel vision, which wrongly uses its central army to perform local civil duties (such as traffic duties) and which directs its guns on Nigerians cannot manage this multi-cultural and multi-national objective reality.
We are neither extremist Shiites nor Sunnis; we are Nigerians.
This is why for Nigeria to make progress and realise her potentials, as an aspiring modern, progressive, corruption free, liberal and democratic, Nigeria must be a federal state with a federal constitution that devolves political and economic powers to the state, local governments, towns, and cities such that states, local governments, cities and towns (rather than Abuja) become the centered civic spaces for the cultural, economic and political lives of people.
May the souls of the dead in the December, 2015 Zaria massacre continue to rest in peace.
We are neither extremist Shiites nor Sunnis; we are Nigerians.
PREMIUM TIMES
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