INTRODUCTION
In Nigeria today, it has become quite pronounced that there is a gradual and progressive plan to marginalize a section of the country along religious lines and the plain sectors to be unfolding steadily especially with the coming to power of the current administration.
COUNTDOWN has over the past 20 years gone around the Northern region of the country to ask for the perception of Northern Christian Elders on this issue and just to refresh our minds in order to brazen up to properly reverse the development, we bring you the responses and action plan as revealed by an elder statesman as follows:
“I CAN SEE A PLANLESS, LEADERLESS REVOLUTION COMING IN THIS COUNTRY.” -DR. CHRISTOPHER SHUAIBU ABASHIYA MFR
COUNTDOWN: Sir, from your long years in Public Service experience and co-habitation with Muslims in northern Nigeria, do you perceive or feel there is any form of a calculated move to persecute and marginalize Christians in the workings of the affairs of the individual states and perhaps in the national stage?
ABASHIYA: In the north, you could actually divide the society into Christians and Muslims. And religion from time immemorial has been a potent and attractive tool for settling disputes. It may be a land dispute, it may be an economic dispute. It may be a social dispute, it may be a political dispute. But we know that religion is attractive. For example, if I come up to a situation where you have a group of Christians and they are protesting, I may not even ask them why they are protesting, I’d just join them because I’m a Christian. So I see it as two prongs. Yes, this is a problem of religion. I should think so, I think both Christians and Muslims should go back to their religious books and see if there is any element of violence in that book and say no to it.
Secondly, I think in the North, people have tended to use religion as a tool to settle a number of scores. Let me tell you about a very interesting situation. Way back in 1976, when we were drafting the 1979 Constitution of this country. When some of us spoke of religion, our colleagues in the south were wondering what is this business about religion. Now, we from the north were trying to get something that will protect the interest of everybody in this country. In fact, I may let loose what many of you don’t know. I was solely responsible for Section 10 of the constitution that we have today, which says that no federal or state should adopt any religion as the state religion. I was responsible for it, I initiated it and my colleagues supported us and we got it for the first time in the 1979 constitution. Now, for my colleagues, they were like, ‘Chris why are you bothered about religion?’ But some of us in the north have had problems, especially with religion and this is why we wanted a safety clause, so that one Governor would not wake up one day and say the state religion in this state is Buddhism. So there has been that fear for a long time ago, mind you I am talking about 1976. If we were trying to take care of it as far back as then, you know that there has been a problem. Religious discrimination has been with us immemorially; I am a trustee of MASIYAWA, I don’t know if you’ve heard of that group. It’s a Christian group consisting of Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri groups in the north. Now, this association has come about as a result of the seeming persecution that they are going through. Up till today, their children have not been to good schools; they have no employment and so forth.
I mentioned earlier, I have noticed in the far north, there is no Christian Pilgrims Welfare Board, so the Christians are not being taken care of. I want to ask with humility and with reverence, any governor in the far north, how many Christians have they been sponsoring to Jerusalem? They sure are also Citizens. So this is the issue I think. But I think this is the problem though I want first of all, for us to establish that in the religious books, nothing actually encourages misunderstanding and violence. That is how I’d answer your question.
COUNTDOWN: And this is where the issue of government policies comes in.
ABASHIYA: Yes, now, I am not sure whether … Let’s take the North, I can speak of the North because I am from the North. I am not sure whether the policies that have been introduced have been sufficient to take care of the situation. For example, you don’t need the Federal Government to go and start Almajiri Schools. That is not the problem of the Federal Government. Well, we thank the Federal Government for they have provided the start. That’s the initiative, but the states, this is their responsibility and I can tell you this from my humble perspective that the Almajiri school cannot be successful and effective without you taking a measure that no child should be sent from his own state to another state for Quranic school. There are sufficient Quranic teachers in that state. If perhaps the Quran and other Islamic books have said we should seek education up to China, which is why I believe we are doing what we are doing today. Even in Western education, some of us started in Nigeria. I schooled in Britain, I schooled in America, and so, I’ve gone out. But I think they have to stay in their own states and have a program that will be developed so that in the daytime, they are in the Western Education oriented classrooms and after they finish, they go to Quranic School.
Let me ask you this question, have you ever seen the son of a Permanent Secretary or a Commissioner in the North or an Engineer with a calabash begging and that he is in Quranic school? No, why? I am not asking you to give me an answer. Why? That’s the question. Can’t their children also go to Maiduguri to learn the Quran? They have their children in the Western type of School and after school they get Mallams to teach them at home. Why can’t the state develop that? That they will go for a Western type of education in the morning and in the afternoon, the government will develop Quranic-based institutions for them.
Now, I have said to you, that some of them do not believe that they should send their children to school. When I was growing up, I had a classmate from here. We were in the UK together in 1965, but his twin sister is here, stark illiterate. Why? Because the father felt that there is no sense in educating a female. And up to today, you have that problem. So there are so many factors in the north that are making it impossible for us.
Then, there is the issue of Unemployment. If I know that my child has finished Secondary School and perhaps University with a Master’s degree, he has no job, to a parent that has never been to school, he will say it’s a waste of time. And in any case, when we started, because I will say we started, it was when Ahmadu Bello, Ife, and Lagos came up in ’62, 1960 there was UNN, Nsukka. I term as the only University in Nigeria, then you had Ibadan. Those were the only Universities. When you finish, your job is secure, it’s there. When I finished in 1965, in fact, I was posted to the Ministry of Establishment and Training in Kaduna. But, because my grades were so good, I obtained Commonwealth Scholarship to go to Britain for my Masters. So the situation then was different. Today, many have no jobs and some parents who are illiterate in the North and maybe in the South are saying what benefit do I get by spending my money sending these kids to school, they better learn a trade. And this is why at one time, in one of the states in the east, male children had the lowest enrolment, they were going into trade, business, that’s all. So, there are quite a number of factors. In those days, they sent kids to school with one goal in particular, and that is they will come out, get a job and they will be working, they‘ll give me money. But that’s not the issue today. I’m afraid some of our parents are still sponsoring some of their children who have PhDs that have no jobs, so unfortunate. I think basically, this country must tackle the issue of unemployment, otherwise, parents will say of what use. I’ve sent you to school, and you’ve come back with Masters, no job, with a Ph.D., so much so that Dangote is recruiting PhDs as drivers.
So, myriads of factors, and I’m afraid we are not prepared to face the realities, we are in a world of fantasy, hoping that all will be well. Let me say this, we are lucky, let me refer you to the incident in Entebe, when the hostages were held there and they were rescued successfully, one of the Israelis said “we are lucky” and his colleague said yes this time around, but next time, we may not be lucky. Now, this time around, we are lucky in this country, but we may not be lucky for too long because, I have said this to my friends and they think that I am joking. I’m talking now in terms of unemployment and poverty in this country, because they are related to education. You see, I have said that one today, if we are still alive, I said to my friend, you and I will get out of our vehicles and do the best 100 yards dash running away to save our lives because, there may be a day, we may be deceiving ourselves, but there may be a day honestly, you‘ll have spontaneous revolution, plan less revolution, leaderless revolution. And why? The only uniting factor among them all is that they have nothing to lose but their chains. These are the chains that are chaining some people today, and when they decide to get out of their chains, God help us in this country. We are actually sitting on a keg of gun powder and it could explode any moment. All this is linked with the criminality you are talking about. ‘An idle hand is the devil’s workshop’, that’s what we say. And if somebody is unemployed, somebody will employ him, it could be a human being or it could be the evil one.
.png)
