THAT WE ARE STILL ONE NATION IS A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT

THAT WE ARE STILL ONE NATION, IS A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT-SHEIKH AHMAD ABDUR-RAHMAN
Filed in News By BRUCE MALOGO & JIBRIL MUSA
Friday, October 01, 2010





Sheikh Ahmad Abdur-Rahman belongs in the niche of religious leaders. As Chief Missioner and Chief Imam of Ansar-ud-Deen Muslim Society of Nigeria, he commands a large following. Reflecting on Nigeria’s 5o years of nationhood, the respected scholarly sheikh gave a frank and firm verdict that Nigeria is yet to attain true nationhood.

He pinpointed the various maladies that have truncated the dreams of the founding fathers of the Nigerian nation. In the same breath, he identified what he considered the country’s modest achievement 50 years post independence – the continuing existence of Nigeria as one nation. His pragmatic ‘steps to true nationhood’ is reduced to a synthesis of effective leadership and good followership. Excerpts.

We are celebrating 5o years of nationhood, how have we fared as a nation?
I’d rather say 50 years of statehood in search of nationhood. We are a multi-nationality state. The dream of our founding fathers is to build a nation; up until now, we have not been able to build a nation. We are still a state comprising of so many ethnic nationalities that are yet to fuse into one nation. This is rather unfortunate, because other multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious states are in their various stages of evolution towards nationhood.

Nigeria is still very much lagging behind, and the kind of politics we play unfortunately is such that it is not helping our march toward nationhood. The level of our integration is very slow. The mechanism that the founding fathers of Nigeria put in place to ensure this integration has been infested with corruption such that it is not playing the desired role. Take the NYSC for example. It was conceived to help national integration; your guess is as good as mine. But I will say I am not a pessimist. I am an optimist. Still we have a lot to be grateful for.

A lot to be grateful for, such as?
In spite of the so many contradictions of our togetherness, we still remain, at least one Nigeria.

You think that is something positive in our 50 years existence as a nation?
I tell you that as far as I am concerned, it is something positive. The world today is moving closer – single currency, the European Union, single Market, multinational government. This is not an era of small, small states. Whether or not we accept, we need that nation that is strong and virile. Nigeria today continues to be relevant in Africa because of its population.

If Nigeria were like Benin Republic, it will just be like Benin Republic; and that does not mean it is going to work. That is why even some states are not working. States that are ordinarily supposed to be homogenous are not working today. Check what is happening in Ogun State. And other states. These are states that are supposed to be relatively homogenous. But unfortunately, Nigerians still find some thing that divides us rather than look for something that unites us. Even as a Yoruba nation. The Yoruba nation is still divided into Ijebu, Ijesha, Awori, Egba and so on. Inspite of all these, I am convinced that Nigeria is destined for greatness.

That is to say that in spite of all the controversies, you are a believer in one Nigeria?
I am an incurable, incorrigible believer in the unity and oneness of Nigeria. I have firm faith in the fact that our destiny and our greatness lie in out togetherness.

You mention ‘our kind of politics’ and you also mention corruption as negative factors, how have these two factors impeded our progress in our 50 years of nationhood?
I think we started out with a lot of promises 50 years ago – a lot of promise, a lot of commitment, a lot of selflessness, lots of enlightened and purposeful leadership. We started out on a very strong and purposeful note. We had leaders that were very committed.

They were not angels, but certainly they were very committed. They had egalitarian programs-the western region, the northern region, the eastern region-they were doing great. The virtues of hard work and integrity were some of our core values. Inspite of the differences, our leaders did found reasons to work together before the unfortunate incident of the Biafran War set in and threw spanner into the works.

You think the Biafran war to some extent, is responsible for the problems we are having today?
The divisive factors have always been there, and they will always continue to be there. They are like viruses; there are certain conditions that promote and make them active. But then, there are even certain useful viruses – the microbes; it is not all viruses that are harmful. Some of these tendencies, to my mind, are even useful for national development; I mean healthy competition, healthy rivalry, competition for national development, and competition for self-actualization.

We must not forget that in the First Republic, we had certain icons in terms of education, no matter where you came from, once you made it to University of Ibadan, (UI) you are great; no matter where you came from, once you made it to the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), these were the places for all. There were people from the North, the South, the East, and from the West – from everywhere. All these primordial considerations were not there. To a very large extent, Nigeria was home to us. A lot of people from the east were born and bred in Lagos. Irrespective of where they came from, Lagos is the place of their birth and they speak Yoruba very fluently and they are part of the community. The point I am making now is that the Biafran war was a huge setback; no matter what the contradictions were that led to the Biafran war, it nevertheless was a very huge setback.

Because of years of military interregnum, our politics remains on primordial line. Today, we are still asking questions: where is he from? What entitled him to be president of Nigeria? It is not yet the turn of his people. This is something very unfortunate. There is mutual suspicion; these are things that have made the emergence of true national leaders almost impossible. Because people consider the accent of your English to know where you have come from before you can be entitled to lead. Some people even thought that it should be their birthright to lead- this is really unfortunate.

We should have gotten to a point, after 50 years, where it really doesn’t matter where you come from, but what you can do, what abilities you have, what you can deliver. Our politics is not issue-oriented; it is based on sentiments- who you are, where you come from, even sometimes which church you attend or which mosque you go to pray.

Another thing is that, the system that we operate happens to be one of the most expensive in the world. Our political office holders are the envy of the world-one of the highest paid lawmakers in the world. It is not as if we have anything to show for it. Our politics has remained on the level of primordial sentiments and loyalty. Once, we thought we had broken that during the election of June 12, 1993. Nigerians came together and considered capability above other things. Nobody asked whether Abiola was an Egba man or a Yoruba man. They looked at him; this is a man that can deliver. And Nigerians voted for him overwhelmingly.

What are your values?
Godliness, neighborliness, integrity, bravery, uprightness. These are considerations for all values. These are the values with which we were brought up. You were surprised when I said bravery. You will be what you are destined to be, but you must be brave to face life, you must be brave to tell the truth. You must be brave to handle situations. This life is not for chicken-hearted people. It’s not for the lily-livered. You must take decisions and stand by them. If people are brave, perhaps we will not have the problems we are having. Even so many leaders are lily-livered. They do things that they know are not right just because they want to be popular.

Your values are quite high and these are values you hardly see in today’s society, so how do you operate in this purview?
Well, it’s quite a challenge, but I will tell you that this values until very recently are our common values as a people across this country. Muslim, non Muslim, Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Efik, Ibibio, African – these are our common values.

What happened?
We derailed. We copied others. We became detached. We de-linked from our roots. As it were, we became a people without roots, no thanks to urbanisation, which eroded our core values. I tell you, in all parts of this country before, a farmer will harvest all of his or her produce, place it by the roadside, put the equivalent money that he or she wants to sell on the produce and go back home. Two, three days later he or she will go and check if anybody had shown interest in it; the person would have taken it away and put down the money. This was everywhere in this country among the Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo. Stealing was a taboo everywhere. In fact, if a young man is looking for a wife, the would-be in-laws will go and dig in to his background to know if there were thieves in his family.

And of course, our people all along were not materialistic, they never regarded money as the be all and end all; you know, good name, integrity counts. It was the basis of giving people chieftaincy titles, not money. Hard work, you must be a brave hunter, a hardworking farmer, a wrestler – these are the things that will make the community confer on you a chieftaincy title, not the money that you have.
These things were our core values as a people until we derailed, until money became everything. And since after the civil war, so many things started happening to us that was eroding our core values as a people. I tell you, growing up, there is a saying that someone is “as poor as the church rat,” but I think the best rats are the ones in the churches today. Clergymen were selfless people, they were well respected, but they were not rich people. When did we get it wrong? We derailed at a point.

Even our traditional institution, the institution of the Oba, the Obi or whatever, did not allow for autocracy. There were checks and balances. Look at the Oyo Empire; look at the checks and balances that existed. We had a community, a society that was working, we had values that had a conscience, you know, but everyone moved to the city and the city denatured them. And we became an amalgam. We are speaking a different language, we are thinking in another; we are behaving, aping another culture, so we became an amalgam. And my problem is, a people who think not in their own language will not act according to their own true nature. And they will never develop.

Are you not afraid for this country?
I have fears even as I have hope. I have fear that we are degenerating too fast. About three weeks ago I was in Owerri and I saw something I had never seen before in my life. I saw a young man of about 21 years old. I don’t know what happened between him and an apparently older man. This man was elderly and the young man was slapping this old man repeatedly. I had never seen that sight in my life. It’s un-African. You know I had to go back and ask. They told me it’s not my business; did I know what he did? I said what could this old man do that you a young man is slapping a man that looked to me in his 60’s? What could he have done?
You know, this young people have no respect for elders.

They don’t even understand the language of their people. They can’t speak it. They don’t know the culture of their people. They don’t know anything. They learn from television, by reading novels. To that extent I’m afraid for the future of this country.
Also, to the extent that there is a growing religious expression. Seeming religiosity. Places of worship here and there, but there is dwindling religious experience. We do not find the core values of the church, the core values of the mosque again. Everyone is preaching prosperity at all cost. Sometimes one wonders whether this proliferation is for God or for gold. To the extent that it is not impacting on the morals of the society. People have questioned the relevance of religion and religious institutions. But for me, I believe there is nothing wrong with religion. We must re-examine the motivation. Why do people leave the bank, the oil company to go and start a place of worship? Is it that one is more lucrative than the other? Is it just that there is a call from God to leave where money is?

These are my fears for this country.
My fears for this country is also that we have stopped being original. I pray that this democracy will not ruin this country and I pray that this presidential system will not drain us completely. It’s unAfrican, it’s expensive, it’s incompatible, it’s too expensive, and it’s too wasteful. This is not in our character. Nigerian democracy is one of the most expensive in the whole world and also one of the most wasteful. I have fears because some people who are secondary school dropouts are having so much money now that it could be a source of tremendous crisis of confidence in this country.

Where a member of the House of Assembly has so much money and the teacher, the professor, the medical doctor, the engineer, cannot even earn anything close. Then the country is encouraging mediocrity. You can see that in the quality of laws, the quality of legislatures.
I also fear because our social infrastructures are breaking down at an alarming rate. Roads throughout the country are bad and people don’t seem to care. They have stolen enough money to buy houses in Dubai, in New York, in London and they don’t care anymore.

Our educational institutions, I don’t know what they have become today. Nigerians find it more convenient to go to Ghana for sound university education. They go to Malaysia for post graduate and doctoral. They go to funny places, and it is unfortunate that most Nigerian leaders die abroad. I have never seen and I have never heard of any leader from anywhere in the world who will be sick and will be brought to Nigeria for medical attention.

Alright. They mismanage the resources and God is warning them. He is showing them signs and they remain heedless. If they had remained here, they had spent the money here, they had managed the resources that Allah had given us judiciously, there would be no need to take them abroad to die when they are sick. They live as kings in Nigeria; they die abroad in ignominy.

I’m afraid because the leaders themselves do not have any confidence in the country. If there is headache they are off. If they want to do good thing they will rather go and do it in Ghana because they are afraid that one day the people will rise up and destroy it. They will go and keep money in New York, in Swiss account and nobody will know until they die and then the money that they have stolen will not be useful to them, will not be useful to their family. The only stupid thing they do is when they have money, they go and build mansion in the countryside, you know in the village. Nobody is going to live there, their children will never go and live in the village and they themselves will go there only once in a year during Christmas or during Salah. That is waste.

How do we strike religious harmony in this country?
Let me tell you that I don’t believe in what people call religious conflict. I do not see what is essentially religious in all of this. And I will tell you the Hausa have lived in Shagamu for almost 200 years, now it is only recently that we hear of conflict and war. The Hausa have lived in Jos for upward of 150 years, they have lived together harmoniously with the other tribes; there has been no problem between them.

So what is the problem?</b>
The problem is that politicians are hiding under the cover of religion, manipulating the religious sentiment of the people for their own selfish political aggrandizement. Pitching people one against the other, they are exploiting religious sentiment to score cheap political points.
If you look at conflicts in this country, the so-called religious conflicts, they are basically socio-economic and political; there is nothing religious about it. Forget about the fact that sometimes it may have religious coloration, but if you go beyond the veneer of the religious coloration, you will see fundamental socio economic factors that are responsible for most of these conflicts. Whether you go to Jos or Kaduna or Bauchi or Kano or Maiduguri, you will find these key socio-economic factors.

Lets take the Boko Haram for instance. Unfortunately, the Nigerian Press is not living up to its duty. The press sometimes is too sensational and too superficial. Boko Haram is an extremist reaction to deep polluted socio-economic crisis. It is a reaction to unemployment. It is a reaction to social marginalization. And I will tell you how. Boko Haram means ‘western education is Haram (forbidden).’ What is western education? You go to china, you hardly find people who speak English; go to Japan, how many of them speak English? Go to India, they speak and write in their own language.

Education is a universal human heritage, forget about the medium, but these young people, apparently misled and apparently unemployed, socially marginalized and forgotten, became ready tools in the hands of opposition politicians, and sometimes politicians who are not in opposition.

You have resident population with disgruntled elements in all parts of this country- it depends on what is dominant. If religion is dominant, yes, that will be aggravated, if it is resource control, then that will be. That is what is manifesting. Otherwise, Nigerians are a very, very accommodating and peaceful people. They don’t fight. But hunger, deprivation, lack of education, and denial of opportunities are the tools that the politicians are using to manifest sentiments to their advantage.

You’ve been pointing at politicians, how much have religious leaders done?
So many people have said this because they do not appreciate the extent of deprivation that we have in this country. Look, religious leaders – Muslim and Christians – only play persuasive roles. They don’t have power to sanction anyone. Politicians have a lot of money, religious leaders don’t. Tell me what can a pastor or an imam preach to someone who is hungry; whereas someone is waiting: “I will give you hundred thousand naira if just do this; once you do it and its successful, come back, I will give you more.” That is one.

Two, before you blame religious leaders you must know that religious leaders are not in control of so many things. They can only preach and try to convince. They do not allocate resources. They have tried. Missionary organizations have built schools, and government took them over. Missionary schools are where the core values are imparted. Government took over missionary schools and they made the teaching of religion optional. They outlawed discipline in schools and yet you want to blame religious leaders. They (government) are not properly involved in the upbringing of the younger ones and sometimes, government does not listen to religious leaders. They only use them as ‘fire brigadiers.’

We have been insisting that the sponsors of these mayhems should be brought to justice. Nobody has been prosecuted till today. Is it that they are ghost? I’m a member of the Nigerian Inter Religious Council and I know what we do and I know what recommendations we make to government.

So where do you think the problem is? Why is it that nobody has been held responsible?
Let me give you an example of the Jos crisis. Unfortunately, Nigerians are being misled into believing that the Jos crisis is religious. There is nothing religious about it. It is fundamentally political and socio economic. Nobody is addressing the core problems and it will continue to recur. It has to do with lifestyle. We have been shouting about this settler-indigene syndrome, government must liberate it decisively. People have lived in a place for 200 years or more, yet you are still saying they are settlers.

Now after 50 years of existence as a nation, how do we move the nation forward?
Let me start from my personal dream for the next 50 years. My dreams and hopes, and I dare to add, my prayer. What I expect to see in Nigeria, Nigeria as a people, and Nigeria as a country. Right now there are about 152, 000 Nigerians studying in the UK. It is unfortunate. I want to see a country that will develop all its capacity to educate its citizens at all levels.

I want to see a country where health facilities are developed and Nigeria becomes the health hub of the sub region. I want to see a country where life expectancy is high. I want to see a country that will take advantage of its natural endowments apart from oil. I want to see a country where true leaders will emerge, a country where the people believe that they have one destiny and they work towards that one destiny. I want to see a country, a nation, where plurality is a source of strength, rather than a source of weakness, a country where we respect one another’s differences and not exploit it as a tool for putting one another down. I want to see Nigeria in the next 15 years overtaking Malaysia and Singapore.

We have the potentials to do it. I want to see a country where the youth will continue to play much more important roles than being political cannon fodders. I want to see a country where our produces will not be allowed to waste. A country that will develop its agricultural potentiality and move from primary producer to agro allied, a country that will be net exporter of food, rather an importer of food. I want to see a Nigeria that will prefer what it produces to what it imports. I want to see a Nigeria that will say no to a few corrupt, inept, ethnocentric bigots that are in leadership positions.

Concisely, how do we achieve all these?
I am a believer in the fact that the people get the kind of leadership they deserve.

So it boils down to followership?
It is both a question of leadership and followership. Four years ago, if you know Lagos well enough and you know Oshodi, can you ever believe that Oshodi will be close to anything that it is today? The people – Danfo drivers, Molue drivers, the traders, commuters- nobody believed that Oshodi could be like that. Ordinarily, Nigerians think that you need the force of a military regime to make it happen.

That’s where leadership comes in. And that shows what the people can do if they come together to elect purposeful leaders. And to do this, they must be able to protect their own votes. No government will ever do this for them. The people must take their destiny in their own hands. They must protect their own ballot. They must ensure that their votes count. They must not mortgage their conscience. They must not mortgage their future. This is where followership counts. We need good followership. We need the right leadership.