By Azuka Onwuka
Last month, while the world was marking Easter, the number one feast in Christendom, a Nigerian bank – Sterling Bank – with a Muslim, Abubakar Suleiman, as its CEO, ran an advert which said, “Like Agege Bread, He Rose,” in reference to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity. It was not just an advert lacking in creativity and sensitivity; it was repugnant and despicable.
Many Christians expressed their outrage against the advert. The bank apologised and the issue was rested. The bank was not attacked. The staff of the bank were not attacked. There was not even a campaign to blacklist the bank.
Last week, there was an allegation that Deborah Yakubu, a female student of Shehu Shagari College of Education in the North-West state of Sokoto, had asked her classmates to focus on posting academic materials on their class WhatsApp group and stop posting religious materials. She was accused by her Muslim classmates that her comment contained blasphemy. Subsequently, a mob went in search of her, got her, stoned her to death and burnt her body.
While reactions were pouring in regarding the barbaric act, the next day mobs took over the streets of Sokoto and began destroying and burning churches and business premises of those perceived to be Christians, even though these people had no connection with Deborah. Deborah was an indigene of Niger State in the North-Central zone of Nigeria. In addition to the vandalism and arson by the mob, there were also calls by those who supported the lynching of Deborah that the two people arrested over her killing be released.
Though there have been strong claims that there is no part of the Quran which directs adherents to lynch a blasphemer, many Muslims on different social media platforms have continued to defend it outrightly or indirectly. The usual subtle endorsement used even by those who don’t want to endorse it directly is: “People should learn to respect other people’s religion.” The implication is that those who “don’t respect Islam” should be ready for whatever they receive.
In June 2016, a 74-year-old woman, Juliet Agbahiwe, was lynched in Kano for telling a Muslim neighbour, performing ablution in front of her shop, to give room for her customers to be able to access her shop. Part of the message retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari as President of Nigeria gave read, “Let us learn to respect each other’s faith so that we can know each other and live together in peace.”
Many saw it as an insensitive comment by a president who is a Muslim in response to the incident of some Muslims from his zone lynching a Christian septuagenarian on the allegation of blasphemy. The meaning of that statement was that if Agbahiwe had respected other people’s faith, she would not have been killed.
The danger in the lynching of Deborah was that unlike in the case of Agbahiwe which happened in a market (where most of the perpetrators could have been uneducated), it happened in a higher institution where education is expected to make a difference in the people’s reaction to religion. In May 2015, an angry mob set the Kano venue of an Islamic sect ablaze for a comparison which was seen as blasphemous. Nine members of the sect were arrested and in June they were sentenced to death for blasphemy by a sharia court.
“There has been consensus among Muslims scholars that insulting the prophet carries a death sentence,” the head of Kano’s religious police, Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa, had told the BBC Hausa Service.
“We quickly put them on trial to avoid bloodshed because people were very angry and trying to take law into their hands,” he added.
The hashtag, #SaveKanoNine, was created on social media for their sake. In response to that hashtag, Bashir Ahmad, who was the Personal Assistant to President Buhari on New Media and Digital Communications, made a tweet that read, “I can’t pretend or keep silent. I support the death penalty for BLASPHEMY [emphasis his]. That’s my belief and I do not and will never support #SaveKanoNine.”
To the majority of Muslims of Northern Nigeria, the issue of death for blasphemy is a very passionate one that should not be compromised. Anybody speaking against it is seen as an accomplice that should be treated as an enemy. To the Christians in the South and North as well as many Muslims in the South, killing for blasphemy is barbaric.
What this re-emphasises is that there are two civilisations in Nigeria, fiercely opposed to each other. Since the Southern and Northern Protectorates were merged in 1914 to form Nigeria, these two civilisations, or worldviews, rarely agree on any issue except that of gay marriage, even though statistics shows that Nigeria ranks high in the viewership of gay pornography.
The primary reason why Nigeria has been retrogressing and filled with violence, conflict and bloodshed is that these two civilisations never agree on issues that aid growth and development. They do not agree on issues regarding education, democracy, religion, commerce, employment, marriage, procreation, human rights, female rights, child rights, life and death. The disagreement between these sides is not like that between the conservatives and liberals in most Western countries. It is a matter of life and death. There are no middle grounds.
And because of the way Nigeria is structured, Nigeria cannot make any progress unless the whole parts agree. In the event that the whole parts of Nigeria do not agree – which happens virtually all the time – the view of the most disadvantaged side or of the most conservative side or the side with the ability to dish out the most violence is adopted as the national view. That entails that Nigeria usually crawls when it should be running or flying.
Those who assume that Nigeria’s problem is that of leadership do not understand the depth and magnitude of the problem facing Nigeria. The existence of two civilisations that are centuries apart in ideology and are pulling in opposite directions is the fundamental problem of Nigeria. Good leadership cannot solve this.
The only part leadership can play in it is in helping to midwife a system, which will make Nigeria run a truly federal or confederal system, that gives freedom to the sections of Nigeria. However, because the two opposing civilisations in Nigeria never agree on anything, the chances of this are slim. The other option is to peacefully dissolve Nigeria like was done in former India, Malaysia, the USSR or Czechoslovakia, to end the perennial bloodshed and backwardness and allow the different parts to pursue their dreams and ways of life. Again, the two opposing civilisations in Nigeria will never agree to any peaceful dissolution of Nigeria.
Therefore, Nigeria is in a situation that creates apprehension. The rise in secessionist agitations and violence from different parts of Nigeria heightens that anxiety. Acts like the lynching of Deborah Yakubu over allegations of blasphemy merely widen the gulf between the two opposing civilisations in Nigeria. Nobody knows where this division will lead to. It is imperative, therefore, that Nigerians hold a national dialogue to create a system that will allow the sections to live the type of life they cherish without suppressing the desires of others. The more this is denied or delayed, the more danger it poses to Nigeria and Nigerians.
• Onwuka is a newspaper columnist and author.