Muslim Hausa hegemony and the Jos crisis
Many
in the media have severally commented on the recent Jos mayhem, but
in the spirit of political correctness virtually none has broached
the touchy issue of real and perceived fears of Muslim Hausa
domination by the Jos indigenes. Their grievances have been
variously dismissed as irrational, unpatriotic, irredentist,
unconstitutional, un-nationalistic or retrogressive. The Zango
Katafs, Kafanchans and other Middle belt peoples who have similarly
revolted against Muslim-Hausa hegemony would certainly disagree.
It's all well and good to pontificate about the constitutional
rights of all Nigerians wherever they reside within the country, but
many Middle belters and Southerners can't help wondering why only
Hausas should be insisting on such citizenship rights given that
Muslim Hausas in their home states of the Core North deny other
Nigerians such rights (nay privileges).
Consequently most non-indigenes in the Core North have more or less
accepted their second class status and make no attempt to vie for
any major political office like Senator or local govt Chairman like
Muslim Hausas in Jos. Non-indigenes in the core North simply wish to
be left alone to get on with their lives.
Even this very modest unambitious expectation of peaceful
coexistence is often denied non-indigenes by Muslims in the Core
North who habitually organize massacres and bloodbaths of Aarna
(non- muslims), based on flimsy excuses such as Danish cartoons, a
Christian preacher arriving in Kano, America's post 9/11 bombing of
Afghanistan, or even an innocuous newspaper article complimenting
their Muslim "prophet" with beauty contestant brides. Consequently
many non-Muslims in the core North sleep with one eye open, lest
they get caught up in the incessant religious violence.
Religious violence isn't the only ordeal of non-indigenes in the
Core North. They also contend with other unconstitutional practices
such as discriminatory school fees and employment, discriminatory
admissions into choice courses at tertiary educational institutions,
severe restriction on non-Muslim places of worship and imposition of
Sharia not only on non-Muslims but also on secular Muslims –
provocatively destroying non-Muslim alcohol consignments.
If this religiously motivated, state sponsored destruction of
non-Muslim property and livelihood is allowed to continue, one
doesn't need to be a soothsayer to predict a violent clash that
could trigger another bloodbath of non-Muslims. And when the
inevitable violence happens, they will as usual resort to denial…it
has nothing to do with religion !!
It would thus appear that our Muslim compatriots up here in the core
North only remember the constitution when it suits their
narrow-minded sectional interests such as in Jos politics and Niger
Delta oil. They brazenly flout the secular provisions of the same
constitution when they impose Sharia. Kano state government even
maintains an illegal religious police ( Hisbah), in direct
contravention of our constitution that doesn't allow for state
police.
Every once in a while, state broadcast and print media regale the
public with reports on how many of us Maguzawa (Hausa
traditionalists), have been lured or coerced into Islam, as the
supposedly secular state governments in the core North have made it
their business to systematically destroy our indigenous African
culture to facilitate the imposition of violently intolerant Arab
pseudo-religion - Islam. And we wonder why Black Africa remains
developmentally stunted. It is this same Jihadi-supremacist penchant
for conquest and domination that has provoked the Jos backlash.
Granted that institutionalized discrimination against non-indigenes
is not peculiar to the North, but a national disgrace. However, it
is only in the Core North that non-indigenes are under the constant
threat of religious violence, thereby intimidating and subjugating
non-indigenes to second class Dhimmis who are unable to assert their
constitutional citizenship rights.
Muslim supremacists from the Core North residing in Jos are
therefore the least qualified to champion (or pretend to champion)
non-indigene citizenship rights; which for them, is just a ruse to
camouflage their domineering Jihadist expansion. If they are serious
about full constitutional citizenship rights for non-indigenes,
Muslims from the core North should begin in Sokoto, Kano and
Maiduguri. After all charity should begin in their home states of
the core North, not in Jos.
With regards to the burning issue of supposedly rigged Jos North
Chairmanship election; the mistake of the Jos indigenes was allowing
the creation of Hausa majority local government in their ancestral
homeland. In Kano metropolis, the predominantly non-indigene peopled
contiguous areas of Sabon Gari, Nomans land, Brigade, Yakudima /
barracks, Bompai and Dakata are sufficient to constitute a local
government. Instead they are divided and parceled to Hausa dominated
areas just to ensure that non-indigenes never dominate any political
space in Kano that would result in the abomination of an Aarne
(non-Muslim), non-indigene local government chairman. Even then, at
least half the population of Fagge local government - that include
several of the aforementioned non-indigene dominated areas - are
non-indigenes, yet the LGA has never had a non-indigene
vice-chairman, talk less of Chairman...and there has been no violent
protest.
But then one supposes that Jos indigenes did not have much of a say
in the delineation of the LGA that was created by executive fiat of
Muslim Hausa-Fulani oligarchy controlled military dictatorship. The
military junta that decreed the tribally segregated, Jos North Hausa
enclave into a local government didn't deem it fit to accord the
same priviledge to non-indigenes in Kano. Kano is particularly
pertinent to the Jos discourse because many of the Jasawa (Jos
Hausas) that are now insisting on full citizenship rights are
actually relatively recent migrants from Kano – refugees of the
first republic NEPU/NPC clash.
The Muslim-Hausa intelligentsia who should know better, have not
helped matters. Instead of sanctimonious pseudo-nationalist
indignation against "Christian terrorists" in Jos; and peddling
spurious pseudo-historical revisionism that Jos was a no man's land
prior to the arrival of Hausa settlers; they would do well to
address the justified skepticism of other Nigerians with regards to
their duplicitous double standards on citizenship rights and
constitutionality. Little wonder Gideon Orkar and his fellow
coupists wanted to remove the Core North from Nigeria.
Just a few years ago such double standards in the selective
enforcement constitutional rights for our Muslim Hausa compatriots
was at the heart of the violent OPC-Hausa clash. Prior to that
violent clash, the infamous OPC had severally extra-judicially
executed Yoruba and Igbo thieves as well as those of other ethnic
stock…and the heavens did not fall.
But when a Hausa thief was similarly murdered by the vigilante
group, all hell broke loose as Nigeria's special citizens (sorry
Hausa-Fulani Muslims) in Lagos with their exclusive inviolable
constitutional rights - just like their Jos brethren - went on
rampage to protest the extra-judicial murder. Thereby provoking an
annihilating counter-attack by neighbouring Yorubas (not just OPC),
in which the local Hausas were inevitably the crying losers.
This of course is not to condone extra-judicial killing by vigilante
groups who try to compensate for the failure of our dysfunctional
Nigerian state to protect her citizens' life & property. But rather
to point out that Muslim Hausa compatriots should have known better
than resort to violent protests to assert their exclusive
constitutional rights; just as Igbos in Kano knew it would be futile
and self-defeating to go on rampage when, Gideon Akaluka, a
law-abiding Igbo citizen was gruesomely beheaded and his severed
head paraded around Kano.
Furthermore, in the aftermath of the OPC-Hausa crisis, the Sarkin
Hausa was reported to have threatened to dethrone the Oba of
Lagos…which was largely ignored. It is of course unthinkable for an
EzeIgbo under any circumstance to make such provocative comments
against a northern Emir. Yorubas wouldn’t even dare it in Ilorin,
which is Yoruba land. All of these buttress the point of duplicitous
double-standards by Muslim Hausas, which undermine their otherwise
laudable campaign for full citizenship rights in Jos.
Then there is the issue of Yar Adua stopping the Plateau governor
from swearing-in the Jos North LGA Chairman, which seems to suggest
that UMYA favors his Muslim kinsmen rather than his party – blood
and religion being thicker than party affiliation. Although this
writer isn't sure if stopping the swearing- in was a presidential
order (which would be an unconstitutional interference of the
Federal government. in state matters), or an appeal to the governor;
it is nonetheless disturbing as it sends the wrong message of
encouraging violent murderous protests against disputed election
results.
What happened to election tribunals as per Yar Adua’s much vaunted
“rule of law”? This wasn't the first rigged election in the country;
in fact rigging is the norm rather than exception. How come
Nigerians are more willing to kill and die for local elections than
they are for presidential election where there's much more at stake?
If the election is rerun and a settler Hausa wins; are the Biroms,
Anagutas and Afizeres expected to accept the result, given that
their Hausa neighbours refused to accept an outcome that wasn't in
their favour? With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps we should have
similarly violently protested UMYA's Iwuruwuru election of April
2007 to forestall his swearing-in as the Supreme Court has
repeatedly failed to deliver justice on presidential elections.
No doubt, this write-up will in some quarters be misconstrued as a
hateful diatribe against Muslims in the Core North rather than
constructive criticism for them to mend their malicious ways, and
stop constituting themselves a nuisance to Nigeria. However, the
bottom-line of the intractable Jos conflict is that of two mutually
antagonistic alien dogmas (Islam and Christianity) that prevent
meaningful integration of the predominantly Muslim Hausas with the
predominantly Christian indigenes.
Having lived together in Jos for about a century, by now both
peoples should be harmoniously integrated by intermarriage, such
that there shouldn't be much of a distinction between settler and
indigene. The intolerant alien un-African dogmas (Islam and
Christianity) with which our people have been brainwashed prevent
this integrating union from happening to any significant extent.
Hence, the ‘we-vs-them’ settler-indigene dichotomy persists and is
occasionally violently ignited by unhealthy competition for
resources and position occasioned by socio-economic deprivation due
to corrupt inept leadership.
Nafata Bamaguje writes this article as a social commentator for
Baobab Africa – People and Economy magazine from Daura, Katsina
State in Northern Nigeria.
“The intolerant alien un-African dogmas (Islam and Christianity)
with which our people have been brainwashed prevent this integrating
union from happening to any significant extent.”
Baobab magazine and
www.baobabafricaonline.com are published by Baobab Media,
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