I stand with Gumi

But for just one sentence, which tends towards an uneven appreciation of citizens’ discontent with the Nigerian establishment, I am with Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, in his most recent interventions on Nigeria.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, Pidgin English, during the weekend, the Kaduna-based cleric opined that most Nigerians want a united country.  He gave instances of peaceful co-existence amongst peoples across the country and explained that only a few disgruntled elements desire the end of the country.

Gumi told the BBC that: “So, all these youths that are making noise, whether Abubakar Shekau of Boko Haram, Nnamdi Kanu of IPOB and their Oduduwa counterparts, they are just a tiny minority of Nigerians using ethnic, archaic and retrogressive sentiments to destabilise the nation. But l can vouch that Nigerians really want to stay together in peace and equity. Not where any segment of Nigeria is cheated.” I do not know if anyone can honestly fault the position.

The cleric however misfired when he said the following: “Look, let’s forget these useless youths. They’re no more different from these herdsmen. These people agitating for Oduduwa, Biafra or Arewa are all the same group of people with Boko Haram.”

Even from what he said, it is clear that youth groups with nationalistic agitations have clear set goals. This is why Gumi and whoever is talking about it can identify them as Oduduwa, Biafra and Arewa. They leave no room for opacity in their agitations. To compare them to the Boko Haram insurgency is revisionist at best. Likening Boko Haram, which has no clear objective and is enemy with anyone regardless of tribe, faith or pedigree to groups asking for justice and equity for every part of Nigeria is to attempt to rewrite history before the very eyes of the same people in which that history started to unfold.

In a little over a decade, Boko Haram is believed to have killed over 36,000 people and rendered another two million homeless. It has split into groups and even got affiliated with the dreaded Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which gives the impression that it is poised for the Islamisation of the country or any part of it that falls within its conquest.

Yet, this group has killed possibly as many Muslims as it has killed Christians. It has burnt down mosques as it did churches and has become an existential threat living in the north-eastern states. It is therefore faulty judgment to equate this group to any agitation by ethnic nationalities.

But it would be disingenuous to argue that a majority of Nigerians do not want to stay together if only the country was one where everyone was treated as equal. Even in their agitations, those who clamour for a rethink of the Nigerian structure desire a better country, where hard work, merit and social justice prevail. And this was the main point that Gumi tried to make in his BBC interview.

The interview itself stemmed from a visit of the religious leader to bandits operating in some of the states in the north-west. Briefing Governor Bello Mohammed Matawalle of Zamfara state on his dialogue with the bandits, Gumi proposed that the Nigerian state should employ the carrot and stick approach in dealing with the issues. He suggested that military action would by itself not put an end to these criminalities, but that government should consider an amnesty programme similar to the one once granted to militants in the Niger Delta region by the Federal Government. His premise is that the country, due to its negligence of these mostly stark illiterate bandits, brought this situation on itself.

Now, this is another argument difficult to fault. The failure of Nigeria in general and those who have led states in northern Nigeria to provide functional education for thousands of children drove them into the hands of the devil where they now unleash venom on the country.

One wisdom I find in the admonition of the Islamic cleric is in the popular saying that he who is down fears no fall. From the mode of operation of these bandits, it should be clear to all Nigerians that they have already signed their lives to the devil. They fear neither death nor fall.

The second thing is that they will always find new recruits essentially because of the pervasive level of ignorance and poverty in that part of the country. So, the more Nigeria turns its armoured tanks and jet fighters on them, the more it would have more of them, enticed with pecuniary incentives and converted to this evil cause to contend with. Truth is it will forever be Herculean for a country to win a war against its own people especially when it has not given these people the benefit of education that promotes the sanctity of life.

While clamouring for an all-out-war against bandits in the north-west, Nigerians should also be conscious of the fact that the country now has a community of criminals scattered all over.

Events in the past few years show that the security forces are overstretched and that criminality is gradually taking over the administration of the country. Before our very eyes, Nigeria is being submerged by a variety of criminal tendencies, partitioning the country, creating fiefdoms, unleashing pain, spilling blood indiscriminately, pillaging private investments and portraying the country as a blood field without any respect for the sanctity of lives. Even security officials are now kidnapped and held until ransoms are paid! That is clearly not a country trusting its overwhelmed security forces to procure victory against its deviant citizens.

This is why the option of talking these misguided elements out of their crimes is appealing. This is more so when you consider that it is the neglect of the country that most likely drove a substantial number of them into crime.

Here again, however, the kiss and tell method adopted by Gumi and people like Matawalle is counterproductive. The fundamental duty of government is the security of lives and property; this is the way to ensure peace and development of society. Now, how the government achieves these objectives is not necessarily the business of the citizens, who have handed over their destiny in trust to those they elected. Governments all over the world negotiate with anti-state actors, yet they do not immediately visit media houses to proclaim the backend strategies adopted in the management of social tension. Especially as law-abiding citizens are expected to kick. This country should learn from its wasteful past and learn now

So, while Gumi’s interventions and bold engagements may not be nationalistic, they represent quality voices that have remained silent when the country should unite against emerging trends turning Nigeria into a planetary hell.

The other thing government at all levels needs to do urgently, something which they seem to only pay lip service to, is to educate all Nigerian children, increase opportunities for the youth to be gainfully employed and for a wider range of Nigerians to share in the prosperity of their fatherland.

A strategic process, superior to the guns of our armed forces and intervention of the Gumis of this world, is the provision of schools where Nigerians get functional education and are groomed to become good citizens. Nigeria currently abandons its children to the school of life where ignorance and violence are languages of instruction and life is without value.  Unless this changes fast, it still does seem that the story of banditry, kidnapping and such violent crimes that we talk about are mere child’s play compared to what is impending.

Adedokun tweets @niranadedokun