Re: Aisha Yesufu, the hijab-wearing revolutionary

BY MUHAMMAD MUHSIN

Fredrick Nwabufo’s article published by Sahara Reporters with the title: Aisha Yesufu: The Hijab-wearing Revolutionary caught my attention on October 11, 2020 when I was surfing through the internet to understand the agitation behind the #EndSARS protest that rocked some major cities in Nigeria in the last few days. I never new that Nigerians have the capacity and a dogged spirit to protest against retroactive policies that has become the emblem of the administration of President Muhammad Buhari. This is because there are many anti-people’s policies that this administration initiated and implemented without any form of resistance from the citizenry. In fact, it appears to Nigerians in diaspora that the whole country is under a spell.

The recent protests proved this thinking to the contrary. However, some public commentators are of the view that some certain “invisible hands” bankrolled the protest to further their personal surreptitious criminal activities which are not known to the general public; and the revolutionary hijab-wearing Aisha Yesufu must have fallen victim of this clandestine motive which perhaps must have been sponsored by men of the underworld. Now, as it is, SARS has been dissolved. A decision I consider not too good or akin to throwing away the baby with the bath water. Though the agitations of the #EndSARS protesters are genuine and the truth remains that the Nigerian Police Force needs to be reform and completely overhaul.

Hence, if credit is to go to anyone for the new strategic road map read out in a press conference by the Inspector-General of Police, M. A. Adamu, Aisha Yesufu’s name must be mentioned; this perhaps must have inspired Fredrick Nwabufo’s short piece on her revolutionary spirit. He thus wrote about the hijab-wearing revolutionary woman that “the Chibok girls’ abduction of April 14, 2014 coerced Aisha out of comfort. She was among many other women who marched on the National Assembly to demand the rescue of the schoolgirls in the unwelcoming rain of April 30, 2014. I was there. I saw the power of purpose and the passion for humanity”. It was this assertion that captured the attention of this writer and forced me to put forward this rejoinder as a way of pointing out some issues that needs the attention of the activist in question.

The passion for humanity is strongly rooted in Islamic religious orthodoxy. It has never restricted women from participation in public life as Fredrick Nwabufo pointed out in his article. It is rather the Sunni Islamic Wahabbism, an adulterated version of Islam crafted to defame the very foundation of the Islamic faith that promotes this idea. In fact, history has it that many Muslim women have stood for, and fought for justice in the past. It is on record that some of them were killed, maimed and ridiculed in the public. It is important to inform Fredrick Nwabufo and other readers that some Muslim women have demonstrated courage that was never known in the history of humanity. Such women include Zainab bint Ali, one of the survivors of the battle of Karbala who was paraded through the crowded markets of Kufa and Shaam, manacle and chained along with other female members of the household of the holy Prophet of Islam. Yet, she never relents to speak truth to power with the fluency of her father and the indomitable spirit of Imam Hussain (AS) in the Court of Yazid.

To cut the anecdotes short, women such as Nana Asma’u Bint Shehu dan Fodiyo remains a symbol of struggle for women’s right in contemporary history of Islam in West Africa. Other women such as Zainab al-Ghazali, Hamida Qutb, Bint al-Huda al-Sadar and many others equally played significant roles in public life; just as Aisha Yesufu is equally playing a leading role in public life through unrelented struggle for good governance and protecting human rights and dignity. Even though Fredrick Nwabufo pointed out that women like Aisha Yesufu are “shining star on the path to a new world where humankind can thrive without chains and shackles”; it must be mention that members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria have lived in chains and shackles since the beginning of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration while Aisha Yesufu did not deem it fit to echo her voice as a show of moral support to their struggle and the constant call on the FG to free their leader Sheikh Ibraheem Yaquob El-Zakzaky who has been in detention for more than four years despite a competent court ordered that the Sheikh should be released.

As if not to use this medium to remind Aisha Yesufu that the Sheikh was arrested after the infamous Zaria Genocide perpetrated by the Nigerian Army under the pretext of road blockage by members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. Hence, the Army killed not less than 193 children in Zaria, 23 pregnant women, 297 women, wipe out 39 families, killed over 1000 members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) and bomb and completely destroyed their place of worship contrary to the provision of international laws (see Amnesty International Report on Zaria Genocide for more details). Many activists within the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) has since then remained resolute that those that perpetrated this genocide must be punished accordingly.

Hence, the fact remains that humanity is suppose to be all embracing because injustice anywhere is a treat to justice everywhere. Therefore, the disposition and silent of some rights activists in the face of injustice against certain group remain disturbing especially when they speak out poignantly when it comes to another group. We must always remember that ALL LIVES MATTER! I therefore encourage this revolutionary hijab-wearing woman, Aisha Yesufu to keep the banner of her activism in the air and learn to speak for all Nigerians irrespective of their ideological leaning in the face of injustice. In fact, this would go along way to prove Frederick right that “she is neither a political adventurer nor an activist of fortune. She is a woman dead to self and to whom death has no victory”.

Aluta Continua! Victoria Acerta!

Muhammad Muhsin
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