Following President Donald Trump’s last year designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” due to the alleged persecution of Christians, and the subsequent report by US lawmakers describing Nigeria as the “deadliest place in the world” for Christians, and its call for the abolition of sharia and blasphemy laws in Nigeria, the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, and some Muslim clerics in the north have vehemently kicked against these reports and recommendations.
According to agency reports, Congressmen Riley Moore, and Chris Smith, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Africa Subcommittee in the report by the House Appropriations and Foreign Affairs Committee, said that Christians in Nigeria were “subject to ongoing violent attacks” from armed militias and terrorist groups.
It said this had resulted in the “death and murder of tens of thousands of Christians, including pastors and priests, the destruction of thousands of churches and schools, as well as kidnappings.”
It also said blasphemy laws in Nigeria’s northern states are used to silence speech and dissent, target Christians and minorities, and “justify so-called ‘convictions’ without due process.”
The committees also recommended establishing a US-Nigeria security agreement to protect Christians, withholding certain US funds and repealing sharia and blasphemy laws, among others.
The Sultan, in his statement, said sharia and blasphemy laws have come to stay, and any attempt to repeal them will not be tolerated. He also said anyone accused of blasphemy must be killed.
In the first place the sharia law when it first started in Zamfara during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency was basically begun to destabilise the reign of Obasanjo who also rightly, at the time, dismissed it as politically motivated.
Over 20 years later, Sharia law, as practised today, has not been able to prove Obasanjo wrong. Sharia and other Islamic extremist postures have been used basically to subjugate the poor and weak in society.
What is religious about a sharia law that only punishes the weak and downtrodden of the society? How many politicians or the rich or their children in the north have been flogged publicly or amputated for any offence. Or is there anything that says only the poor commit adultery, fornication or drink alcohol?
The biggest problem of the North are their hypocritical elite, who have weaponised power and religion to perpetually subjugate their masses.
Is it not hypocritical for Sharia judges who have presided over cases involving the poor to opt for regular courts for trial after being accused of corruption? When will we begin to see the elite face trial in Sharia court? When will we hear verdicts of amputation against the rich or elite?
If the sharia law is religious, then it must not be a respecter of anybody, but for as long as Sharia judges and elite of the society are not subjected to these laws, then it’s anything but religious.
Again, the Sultan, by affirming death for alleged blasphemy, is simply promoting extra-judicial killings in the country. That’s put in another way, jungle justice. All it takes to be killed is for anyone to accuse someone of blasphemy, and that is all. In this age and time when most Islamic nations are opening up to the rest of the world, how can this be a problem of a struggling nation as Nigeria?
Is it therefore surprising that on May 12, 2022, when Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a second-year Christian college student, was stoned to death by a mob of Muslim students in Sultan’s Sokoto, after being accused of blasphemy against Islam, there was conspiratorial silence by all the elite in the muslim north till this day? The only voice who spoke against the injustice done to Deborah was the then presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, who quickly pulled down his post condemning the murder, again for political reasons. This more than anything shows that Deborah’s killers had the consent of the Sultan and the islamic elite in the north.
What opportunity was given to Deborah to defend herself? How can anybody’s life be taken, without a formal process of trial, based on the allegations of, perhaps, a mad man all in the name of religion? What decent society with the rule of law enshrined will allow this barbaric deed?
When last year some group of so-called armed hunters were killed in Edo, the entire Muslim north was united in calling for the heads of the perpetrators of the unfortunate act and the need for compensation for the victims. This sad killing is not only despicable and horrendous, but so also are the cases of Deborah and all others who have been murdered through jungle justice all in the name of blasphemy.
Until we are able to address the problem of the pervading state of killings across the land, we shall not know peace. Everyone’s life is important and must be protected. Truth is that for as long as we continue to deny this current state of lawlessness and killings across the land in the name of tribe, religion or ethnicity, for so long shall we remain the butt of the joke of the rest of the world.
It is for these reasons of inequality, injustice, double standards, and hypocrisy that Trump’s intervention in the country has been widely received by the generality of oppressed and helpless Nigerians. The continuous recourse by our muslim elite to placate murderers and reward them for their atrocious conduct against the nation is the reason bandits, terrorists and killer herders have continued their atrocities unhindered.
Whether the Sultan and his double-faced elite in the north would admit it or not, everything said by Trump and the US legislators about us are true. It’s also true that Muslims, too, are also being killed, but that can not repudiate the fact that Christian communities are being sacked and their lands possessed by expansionist Islamic jihadists.
The way to address these problems is not wasting energy and resources on propaganda and public relations stunts but by admitting our problems and seeking help from people outside of the nation. Any Nigerian leader shackled by ethnicity, tribalism, religious bigotry, and hypocrisy cannot end the killings across the nation. That’s why this has lingered for this long.
We need help.
And if Trump can help us tame these hydra-headed monsters, let’s collaborate and achieve that.
