I had resolved to keep quiet. In moments of national fever, silence can be a scalpel. Emotional intelligence, as Daniel Goleman’s framework teaches us, is not about shouting first; it is about knowing when to speak, how to speak, and what not to dignify with a response. Healing rarely arrives through loud analysis, especially when an entire timeline is demanding your opinion on the latest provocation.
Yet I broke that resolve after reading Dr. dk.egga’s piece with the audacious caption: “I am an INFIDEL.” And if we follow Sheikh Yahaya Jingir’s framing, who among us is not?
The piece, written by Dr dk.egga who now wears “Infidel” as both armor and joke, is aimed squarely at Sheikh Yahaya Jingir, the Jos-based leader and custodian of the Izala tradition, for calling those outside his creed “kafir.”
Dk.egga’s argument is disarmingly simple and sociologically sharp. Within Jingir’s constructed universe, the label is logically consistent. To be outside Izala theology, even to be a Muslim of another sect, is to be a non-believer. So why flinch? Instead of bleeding from the word, Egga pins it to his chest like a medal of liberation. The real betrayal, he says, is ours. The media, the commentators, the keyboard warriors. We took the bait. We inflated a theological remark into a national alarm and handed Jingir the spotlight he wanted. Research on outrage cycles by media scholars like Neil Postman and, more recently, Nigerian communication scholars on “agenda-setting in polarized publics” shows exactly this: sensational language migrates from the pulpit to the front page because we reward it with attention.
But what should outrage us, Egga insists, is not vocabulary. It is policy that starves. It is fuel that costs a week’s wage. It is banditry, collapsing naira, and school fees that rise faster than salaries. Poverty in Nigeria, as political economist Bismarck Rewane and NBS data repeatedly show, is profoundly ecumenical. It does not ask for your prayer mat before it empties your pocket. The trader in Wuse Market does not check your sect before calculating change. The keke driver does not ask your denomination before demanding fare. The rice bag weighs the same on the pastor’s child and the sheikh’s child. That is the material reality Jingir’s word cannot touch, and that is where our anger belongs.
It must also be said plainly: Jingir does not speak for all Muslims. His interpretation is his own, and even within Islam it is contested. If “infidel” means anyone who rejects a particular political-theological line, then many Muslims would fit Jingir’s category before any Christian does. Consider the Muslim-Muslim ticket. I know pastors who campaigned for it, calling it strategy, not theology. I also know a growing number of Muslims who have walked away from it, calling it deception.
Prof. Ali Isa Pantami, the respected cleric, is contesting in Gombe under PDP, a party that has made opposition to the ticket central to its campaign. By Jingir’s subjectivist logic, is Pantami also an infidel? Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, Bashir Ahmad and others have publicly rejected the idea of Nigeria as a “Muslim country,” reminding us that the Constitution itself declares Nigeria secular. Political science tells us this is classic in-group/out-group framing, what Henri Tajfel called Social Identity Theory: define the out-group, exaggerate difference, and rally the base. But Nigeria’s electorate refuses to stay in one box.
Jingir’s Izala tradition has always policed boundaries this way. Academic studies of Izala by scholars like Roman Loimeier and Abdul Raufu Mustapha note that the movement built its identity by contrasting “pure Sunnah” with what it calls “bid’a.” Maulud celebrations, shrine visits, and group zikr are routinely denounced in Izala sermons, sometimes with the same language of innovation that gets applied to political dissent. Sheikh Jafar Mahmud and Sheikh Kabiru Gombe have in recorded khutbahs warned that such practices have no precedent in Qur’an or Sunnah. To them, the label is theological, not tribal. So the “infidel” tag is not reserved for Christians alone. It is a boundary marker that can fall on any out-group.
And maybe that is the uncomfortable truth, dk.egga is forcing us to see. We are all infidels to someone. If infidel means unbeliever, then every community has one. There are Muslims who do not pray at 1pm the Izala way. There are Christians who support APC. There are Nupes mocked as “Nda” in Katsina, Gbagyi given slurs, Yoruba called “Eyagi” by Nupe, Nupe called “Takpa” by Yoruba, Hausa called “Aboki” in the South, Igbo called “Iyamiri” up North. Linguistic anthropologists call this “ethnic epithet as shorthand.” The tone can wound, but the words also function as crude maps of identity. Jingir speaking in Hausa may have reached for the available vocabulary for “outsider,” even if the tone betrayed anger. We cannot erase every label overnight, but we can change the weight we give it.
So yes, I am an infidel. And you might be too, depending on who is preaching that day. The word is vague, faceless, and throwable. It only has power if we catch it.
What we must not do is unsheathe knives because someone was provocative. Leaders, especially religious ones, carry a heavier burden. Citizens too. Because while we argue about who is saved, the deeper demons are eating us alive: no light, no affordable garri, no stable schools, no safety on the road. Restraint is not weakness. It is emotional maturity. It is the most effective recipe we have for sanity in a country that is tired of fire.
Bagudu Mohammed is the Founder, Alternative Perspectives.
Web: https://alternativeperspective.onrender.com
Email: bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com | Phone: 0703 494 3575
