Yesterday, Tuesday, August 25, 2026, was work-free day. The Federal Government of Nigeria declared it a public holiday to commemorate Eid-ul-Maulud, the birth of Prophet Muhammad. Across homes, mosques, and streets, Muslims paused to remember his life, not just as history, but as a mirror for how we live today.
This reflection is not a fatwa, nor a theological brief. It is a reading of what Maulud has become, and what it teaches us about power, identity, and persuasion far beyond religious ritual. The celebration itself has grown louder, brighter, and longer. What once was a quiet night vigil with a cleric, a sermon, and quiet reflection now stretches into daylight processions, city-wide fanfare, and days of preparation. In a way, the tradition has been strengthened by overkill.
That word, overkill, took me back to my mother’s wisdom. Whenever a neighbor came to report that I had been fighting in school or in the neighborhood, she would not shout. She would ask, quietly, why I let someone else choose my response. If I said, “They insulted my mother, my father,” she would lean in and ask, “And did the insult stick to you? Did it stop you from doing anything?” When I admitted that it was the mockery that stung, she taught me the most disarming therapy I have ever received: ignore, be indifferent, act as though you did not hear. “Most provocations,” she said, “die naturally when they are not fed.” She was right. The moment I stopped reacting, the aggressors were the ones left embarrassed, searching for a new weapon because malice had been disarmed by silence.
That childhood lesson keeps echoing in public life. Social psychologists have long observed this. Henri Tajfel and John Turner’s Social Identity Theory tells us that when a group feels its identity is under threat, it does not shrink. It hardens. People will defend symbols, rituals, and even minor practices with extraordinary energy, not because the practice itself is central, but because to concede feels like erasure. Jack Brehm’s Reactance Theory adds another layer: tell people they cannot do something, and the urge to do it intensifies. What was once casual becomes sacred, not by theology, but by contest.
Maulud followed that arc. I remember when it was simple. No public holiday, no daytime processions, just a night of recitation and counsel. There was no fixed template for it the way there is for salat, fasting, or pilgrimage, so it lived in the margins. Then the criticism came, loud and sustained. Some called it an innovation, un-Islamic, borrowed. Defenders answered that all they were doing was prayer, sermon, and reflection. The argument hardened. Sermons that should have been about mercy turned into weekly referendums on Maulud itself. It became “us versus them,” and in that atmosphere, moderation sounded like weakness.
So the celebration grew. Day and night were claimed. Loyalty had to be visible. To not participate was to risk being labeled lukewarm. What began as a commemoration became a contest for supremacy, an assertion that “we will not be silenced.” Scholar of conflict transformation John Paul Lederach warns that when we frame differences as battles to win rather than relationships to mend, the issue itself becomes secondary. The goal shifts to making sure “the other side” does not win.
We see this everywhere, not only in religion. In 2023, I heard young people say they leaned toward one political camp precisely because another camp tried to bully dissent into silence, to enforce groupthink through ridicule. The overreaction did not kill the opposing view. It gave it oxygen, sympathy, and recruits. People do not only follow what is reasonable. They follow what respects them. When correction comes wrapped in mockery, dismissal, and the performance of “I am more knowledgeable than you,” it triggers resistance, not reflection.
A woman once told me a story that still unsettles me. A married man was pursuing her, and she ignored him. Then his wife found her number and called to threaten her. “Leave my husband or you will regret it.” The woman said, “That threat decided me. I married him just to see what she would do.” A challenge to supremacy produced the very outcome it sought to prevent.
The cost of overkill is not always personal. It can be national. Nigeria is still living with the consequences of responding to a small group led by Mohammed Yusuf with maximum force, without a parallel channel for de-escalation. What began as containment hardened into resistance, then into Boko Haram. Contrast that with the amnesty model adopted by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua for Niger Delta militants. It combined firmness with an off-ramp, carrots with sticks. It did not excuse violence, but it lowered the temperature enough for dialogue to breathe. In families too, we know this truth. Correct a partner with thunder and they will wait for the next opportunity to return the blow. Correct with steadiness and even humor, and the lesson lands.
Which brings us to the hardest question: when must government act decisively, and when must it practice strategic restraint, the kind of emotional intelligence that refuses to be baited? There is no clean formula. But the pattern is clear. When a message is delivered with insult, provocation, and the intent to humiliate, people do not hear the content. They hear the threat. They close ranks.
The expanding color and scale of Maulud today is, ironically, part of the lesson critics never intended to teach. By treating a modest observance as a crisis, the response amplified it. By meeting it with alarm instead of calm engagement, the ritual was pushed from the margins to the center.
Perhaps the deeper wisdom of Maulud, beyond the recitations, is this: strength is not always shown by volume. Sometimes it is shown by restraint. Sometimes change is won not by overkill, but by the quiet courage to not react, to appeal rather than to assault, to invite rather than to indict. In a world addicted to loudness, that may be the most radical, and the most prophetic, practice of all.
Bagudu Mohammed is the Founder, Alternative Perspectives.
Web: https://alternativeperspective.onrender.com
Email: bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com | Phone: 0703 494 3575
