“No sensible human being ever restricts his itinerary to a particular habitat; to keep moving, by migrating from place to place, is the secret of human progress….”. (By an Arab Poet)

By FEMI ABBAS

Monologue

Today, ‘The Message’ column is migrating, if psychologically, from the insanity of Nigeria’s political, economic and religious calamities, to the globally escalating tempest of disastrous diseases, including the current Corona Virus pandemic codenamed COVID-19 and its entailed commercial vaccine. Such a migration by ‘The Message column’ may bring a temporary respite to readers of this column especially in respect of the current combination of suffocating economic heat with incessant incidents of terrorism and banditry in the country. Such is a way of ventilating a relative atmosphere of peace for peace-loving Nigerians.

Preamble

It is not by accident that today’s world is in a sweeping turmoil. That turmoil is rather by design. But most people do not know its genesis especially as it coincides with the advent of the 21st century.

Perhaps, this is an opportunity to recall the fact that the multifarious calamities currently ravaging the entire world, to the detriment of peace and tranquillity for mankind, is a product of long term plan for which the European colonial mentality is well known. Since the end of the 19th century, when the once lucrative European venture of colonizing certain countries and utilizing their resources to the benefit of the colonizers, began to fade out, due to agitations for freedom and independence of those colonies, the Caucasian race of Europe had started to plan new ventures that could enable them to continue the domination of the world’s economy.

Thus, an ambitious blueprint for the current millennium was theoretically prepared at the beginning of the 20th century. It was then practical effect of that blueprint that precipitated the current ongoing turmoil that began with three fortuitous incidents 41 years ago (1979). Incidentally, the year 1979 happened to be the turn of the Islamic Hijrah century 1400 AH.

The first of the dramatic incidents in that year was the undreamt Iranian revolution that toppled the then Imperial Shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, after 38 years of reign (1941-1979) on Iran’s imperial throne. The man reigned as the Emperor of Iran from September 16, 1941 to February 11, 1979. The revolution that stripped Pahlavi of despotic throne occurred on February 11, 1979.

Reminder

It must be remembered that Shah Pahlavi was the monarchical agent of the West, planted in the midst of the Middle East monarchs who were averse to Western model of democracy. His main duty as an agent was to hobnob with other kings in the region and spy those kings for his Western masters.

The second frightening incident, in 1979, was a failed coup d’état that was staged during the Hajj time, in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, on November 20, 1979.

Third Incident

The third incident was the invasion of Afghanistan by the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on December 24, 1979. That invasion, which eventually led to the emergence of an Osama Bn Laden phenomenon, through his founded Al-Qaeda Islamic Group, was part of the struggle for supremacy among the Western powers.

Osama was recruited by the US to assist in getting Islamic mercenaries who could resist USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.

American Hidden Agenda

It was the same US that engineered the establishment of the Taliban government in that country, as a counter force to the Soviet aggression. All these were in a bid to counter socialism/communism in Asia Minor and the Middle East.

But after the USSR had been flushed out of Afghanistan by the Muslim the US proposed a confrontation with certain Muslim countries to which Osama objected. And, that was the beginning of the rift between the US and Osama Bn Laden. A former American Presidential candidate, who was also a onetime American First Lady, (Hilary Clinton), confessed to American plot against Islam recently, in her campaign for American presidential seat.

Explanation

Although the above listed incidents occurred separately in different countries and at different times of the year, they were, nevertheless, interconnected through two major factors. One of those factors was the religion of Islam which linked the peoples of the affected countries who were predominantly Muslims.

The other factor was the then raging cold war between the the capitalist West and the socialist East which had engendered an unpredictable ideological cold war that engineered global enmity among human races in the 20th century. If these two factors are deeply viewed from divergent angles, Islam will be discovered to be the main target of both blocks.

A Grand Design

Long before the above mentioned incidents began to rear their ugly heads, a dangerous graph of desperation had been designed, by the West, in anticipation of perpetual domination of the world.

That grand design was first expressed in 1902 by a British Prime Minister, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman when he observed as follows:

“There are people who control spacious territories with manifest and hidden resources.  They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate them from one another….If, per chance, these people were to be unified into one state it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never-ending wars. It could also serve as a spring board for the West to gain its coveted objects”.

Analysis

Although, Prime Minister Bannerman did not mention his targeted race and religion, it was obvious that he was talking about the Arabs of the Middle East and Islam. The subsequent developments in that region later proved that the religion in reference was no other than ISLAM.

Follow Up

Sir Bannerman’s observation was in further pursuit of an earlier demand by an Austrian Jewish Lawyer/Journalist, Theodor Herzl, who founded the Zionist movement in 1879 with a cogent demand from the Western powers. In his demand at that time, Theodor Herzl said:

“Let sovereignty be granted us (Jews) over a portion of the globe, large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest, we shall manage by ourselves…”

In response to that clandestine demand, some years later, another British Prime Minister, James Arthur Balfour, issued a devastating declaration that now bears his name. The declaration which was issued on November 2, 1917, (one year before the end of the World War I), conceded a major part of Palestine to the Zionists as a home.

The Letters of the Declaration

That (Balfour) declaration, which was aimed at enabling the British government to gain direct access to the Suez Canal in Egypt, with Israel as her Policeman in the Gulf, has since put the Middle East in an incessant turmoil till today. The declaration read thus in part: “…His majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective….” “The rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country shall not be prejudiced by the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

Implementation

To facilitate the implementation of that objective effectively, some other Middle East countries had to be incapacitated economically and politically by excising from them, some juicy chunks of their lands. Thus, Lebanon was excised from Syria just as Kuwait was excised from Iraq. The strategy was to cause an irresolvable dissention among the citizens of those countries with the intention of breaking the yoke of the Muslim unity which Sir Bannerman had targeted in his infamous observation of 1902, quoted above.

Iranian Status

Now, how does Iran come into the above painted picture when she is not an Arab country?

That is a logical question that anybody who is not quite familiar with the Middle East and the intricacies of its political and economic set up would ask.

Naturally, Iran is affected by three major factors: Politics, economy and culture. And, by culture here, we mean ISLAM.

Iran is a foremost Islamic country even if her official language is farsi and not Arabic. And, as an Islamic Country, whatever affects her must affect other Muslim countries. Iran is the only non-Arab country in the Gulf area of the Middle East that resists the Western aggression with a radically progressive posture.

Turkey’s Role

The role of Turkey in trading off Islam is another good example of a non-Arabic-speaking country that has a direct but clandestine link with the Middle East. It is well known, in history, that Turkey was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate until 1924 when a diabolical agent of the West came on stage as Head of State in that country. His name was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a man who wanted to prove to the West that it was possible for a non-Catholic to be “Holier than the Pope” especially when it came to adopting the so-called Western Civilization. On March 3, 1924, just one year after he assumed office as the new ruler of Turkey, Ataturk introduced a Bill to the Turkish Parliament, seeking to secularize his country by abolishing the office of the Caliph without any consideration for the feelings and sensibility of the people he wanted to rule.

Presenting the Bill, Ataturk said: “Ottoman Empire was built and existed on the principle of Islam. Islam is Arabic in character and in concept. It shapes from birth to death, the lives of its adherents; it stifles hope and initiative. The Republic (of Turkey) is threatened by the continued existence of Islam in its midst….”

Thus, with the passage of that Bill, albeit under duress, Turkey was recognized as a secular state. Consequently, politics was separated from religion and Islam was relegated to a personal matter rather than the state religion that it was before then. The Caliphate was abolished and Islamic law was abrogated. Ataturk borrowed the new Turkish civil law from Switzerland, he borrowed the criminal law from Italy and the international law of trade from Germany. The Muslim personal law was harmonized with the European civil law. Religious instruction in public schools was prohibited. Islamic Purdah system was abolished and declared illegal while co-gender education was compelled in schools. The use of Arabic alphabets was prohibited and replaced by the Latin Script. Adhan (the call to prayer) was no longer to be made in Arabic but in Turkish language while the national costume was changed to that of the Europeans even as the wearing of hat was made compulsory. What Ataturk did not do was to abrogate the tenets of Islam completely.

Thus, by one man’s whim, Turkey lost her values and heritage of centuries in a bid to adopt the so called ‘modernity’ brought by ‘Western civilization’. One can imagine what Islam would have become today, if countries like Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan had adopted the same misfortune in the name of civilization.

The Iranian Revolution

No one believed, in 1979, that a mere mass protest by armless Mullahs could snowball into such a great magnitude of political ‘earthquake’, capable of sweeping an imperial monarchy like that Muhammad Pahlavi into permanent oblivion. By the time the foggy dust finally settled down in February 1979, a new Iran surprisingly emerged from the debris of the old. Thus, against the wish and expectation of the capitalist West, the secular, monarchical Iran became an Islamic Republic. The drama was quite electric.

But, characteristic of the West, all hands still remained on deck, at that time, to ensure that an Islamic Republic did not succeed the despotic monarchy headed by Shah Pahlavi which was heavily backed up by the oppressive West.

In particular, America was most active in that ambitious but vainglorious plot. She would not easily allow the massive material benefit that she had been enjoying for decades in that oil-rich country, under the Shah regime, to slip out of her hands just like that. Thus, under the pretext of wanting to rescue her citizens from the siege laid by Iranian students on American embassy, in Tehran, the US attempted an invasion of Iran.  The espionage activities by the American diplomats, inside that embassy, against the new Islamic government had warranted the siege.

The Failure of American Strategy

While a number of American F15 jet fighters were approaching Iran, the then US President, Jimmy Carter, tactically engaged his country’s press men in a media chat without giving any hint of the impending military operation in Iran. The tactics was to divert the attention of the press and, even that of the entire American populace from the illegal Pentagon’s military expedition. But no sane person can ever fault the contents of the Qur’an.

Qur’anic Notion

Almost 1400 years before the American plot in Iran, a verse of the Qur’an had been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “They (the unbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemes. Allah is the supreme schemer”. Q. 3:54.

Jimmy Carter’s thought was that by the time he would be finishing his media chat, information would have reached him that America had successfully invaded Iran to reinstall Shah Pahlavi as the imperial ruler of that Country. He had therefore intended to announce the news of his ‘great’ successful scheme to the press as the epilogue of his media chat. And that would have served as his impetus for wining that year’s Presidential election for a second term in office. But, as Allah would have it, instead of the expected news, what he got was a shocker of his life.

The Failure of American Might

It was like a miracle when two of the F15 fighters deployed for a surreptitious operation, by the US, collided in the air and crashed with their contents, just at the point of entering the territory of Iran. And, the crash consumed the lives of 16 top air force officers inside those jets while the other jet fighters had to turn back after realizing the futility of continuing their mission.

When the news of that devastating occurrence reached Carter, it was too much for him for him to hide, as it quickly went viral through the throbs of the media.

Thus, the mighty America failed woefully, with her technology, in circumstances she has never been able to analyze convincingly till date. Allah Akbar!

Jimmy Carter’s Fate

With the   failed plot analysed above, it became obvious that Jimmy Carter of America’s Democrat Party had dug his own political grave. Of course, he lost the election to the cowboy-turned Politician, (Ronald Reagan) of the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, for about 444 days thereafter, the 52 American diplomats that were held hostage in American Embassy, in Tehran, remained under the siege of the Iranian students. It took high-level international diplomacy, through third party countries, to get them released.

Yet, America was not done. She still went ahead to freeze Iran’s foreign reserve of about $80 billion in her custody. In addition, she imposed economic sanctions on that country with the intention of running that country’s economy aground. But trust Iran, she recovered her money from American banks through unimaginable means.

Thus, the relation between both countries further deteriorated recently when Iran started a nuclear project with which to prop up her economy through a boot to her electricity. America responded with a threat to Iran, saying the United States would not tolerate any nuclear project in that Gulf country because she (America) could not trust that Islamic country with nuclear power. Yet, in the same Gulf region, Israel had acquired nuclear power without any opposition from America.

The Secret of American Power

The secret of America’s military successes in various parts of the world is neither due to technological advancement nor military superiority per se. The failed American rescue mission, in Iran, in 1979, has historically confirmed this assertion. Rather, those seeming successes were due to her ability to cause schism among some other nations. That is why many American Presidents have won or lost elections at home due to the foreign policy of the reigning President.

Iran has never been a direct prey to any Western military aggression, because she has never played a fool, dancing to the sour music of a predator in an open market.

Coup in Saudi Arabia

In the same 1979, some disgruntled elements, in Saudi Arabia,  fortuitously staged a coup against the monarchical reign of King Khalid Bn Abdul Aziz. The aim of the coup was not to change the system of government but to hijack the monarchy in the name of a fictitious ‘promised messiah’ (Al-Mahdi). That incident caused a stoppage of salat and Umrah for almost four months (from November 1979 to March 1980). It took the intervention of the French military strategy to liberate the sacred Mosque of Makkah from the rebellious renegades that invaded it.

Invasion of Afghanistan

Also, in 1979, the now defunct Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with the intention of annexing the latter. It was  that incident that led to an unprecedented jihad which paved way for the emergence of Al-Qaida and that of the Taliban government in that country.

All these incidences of 1979 jointly formed the foundation for today’s global turmoil that is now pervading the world and threatening human existence. The details of the 1979 coup attempt in Saudi Arabia will be discussed in this column at another time soon, in sha’Allah.

By Femi Abbas

Preamble

History is naturally all ears. It also has a retinue of reminders in human memory. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict that has been ongoing for 73 years, since 1948, is a typical example of this assertion.

It will be recalled that since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, she has consistently maintained a progressive diplomatic tradition that makes her a reputable African champion of liberation of people in bondage from the shackles of oppression. For instance, the cases of Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Southern Sudan, among others, are not yet lost on the track of African history.

That Nigeria’s diplomatic policy remained intact until 2014 when Dr. Goodluck Ebele  Jonathan decided to change that trend by dancing sentimentally to the tune of religious bigotry, in the case of Palestine, did not come as a surprise to well-meaning Nigerians who have flare for international diplomacy. For a long time to come, that unfortunately miscalculated decision may remain a scar on the flesh of Nigeria’s diplomatic history, which will be very difficult to obliterate.

Unforgettable Date

The contemporary diplomatic world will not forget Tuesday, December 30, 2014, in a hurry. That was the day that Nigeria ridiculously displayed a landmark diplomatic goof to her own embarrassment. The date will remain an indelible memory of a deadly sore throat for generations of Palestinians whose destiny of existence became tied to the oppressive apron of the iron fist of the Zionists at the instance of Nigeria.

For long, the incident which makes that date an indelible memory will continue to confirm Nigeria’s bloody hand in the saga of Palestinian/Israeli perennial conflict. And, here, in Nigeria, as far as international diplomacy is concerned, the designer of that bloody hand President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan will also not be forgotten.

The Incident

On the mentioned date (Tuesday, December 30, 2014), Nigeria openly and ridiculously threw away the garland of dignity which had fetched her an  incomparable reputation as the African leader of international diplomacy. It was an incident that simply amounted to a country’s betrayal of conscience. That incident which occurred at the United Nations’ Security Council meeting, far away in New York, seriously exposed the diplomatic hypocrisy of Nigeria and replaced her garland with a crown of thorn.

Before that meeting, the United Nations’ Security Council had proposed an historic anticlimax solution to the then 66-year-old Palestinian/Israeli conflict with a view to paving way for a two-State UN resolution. If that resolution had scaled through as expected, it would have served as the final solution to the the Middle East rises and, by implication, a lasting catalyst for the entire world in fetching peace.

The Voting Pattern

In the ‘YES or NO’ voting rule to be followed by the 15 member-nations of the Security Council, on the mentioned proposed resolution, nine votes were required as the simple majority to determine the liberation of the Palestinian people from Israel’s political and economic strangulation of Palestine. The immediate concern of the Security Council, at that time, was to stop the suffocating siege laid on the West Bank/Gaza Strip by Israel. But out of the 15 member-nations, in the Council, at that meeting, only eight voted in favour of Palestinian liberation while two voted for continuous Israeli oppression on Palestine. The eight nations that voted for  the liberation of Palestine  were Argentina, Chad, Chile, China, France, Jordan, Luxembourg and Russia. Those that voted for continuous oppression by Israel were the United States and Australia.

The five remaining countries that opted for abstention were Lithuania, South Korea, Rwanda, Britain and Nigeria.

Antecedent

Meanwhile, two years before the above narrated incident (2012), Nigeria’s permanent representative at the United Nations, Prof Joy Ogwu, had passionately supported the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and statehood, based on her understanding of Nigeria’s diplomatic tradition. She also reiterated Nigeria’s recognition of the State of Palestine. That was just about one year after Nigeria confirmed her diplomatic relation with Palestine on October 31, 2011. At that time, Professor Ogwu voted in favour of UN’s admission of Palestine into UNESCO as a full member-state, despite a fierce opposition from the US and Israel.

During her speech on that occasion at the UN General Assembly in 2012, Prof Ogwu, a highly disciplined and conscientious professional diplomat, underscored the right of the Palestinians to live in freedom. She enthusiastically expressed her country’s stand as follows:

“It was quite fitting that the international community had given Palestine a non-member observer state status in the United Nations. This was not only timely but also right and just.”

She then went ahead to pledge Nigeria’s commitment to working towards Palestine’s admission into the United Nations as a full member state.

Dramatic U-turn

However, apparently acting on the instruction of her big boss in Abuja, Professor Ogwu, a reputable diplomatic personality of international repute, dramatically made a somersaulting u-turn that made a ricule of Nigeria’s diplomatic status in the comity of nations. Rather than living by her words of two years earlier (2012), as a dignified diplomat representing a dignified nation, she cheapened out with a hallow face and threw the supposed conscience of Nigeria to the winds, apparently in exchange for a surreptitious agenda built on a clandestine foundation, which is generally known as “Nigerian factor”. Thus, to the amazement, and, perhaps, disappointment of most members of the then UN Security Council, including those that voted to block the Palestinian right to a home, Nigerian government destroyed her decades of diplomatic glory with a self-damaging decision to scuttle the UN’s long awaited pivotal resolution that would have brought permanent peace to the Middle East and even the entire world.

Implication

The implication of that surreptitious decision, today, is that the Middle East, in which Nigeria has tremendous economic interest, as well as the rest of the world, cannot sincerely sleep with both eyes closed.

This is because, the Middle East conflict especially between Israel and Palestine has consistently been the major determinant of global insecurity since 1967 when Israel, aided by the imperialist West, further occupied the Arab lands which she has since refused to relinquish, despite all global efforts. It should be noted that Donald Trump’s unilateral declaration of the entire Jerusalem as the indivisible capital of Israel, in 2020, further compounded the conflict in multiple ways.

Focus on Nigeria

Before the time of the above mentioned voting date, the anxiety created by the impending abstention of certain member-states had put a global diplomatic focus on Nigeria, being a legendry African champion of liberation movements in the past. The tenacity for such a diplomatic role, during the cold war years, as a vital part of Nigeria’s foreign policy that aided the independence of countries like South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Algeria and others had once pitched Nigeria’s tent against that of the  imperialistic tendencies of some Western countries. And, many serious-minded countries had expected the continuity of that role by Nigeria.

Observation

By deviating from her well known respectable foreign policy, and, by pitching tent with the imperialist West, to stifle the lives of the Palestinians, in 2014, Nigerian government, under the Presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, only sacrificed her conscience on a platter of religious sentiment which was a reflection of an unstable conscience and a dangerous diplomatic summersault. This could be linked to a fortuitous diplomatic visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, to Nigeria in June 2014, in preparation for the above mentioned betrayal of conscience by the so-called Giant of Africa. Thereafter, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, openly thanked and praised President Goodluck Jonathan ‘for carrying out a yeoman’s job’. Despite all these Christi-religious shenanigan,

Nigerians, irrespective of their faiths and political ideologies, are hereby urged to forget about that diplomatic catastrophe and wait for another chance, bearing in mind that diplomatic policy is an arena in which formulators of come and go like weathers. God bless Nigeria!

By Femi Abbas

“Man is nothing but history after his demise. Therefore, endeavour to be a veritable archive of reference from which others can learn lessons after you might have left the stage”.  – Arab poet

Observation

What is true of man in the above quoted poem is equally true of a nation. As a matter of fact, nothing is qualified to be called a nation or a country in the absence of man.

Preamble

Man is both a product and a producer of history. He lives by history and leaves history behind, as his legacy, at the time of his exit from this ephemeral world. This confirms the fact that man and history are like Siamese twins. The one cannot do without the other. History makes man just as man makes history. The synergy, between the two, makes them look like a pair of scissors in which one blade cannot effectively function without getting firmly attached to the other.

Necessity of History

This is a period, in Nigeria, when recalling history is a necessity. And, that necessity has raised some vital questions which require some cogent answers.

How did Nigeria come into being as a country and how did she come to be so named? Is this name fitting and appropriate for the country that bears it? Can the name be changed and, if changed can there be any sensible difference? These are some of the questions that ‘The Message’ column seeks to answer here today. The venerable readers of this column can also provide answers from their own thoughts as they may deem fit.

Accident of History

On January 8, 1897, an article appeared in The Financial Times, of London, which suggested a name for the vast area of land, around river Niger, here in Africa. Earlier on, this land had been colonized, by the Royal Niger Company, on behalf of the British Government. The suggested name given to it in the referred article was Nigeria. And, that name was coined from the word Niger. How the word Niger itself came into existence is another story to be told on another day in this column.  Meanwhile the author of the said article was one Miss Flora Shaw, a 45-year old British journalist who was then the colonial editor of The Financial Times of London as well as a weekly columnist. The   title of her column, in that newspaper, was ‘The Colony’.

In coining the name ‘Nigeria’, Flora Shaw logically took certain facts into consideration. Those facts were as follows:

1. At the time of her writing, the colonized vast area of West Africa which came to be named Nigeria had no specific name, by which it could be called, other than a protectorate of the ‘Royal Niger Company’ which Miss Shaw considered inappropriate.
2. She also considered an earlier suggested name, ‘Central Sudan’, as aberrational since that name had already been given to a particular area around River Nile, which was occupied by a population of Black Africans now called Sudanese.
3. Miss Flora Shaw also examined the appropriateness of a name ‘Slave Coast’, which the British colonialists had attempted to give to the vast land in question and found it derogatory. Finally, after a lot of efforts, Flora settled for ‘Nigeria’, which she coined from ‘Niger Area’.

Who was Flora Shaw?

The British   woman called Flora Shaw was born at N0 2, Dundas Terrace, Woolwich, England, on December 19, 1852, as Miss Flora Shaw. She was the fourth of her parent’s fourteen children. She grew up to become a novelist and a versatile female journalist, who gained fame through her pungent analyses of African colonial economy. She was later to become Honorable Dame Flora Lugard, the wife of Frederick John Deatry Lugard of Abinger who colonized the southern and northern parts of the area now called Nigeria, and later merged them together in the name of amalgamation, in 1914.

Flora was six years older than Frederick Lugard who was born in India on January 22, 1858. The two historic personalities married in 1902 and lived together without children for the rest of their lives.

Profile of Fredrick Lugard

Lord Frederick Lugard was a military adventurer and an ardent administrator who played a major part in Britain’s colonial history between 1888 and 1945. He served in East Africa, West Africa, and Hong Kong. His glorious name, in history, is particularly associated with Nigeria, where he served as High Commissioner (1900-06) as well as Governor and Governor-General from 1912 to19. This man was knighted, in 1901, and promoted to the peerage in 1928.

His Military Incursion

As at the time of Lugard’s military incursion into the territory now called Nigeria, in the late 19th century, most of the vast land of over 300,000 square miles or 800,000 square km was still unoccupied and even unexplored by Europeans. In the southern areas, at that time, were mostly animists while in the northern areas were multitudes of Muslims with city-states and large walled cities.

After colonizing the two areas, Lugard’s intention was to merge the occupants of the areas together, to enable him manage them as a single people in a single nation despite the diversity of their cultures and traditions. Thus, within three years of his expedition, he had established a British control over the vast territory using diplomacy on the one hand, and effective mobilization of the meager military force at his disposal, on the other hand.

His policy, at the time, was to forbid local slave raiding and impose severe punishments for recalcitrant while seeking a central control over the area through the native rulers.

The Lugards’ Historic Marriage

After Lugard’s marriage to Flora Shaw in 1902 and the latter could not cope with the Nigerian climate, he (Lugard) felt obliged to leave Africa and accept a junior position of the Governorship of Hong Kong which he held from 1907 to 1912. It was like stepping down as president, to accept the position of a Governor.

Thereafter, Lugard and his wife managed to come back to Nigeria with the purpose of joining the Southern and Northern parts of this country in a way that makes that merger a repeated talk of the town till today.

But to worsen the situation, a tribal military incursion was brought into the scenario with a strong intention of domination in January 1966. Since then, Nigeria has not been a country of comfort again. Now, after 61 years of independence, Nigeria continues to wallow helplessly, in a paroxysm of despair, despite her abundance of wealth. It became so bad that at a time, we suddenly found ourselves in a situation where figure 16 was officially declared higher than figure 19 and theft was officially defined as a lesser crime than theft in the framework of politics. On a daily basis, billions of dollars were declared missing from our national or State treasuries just as our foreign reserves are recklessly being depleted with fiat. Where are we going from here?

Democratic Tenure

Four years is a long period in a democratic tenure of a nation. It is long enough to lay a solid foundation for a nation. It is long enough to build a formidable edifice that can be inherited from generation to generation. If 16 years of democracy could not do any of these in Nigeria can one century do anything? If a journey of one year cannot take a traveler to the port of embarkation, who says 10 decades will take him to the port of disembarkation?

As an OPEC country, we have abundant oil wealth but we must import refined fuel for domestic consumption. We have a massive army of unemployed youths and we cannot provide electricity to enable them to be self-employed. Yet, we are insisting that we must continue like this even as billions of dollars are being funneled out of the country daily, by the means of corruption. Where are we going from here?

Obama’s counsel

In his direct presidential address to Nigerian populace on Tuesday, March 24, 2015, the then American President, Barrack Obama said something quotable about a Nigerian election that was to come up the following day (March 25, 2015). Here is how he put it: “Hello.  Today, I want to speak directly to you-the people of Nigeria.

Nigeria is a great nation and you can be proud of the progress you’ve made.  “Together, you won your independence, emerged from military rule, and strengthened democratic institutions.  You’ve strived to overcome division and to turn Nigeria’s diversity into a source of strength.  You’ve worked hard to improve the lives of your families and to build the largest economy in Africa. Now, you have a historic opportunity to help write the next chapter of Nigeria’s progress-by voting in the upcoming elections.  For elections to be credible, they must be free, fair and peaceful.  All Nigerians must be able to cast their votes without intimidation or fear.

“So I call on all leaders and candidates to make it clear to their supporters that violence has no place in democratic elections-and that they should not incite, support or engage in any kind of violence-before, during, or after the votes are counted. I call on all Nigerians to peacefully express your views and to reject the voices of those who call for violence.  And, when elections are free and fair, it is the responsibility of all citizens to help keep the peace, no matter who wins.

Successful elections and democratic progress will help Nigeria meet the urgent challenges you face today.  Boko Haram-a brutal terrorist group that kills innocent men, women and children-must be stopped. Hundreds of kidnapped children deserve to be returned to their families. Nigerians who have been forced to flee deserve to return to their homes.  Boko Haram wants to destroy Nigeria and all that you have worked to build.  By casting your ballot, you can help secure your nation’s progress.

“I’m told that there is a saying in your country: ‘to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done.’ Today, I urge all Nigerians-from all religions, all ethnic groups, and all regions-to come together and keep Nigeria one.  And, in this task of advancing the security, prosperity, and human rights of all Nigerians, you will continue to have a friend and partner in the United States of America”.

Conclusion

No country in history ever came into existence with mono-tribe or mono-tongue by design. Whether in the primordial or contemporary time, all countries are inhabited by diverse people of diverse cultures. The continued existence of such countries is just by management by reciprocal understanding, tolerance, endurance and sacrifices through dialogues. Every famous country is like a currency which recognition and validity depend on its intact posture. If it is torn, there can be no fame for it any more. Nigeria cannot be an exception. This is a fact which those agitating for secession should note very carefully in their own interest. GOD SAVE NIGERIA!

By FEMI ABBAS

Monologue

Hardly did a onetime American President, John F. Kennedy, Know, that he was describing the Qur’an when he made the following statement in form of an assertion in the early 1960s:

“We live in a hemisphere whose own revolution has given birth to the most powerful force of the modern age-the freedom and fulfilment of man”.

Preamble

Inside the Glorious Book called the Qur’an is everything about the world in which we live. Our sojourn in it and the end result of that sojourn are explicit;y analysed in that nonesuch Book.

There is nothing in the world that the Qur’an does not talk about with guidance. The message contained in that divine Book is not meant for man alone. All other creatures have their own fair shares of that message. And, the Almighty Allah confirms this fact in the same Book thus:

“We did not leave out anything untouched in this Glorious Book” Q. 6:38.

The planet called the earth

Our planet, the earth, did not come into existence by fortuity. Our primogenitors, Prophet Adam and his spouse, Hawa’u, were not created to take charge of the earth by fortuity. The divine law by which this world is governed was not enacted by fortuity. And, man’s peregrinations on earth, towards the World Hereafter, is not by fortuity. All these are a ground design of a great revolution through which the meaning of the universe becomes understood to man.

The divine signature

The divine signature appended to the above mentioned design is what eventually came to be known as the Qur’an. That unassuming signature which stands for the seal of authority on the law that keeps the world going is not only unsurpassable but also inimitable in the grandeur of its diction and the splendour of its rendition. The real essence of the esoteric connotation and exoteric profundity of this authoritative signature is the testimonial that a true believer needs as the compass with which to find smooth path to the final abode called the Paradise.

The summary of this signature as known to the primordial and contemporary   humanity is a great ‘Revolution’.

By implication, the Qur’an can be semantically defined as ‘THE DIVINE REVOLUTION’ that transformed human life from the sphere of obscurity into that of unimaginable sophistication which otherwise came to be known as civilization.

Phases of human growth

Following his tiresome peregrinations and sojourns around the world, man gets greying, not merely because of stress cultivated from sweat or the experiences garnered from labour, but also because of the sapping occurrences  which form huddles on his way through the various circumstances of life. Incidentally, some of those occurrences are invisible to us even as some are totally unknown. But, invariably, all are contained in the above mentioned divine signature (the Qur’an) which prepares us for our eventual homes.

In the same manner, it takes classes of pious intellectuals to pursue the recitation, analytical digestion and understanding of the Qur’an, to an appreciable level, before disseminating the knowledge therein to others.

The empirical dictions

That Glorious Book is the undisputable encyclopaedia of life which thoroughly explains the essence of existence of every living thing and its coexistence with others in a given environment. That explanation simply consists of the connotations of such empirical dictions of journalism which are as follows: ‘what?’, ‘where?’, ‘when?’ ‘why?’ and how? of everything in existence. The combination of the connotations of those dictions was what cumulated in the Divine Origin of the contemporary gadgets called CCTV.

Secret camera

But for the Qur’an, how could we have known that every human being is closely monitored by two Angels who record his/her deeds on indelible video and audio every minute of life? These two Angels, according to the Qur’an, are called Raqib and ‘Atid.

Copies of their records are forwarded to two other Angels who, like immigration officers, interrogate every demised human being at the point of his or her entry into the Hereafter from the earth, through the transit of the grave. These latter Angels are called Munkar and Nakir. Their joint duty is to play back the recorded deeds of humans and set questions for the deceased who is seeking immigration into the hemisphere of the Hereafter, based on the video and audio that had been recorded on their activities on earth. This is done in the grave as soon as the deceased is buried.

The Almighty Allah speaks of this with emphasised clarity in chapter 80 verses 16-31 thus: “We surely created man and we know the promptings of his soul; We are closer to him than his jugular veins; we assign two keepers to guard him; one sits on his right and the other on his left; He utters no word that can escape the recording instruments of Raqib or those of ‘Atid. And, when the agony of death justly overtakes him/her, they (the two Angels) will say: “This is the fate you have striven to avoid” And, then, the Trumpet shall be blown. Such is the quivering day on which each soul shall be accompanied by two Angels (Munkar and Nakir) that will bear witness and one of them will say: “Of this you have been heedless. But now, we have removed your veil. Today, your sight is keen….”

Questions and answers

It is at the point of burial that the demised Muslims are often reminded of how they should answer the questions asked in the grave by the two Angels. Some funeral officiating clerics do exclaim a reminder on what the answers should be to the deceased at the point of burial before the corpse is covered up. This is the situation that warranted the casting of the title of this article: “What should I tell them?”

Some of the questions are primary and fundamental. They include the following: Who is your Lord? What is your religion? Who is your Prophet? Who is your Imam? What is your book (of guidance)? Where is your Qiblah? Other fundamental questions are asked especially in respect of worship and personal mannerism. All these ought to have been filled into the memory of a practicing Muslim while alive. Thus, like in mundane exams,  such a Muslim will have no problem in answering the questions awaiting him/her in the grave.

A chain of transits

Man’s journey from this world to the World Hereafter is interrupted by a chain of transits. And, every transit is a question which requires the guidance of Allah to answer. The period spent as mere semen in the loins of a man who came to be known as father is a transit. The period spent in the womb of a woman who later becomes mother is a transit. The period spent between birth and attainment of adolescence is a transit. Man’s life from puberty to middle age is a transit. And, the period between middle age and death is another transit. Each of these transits forms a chapter in the life of man, a part of which will be accounted for and a part of which will be treated as one of innocence. Through this process, it becomes clear that   human beings constitute the central focus of the Great Message which the revealed Sacred Book called the Qur’an brought to mankind.

Yardstick for judgment

As human beings, we shall not be judged by our actions as much as by the intentions upon which those actions are based. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) emphasized this in his Hadith thus: “Every action shall be judged according to intention. And, every person shall reap the fruit of his intention. Whoever migrates for the sake of Allah and His Apostle shall be judged accordingly. And, whoever migrates because of a hidden agenda, not disclosed, shall equally be judged accordingly…”

If what to tell the two Angels (Munkar and Nakir) in the grave is a bothering question, the answer had been provided before death. What to tell those Angels is just a recast of what had been done or left undone while alive. And that alone is enough to arouse our consciousness and put us on a permanent alert. Whether we like it or not, death is around the corner. We are all from Allah and to Allah, we shall all return.

By Femi Abbas

”Do you not see how Allah has set forth a parable of a meaningful ‘WORD’   like a fruitful tree which roots are firmly planted in the fertile yoke of the earth while its lofty stem carries its sprouting foliages magnificently into the firmament of the sky, yielding nourishing fruits every season by Allah’s grace? Allah speaks in parables to men (of reason) that they may constantly ponder over His uniqueness and be mindful (of His unquestionable ability to do whatever He wishes)“ (Q. 14: 24).

Monologue

It is rather ironic that even in this age of sophisticated technology and evidential knowledge, some people, including ignorant Muslims, still perceive Islam as a mere dogma, like some other religions, in which stories, rituals and superstitions thrive. This is quite far from the reality of the unique comprehensiveness of the divine religion called ISLAM. Such people do not even take into consideration, the unprecedentedly massive empowerment and inexhaustible market of buying and selling, for billions of people, which this great religion has provided for mankind. Without Islam, what would have happened to the lives of those billions in terms of economy and social life? Just as there could not have been anything called Islam without the Qur’an, so could not have been anything called harmony without Islam in the contemporary world.

It is not surprising, however, that such parochial people are still in existence even in the 21st century. After all, it takes only people with functional eyes to perceive the light from the dungeon of darkness. This further confirms that ignorance is a chronic disease which only knowledge can heal permanently in man.

Allah’s guidance

Since the creation of Adam, man has continuously enjoyed the guidance of Allah in one form or another, through the divinely appointed Messengers that have been sent to various societies with various tongues. It is through those divinely revealed Books that the deeply dark world of man came to be illuminated for mankind. In those Books, particularly the Qur’an, parables are used with references drawn from the past, while warnings, as well as admonitions, are divinely issued with practical lessons, such as the great deluge, the cataclysm of Sodom and Gomorrah, the defeat of Jalut (Goliath) by Prophet Daud (David), the doom of the tyrannical Pharaoh, and, most recently, the waterloo of Napoleon Bonaparte of France and the vanquish of Adolf Hitler of Germany. All these have come to man as lessons by which he can re-assess and reform himself.

All these and many other similar occurrences are mentioned by Allah, to remind mankind of their mortality and to serve as the guidance in his ephemeral life’s odyssey. But, unfortunately, man has always been blind to that genuine, divine guidance. Consequently, he has been deaf to warnings and resistant to reasoning as much as he is insensitive to rightly guided thoughts even while he remains inflexible to blissful ideas. Thus, in his choice to form freemasonry with the custodian of ruins and deception called Satan, man has ignorantly strayed into a quagmire of irredeemable sorrow through the millennia. Today, as in the past, by taking Satan for his best friend, man refuses to use the long spoon with which he is provided by Allah, to dine with the damned Lucifer. This was the situation until 610 CE when Allah decided to chronicle the activities of man from the very beginning of human existence and make it an eternally concrete ‘MIRROR’ through which the descendants of Adam can continue to see life in its past, its present and its near and far future. This ‘MIRROR’ is the Qur’an, the visionary anecdote that heals man’s blindness, the sanitizer that purifies human hearts and the greatest treasure in possession of mankind.

Features of the quaran

For the rightly guided minds, Qur’an is the eye with which to see, the ear with which to hear, the sense with which to reason, the bridge with which to cross the dangerous valleys of life, the insurance against any satanic damnation and the passport with which to obtain the valid visa to salvation. Indeed, the Qur’an is the only reliable redeemer of man from the shackles of this ephemeral world.

This sacred Book called the Qur’an leaves no aspect of life untouched. It leaves no privacy unprotected and no secret unexposed. This wonderful Book is the repository of problems and solutions; history and lessons; crimes and penalties; justice and righteousness; discipline and rule of law; courage and truth; friendship and trust; governance and policies; victory and magnanimity; marriage and divorce; widowhood and orphanage; childhood and inheritance; richness and poverty; politics and economy; reasoning and opinion; facts and figures; darkness and light; life and death war and peace; leadership and power; Angels and man; heavens and the earth. All these and many other matters form the subjects of discussions and guidance in the ‘Divine Diary of Life called ‘Al- Qur’an’.

For people on the right path, therefore, life begins and ends with the Qur’an, Allah’s own tradition and the only authentic fountain from which man can draw wisdom with which to solve any problem. The sense that reasons with the Qur’an makes no mistake. The mind that thinks with the Qur’an is never bedevilled. The eye that sees with the Qur’an incurs no sore. The tongue that talks with the Qur’an never stammers. The power that rules with the Qur’an never falls. And, the Almighty Allah warns in the Qur’an thus: “But whosoever deviates from My tradition, verily for him/her is life of subjugation and We shall raise him blind on the Day of Judgment” (Q. 20: 124).

Proof of qur’anic revelations

Some religious charlatans who perceive Islam through the conducts of malfeasant Muslims and see that   sacred path of Allah as a dogma continue to ask for the proof of the genuineness of Qur’anic revelation as if other revelations before it do not require proof. In reason and logic, asking for the proof of the Qur’an is like asking the sun to prove the vividness of its rays. Can anybody reasonably ask for the proof of the hair growing on his head? It is the nature and character of unbelievers to deny the truth and refute the manifest. But does it ever bother the sun in any way that some blind men or women deny the well being of its rays? Or can a brook be affected in any way if some herds boycott its water?

To Muslims who deeply understand the tenets of Islam, all the genuine Prophets and Messengers of Allah are from Allah and all the revealed ‘BOOKS’ are series of the same ‘MESSAGE’. This fact has been firmly established in the Qur’an and that is why Muslims are not known for maligning any Prophet or revealed ‘BOOK’.

Right from its very first day of revelation, the Qur’an has come with undeniable proof. But it takes only a divinely cleansed heart to acknowledge such proof. Qur’an itself is the proof of all other celestial messages that preceded it. It is the only divine revelation which has no human interference or human tampering. Neither Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who brought that ‘MESSAGE’ to mankind nor any of his companion had a say in it. It contains no chapters or verses according to anybody. And it is the only divine Book that is easily memorisable despite its voluminous contents. No other acclaimed Book has ever or can be memorised word by word like the Qur’an. That alone is a clear attestation to its sacredness as a revealed Book.

The similitude of the qur’an

The Qur’an is like gold, the value of which everybody seeks directly or indirectly because of its immeasurable quality but which only a few can recognize in its raw form. It takes geologists to identify the soil in which gold is buried. It takes miners to mine it out just as it takes smelters to smelt it before the goldsmith can transform it into a beautiful ornament. In the same manner, it takes categories of pious intellectuals to pursue the recitation, exposition and interpretation of the Qur’an to a loftily appreciable level.

Language of the qur’an

That the Qur’an is the only revealed ‘BOOK’ in the world today which retains the originality of its language and contents for about 1500 years so far, is enough a testimony to the proof of its divine origin. That also confirms Arabic as one of the oldest languages in the world today.

If the proof of the Qur’an is not seen in the social, economic and political context of its exegeses, it must be seen in its scientific hypotheses through which Europe came in contact with civilization. It is from those hypotheses that the modern world zoomed into technological advancement through the adoption of ‘Al-Jibrau (called Algebra), Al-Kaymiyau (called Chemistry), Al-Fisiyau (called Physics) as well as the introduction of ‘ZERO’ into numerals which led to the replacement of Roman figures, in the 13th century, with Arabic numerals that brought about decimal system and paved way for scientific breakthrough. It should be recalled that the numerals used in schools today are called Arabic numerals as a mark of their origin.

Before adopting the Arabic numerals, Europe had relied so much upon the clumsy system of Roman numerals which called for enormous expenditure of time and labour. For instance, while the Arabic numerals make it easy for the world to write such date as 1948 in only four figures within a second, it takes the same number to be written in eleven figures in Roman numerals thus: MDCCCXLVIII. Even if Islam has contributed nothing more than the decimal system to the modern civilization it has done much more than any other creed. And what is more, the idea of what is called UNIVERSITY today originated from that divine religion. The very first University in the world (University of Cordoba) was established by the Muslims in Spain based on Qur’anic guidance. And the three oldest existing Universities in the world today were established by Muslims in the 10th century as offshoots of the University of Cordaba. Those Universities are Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt; QarawiyyinUniversity in Fes, Morocco and Zaytuniyyah University in Tunis, Tunisia. Yet, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who brought that wonderful ‘MESSAGE’ (the Qur’an) to humanity was unlettered. However, despite his unlettered status he remains the greatest human being that ever lived throughout the history of man.

Attestation

It was in reference to this non-such Islamic contribution to human civilization that the renowned French historian of the 20th century, Gustav Le Bon wrote in his book thus: ‘The Civilization of the Arabs’ thus:

“At an epoch when the rest of Europe was plunged in darkest barbarism, Baghdad and Cordoba, the two great cities where Islam held sway, were centres of civilization which illumined the whole world with the light of their brilliance”.

The message and the messenger

Through the writing of Prophet Muhammad’s  biography, some people have zoomed into undreamed fame. Others have sunk into permanent oblivion. No other Prophet’s biography has attracted as many writers from believers and non-believers, from friends and foes alike as that of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). Every aspect of his life including the dresses he wore, the food he ate, the way he spoke and the wives he married has come to form chapters in his biography. In short, next to the Qur’an, no book is as much read daily in the world today as the biography of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in one form or another. Given all these, one can imagine what the world would have been without the Qur’an. Please read more about the Qur’an in this column in the foreseeable future. God bless you.

By Femi Abbas

Monologue

Last Tuesday,  July 20, 2021, was Eidul-Adha day of year 1442 AH throughout the world. The Arabic word Eid means is a festival of joy and festivities in Islam which reminds the religious ancestry of Prophet Ibrahim’s faith with reconfirmation.

It is the anticlimax of the last pillar of Islam called Hajj. EidulAdha was first observed by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in Makkah shortly after he was divinely ordained as a Messenger of Allah.

Preamble

Were it possible for the dead to wake up from their graves at will, Prophet Yusuf (Joseph), the great son of Prophet Ya‘qub (Jacob), would have resurrected in Nigeria at the request of millions of hungry Nigerians. And, his mission would have been the interpretation of a dream similar to that of a Pharaoh of some millennia ago, which saved Egypt of yore from the scourge of a looming famine.

But alas, the absence of a Yusuf on the surface of the earth today has rendered the possibility of any solution to such a dream in this country hopeless. Despite unlimited human and material resources with which    this so called ‘Giant of Africa’, is endowed, most of her citizens continue to grapple helplessly with a jaundiced economy like a centipede crawling sorrowfully into a brook of uncertainty through the path of ashes. When will this perennial debacle come to an end for a people who are eagerly waiting to hand over the baton of the present to the generations of the future?

No Festivities

While Muslims, all over the world, are supposed to be celebrating ‘Eidul-Adha’ with joy, in festivities, overwhelming majority of Nigerian Muslims are celebrating this same festival with a combination of hunger, fear and despair. At the instance of unbridled avarice and aggrandizement of a few privileged Nigerians who are in government, the ingredients of festivities for majority of Muslims have been tacitly banished in this country. Thus, many Muslims are celebrating this year’s ‘Eidul-Adha’ in despair as usual.

This iron period in which consistent promise of eliminating corruption, rampancy of banditry and terrorism on the one hand and the scourge of hunger, starvation and abject poverty on the other, seems to be a coded omen in which a pleasant dream of the past is rapidly culminating in a painful nightmare. That is an indicator of indefinite despair for a hapless country.

Nostalgia

Generally, today, there is nostalgia in the land, not only for the days of oil boom when life was relatively comfortable for all and sundry, but also for the era of abundant farm products when the thought of feeding without hardship was taken for granted by most citizens. Nigerian Muslims and non-Muslims alike are, today, yearning for the return of those days when wives could confidently ask their husbands for festival gifts and children could demand for new dresses, shoes and wrist watches from their parents. Those were the days when festival seasons were really festive and the graph of marriage carried some indices of value. They were the days of friendliness among neighbours, sincere wishes among colleagues, mutual confidence among spouses as well as general peace and tranquility in the society.

Now, those days are not only gone but seem to have gone forever.

A Couplet of Warning

Today, we are in a situation against which we had long been warned in a couplet rendered by an Arab poet who was quoting two disciples of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) i. e. Ubayyi Bn Ka’b and Abdullah Bn Mas’ud. The Couplet goes thus:

“This is the period in human life against which we had been warned through the admonitions of Ubayyi Bn Ka‘ab and Abdullah Bn Mas‘ud; it is in this period, as had been foretold, that a rejection of truth in its totality would become manifest while falsehood, corruption and betrayal of trust would be held aloft; should this period linger beyond now with its woes and tribulations, the world may soon assume a situation where people will neither rejoice over the birth of  new babies nor grieve over the demise of close relatives”.

Probing Questions

As Nigeria is fast becoming a dramatic entity mysteriously shrouded in coded parables, it may take an unprecedented revolution to dislodge some Nigerian economic vampires who are fund of subjecting the citizenry to that to irredeemable penury. Ordinarily, in normal circumstances, a forward-looking country would have encouraged her citizens to ask some probing questions thus:

Who are we? Where are we coming from? And where are we going from here? Those are some of the probing   questions which all rational human beings should normally ask themselves randomly as a means of paving the way for progress.

But such questions have been rendered irrelevant in Nigeria because the circumstances of life in this country have changed the priorities of the ordinary citizens. The only question now in vogue, which virtually everybody in government seems to be asking incessantly, is as follows: ‘what personal benefit will I derive from this office?

That very question is the real drama that permanently engages the attention of Nigerian civil servants, the politicians, the legislators, the law enforcement agents and the judicial officers, in their quest for wealth through fraudulent means. It also is the question that robes Nigerian Police in a garment of open shamelessness with a banished conscience. It is the question that crowns money as a demigod which forbids human feeling. It is the question that fosters greed and fetters Nigeria, as a country, to the stake of endemic corruption. It is the question that presents mirage to Nigerians as the only valuable substance worthy of pursuit.

The Reality

What can we say of a man who fixes his eyes on the sun but does not see it? Instead, he sees a chorus of flaming seraphim announcing a paroxysm of despair. That is the parable of the country called Nigeria. Like the Israelis of Moses’ time, Nigerians have become gypsies wandering aimlessly and wallowing in abject poverty in the midst of abundance. What else do we expect from Allah beyond the invaluable bounties with which He has blessed us?

Nigeria is not lacking in forest and arable savannah. She is rich in rivers, mineral resources and promixing mountains, all of which are great sources of wealth for people who are seeking reasonable comfort without self-deception. What this country lacks is a class of responsible and patriotic leaders who can sincerely highlight her priorities according to the yearnings of the ordinary people. That food has now become a threat to Nigerians is an irony emanating from naivety engendered by massive corruption entrenched on her soil especially since 1999 when the current democracy first beamed a ray of hope on the people but which was turned into a forlorn by the politicians.

Cost of governance

In Nigeria today, the cost of running the government alone is enough to render the country bankrupt. The retinue of federal ministers and a galaxy of Presidential and gubernatorial Advisers as well as the unlimited salaries and allowances for the legislators are the real causes of poverty in the country. Even America, with her huge economic resources, large population and financial wherewithal, does not live in such reckless opulence. Why must we have separate ministers or Commissioners for agriculture and water resources? Where are the federal and State government’s farms to justify that? Why must we retain an obnoxious immunity clause in our constitution for certain political demagogues to facilitate monumental corruption?

Besides al these, what informs the idea of the so-called constituency allowances running into billions of naira for our legislators without anything to show for it at a time when innocent women and children are crying for food and dying of hunger? No one would have thought, in 1999, that artificial hunger could be added to the abysmal level of poverty in Nigeria despite the unprecedented rise in price of oil in the international market at that time. The ubiquity of beggars and lunatics in our cities and towns nowadays is a confirmation of this assertion.

Style of Governance

Governance in Nigeria has become an artful trick adopted by a vicious political cabal to bamboozle the populace into blind submission.

Now, despite the undeniable fact that Nigeria has become a country without roads, without electricity, without functional without jobs for majority of able-bodied citizens and even without food on our tables, we are still being cajoled into believing that Nigeria, a country without coins, has a frontline role to play in the global economy. Isn’t that a deliberate and audacious deception? No country in history has ever been known to have achieved economic vibrancy by magic. Nigeria cannot be an exception.

A fire-brigade approach to food crisis in a country like Nigeria is a shameful reaction to an avoidable melancholy.

Egyptian Experience

Yusuf (Joseph), the son of Ya’qub (Jacob), did not know that he could have any solution to a fundamental problem of a country other than his own. Neither did his brothers who sold him into slavery know that he could find solution to a major problem in another land. But the accident of history never ceases to play itself out. Without Yusuf, only Allah knows what the history of Egypt would have been today. And without a Pharaoh’s dream of drought, the story of Yusuf would have been totally different from what we came to know of it.

If Egypt had any major plight when Yusuf was in prison in that country, it was Pharaoh’s dream. It turned out that Yusuf’s imprisonment in Egypt was a blessing, not only for Egypt but also for Yusuf and his family. What could have been a historical repetition of that episode here in Nigeria, turned out to be a regrettable forlorn. The rest is left to history.

Irony

It is ironic that people who live at the river bank can’t get water to drink when those living in the desert can find a reliable oasis to combat any drought. Given all the resources with which we are endowed, Nigerians should have no business with poverty let alone food crisis.

Effect of Capitalism

Capitalism which was once an economic ideology propelling mercantilism has moved a step forward, especially in Nigeria where official theft has become a profession. Capitalism is now a religion through which its adherents worship money. To such adherents, accountability is a mere riddle which only the poor may wish to unravel.

It is only in the interest of those in government, especially, those in the executive and legislative arms, who are most active in sharing public funds, to let the national wealth spread across board legitimately if only to avoid the current Nigerian elite situation where every house has become a prison in which the occupants are voluntarily self-jailed. To ignore the rule of law and shun justice in a land blessed with milk and honey is to cultivate trouble with insecurity in all its ramifications. “Allah will not change the situation of a community until the people in such a community change their evil attitude”. Q. 13;1

Although this year’s Eidul Adha has come and gone, nevertheless, the expression of gratitude to Allah continues by sayinh EID MUBARAK!