Femi Abbas

This article ought to have been published at the beginning of this year’s Ramadan. But an oversight as a human factor set in as a cause of delay. However, it is still very much relevant even at this stage.

One of the most important aspects of marriage is mating. It is the means of procreation of children as legitimized by consummation of marriage. Across nations, tribes and cultures, legitimate mating serves as the lotion of love.

It is also perceived as the natural balm with which to soothe the aching areas of   matrimonial conflicts. A matrimonial home without sexual intercourse is like a wild desert without an oasis.

Therefore, Ramadan should not be used as an excuse to abdicate legal matrimonial responsibility by abstaining from the matrimonial bed.

In Islam, sexual intercourse in the matrimonial home is so important that its constant denial by either party without any cogent reason is classifiable as a sin.

Mating in Islam is not just for procreation of children. It is also a reconfirmation of love and fulfilment of nature’s promise. With matrimonial intercourse, paradise is attainable And, without it, paradise is deniable.

While elucidating on the gains of Sadaqah, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once told his companions that mating is Sadaqah if it is legitimately done. And legitimacy here means doing it with ones legitimate spouse.

The prophet’s position on this is confirmed by Allah in Qur’an 2: 223 thus: “Your wives are your fields, enter them as you please…”. Denial of matrimonial intercourse to a spouse without reason is a violation of a fundamental marital right.

Even where both spouses have tested positive to a disease like   HIV/Aids, sexual intercourse should not be ruled out. And where only one of them is tested positive, the couple should reach an understanding on how to go about it medically.

In Ramadan, a couple can be as sexually active as outside Ramadan provided it is done between dusk and dawn.

It is, however, assumed that no serious Muslim will ever want to indulge in any unwarranted circumstance like intercourse to skip Salatus-Subh (early morning obligatory worship) by not taking Janabah bath at the right time. Allah judges deeds by intention. Whoever claims to be a Muslim must embrace Islam totally.

However, necessary as sexual intercourse may be in a matrimonial home, it must not hinder any obligatory worship of Allah. Ramadan Karim!

Linguistically, the Arabic word Zakah simply means charity. But semantically, it means the spiritual purification of wealth in one’s possession which some other people are not endowed with.

In Islam, there are two types of Zakah. One is called Zakatul Mal (meaning charity paid on possessed wealth), the other is Zakatul Fitr (meaning feasting charity). The one is a whole pillar of Islam while the other is an attribute of another pillar of Islam called  Ramadan fast.

As for Zaatul Fitr which is an organ of Ramadan fast, its payment is obligatory on all Muslims (adult or minor, male or female).

This Zakah is called Zakatul Fitr (feasting charity) to facilitate a festive mood for the poor once in the society.

Zakatul Fitr can be doled out in grains or in cash. Although the preference is for grains, nevertheless, if you give grains  to a wretched person who cannot afford any amount of money to turn it into an edible meal how will grains alone be useful for him? This is why some jurisprudential Islamic scholars thought of applying the principle of Qiyas (analogical deduction to it) and it is not illegal in Islam.

To say that Zakatul Fitr must be paid only in grains is to be extreme especially when the recipients of such charity may be forced to sell the grains given to them for cash.

The Prophetically recommended measure of grains to be given as charity is called Muddu and each person must give four of it out in terms of valid grains.

Zakatul Fitr must be given out either on the eve of ‘Idul Fitr or before observing Salatul Fitr on ‘Id day. Completing Ramadan fast without paying Zakatul Fitr is a spiritual question mark which a Muslim must be ready to grapple with before Allah. Ramadan Karim!

Femi Abbas

Like any aspect of human life, Ramadan is a test which every Muslim should endeavour to pass. Without waiting to be asked, a good Muslim must be able to sincerely ask him or herself in this sacred month the following vital questions? What was my spiritual status at the commencement of this year’s Ramadan and what is it at this stage of the sacred month? There are many reasons for this:

Ramadan has become a transit period for most Muslims especially in Nigerian society. Whenever the month of Ramadan comes around such Muslims just dust up their instruments of worship and pretend to be genuine Muslims. At least for the first few days in the sacred month Mosques are full of worshippers, regular and irregular. They come from all strata of the society to join other Muslims in observing congregational prayers especially Salatu-t-Tarawih in the Mosques. They endeavour, if pretentiously, to do away with drinking alcohol openly even as they discard fornication or adultery as well as other crimes temporarily in the month.

Even when some of such pseudo Muslims do not find Ramadan fasting interesting, they do pretend play along. Such people are easily recognizable by their uncultured attitudes in the sacred month. For instance, most of them do not wake up for ‘Sahur’ in the night. Neither do they involve their mental and physical beings in fasting. To them, abstaining from eating and drinking should be enough as fasting. Thus, as long as they go about with empty stomach, fasting is on course.

Such people are like self-deceptive students who believe in marking their own scripts after writing examinations. The question is: can they award themselves the needed certificates? If they can, who will recognize such certificates? Thus, sincere self assessment in the month of Ramadan is a necessary means of reassuring oneself of the right performance in the sacred month of Ramadan. The first ten days of the month were for free blessings of Allah. The second ten days are for forgiveness against all sins and iniquities.

If Allah can grant unlimited blessings to fasting Muslims in those first ten days, one should, at least work for forgiveness before the last ten days when fasting Muslims will be granted total spiritual liberation fom the shackles of Satan. Therefore, to be sure of being on course, during this spiritual journey, a self-assessment at this stage is a sine qua non. Ramadan Karim!

Femi Abbas

For any good Muslim, coming out of Ramadan is like coming out of Hajj fresh. Both are spiritual cleansers and erasers of sins.

Whoever passes through Ramadan or Hajj with genuine intention and abides by their rules scrupulously is sure to become like a new born baby devoid of sins.

If anything should be called a clean slate (Tabularasa), here on earth, it is either Ramadan or Hajj. The one is open to all. The other is limited to a few according to the condition by which it is to be performed.

Both Ramadan and Hajj constitute the rarest opportunity for living Muslims to renew their covenant with Allah on an annual basis.

Through Ramadan, we came to know about Tarawih and the reinvigoration it entails; we came to know about Sahur and the discipline it instils in obedient Muslims; we came to know about Iftar and the relief it brings to fasting Muslims; we came to know about I’tikaf and the spirituality it encourages in Muslims; we came to know about Laylatul Qadr and the great mercy it bestows on mankind; we came to know about Zakatul Fitr and the spirit of kindness it accentuates and finally we came to know about Eidul Fitr and the happiness it disseminates among believers.

Through Hajj, we came to know about the very first house on earth which is called Ka’bah; we came to know about the circular nature of the world which Tawaf represents; we came to know about the necessity of endurance in life which Sa’y connotes; we came to know about the great assembly of the Final Day which Arafat exemplifies; we came to know bout the damnable character of Satan which the throwing of pebbles at the Jamrat symbolizes; we came to know about perseverance of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) which the visit of pilgrims to Madinah represents and the everlasting universality of Islam which the meeting of races in the Holy Land confirms. Yet, without the Qur’an, we would not have known Ramadan and Hajj.

Neither would we have known Islam and its three other pillars. This confirms that Qur’an is the main constitution of this life and the life hereafter.

With the last two pillars of Islam so heavily loaded with spiritual well being and jointly forming an estuary of fortune for the other three pillars it may be concluded that the traces of life hereafter are vividly clear in this very life on earth. Thus, we thank the Almighty Allah for granting us opportunity to sail through another Ramadan without scratch.

Femi Abbas

For everything in the life of man, there is a climax as well as an anti-climax. The climax of Ramadan is Laylatul Qadr (the night of power). That is the night in which the very first revelation of the Qur’an was made to Prophet Muhammad (SAW). It is also the night in which the contents of that Holy Book are reconfirmed annually. Laylatul Qadr is the meeting point between the earth and the heaven. It is the rare opportunity, which Allah offers the Muslim to reshape their destiny and rekindle their spiritual fortune. The anti-climax of Ramadan begins with the disbursement of Zakatul Fitr and ends with Eidul Fitr. Zakatul Fitr is a part and parcel of Ramadan. It is made compulsory by Prophetic tradition. The latter is the festivity with which the Muslim expresses gratitude to Allah for taking them successfully through another month of blessing, forgiveness and liberation. Eidul Fitr is essentially a Nafilah (supererogatory prayer) consisting of two Rakats and a sermon. The Rakats are observed congregationally a couple of hours after Salatul Subh. They are followed by the sermon. To observe Eidul Fitr Rakats, a Muslim is expected to wear a festive and not a mourning mood. He should be gay in appearance without necessarily being extravagant. He should take normal bath, perform ablution and wear a neat but not necessarily a new dress. On his way to the praying ground, he should put his Lord in mind by chanting alone or in congregation any of the following:

1. Allah Akbar (3ce) La ilaha illa Llah, Allah Akbar (2ce) Wa Lillahil hamdu.
2. Subhana Llah, wal hamdu lillah, wa la ilaha illa Llah, Allah Akbar (3ce) wa la hawla wa la kuwwata illah billahil Aliyyil Alim.

And, on getting to the praying ground, everybody should just sit down chanting any of the above. There is no observance of any Nafilat on individual basis because Eidul Fitr itself is Nafilat. The Imam leads the congregation in observing the two Rakats. He then follows that up with a sermon preferably in a language understandable to the congregation. No private Nafilat should be observed before the commencement of Eidul Fitr prayer. It is advisable to wait after the SALAT and listen to the sermon which is more important than the Eid prayer itself. Those who missed the prayer do not need to observe it thereafter. Listening to the sermon is enough for them.

FEMI ABBAS

“Who shares his life’s pure pleasure and walks the honest road; who trades with heaping measure and lifts his brother’s load; who turns the wrong down bluntly and lends the right a hand; he dwells in God’s own country and tills the holy land.” Louis F. Benson

Monologue

This article is not new. It had been published in this column before. But it is being repeated here because of its relevance to the appreciation which humanity owes an exemplary orphan from Arabia whose mentorship rescued us from the crushing dangers of certain thorny paths of life.

Preamble

No man in history has ever been as fitting to the above poetic description as Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the undisputable   greatest man that ever lived. His legacy is the solid foundation upon which the contemporary civilization is built.

But despite the vivid feasibility of that legacy it remains invisible to many eyes that are alien to the light of Islam. Thus, the Prophet’s legacy is like the beaming sun which no blind person can see and no seeing eyes can perceive in its natural nakedness.

Yet, both the blind and the seeing feel its burning effect ‘willy-nilly’ even as it photosynthesizes the proverbial ‘plants’ around them and nourishes those ‘plants’ to fruition with sustainable potency.

His Legacy

This article is rather a token of an appreciation of Prophet Muhammad’s unprecedented accomplishments than the trivialization of those accomplishments in the guise of his birthday celebration called Mawlidun-Nabiyy by some people.

Muhammad, the son of Abdullah and Aminah was not born a Prophet. He only became a prophet by Divine ordination at the age of 40 years in 610 AH. Before then, his birth was neither remembered nor celebrated. And while he was alive, no one dared the celebration of his birthday.

Therefore, if anything were to be celebrated about the personality of this great man, it must be his Prophet-hood which was about his service to humanity.

The Prophet’s Biography

From the creation of Adam, (the first human being created by Allah), till date, no man’s biography has ever been so much written and read as that of Muhammad (SAW), the son of Abdullah and Aminah.

This man’s biography has been written from all perspectives, positive and negative, by various men and women of diverse races, tribes, ideologies and religions in the past over 1400 years or there about.

And the biography is still being written and re-written authoritatively and un-authoritatively, today, in uncountable languages.

Even those who are obviously bereft of writing prowess randomly resort to cartooning him just to seek relevance and curry ignominious fame.

Through the writings of Prophet Muhammad’s biography, some millions of people have zoomed into un-dream-able fame.

Some others have sunk into the abyss of a permanent oblivion. But virtually all the writers have benefitted from their writings directly or indirectly, in coins and in kind.

No other Prophet’s biography has attracted as many writers from among believers and non-believers, as well as from friends and foes alike, over the centuries, as that of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

Every aspect of this Prophet’s life including the dresses he wore, the food he ate, the way he spoke, the steps he took, the laws he enacted, the wives he married, the children he bore, and the wars he was forced to fight, has formed the components of 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.

A vital Question

Given this situation, however, a vital question has arisen thus: why has there been so much global focus on this unlettered Prophet from Arabia for so many centuries? The answer to this question is not far-fetched.

The world has not produced any human personality comparable to   Prophet Muhammad (SAW), and, it will not.

He is the seal of all the Prophets/ Messengers of Allah and the epitome of human exemplariness. In him alone are found all the traits of what a perfect gentleman should be in all ramifications.

The ‘Ifs’ of His Life

The life of every human being is full of ifs. And, it is the conglomeration of those ifs that often form the particles of what is called profile or biography. For example, if Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had not been an orphan, he would not have been able to guide humanity on how orphans should be treated especially with regards to inheritance.

If he had not been a husband, his marital life would not have been an excellent template for others to emulate and women’s rights would have been permanently ignored. If he had not been a widower the world would not have realized the plight of widows and how to provide for them.

If he had not been a father, the proper parental care deserved by children would have been relegated to the background in Islamic doctrine. If he had not been trustworthy, the value of trust would have been totally lost in the lifestyle of mankind.

If this nonesuch Prophet of Allah had not been compelled to migrate from Makkah to Madinah, the culture of wayfaring and hospitality, which is universally   imbibed today, would not have been in existence.

If he had not been forced to fight wars, the laws of war, armistice and reconciliation would have eluded humanity. If he had not diplomatically overcome the oppression to which he was subjected by his adversaries, the word magnanimity would not have found a place in the dictionary of the victors among warriors.

If the Prophet from Arabia had not been a judge, the virtue of justice would have been globally thrown to the winds and survival in all societies would have been for the fittest.

If this greatest Messenger of Allah had not been a democratic ruler, the relationship between the ruled and their rulers, all over the world, today, would not have been dissimilar from that of slaves and their masters and dictatorship in governance would have known no boundaries.

If he had not been poor despite being a Head of State, the policy of social welfare adopted in civilized societies today in favour of the poor, would not have been possible. If he had not been an illiterate, the world would not have known the difference between literacy and education.

And, if, despite all these qualities in him, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had not been humble and affable, arrogance would have been the main character of all privileged people in the world today.

Comparison

Who else can be compared to this greatest man that ever lived in history? And, in which any other single personality could all the aforementioned qualities have ever been found in history? There can be little wonder, then, why so much attention was and is still being focused on the personality of this extra-ordinary human being.

That is Prophet Muhammad (SAW) for you, the like of whom the world has never seen before him and will never see again after him.

If this man is celebrated anywhere in the world today or any other time, therefore, it is definitely not because he was born like any other man. Rather, it is because his achievements transcend ordinary birth.

But for him, the world would have remained in the dungeon of ignorance and primitivism without any distinction between humans and beasts.

It was he who brought back the manual of life to mankind after it had been lost to vanity through centuries of man’s peregrinations on earth.

That manual of life is the divine instruction called the Qur’an, which came gradually from Allah to mankind in accordance with the growth rate of human intellect.

Attestations

After many decades of scientific experimentations, a German-born American physicist and Nobel Laureate, Albert Einstein the inventor of atomic bomb who is generally known as the 20th century creator of special and general theory of relativity wrote about Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

He compared the Prophet’s works with the contents of the Qur’an and concluded as follows: “Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind”. He then called on fellow scientists to endeavour to read the Qur’an without bias in order to know the true origin of science in human life.

Einstein was not alone in such unfaultable reasoning and advocacy. Other great contemporary scholars have made similar observations.

One of them is Professor Tagatat Tajasen, Chairman of the Department of Anatomy at Chiang Mai University in Thailand. Through his deep research, this Professor had to accept Islam on the strength of just one scientific sign accurately mentioned in the Qur’an to his intellectual consternation.

He had spent a great amount of his time, as a Professor, in search of pain receptor. When his attention was drawn to the Qur’an, he did not believe initially that such a highly sophisticated aspect of science could have been mentioned over 1,400 years ago.

But when he confirmed it by himself in the translation of the Qur’an, he became so much impressed that he publicly embraced   Islam which he   accepted as a truly divine religion.

Perhaps, it was those attestations by great men of intellect that prompted one Michael Hart, a Jewish American Astrophysicist, to research into the personality of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) whom he named as the greatest man that ever lived, in his famous book entitled ‘The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History’. There are many more prominent scholars who, at one time or another, gave   testimonies about the un-questionability of the divine mission of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). One of them was Alphonse de Lamartine of France, who had the following to say about the Messenger of Allah in his book entitled ‘Histoire de la Torque’:

“Never has a man set for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a more sublime aim since this aim was superhuman; to subvert superstitions which had been interposed between man and his Creator; to render God unto man and man unto God; to restore rational and sacred idea of divinity amidst the chaos of the material and disfigured idolatry which were then in existence”. He went further thus:

He went further thus: “…If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astounding results are the three criteria of human genius, who could dare to compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws and empires only.

They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled before their very eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples and dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls. On the basis of a book (the Qur’an), every letter of which has become law, he created a spiritual nationality which blended together peoples of every tongue and of every race…..”.

He then concluded thus: “As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured we may well ask, is there any man in human history that is greater than Muhammad?”

Napoleon Bonaparte’s Testimony

On his own, Napoleon Bonaparte, the great 18th century French conqueror of Europe was so much amazed by the traits of Islam which he saw in Egypt during his military expeditions that he made the following historic statement about that divine religion and its great Prophet:

“Muhammad, in reality, was a great leader of mankind. He preached UNITY among Arabs who were, till then, torn asunder due to internecine quarrels, sometimes resulting in bloody war fares.

He brought them out of the obscure world in a short time and the discipline which they maintained under his leadership was simply marvellous, and so was their bravery, courage and devotion to the cause which they loved and cherished”.

He also continued as follows: “…this, coupled with the contempt for death, as taught by their leader, made them great soldiers and fighters like of whom history rarely produces.

I simply marvel at the achievements of this great ‘Son of the Desert’ within a mere period of less than 15 years; a thing which Moses and Christ could not do in 15 centuries. I salute this great man; I salute his qualities of Head and Heart….”

George Bernard Shaw’s Comment

Meanwhile, in corroboration of the above highlighted testimonies, variously made by renowned men of letters and intellect, another foremost Orientalist, playwright and dramatist, George Bernard Shaw, had the following to say about Islam and Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in his book ‘The genuine Islam’ (vol. 1 No 8 of 1936):

“The Christians and their missionaries have presented a horrible picture of Islam. Not only that, they also carried out an organized and planned propaganda against the personality of Prophet Mohammad and the religion he preached. I have carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet.

I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to the conclusion that Mohammad was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under a most agonizing pain. I have always held Islam in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality.

It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing face of existence which can make it appealing to every age. I have studied him-the wonderful man and in my opinion, far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the saviour of humanity.

I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness.

I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today”.

Conclusion

These are just some of the facts that make an unlettered Arabian orphan, Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the greatest human being that ever lived on earth.

If non-Muslims could go so far to analyze the facts above about Prophet Muhammad (SAW) without reference to his birth, what is expected of Muslims for whom his mission is primarily meant? The life of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was about service to mankind and not self adoration in the name of birthday.

As we are now celebrating another Eidul Fitr, we pray the Amighty  Allah to continue to bless the invaluable soul of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as well as those of his companions, his spouses and household till the Day of Judgment. Amin. Eid Mubarak!

Femi Abbas

The month of Ramadan in the life of a Muslim is an annual cleanser. It cleanses you of all the past misdeeds which border on irreligiousness. It is also a rejuvenator of the mind as much as it is a reformer of the soul.

By abstaining from eating and drinking for 30 or 29 days during the month, you have reinvigorated the organs of your body to your own advantage. And, by abiding by the rules and regulations of Ramadan, you have reshaped your lifestyle to suit your conscience.

Ramadan has taught you how to be closer to your Creator and Sustainer. It has taught you how to moderate your relationship with your fellow human beings, in the family, in the neighbourhood or in business. It has also taught you how to simplify your mind and tame your heart against wild conduct.

With Ramadan, you have learnt how to sympathize with the poor and the needy by offering them financial help, kind utterances and good conduct.

You have also learnt the futility of gluttony and greed. And, by recognizing the rights of others including your wife’s and your children’s, you have learnt how not to imprison your conscience again.

In the first ten days of Ramadan, you have been showered with Allah’s blessings. In the second ten days, you have been forgiven your sins. And, in the last ten days you have been liberated from the claw of Satan. During those days, you have woken up in the nights in obedience to the will of Allah. You have spent the days enduring thirst and hunger. You have also boosted your health with the exercise of fasting and praying.

In other words, you have become a renewed person before your Creator. Your slate of record has become clean of sins and full of rewards. And, now, you have banished the fear of death in you.

Having achieved all these, would you want to go back into a wild world dominated by fear of death?

The essence of Ramadan is to remind humanity that this world is a transit and not a destination. No one has ever come to stay permanently in this world and no one will ever do. Would you then want to be lost in transit with your luggage? That is the question you should always ask yourself after Ramadan. God bless you and Ramadan Karim

Femi Abbas

“I shall pass through this world but once; If therefore, there is any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being; Let me do it now; Let me not defer or neglect it, for I may not pass through this way again”

Monologue

It was as if the young Nigerian Muslim Journalist, Waheed Bakare, who departed the shores of this ephemeral world on Eidul Fitr day last Sunday, May 24, 2020,
knew the secret of the divine schedule of his death date.
His concept of life, despite his virtual indigent status, tallied perfectly with the above quoted poem in accordance with Islamic philosophy of humanitarianism and welfare management. That concept, which the deceased young man willingly adopted
as his guiding principle of life now represents the footprint which serves him in death as an irrigation that nourishes the seed of kind-heartedness and philanthropy by which he lived his life.

Preamble

Life is like a cycle which constantly rotates around a permanent axis. Whatever goes forth comes back. Whatever goes up comes down. In summer season, the sun rises in the East every day and travels to set in the West. It comes back the following day to repeat the same journey without losing its track. That is the divine will of Allah which no mortal being can ever change.

Parable of Life

Human life is like the rotation of the seasons in their turns. Seasons exchange batons on a quarterly basis. Spring, autumn, summer and winter, all come at their right time without one taking the place of another.

Children come into the world daily and grow up to become adults with time. Parents rear their children the way they, themselves, had been reared so that the cycle of life may continue after their demise. We sleep and wake up just as we eat and defecate almost daily until we are stopped by the supreme force that fixes and schedules everything in our lives. And our successors proceed from where we stop if only to keep the cycle of life rolling in continuity.

Human beings are like cash crops. We germinate into embryo from spermatozoa. We transform biologically from stage to stage until we blossom into youthful adolescents and grow up into productive adults just like fruitful trees. And, then, we begin to grey as an indication that we are starting to wither away like trees which leaves are turning into yellow or red colours. However, when the icy hand of death comes to pluck us like ripe fruits, the indication is that our transit visa in this ephemeral world has become automatically expired. But our journey still continues from the unknown to the unknown until we are summoned by our Creator to give the account of that journey.

Man’s Mission on Earth

No man comes into the world without a mission. The mission may be positive or negative. It may be completed or carried out half way. But what is common to all is a place in history which may serve as an encouraging guide for others or a warning against the vanity of human wishes or both. In man’s initial journey into the world, the soul is firmly in harmony with the flesh. Both work in tandem physically and spiritually. At that stage, a spade is always seen and called a spade. And that is why children are said to be innocent. But after some time, the flesh outgrows the soul and becomes like a mossy stone eagerly wishing to crush the fragile lily that the soul represents in human body.

At that stage, Satan begins to assemble his destructive tools with which to rework or dismantle man’s engine of life to enable him propel his own destructive mission. No one drives a car without an engine. But when the engine is removed from the car or damaged, the body of that car becomes immobile. The same is the case with the corpse of man after the exit of the soul. But blessed are those who do not nourish the flesh at the expense of the soul.

Waheed Bakare

The similitude of the cited car is like that of the life of the young man, Waheed Bakare, a Journalist, who, like a falcon, flew away forever while leaving the falconer behind. Waheed had a young wife and four young children of school ages. Now, neither the wife has a spouse to call her husband nor the children, the eldest of whom is just about 16 years old, have any bread winner they can call their father. Now, for that wife and her young children, the reality of life has avowedly come on board to distinguish itself from imagination. Every married Muslim wife can put herself in the position of Waheed’s wife. And, every Muslim father can imagine what could have become of those children if he were to be in the present position of Waheed Bakare. This is where we, Nigerian Muslims, should honestly re-examine ourselves about our practice of Islam.

The Lockdown on Zakah

Ordinarily, as responsible adherents of Islam, we should not be calling on members of the public for help whenever we have a case like that of Waheed at hand. Waheed was only lucky to be associated with people who can do that for his family. What about millions of other Muslims, widows and widowers as well as orphans and elderlies who have no means of reaching out to the public?   Zakah as a whole pillar of Islam should automatically take care of the underprivileged people and give us a befitting confidence as practitioners of Islam. But here we are in the hands of certain clerics who dogmatically believe that Zakah should serve as a protecting factor for the rich rather than for the poor. Those are the clerics who insist that the Nisab of Zakah must be based on the current price of gold as determined by the Jews who are globally known to be the principal merchants of gold. To those clerics, the Nisab of Zakah must be far, far ahead of the incomes of most Muslims.

The statutory facts of Zakah are clear and obvious. And, Islam is a dynamic, not a dogmatic religion. Zakah is the only pillar of Islam that touches the lives of others, especially the downtrodden poor. But in a Nigerian situation where Nisab is rising astronomically every year and the number of Zakah payers is geometrically dwindling just because it must be done as it was done in the time of the Prophet. As of now, the locally prescribes Nisab is about N1.74 million or thereabout. How many Nigerians of today can boast of such net income? Thus, in a situation like this, where is the statutory protection for the poor? Yet, thousands of Nigerians are going Hajj and Umrah regularly witout ever paying Zakah in a country where millions are helplessly wallowing in abject poverty.

This is one of the reasons why yours sincerely promised to open a new column on the problem of Zakah in Nigeria after Ramadan. That column will be entitled ZAKAH REVOLUTION. And, its main objective is to discuss regularly cluster areas of Zakah, based on evidential research until Nigerian Muslims really understand it to the benefit of Islam. As a columnist in the defunct Concord newspaper I started writing  on certain major issues in since 1982, when most Nigerian Muslims were not quite familiar with them. Among those issues were Zakah, Hijrah calendar, Hijab, Indebtedness in Islam as well as orphanage and Muslim Will.

Personal Concern

As a payer of Zakah, in my own little way, I do not pray to become a recipient of Zakah again in my life. But the shame to which Islam is being subjected through the ridiculous rampancy of begging in our society is a major concern of my life. As for the modalities of Zakah payment and the issue of Nisab, when we get to the bridge, we shall cross it through this column in sha’Allah.

 An Appeal as Usual

As a Muslim and a Journalist, if anything implacably constitutes an irritating nuisance to me, it is begging in the name of Islam. But, unfortunately, that is not just the fashion in vogue now in Nigeria, it has also become the principal norm by which Nigerian Muslims are known in the society. And some clerics believe invariably that such a nauseating norm is preferable to payment of Zakah on a reasonable and lawful Nisab even when earners of the monthly minimum wage of N30000 in Nigeria are paying tax to the government willy nilly.

Back to Appeal

Lest I forget, my appeal here is to kind-hearted Nigerians whose children are joyously and hopefully attending schools as well as those whose children have graduated, to please, join some others who have kindly indicated interest in giving a helping hand to Waheed’s family whose bread winner has fortuitously vacated the stage even without saying bye to his innocent children. It should ordinarily be the responsibility of the Muslim Ummah to rescue this young family from an impeding scourge of poverty if seriousness had be duly applied to the management of Zakah in Nigeria. Actually, but for the highly laudable efforts of some Muslim groups and organizations whose commendable efforts have opened the eyes of Nigerians to that pillar of Islam, Zakah would have been completely forgotten. To    unwreawake the consciousness of Nigerian Muslims on Zakah, the unwarranted lockdown rigidly imposed on Nisab of Zakah by some theoretical lerics in the name of the primordial norm is must be removed.

Bak Account Details

The Bank Account Details of the wife of Waheed Bakare are as follows:

Name of  Bank: First Bank

Account Number: 3148987691

Account Name:

Bakare Basirat Adekemi.

I pray the Almighty Allah to safeguard the lives of kind hearted Nigerians home and abroad, who are ready to rescue the lives of these innocent children from the cobweb of moral and education confusion that would have put them on an endless rigmarole. I pray the Almighty Allah never to subject the educational lives of your own children to begging.

Read the Poem Again

Meanwhile, while appreciating the marvellous gestures of some brothers and sisters who have been enquiring about the bank account details for assistance, I call on the readers of this article to please, read the top quoted poem once again and try to live by its contents. Yes, it is Waheed Bakare’s turn today even in the month of Ramadan, no one knows whose turn it may be tomorrow. God bless you all.

By Femi Abbas

Dear Muslim parents, this is not a parents/teachers association meeting in which new school fees or new calendar year is to be discussed.

It is rather a meeting of positive and constructive minds over one of the most fundamental issues in the life of man. And it is to be moderated by the conscientious guideline divinely revealed in the ‘Qur’an’ by the Almighty Allah.

In relation to the wellbeing of children, the joys of parents are manifest just as their griefs and fears are secret. Hardly can you hide the one or openly express the other.

Happy are parents whose children tread the path of their divinely guided dream. And, sorrowful is the portion of parents who end up regretting bringing certain children into this world. All of them will account either for what bring them joy or push them into sorrow.

Prophetic admonition

Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had admonished on this situation when he said: “all of you (parents, teachers and leaders) are shepherds and all of you shall be asked to account for your herds”.

Children are the most invaluable gift of Allah to man. In a sane society, they cannot be bought. They cannot be sold. Even adoption or exchange of children for money is only a temporary illegal act which will become a permanent question later.

One day, the child will know his parents or know that the foster parents or slave drivers who take charge of him at a time in life are not his real parents. Then he will ask the permanent question: “whose child am I?

You may give your biological or adopted children your love and your ideas but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts which you may never be able to alter. You may clad them in the most fashionable dresses.

Life of vanity

You may house them in the most comfortable residences. But you can never, never gain a way into their souls in the absence of the divine instruction of Allah.

While you may be able to interact closely with the bodies of your children today, you will discover that their souls dwell in the abode of tomorrow which you cannot see even in your dream.

Children are a bundle of joy. But they can also be a load of grief. At least, they form the source of both in the life of parents.

Manual of life

No man or woman becomes a parent without first being a child. What is perceived as experience today sprang from the childhood pranks of some years past. And the cycle continues.

Everything in life has its own manual. The general manual of life is the Qur’an; that anchor message of Allah, which leaves no stone unturned in the life of man.

In chapter 31 verse 13 of that divine Book Allah relays to us how Prophet Luqman counseled his son thus: “And (remember) when Luqman said to his son while admonishing him: ‘My son, associate none with Allah, for to associate others with Him is a grievous iniquity’…. (Go and know that) Allah will bring all things to light, be they as small as a grain of mustard seed, hidden inside a rock or in the earth.

Allah is All-wise and All-knowing. My son, be steadfast in offering Salat; enjoin justice and forbid evil. Endure with fortitude, whatever befalls you. That is a duty incumbent upon you.

Do not scorn fellow human beings nor walk arrogantly on land; Allah does not love the arrogant and vainglorious ones. Be modest in your gait and lower your voice when talking for harshest of voices is the braying of an ass….”

The above verses of the Qur’an are a good example of how Allah teaches us what to do in each circumstance of life and how to do it.

Harmonious life

Prophet Luqman and his son were just used symbolically. What Allah wants us to know is how to bring up our children as gentle and responsible men and women on earth, if only for nations and tribes to live harmoniously in peace? But that cannot be achieved without the fear of Allah which every parent is expected to preach practically to his or her children from the very early age as did Prophet Luqman.

Elite parents

It is quite ironic that most parents especially in the elite class do not see life as a queue which ought to be followed scrupulously. They rather believe that any queue, at all, is a fool’s rout to success where shortcut is available.

Those are the parents who create special class for their children right from birth. They show them how superior they are to other children and tell them the category of children with whom they should be friendly.

They provide for their children what those children do not need. They take them to schools in very expensive cars and create in them the impression that money is not their problem.

And when, occasionally, their children refuse to ride in old cars brought for them by their drivers, the parents quickly apologize and send new cars to convey them.

Easy money syndrome

These are children who have never worked for one kobo in their lives. All they know is that there is money. And they don’t want to know where the money is coming from.

And here are parents whose source of money is stealing public funds either by pen or by gun. With such dirty money, they sponsor their children in the most expensive schools abroad or at home.

They follow them to their schools to grease the palms of the teachers. At times they buy cars for such teachers just to ensure that their children secure the required certificate or marks for promotion into the next class.

It does not matter to them much whether those children know what they are taught or not. What matters to them is the shortcut which will see their children graduate at an early age of 19 or 20 so that by the age of 23, such children would have become Chief Executives of banks or multinational companies where the cycle of fraud would continue for the family unabatedly.

Now, why wouldn’t such a brazing desperation lead to mass cheating in examinations and greedy stealing at work as now being experienced in Nigeria? Are the children to blame? What else is expected of them when their parents will buy anything for them including live examination papers? And the children of the less privileged parents will also want to take advantage of the terrible rot to succeed in life.

Adorned children

Some parents have taken their children for an adorable ornament which nothing should tamper with. Such parents often treat their children like fragile eggs.

They lavish stolen money on them and give them the impression that they were not born to be poor. They often forget that no amount of fraudulent spending can make any child rich in life.

For such parents the Qur’an has the following advice: “Are they the ones who apportion your Lord’s blessings? It is ‘WE’ (Allah) that apportion to them their livelihood in this world, exalting some in ranks above others so that the ones can take the others into their services. Your Lord’s mercy is better than all their hoarded treasures”. (See Q. 43: 32).

Implication

The misfortune or calamity afflicting the world today, especially, that of Nigerian society, is mostly caused by the elite parents.

Right from infancy, most children of the elite, particularly the white-collar jobbers, would have the impression that they are born to be masters. And they behave as such at every stage of their lives.

It all starts with unwarranted lavish spending on children’s birthdays which has virtually become the past-time of those parents.

Sometimes millions of naira may be spent by parents to celeberate the birthdays of their toddler children. The implication of this is that such children are being taught how to spend money without being taught how money is made.

And by the time they grow up, they would have been so much used to easy that they quickly resort to desperation in the absence of easy mone. By that time, the parents would have forgotten how they indulged the innocent children into such act.

Advanced level fraud

Today, what used to be examination fraud in the primary and secondary schools has gone beyond that level. We now have black market certificates issued in most of our federal and state universities.

We also have election frauds at all levels of governance practically supervised by those who are supposed to be umpires. We also have lawmakers who must take bribe before voting for or against any bill.

We also have law enforcers in the name of police whose main source of income is open corruction audaciously committed even on the roads.

As a matter of fact, nothing symbolizes the extent of corruption in Nigeria than the uniformed government enforcement officials called Policemen or Policewomen.

We also have the unrepentant civil servants who live like kings and queens while milking the society shamelessly without any regard for their legitimate earnings.

We also have the half-baked lawyers who are feeding fat on fraudulent opportunities while capitalizing on the deliberate lapses created by our so-called constitution.

In all these, who will curb the ever-rampant examination fraud spreading like bush fire in Nigeria? Is it the parents who are so desperate that they would do anything including illicit sex to see their children through? Or school Principals and Proprietors who are the real architects of examination fraud? Or the officials of the various examination bodies who often facilitate and help to perfect the act? Or the police whose orientation is to call a spade a hoe where money is involved? Or the legislators who will prefer to keep mute on anything fraudulent, having dipped their hands so much into illegalities?

All of these and others not mentioned here are elite parents who can hardly come up with a clean hand on anything. How can they curb the largesse from which they benefit so tremendously?

Agonising result

Many Muslim parents have, in defiance to Allah’s instruction, joined the terrible cartel of the above listed crimes. They feel satisfied with their children’s mundane lives which entails no care for their spiritual lives. This has caused some temporal agony in certain lives and spiritual melancholy in others.

We were in an Islamic meeting at the University of Lagos Mosque sometime in the early 1990s when a septuagenarian parent of four grown up children suddenly burst into tears. He sobbed painfully like a housewife who just lost her first child at the point of delivery.

Surprised and embarrassed, we inquired from him what the matter was since the issue under discussion had no sad angle.

In his response after calming down, the man who was a former Nigerian Ambassador said he had lost his entire life. He narrated his pathetic story in a very sober mood and concluded that he had lived his entire life in vain.

He told us how three of his children (all boys) had their secondary and university education in London. The fourth child who was a girl joined them after her secondary education.

And after graduation, they all got juicy jobs and settled permanently in England. But by then, they had all crossed over to the other side of the spiritual bridge having married spouses from outside Islam.

This was however not the cause of his regret. The real cause of the man’s regret was the attitude of those children to his religious life which he claimed to cherish so much. First, the children never thought it right to pay him a visit in Nigeria despite his old age.

Secondly, whenever he visited them, in London, none of them allowed him to observe his daily Salat as they told him that it was uncivilized. After all efforts to persuade them failed, he had to abandon them and live like a man without children.

The old man’s most agonizing point was in seeing the children of his friends practice Islam very well even as they were all doing fine in their various careers.

That is the plight of a man who had the courage to voice it out after admitting his guilt. There are thousands of others like him who would prefer to lick their messy wounds secretly till death comes to strike.

Despite the Qur’an

If this can still happen in a Muslim home despite the Qur’anic lesson, what is the value of life? Why would any sane person want to lose his life and his life hereafter just to gain vanity? See what avarice is doing to Muslim parents?

It is only for the reason of avarice that most Muslim parents do not see any necessity in giving their children such qualitative Islamic education as they do in the Western way. But Allah has a wonderful way of doing things.

Some of the children who could not be given secondary education some years past, because their parents were too poor, are professors in the universities today.

What else is worthy of pursuit in life? You are your children’s real school. Let them learn the value of real education in your conduct.

it may be tomorrow. God bless you all.

Femi Abbas

Monologue

This article is a reminder of an article written and published in this column by yours sincerely on Friday, January 20, 2017, in which I predicted what would become of the United States of America (USA) at the instance of that country’s newly elected President, Donald Trump before the end of his first term. The article was entitled ‘Welcoming a Trump of Sadism’.

Two weeks before the publication of that article, an earlier article had was written and published, also by yours sincerely, in this same column. It was entitled ‘Waiting for January 20’.

Excerpts from both articles can be found below as follows:

Like the hands of a clock, many democratic countries in the world do swear a new President into office every four or five years at the expiration of a previous tenure. Now, it is the turn of the United States of America to do that again. And the man to take  White Houseas from today, January 20, 2017, for the next four years, all things being equal, is called Donald Trump, a man that most people in the world, including Americans, who voted for him, have seen as a wild bull surging furiously into a china shop.

In an article entitled ‘Waiting for January 20’ and published in this column two weeks earlier, yours sincerely cited the example of Adolf Hitler’s oath of office and his inaugural address of 1933 that culminated in the World War II which started in 1939 and ended in 1945.

The dramatic events within that period of 12 years (1933-1945) were the main determinants of today’s world history”.

The above quoted excerpt was from the article entitled ‘Welcoming a Trump of Sadism’.

Another Excerpt

Below is also an excerpt from an earlier article entitled ‘Waiting for January 20’ and published on January 6, 2017, in this same column by yours sincerely. Its contents went thus in part:

“All eyes, across the world, are on the 20th day of January 2017.  That is the day that the new America’s President elect, Donald John Trump, will be formally ushered into the ‘White House’ in Washington, with a swearing in ceremony. He will be the 45th American President. That the entire world is waiting for this event is a confirmation of America’s undisputed leadership of the contemporary world. There is no doubt that this event will be historically electric positively or negatively. A similar wait had taken place in February 1933, in Germany, where a Nazi magnate, Adolf Hitler was sworn into office as the Chancellor of that country. The speech he delivered that day eventually altered the destiny of Germany and reshaped the geography of the world. Incidentally, Donald Trump’s ancestral origin is Germany.

Now, will Trump of the 21st century come out like Hitler of the 20th century to put the world on the path of another World War? That is a major question that the unfolding events of the days ahead may need to be answered fundamentally.

The Meaning of Trump

The name TRUMP is a short form of trumpet, a musical instrument with which the decision of a tyrant is often announced in a local cultural setting. Ever since he was declared the winner of the American Presidential election of November 2016, this Trump has been trumpeting his tyrannical plans to the world arrogantly. And, the jitters rolled out from that trumpet have started gripping the world with an imaginary icy hand. That an American President elect had begun to overrule his still serving predecessor even before taking an oath of office is a clear indication of what the world should expect from the china shop in which a wild bull will start to operate as from today.

History as a Teacher  

History is a well known phenomenal teacher. It teaches the old and the young alike. Its students are always drawn from far and near. It examines those students from time to time and gives them examination results periodically. Its lessons are as generational as they cut across races and cultures. Yet, it has no peculiar communication language. But then, history faces a fundamental problem. That problem is not in the repetition that has characteristically become its culture but, rather, in getting mankind to understand its repeated teachings as well as in heeding its warnings.

In virtually all celestial religions, history plays such a prominent role that gives it the permanent identity of a teacher. And, from its beneficial teachings, human beings build ladders of experiences with which they mount the pyramids of life, sometimes to the peak.

Christianity and Islam

Despite the seeming brutal gangsterism being vaingloriously displayed by the goon called, Donald Trump, the Muslim world is hereby advised not to write him off completely as an agent of the Lucifer.

In the histories of both Christianity and Islam, we are repeatedly told of certain arch antagonists of God’s divine message, who dramatically turned round to become voluntary Ambassadors of the same message to which they had been   viciously antagonistic. One of such antagonists was Saul of Tarsus, an avowed anti-Christ who dramatically turned round to accept the message of Jesus after the later had vacated the scene of this world. Saul later adopted the name Paul as a symbol of his new apostolic faith. That was in the Bible. Another known antagonist of Allah’s divine Message was Umar Bn Khattab of Makkah who had plotted the murder of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) but dramatically turned round to embrace Islam on the very day he was to practically implement his plot. Eventually, Umar rose to become the second Caliph in Islam and he conscientiously spread Allah’s divine religion across nations and continents even more than any other Caliph.

Jesus’ Wish

Jesus had wished that Saul, a well- educated Jew, accept his message while he was around. But that wish did not materialize until after his departure from the stage.

However, if Saul had not eventually accepted Christianity when he did, perhaps, the situation of that religion would have been completely different today.

The Case of Umar

In the case of Umar Bn Khattab, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had prayed the Almighty Allah to enable one of the two famous persons bearing Umar in Makkah at that time, to accept Islam.

Although the Prophet’s mind was on the other Umar, It however turned out that Umar Bn Khattab was the one  Allah’s favour magnetized. And, Umar Bn Khattab’s acceptance of Islam became so remarkable that the Prophet was reported to have once said of him as follows: “Were there to be a Prophet after me, Umar would have been that Prophet”.

Irony of Life

Today, another thorny bud seems to be wildly growing under the armpit of an American bitter tree in the 21st century. That proverbial human bud is an avowed racist and morbid hater of Islam that emerged as President in that country in 2017. His physical appearance alone, anywhere, is a vivid reminder of the unbridled atrocities of a onetime originator of Nazism, Adolf Hitler, who brutally terrorized the entire continent of Europe for about a decade.

And, for the first time ever, majority of Americans who voted to choose Trump as President started to express fear of uncertainty about their choice even before he formally assumed office.

Thus, from the beginning of his four year presidential tenure, Trump had been perceived as an incubated egg waiting to be hatched.  However, the kind of chicken that would come out of that incubated egg was a matter of guess. Nevertheless, such a perception in 2017 might have been too early in the day for the eagerly agitated Americans. After all, the cited cases of Saul and Umar still remain very validly influential on contemporary history.

Future Shock  

From the foresighted perception of yours sincerely, the narration above was a virtual indicator of a future shock that the world was waiting to grapple with after the 2016 American Presidential election.

Now, the ongoing occurrences in the United States, besides COVID-19, have come to vindicate my perception. The only aspect of that perception that is still eagerly awaiting vindication is what will eventually become of today’s sadistic Trump.

Curious Questions

Why was it after the conversion of Saul, that the Greek Empire and, subsequently, the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as official religion? Why did the whole Arabia wait for Umar Bn Khattab to embrace Islam before it formally accepted that divine faith as her State religion? And, by analogy, shouldn’t America be getting ready for a similar eventuality? After all, centuries of religious practice in America have proved that Christianity is just a decoration with which Americans have been trading in fun as a mere symbol of public association. That fun has now virtually dwindled to its lowest ebb. And, in reality, nothing remains of Christianity in America today beyond name.

In Retrospect

It sounded odd in the yore, when speculations began to indicate that Rome could adopt Christianity as State religion. It also sounded unbelievable that the whole Arabia could adopt Islam as official religion following the reversion of Umar. But reality eventually prevailed and, today, the rest remains a property of history.

In the same vein, far from prophesying, I foresee a day, in a foreseeable future, when America will become the home of Islam and give that genuine divine religion the Impeccable reality of life that it deserves in the West. In reaction to this millennial prediction, as it happened in the Roman and Greek Empires of yore, the Nigerian doubting Thomases of this era may commence their repugnant arguments from here. But those who will engage in any argument on this assertion should remember that the roots of tomorrow’s gargantuan tree of peace are already being firmly planted in today’s fertile soil as it happened in Guantanamo, USA, recently.

The Guantanamo Bay

Terry Holdbrooks Junior is an American native of Huntsville in Alabama. He grew up a troubled kid with junkie parents that dumped him at age 7 on his ex-hippy grandparents to be raised. By 18, he’d completed both high school and trade school which is suggestive of brilliance on his part. But along the line, he indulged in drugs, illegal sex and tattoos which covered his arms from shoulder to wrist. His earlobes were stretched to a plug that a thumb could pass through.

Thus, when he walked into an Army recruiter’s office in Arizona a year after 9/11 saying he wanted to join the Army, to be able to kill people and get paid for it, the recruiter looked up briefly and turned back to his computer saying “No, thank you”.

Finally, it was only during his fourth visit to the recruitment office that he was allowed to take part in the military’s aptitude test when the recruiter realized the potential in him. Then, Holdbrooks signed up for the military police because it offered a bonus. And when his unit was transferred to Guantanamo, the sergeant detoured through New York to take them to Ground Zero where he told them to “remember what Muslims did to us and who you are supposed to protect”.

Thus, the 29 year old Terry Holdbrooks Jr., enrolled in American Army in 2003/2004 and was posted to Guantanamo Bay as a military Police officer in a detention camp earmarked for people pronounced as criminals. Part of his duties was not just to prevent those detainees from escaping but also to escort them to interrogation rooms and then return them to their cells. He knew the kind of stresses and tortures those detainees were undergoing in repeated questionings.

How Islam beckons

All along, Holdbrooks Jr.’s perception and understanding of Islam was not dissimilar from those of his military colleagues in Iraq, Afghanistan or even Guantanamo Bay. However, one day, the thought of accepting Islam as a rightfully guiding religion crossed his mind after several months of conversation with some Muslim detainees in that camp.

Before he became a Muslim, Holdbrooks was wearing the beard of a bald Amish guy, the tattoos of a punk kid and the twitchy alertness of a military policeman. Take him to a restaurant, and he’ll choose the chair with its back against the wall. Take his photograph and he’ll prefer to look away from the camera. That was Holdbrooks before 2013 when he embraced Islam.

He took  Shahadah

After three months of intensive study and conversation, Holdbrooks told the Muslim detainees one night that he wanted to become a Muslim. And in response, the detainees explained the implications of that to him. They said: “Converting to Islam means you would have to change your life style including your diet. You will quit drugs, drinking, profanity and tattoos. Then, be prepared for good relationship with everybody – wife, neighbours, the Army and the government”. Thus, little by little, Holdbrooks made the changes as he found a measure of health, discipline, family and peace of mind which he never had before.

“If Prophet Muhammad (SAW) were to come back to the world today, people would find the best examples of Islam in the United States. American Muslims have a responsibility to live their faith so that others can see a true example, not the perversions of the terrorists or the tyranny of corrupt governments. He concluded that: “For every little step I took toward Islam, Islam was taking more steps toward me”. Thus, the man who was employed to quench the glow of Islam became a propagator of Islam in America.

The same President Donald Trump, who is innately persecuting Islam and the Muslims today may become like Holdsbrooks tomorrow. Allah’s way of doing things is full of wonders. Nothing is impossible with Him.

By Femi Abbas

Monolouge

This article is not new. It was first written and published in this column 11 years ago (2009). Yet, the situation that warranted its writing and publication at that time persistently remains an implacable spectre threatening to devour the lives of ordinary Nigerian citizens, days and nights even as the deceptively proclaimed democracy in 1999 has now become a mockery of itself. Thus, a repeat of the publication of this article here today is at the request of readers who still remember its contents and find a potent psychological respite in it.

THIS world is a dramatic entity mysteriously coded in heterogeneous   parables. Every living thing therein sees that entity and relates to it according to its own nature of existence. It takes history to decode it only after the actors in the drama might have left the stage.

Who are we? Where are we coming from? And, for where are we heading from here? These are some of the questions which all rational human beings, anywhere in the world, should ask themselves from time to time. Those questions are an indication of planned progress that can be pursued through positive actions.

But, ironically, in Nigeria, such questions have been rendered irrelevant because the circumstances of life imposed on this retrogressive country have changed the priorities of her citizens. The only question now in vogue, which every privileged person seems to concentrate upon is this: ‘what will I get for myself in this appointment?

That very question is the real drama that has permanently engaged the attention of overwhelming majority of Nigerian elites since the commencement of the country’s   fourth republic. It is the question that crowns corruption as the despotic king that now rules Nigeria with impunity. It is the question that fosters greed and impunity beyond imagination even as it fetters conscience to the stake of Satan. It is the question that presents mirage to Nigerian youths of today as the only substance that is worthy of pursuit.

Hmmm! We live in a material world where immaterial   substances are taken or rather mistaken for value.

No Answer

Incidentally, however, no effort has ever been made to answer that all-time question even if to confirm the aberration in sticking to the ephemerality of this world. If any such answer had been found and applied, it   would have drastically reduced the current rate of crimes in Nigeria to the barest minimum.

Hope or Despair?

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 like Egyptian gypsies of yore wandering aimlessly without a definite destination and wallowing in abject poverty in the midst of abundance.

The Wasted Abundance

What else do we expect from Allah beyond the invaluable bounties with which He has blessed us?

What is Nigeria not blessed with? We have land in abundance, not in terms of size alone but also in terms of agrarian soil and rich vegetation. At least over 77 million hectares of land was said to be arable in Nigeria over a decade ago. Out of this, only about 34 million hectares was reportedly being cultivated for various agricultural activities, including animal husbandry, at the time of writing this article in 2009. Today, this has dwindled to less than 17 million hectares as vicious insecurity is now virtually in control.

Bountiful Blessings

We are blessed with excellent weather that maintains our good health as well as torrential rainfalls that water our plants from the sky and greeneries   with which we graze our animals to satisfaction. We are endowed with a variety of nourishing food crops that are enough to feed us from generations to generations without importing any edible substance from anywhere. And, our population is large enough to form the needed market for the sales and consumption of our sundry products.

Qur’anic Attestation

The Qur’an vividly attests to the above assertion in chapter 80, verses….. Thus:

“Let man reflect on the food he eats; how ‘We’ pour down the rain in torrents and cleave the earth asunder; how ‘We’ bring forth the corn, the grapes, the fresh vegetables, the olive, the palm products, the thickets, the fruit-trees and the green pastures for you and for your cattle to

Delight in…”

Any Denial?

Allah’s blessings on us are regular and incessant. No sensible individuals or government can deny them.

In addition to the aforementioned divine blessings, we also have energetic and dedicated work force that is married to the farm land in Nigeria despite all odds. We also have intellectual brains that are capable of engaging in research work in all fields of human endeavours days and nights to ensure the growth and development of our country.

Nigeria is not lacking in forest and savannah. She is rich in rivers, mountains and minerals, all of which are great resources for people who are seriously seeking reasonable comfort and are not self-deceptive.

Dearth of Leadership

If Nigerians have consistently suffered from anything, it is a dearth of responsible leadership that should ordinarily care about our foremost heritage which is agriculture. That scarcity of food, or even outright famine, is now a major threat to Nigerians can only be blamed on naivety on the part of the ruling class, especially in the disastrous first 16 years of the so-called fourth republic, (1999 to 2015), when the rain of dollars was falling torrentially from the sky of oil.

That misfortune started when the first shot at the Presidency in 1999 was entrusted to a parochial ‘prisoner’ who had completely lost contact with the actual reality of the modern life.

On his assumption of office in that year, some equally parochial but die hard, fanatical Nigerian optimists, saw him as a reincarnate of the Biblical Yusuf (Joseph) of the Egypt of yore who could rescue Nigeria from an impending economic scourge.

But no sooner had he assumed office as President than those blind optimists realized that the man they classified as the modern day ‘Yusuf’ coming from the prison to transform the dream of Nigeria into reality was actually a ‘Mathew’ without any intuition.

As a farmer that he claimed to be, before his incarceration, this man had been expected to act like Chairman Mao of China who started the revolution of his country with agricultural self-sufficiency. But, far from acting like Mao, this parochial ‘Mathew’ eventually confirmed that no man can give what he does not possess. Thus, with his crude style of governance, he proved that he was never tutored in any decency that could fetch any expected good governance. Those who imposed him on Nigeria have since openly confessed their calamitous error while expressing a belated regret even as they are now liking their bleeding fingers with internal agony. Today, Nigeria is worse than what she was two decades ago.

Compounded Tragedy

The Governors of that time did not, also help the matter. Rather than focusing on agriculture which was the natural occupational endowment of their subjects, most of those political gold diggers preferred to depend on oil boom largess coming to them from the federal government through the so-called revenue allocation. To them, such a quicker way of getting money illegally into their personal pockets was more beneficial than investing in agriculture which could only yield results perhaps years after they might have left office. The only exception at that time was Lagos State where a foresighted erstwhile Senator held sway as Governor.

Cost of Governance

In Nigeria, the cost of running government alone is enough to render the   country bankrupt. What was the federal government doing with about 40 federal ministers and scores of Presidential Senior Special Advisers as well a retinue of Special Assistants when even America, with her huge economic resources, including technological wherewithal, had only about a dozen ministers?

Besides, what informs the idea of immunity and the so-called security vote for Governors and, even, constituency allowances, running into billions of naira, for legislators, at the federal and state levels, especially at a time when innocent citizens were crying for food?

Evidence of Hunger

No one could ever think, about two decades ago, that artificial hunger could be added to the abysmal level of poverty in the land despite the unprecedented rise in the price of oil in the international market during those wasted years. However, the lotus eaters in government, at that time, fraudulently turned governance into an artful trick which they adopted to bamboozle the populace into blind submission. The propaganda in the 1980s, spearheaded by a government agency called Mass Mobilization for Self Reliance, Social Justice and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), established by a self-styled military President, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, and headed by Professor Jerry Gana, was almost hypnotizing. That Agency’s slogan of “Food and Shelter for All in the Year 2000” rented the air with wide, deafening reverberation. But in the end, nothing came out of it. Rather, some new multi-millionaires suddenly emerged from the smart project. That slogan was to later change, in the 1990s, to: “Vision 2010” with loud media propaganda under the blunt dictatorship of a dark goggled Military General.

 Vision 2020

And, when year 2010 was   approaching under the draconian Presidency of the mentioned visionless ‘Mathew’, the slogan changed again to: ‘Vision 2020, a year in which Nigerian government deceptively claimed to have envisioned making the country one of the 20 most buoyant economies in the world. Now, here we are in year 2020. Where are the indications of the acclaimed visions?  Now, the two deceptive visions and their initiators have naturally and fizzled out into perpetual oblivion.

Game of Deception

It takes two to tangle. If the deceptive leaders of those years could pretend not to know that a game of deception was in place, why was the deceived populace also pretending to play along? It takes a visionless populace to beget a deceptive government as the case has always been in Nigeria. No country in history is ever known to have achieved economic vibrancy by magic and Nigeria could not have been an exception. But that was the portion of a self-glorified country that calls herself ‘the giant of Africa’. And, today, what is the result of that self-deception?

From FAO’s Report

In a report of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) some years ago, about 300 Nigerians were said to be dying of hunger daily. Only God knows what that figure might have risen to become now. That was the legacy of the past rulers which became the heritage of today’s government. Yet, ironically, the same layers of the foundation of destroyed economy in the past years are the most vocal critics of the county’s economy today. What a shame?

Yar’Adua’s Tenure

By some actions taken during his tenure, President Musa Yar’Adua of the blessed memory remains highly commendable for showing the example of governance with human face and human heart. He did not only admit that the election that put him in office was faulty, he also promised to correct that error even as he regulated the importation of food items and suspended tariffs on importation of essential food items to the relief of all and sundry. President Yar’Adua also released grains from the national silos to check inflation and pumped N400 billion into the economy for the purpose of creating about 10 million jobs then. And, besides reducing the pomp price of fuel, he also granted unconditional amnesty to the then South-South agitators and thereby opened way for negotiation with them in the interest of peace and harmony.

Although, such measures were far from being adequate for a country which was aspiring to become one of the 20 biggest economies in 2020, the move was generally seen as a good beginning of a hopeful future

However, as soon as Yar’Adua died, a change of gear was applied as all progressive steps which he initiated were suspended and the national treasury was thrown open for audacious thieves to scoop upon with impunity.

The Jonathan Years

Now, it is evident that no miracle could have yielded any success based on a ramshackle foundation laid down for Nigerian economy by a visionless ‘Mathew’ (from the prison) who, as President, could hardly reason beyond the siege mentality of the prison yard from where he had emerged. If Goodluck Jonathan who succeeded Yar’Adua as President had been well tutored in good governance, he would have known that the vessel which took this country’s ‘Napoleon’ to proverbial ‘Waterloo’ was incapable of conveying her to the Cape of Good Hope. But the accident of history must never cease to play itself out especially in a situation where a hidden agenda is given a premium focus. But one indelible fact must never be forgotten.  Without a historic ‘Yusuf’ in Egypt of yore, only Allah knows what the history of Egypt would have been today. And, without a Pharaoh’s dream of drought, the role of ‘Yusuf’ in averting  famine in Egypt would not have become recurrent decimal in global history.

Egypt of the 1970s

Yours sincerely was a student in Egypt in the 1970s when the hostility between that country and Israel was fierce. Egypt was then an ally of the now defunct Union of Soviets Socialist Republics (USSR), while Israel was a satellite of the United States by proxy. Not only did Egypt suffer isolation from NATO member countries but even the Soviet Union which was supposed to be the main ally of Egypt was not forthcoming with any meaningful assistance beyond the supply of light and medium range weapons. Thus, the Egyptian government had to buckle up firmly in order to fend for its people at that critical time.

Realizing the importance of food supply especially in a war situation, Egypt mobilized all her agricultural resources around the River Nile and forgot about any food importation. The result was tremendous as Egypt grew to become a food exporter rather than an importer that it had been for years.

Uganda for Instance

Less than three decades ago, Uganda, a sub-Sahara African country, found herself in the position of ancient Egypt. A colossal drought broke out in that country killing thousands of people and virtually wiping out the entire cattle business in the country. No Pharaoh had any dreamed premonition and no ‘Yusuf’ was in a prison to translate any dream into a solution.

What the Ugandan government did to find a solution was to reset the country’s agricultural focus. Rather than concentrating on tilling the already sapped land and rearing the cattle, which drought had eroded, a new focus was brought to bear. Uganda took to commercial ‘bee farming’ as a relieving alternative. The seriousness which the government of that country attached to the new focus was such that within a short time, Uganda became a leading country in the production and exportation of honey and other bee products to Europe and the United States.

Nigeria’s Situation Today

Today, Nigeria is not afflicted by drought or famine. Neither is she engaged in any uncontrollable war. Yet, the fear in vogue is hunger compounded by insecurity. How this country arrived at such a deadly scourge is irrelevant for now. What is relevant is how to get out of it. Like Egypt of yore, Nigeria badly needed a ‘Yusuf’ in 2015, to unravel the mystery surrounding the dream that brought this scourge about. With the emergence of Muhammadu Thus, with Buhari as President with military background,  that ‘Yusuf’ seemed to be here. But five years in office, so far, the difference is yet to be felt or seen. However,

it is in the interest of those in government, especially the legislators who are most active in sharing public funds, to let the national wealth spread across board legitimately if only to avoid the current situation in Nigerian cities where virtually every house has become a prison in which the occupants are self-jailed voluntarily. 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.

Epilogue

Where people are well educated and conscious of their rights; where they perceive wealth as a divine privilege and not an exclusive right of any group; where they see themselves as qualified but denied their legitimate entitlements; nobody can consign them to ignominy indefinitely. They will react in no uncertain terms. That is what obtains now in the country which has given an unprecedented rise to insurgency and banditry to the amazement of all and sundry. These must not be allowed to further continue. Let Nigeria grow from a country into a nation that we may all be proud to be her citizens. “….God does not change the situation of a community until such a community is ready for change (its misdemeanour)”…. Q. 13:11

By Femi Abbas

“Let there become of you a nation that shall call for righteousness, enjoin justice and forbid evil. Such are men that will surely triumph”.

Q. 3: 104.

Dear Nigerian Legislators,

This is the third time in 21 years (1999-2020) that an open memo of this type is coming to you individually and collectively from this column.

The first was in 2008 barely nine years after the commencement of Nigeria’s 4th republic in less than 40 years of independence.

Although the contents of the first two memos were hardly different, the need to write this memo again is informed by the fact that a genuine preacher must never be tired of repeating his counsels and admonitions even where and when the addressees choose to be deaf and dumb as in the case of most of you.

Functions of Conscience

Conscience, according to Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio, “is an open wound which only the truth can heal”. But one can talk of healing a wounded conscience only where it has not become cancerous.

Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once gave the precise definition of hypocrisy in one Hadith. He said: hypocrites

are known by three signs, when they talk they lie, when they promise they renege and when they are trusted they betray”.

Most of you (Nigerian politicians) so much typify that definition that one would wonder if he had Nigerian politicians in mind when he was expressing that axiomatic Hadith.

In Retrospect

You will recall that when, as politicians, you started nursing the ambition to become legislators, whether at the federal or state level, your first public announcement was that you wanted ‘to serve your people’.

And, based on that announcement, people rallied round you and embraced you as their servants in the understanding that whoever volunteered to serve in public office must have agreed to be servants of the people.

First Covenant

That announcement was your first political covenant with the people you claim to want to serve.

But that covenant was not just between you and the people in your constituency alone as you might have wrongly assumed, it also involved Allah’s hand as supreme the witness because your voluntary announcement to serve in whatever capacity was done in the name of Allah or whatever God you pretend to be serving.

And, in that case Allah will surely hold you accountable for making such a promise. It does not matter whether you were genuinely elected or characteristically rigged into office as usual.

Two Fundamental Issues

In Islam, two issues are exceptionally fundamental, both of which are not treated lightly by Allah. These are sacredness of life and justice.

It is a great iniquity for any human being to engage in murder and injustice under any guise.

Thus, anybody who kills fellow human beings extra-judicially under any guise, religion or politics or economy, is nothing but an agent of Satan who should also be treated in the like manner when caught with evidence.

In Islam, killing a fellow human being deliberately is such a grievous sacrilege that should not occur without application of commensurate punishment.

Besides recalcitrance to Allah through idol worshipping, nothing draws the wrath of Allah as fast as these two crimes which Satan may continue to ask you to ignore at your own peril.

How honourable are you?

Of the four estates of the realm in democratic governance, none is as fundamental as legislature. In any democratic dispensation, there can be no government without legislature.

Thus, whenever you are addressed as honourable legislator, please, refuse to be flattered. There is nothing peculiarly honourable in voluntarily choosing to serve people by joining others to legislate for them and to get heavily paid for doing so.

If you are a legislator today, it is neither because you are intellectually smarter or wiser than those for whom you are legislating.

Rare Opportunity

What makes certain politicians legislators is sheer expediency arising from queer inadequacies sadly foisted on us by our so-called political system which gives room for audacious gerrymandering.

If such opportunity comes your way illegally, let it not be mistaken for good luck. It may rather be a calamity waiting to strike at the appropriate time in future.

And, when it strikes, no one except Allah can tell the extent of its effect. At least you can see how the consequences of the heartless annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election have become an implacable spectre chasing the ghost of Nigeria as a country, even after two and a half decades of licking her wound with agony.

Lack of Conscience

Due to lack of conscience, most of you, politicians, may not have noticed, but you need to be hinted that shortly after you took oath of office as Ministers, Commissioners or Legislators, the people noticed that you started subverting the covenant which you voluntarily reached with them.

That covenant was to serve the people who paved your ways into those political offices. You promised passionately that you would serve them and anybody who volunteers to serve is nothing but a servant.

But no sooner had you been sworn into office than you started calling yourselves masters or leaders. That is why most of you often find it difficult to bend a little backwards and report to the people in your constituencies on how you are serving them.

Your deviation from your promise is a confirmation of the definition of hyporites as given by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as quoted above.

Morality and Reality

Against cultural morality and constitutional reality of the moment, you, as politicians, have turned the privilege of participating in governing the country or your State into your personal right which you are using to intimidate the poor masses and ride roughshod over them.

When you occasionally pretend to interact with those masses, it is only for the purpose of preparing their minds for the next election in which you hope to be returned, possibly, unopposed.

And for this reason, you cunningly pay them some pittances while making another fake promise to improve their well-being during your second or third tenure in office.

Constituencies foe What?

Some Legislators among you politicians have spent about 20 years in those legislative houses. Yet, there is no sign at all in your immediate constituencies that anybody is representing the people therein to the benefit of the constituencies.

You are contented with their milling around you for the pittances that you randomly dish out to them even as you assume that they are satisfied with such pittances.

Budget Padding

And now, Nigeria is held to a standstill because the Legislators among you must pad the annual budget presented to them by the executive to their own favour so that the largess generated by the executive arm may be jointly shared in the spirit of ‘rub my back and I will rub yours’.

As parents, you will want your children to grow up as responsible men and women, yet, most of you have nothing in you that can serve as good examples for those children.

Which aspect of your conducts do you expect your children to imitate since none is worthy of emulation? If you did not know, those children, like the majority of Nigerian citizens believe that you Nigerian politicians are the real causes of the multifarious problems confronting Nigeria today. And, your political attitudes seem to confirm that assertion.

Law of Existence

Covenant with Allah is the most fundamental law of existence. It is not one sided. As man has responsibilities to bear so does Allah have obligations to fulfill.

It is from the covenant with Allah that all other covenants in the life of man, including those of marriage, family rites, trust and confidentiality, are derived. That covenant is what others call oath.

Oath of office

In Islam, oath, whether private or public, does not necessarily require Muslims to carry the Qur’an in one’s hand as ignorantly done in Nigeria particularly at this time when oath of office has become a meaningless symbol of assumption of office.

No oath is ever made without Allah being a witness to it. Besides, He (Allah) has assigned two Angels to every human being as secret monitors.

The names of those Angels are Raqib and ‘Atid. The duty of these Angels is to record all utterances and secret actions of each person to whom they are assigned.

The one records good deeds, the other records evil deeds. Their recordings are both in video and in audio forms.

This is a fact contained in Q. 50: 16 where Allah states that: “We surely created man and ‘We’ know the promptings of his mind and are closer to him than his jugular vein.

We assign two guardians to watch him, one on his right (called Raqib) and another on his left (called ‘Atid). No utterance from him/her (the watched person) or action shall escape the records of these vigilant secret mionitors….”

It is from the functions of these invisible police that researchers came about the idea of video, audio and other technological devices used for espionage today.

Blind Trust

With this scenario, you can see the damages some of you (politicians) are causing to the present and future generations of this country in a bid to display your illegally acquired loot through corruption.

By interpretation, the problem of corruption engendered by gross indiscipline and lack of functional conscience in Nigeria today is not with the youths as often alleged.

It is rather more with the parents, some of whom are in the executive, the judiciary and   the legislative  arms of government.

If certain Nigerian youths are found enmeshed in corruption, they are only proving not to be bastards. It is their inheritance from their parents.

Nigeria remains a country without electricity today, even after 60 years of independence, because the priorities of those of you in government are permanently at variance with the country’s national priorities.

For instance, one would have thought that rather than fighting corruption the way Obasanjo presumably started it in year 2000, what a focused and sincere government should have done was to initiate a re-orientation revolution to enable all Nigerians know why corruption is evil.

And if such a reorientation had been backed up with mass employment, it would have been a preventive rather than a curative measure.

Naira Denominations

The Murtala Muhammad and Buhari/Idiagbon regimes experimented  ulteration of naira denominations and Nigeria was briefly better for it.

Fighting corruption haphazardly as Obasanjo did during his agonizing eight year tenure was like starting the building of a house from the roof.

Nigeria only wasted those eight years chasing shadow in the name of fighting corruption while the monster kept feeding fat on the blood of poor Nigerians using as the term ‘BLIND TRUST’ served as its cloak.

It was the same Obasanjo as a politician, that introduced series of big denominations  of naira and technically eliminated coins to pave way for rampant political thefts and astronomical inflation as well as spiral deflation of Nigerian currency that virtually ruined the economy.

Archive of Naira Denominations

It can vividly be remembered that by the time the 4th republic commenced in 1999, the highest denomination of Nigerian currency was N50 which was popularly called ‘Better Life’.

It was Obasanjo, shortly after he assumed office as President, that   introduced  N100 on December 1, 1999, with the portrait of Chief Obafemi Awolowo; N200 on November 1,   200, with the portrait of Sir Ahmadu Bello; N500 on April 4, 2001; and N1000 on October 12, 2005, with the portraits of Alhaji Aliyu  Mai Bornu and Dr. Clement Isong (the two earlierst indigenous Governors of the Central Bank of Nigeria).

But for suspicious media speculation at that time, the portrait on N1000 would have been quite different. Your guess is as good as mine.

Ironically, after all those naira denominations had turned Nigeria upside down economically and the doors of armed robbery had been widely opened and other heinous crimes had become the order of the day that Obasanjo considered it right to change the then existing coins into polymer notes of N1 and 50 kobo while he completely faced out other coins in May 2007, the very month he was leaving office following the failure of ‘Third Term’ saga.

Thus, with the redesigning of other existing naira denominations, it can be con concluded that all the Nigerian naira denominations in circulation today are an evidence of Obasanjo’s governing era in Nigeria.

Rare Opportunity

Legislating is a rare opportunity to serve one’s nation meritoriously. But some of you (Legislators) seem to have turned that opportunity into one of self-enrichment as well as that of securing the future of your own children at the expense of the lives of millions of other children.

All these are done at the expense of the wretched people around you whose role in democracy has been relegated to voting once in four years.

You have forgotten that wealth is Allah’s endowment which cannot be inherited except by Allah’s will. Who inherited the expansive wealth and kingdom of King Solomon? Have you not seen some money bags of yester years wallowing in abject penury today? When will you learn your lesson?

My dear ‘Honourable Ministers,  Legislators and judges, search your conscience and fear God. Remember that some people had ruled this country in the past.

Among them were those who usurped the roles of the executive, the legislative and the judicial arms together, in the name of military rule, made possible by coup d’état. Where are they today?

The Limit of Governance

Governance, like elasticity, has its limit. Four years may look endless, but for the wise, it is not more than a flash of lightening which only a fool may want to rely upon to walk his way through the darkness of the night.

Service to Humanity

Honourable legislators, let it be kept permanently in your hearts that the only thing which keeps people alive in history even long after their demise is service to humanity.

Prophets Isa (Jesus), and Muhammad (SAW), had neither bank accounts nor estates to bequeath to anybody. Their heritage, after their demise, has become much more than any material wealth for the entire world today.

That heritage is service to humanity. What is your own planned heritage if only for posterity? That is a big question which only people with conscience and common sense can answer.

Remember that you are in a ship already voyaging on the high sea towards the shore. At the shore are the customs officers waiting to check the contents of your cargo.

Be always at alert. Remember that if you cultivate friendship with Satan he will favour your wish. But if he grants you one favour, he will take ten from you in return.

Be Muslims by name, conduct and mannerism. As public officers, whatever you do as Muslims will affect the image of Islam in one way or the other.

I hope you will return home as Muslims that you claim to be and not as renegades. Remember all this and adjust now that you may be able to raise your head aloft when others will be losing theirs.

Assalam Alyakum!

Femi Abbas

History is resplendent with lessons for people whose steps in life are in tandem with Allah’s guidance. It is also the same for the ignorant ones who see this ephemeral life as their ultimate destination.

There is no life’s odyssey without a divine guidance which often comes either in form of admonition or in form of warning. Heeding or shunning such guidance is, however, a matter of choice. And the consequences of such a choice may eventually become an indelible heritage of the concerned people.

Today’s World

We live in a world, today, that is quite different from that of the centuries ago when the Glorious Qur’an was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

But surprisingly, nothing in the contemporary world has run counter to the foretold occurrences in that sacred Book or even to happenings prophesied by the last Messenger of Allah.

Business Transactions

Business transactions in the time of the Prophet might not involve technology or sophisticated transportation and communication as we have today, but the norms which guided businesses today have not shown any significant difference from those of the olden days. Not even the introduction of mundane ideologies like capitalism, socialism, and communism has altered those norms. That is a further confirmation   of Islam as the most genuine religion and the Glorious Qur’an as the most authentic Message of Allah to mankind.

Today’s Youths

Incidentally, today’s youths do not see any virtue in working hard for acquisition of wealth. What matters most to them is to get money by all means at the cheapest cost and squander such money lavishly on frivolous materials. And, that is the main cause of the rampancy of crimes in the land.

Economic ideology

An unlettered personality like Prophet Muhammad (SAW) did not need to   formulate any mundane economic theory or to invent an inconsequential economic ideology to administer a great Islamic government. He was not just a political leader but also an economic expert, a great law giver and an army general of impeccable status.

Without necessarily going into details of how he managed the economy of the Islamic state which he established and ruled from the scratch, it is obvious that even his ascension to ‘Sidratul Muntahah’ (apex of all heights) through seven planets, an adventure that paved the way for modern man’s exploration of the space, is of immense economic value to the contemporary world which no sensible critic can logically dispute. Although some ignorant people see the Qur’an as a mere religious Book, the economic value of that Book has remained unquantifiable and, it will remain so forever. The rapid spread of Islamic banking in the Western world today is a clear evidence of that fact. In Islam, economic discipline which is natural takes precedence  over economic ideology which is artificial and unrealistic.

The Qur’anic Economic Value

Being the most read book in the world, the Qur’an has been translated into hundreds of languages making it possible for millions of people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to be employed at various stages of the world’s economy. For instance, the writing of the Qur’an, its recitation, its proof-reading, its printing, its marketing, its teaching, its translation, its interpretation, its sale and even its criticism by unbelievers are all sources of economic survival for millions of people in the world irrespective of their religions. The global engagement in research on that Glorious Book by various scholars and intellectuals, either for acknowledgement of facts or for mere blind criticism, is an attestation to the above assertion. There was no book like the Qur’an before its revelation and there will never be a book like it till the world will come to an end. The unrelenting hostility to Islam and the contents of the Qur’an in certain corners of the world is largely due to blatant ignorance about that divine religion. But that cannot continue forever.

Islam as Employer of Labour

If only one quarter of a billion people is gainfully employed in working on the Qur’an alone, today’s world economy would have been remarkably upheld by the religion of Islam. Yet, apart from the Qur’an, millions of people are engaged in various businesses relating to Hadith (Prophetic Tradition), Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence), Tarikh (Islamic History), Tawhid (Faith in the oneness of Allah) and Thaqafah (Islamic Culture) among others. All such specialized learning forums which emanated from the Qur’an itself were advanced to compliment the sacred Book of Allah.

Even, for hundreds of years that the Orientalists were busy criticizing Islam through their satanic publications, it was undeniable that those destroyers were benefiting from the economic legacy of the divine religion through the sale of their evil publications.

Orientalists’ Atrocities

Today, even as the same Orientalists are busy reversing themselves on what they had maliciously published about Islam in the past centuries, they are still benefiting economically from that reversal.

However, despite the vast economic advantages provided by Islam, some unscrupulous Muslims including Nigerians still engage in illegal businesses that contravene the tenets of that divine religion. Some of such Muslims are among the thousands of Nigerians who are now languishing in various prisons around the world. Some others are even sentenced to death, by various means, as punishment for their crimes. Incidentally, some of such people often commit their atrocities under the cover of Islam.

Personal Experience

This reminds yours sincerely of a fortuitous encounter with one of those fraudulent elements, as far back as 1981, which keeps my heart quivering even today. I had once relayed the episode of that ugly encounter in this column some years ago through an article with the same title. Recalling it here today is a way of getting young Nigerians to share in that experience either as an admonition or as a warning on the vanity of human wishes.

Illicit act

Akram (not real name), a Nigerian youth of less than 30 years of age, did not see anything like poultry in his dream when he was going into Saudi Arabian prison as a convict in 1981. His only prayer was for Allah to influence the minds of the Saudi Authorities to have mercy on him and grant him amnesty after two or three years in prison. His prison term at that time was 15 years. He earned the sentence through drug trafficking engendered by blind ambition to be quickly rich by all means.

Akram was such a quiet, easy-going young man that he could not be related to the crime that landed him in a Saudi prison. He graduated from the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia where he read Sharia’ah. I first met him in 1978 when I went for a first degree at King’s University in that country. His University was in Madinah while mine was in Jeddah. He left Saudi Arabia after graduating in 1980 and decided to settle down in his home country after a one year compulsory national service to the nation. In his plan, Akram did not want to work for anybody. His ambition was to be a big merchant of automobile and electronics. However, since there was no ready-made capital with which to start off such a business, he decided to take a short cut, typical of what is termed ‘Nigerian factor’ and he found Saudi Arabia, the country that funded his University education with a very rich scholarship, as most suitable for such a dirty business. Thus, he embarked on his first illicit ‘business trip’ to the country of his Alma Mata in 1981.

Meeting Point

It was on my way back to school from a summer holiday of the same year that I met him at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos. After embracing and exchanging pleasantries, we decided to sit together in the aircraft (of the then Nigerian Airways) in order to have a chat on the good old days and our expected future. Thus, from Lagos to Jeddah (a journey of five and a half hours), we really chatted to our fill. It was as if we had not spent one hour when we arrived at King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah after five and a half hours.

Youthful Exuberance

As bachelors, we discussed various issues ranging from marriage, bearing of children to monogamy and polygamy as well as family structure. We gossiped on the political trend in our country as championed by the then ruling party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). We compared Nigeria’s pace of development with that of Saudi Arabia and concluded that our government had neither any focus nor any plan, a situation which made Nigerian youths abroad feel like orphans.

Further Ruminations

In the course of our discussions, we also talked about world peace, the then cold war between the Western Capitalist World championed, by the United States and the Eastern Socialist Block championed by the now defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) and the future of Islam in Africa and the Middle East. We analysed the Middle East crises and the role of the two opposing world powers in those crises. We also veered into Nigeria’s micro economy by discussing the role of small and middle scale businesses in our country compared to those of other countries with similar status like Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, Singapore, India, Pakistan and Egypt.

Reading the Future

Without gazing through any crystal ball, we concluded that with no middle class in place, our country might have no hope except through an accidental miracle. We also reviewed the use to which Nigerian oil was put vis-a-vis that of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Libya and Algeria. On this, we concluded that oil in Nigeria was a blessing from Allah which the country’s ruling class turned into a curse. But we were not experienced enough to suggest tangible solution.

Thus, in that long conversation which touched virtually all issues affecting the corporate life of Nigeria and her citizens, we agreed on some and disagreed on some. However, we were satisfied to have delivered our minds of their pregnancies if only to broaden our horizon.

Point of Departure

On arrival at the King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, my friend quickly dashed into the toilet and requested me to help push his baggage towards the security desk for checking. He promised to join me shortly on the long queue for immigration procedure. It was almost my turn for security check before an instinct gingered me into consciousness. For more than 30 minutes after he went into the toilet and   entrusted his baggage to me, Akram did not resurface. When it was about my turn for luggage checking, something just told me to abandon his baggage I did. My own baggage was checked and I went out of the arrival hall to wait for him at the taxi terminal. After about one hour of waiting and Akram did not surface, I decided to proceed to my hostel where he was to pass the night in my room as we had earlier agreed.

The Shocking News

While still expecting him in my hostel, the electronic waves throbbed with breaking news. The Saudi Television reported the arrest of a Nigerian who smuggled drugs into the Holy Land. His name was ‘Akram’. That was at 9pm Saudi local time. We had arrived in Jeddah at about 9.00am that day. About one hour after the breaking news, my friend was brought to the glare of the nation through the electronic tube and paraded on the Saudi national television as the suspected culprit in the illicit drug trafficking. That was one of the most frightening moments of my life. Akram wanted to be rich by all means and I was to pay the cost of his richness.

Imaginary Lamentations

What would have happened if I had not heeded the warning of my instinct? Who could have believed me if I had been caught with Akram’s baggage? Akram, an introvert, handsome young man was such a seeming gentleman in appearance and in disposition. Relating him to such a criminal venture would have oirdinarily generated a fierce argument among onlookers if the incident had occurred in Nigeria and he was paraded as a drug trafficker on a television dtation. If I had been caught with Akram’s baggage, what explanation I could have given to exonerate myself? That was a question that ran through me like milk through water for quite some years thereafter and changed my mind about sentimental friendship with people, no matter how innocent they might look.

It was that incident that forced me to decide never to assist anybody again in carrying his or her baggage while on a journey.

Court Trial

After about three months of court trial, Akram was sentenced to fifteen years in jail. He was lucky that drug trafficking at that time in Saudi Arabia had not attracted death as punishment. If it were now, the punishment would have been death sentence by beheading. I was also lucky that at that time the Saudi immigration authorities had not adopted the use of secret camera (CCTV) to monitor passengers.

The Saudi Prison System

For 15 years  (1981-1996) after the narrated episode, that landed him in prison, Akram remained behind the bars languishing in Saudi Arabian prison as an inmate among criminals as he anxiiously expected to be let off the hook one day. But one good thing about Saudi Arabia as a country or any other Islamic country for that matter is the concept of reformation which imprisonment entails. In those countries, inprisonment was not just a punishment for crimes but also a means of preparing inmates for a better post-prison life and re-orientated for better world outlook.

Besides, prisoners are paid a specific amount of money daily for their labour in prison. And that gives them hope of reintegration into the society after leaving the prison. Such money is kept in a special bank account opened for them. The total amount is paid to each inmate after his or her prison term.

Thus, when Akram left the prison in 1996, the post-prison money paid to him by Saudi government became the capital with which to establish a business of his own.

Thus, when he was finally deported to Nigeria and permanently banned from reentering Saudi Arabia Arabia it was not without his prison emolument. It was with that emolument that he a poultry business. And, within a couple of years thereafter, he became a big poultry farmer but whether or not he learnt any lesson from that incident is another matter.

Qur’anic admonition

Most of the young men and women of today do not seem to believe in crawling before walking. To them, what matters most in their lives is how to quickly get money to spend and not how such money is made. The slogan of this era, among those youths, is the Machiavelian principle of power grabbing: “The end justifies the means”. That is the main cause of the high rate of crimes witnessed ubiquitously in Nigeria today and the entailed short life span for those youths.

Qur’anic Guidance

In Qur’an, Chapter 43, Verse 32 quoted above, Allah had warned Muslims against desperate accumulation of wealth over 1,400 years ago even when desperate quest for wealth was unfashionable. However, the refusal by today’s youths to heed that warning and the aggressive greed of the privileged elders in power constitute the main cause of rampant banditry and insurrections around in the country.

In Islam, desperation for accumulation of wealth is prohibited because it encourages a focus on the end result rather than the means and its entailed immorality. In the past decades, Nigeria had sunk so deep into the valley of corruption that no one cared to ask about the source of any wealth even as corruption became the taproot of Nigeria’s tree of existence. Now, with parents, teachers, professionals and even legislators getting so desperate to become rich what type of can be said to be waiting for Nigera?

Parochial Wealth Estimation

Desperation is not what fetched Nigeria the enormous oil wealth of today.

Effect of Desperation

If desperation ever had any role to play in accumulating wealth, perhaps Nigeria would have long become a country in penury. This is because people who were more desperate in this same country and had lived and died some centuries back would have discovered this oil wealth and they would have exhausted it long before our own generation. But in consonance with the above quoted Qur’anic verse, Allah deliberately preserved it (oil) for our own generation for a reason best known to Him. Yes, oil may be Nigeria’s principal   source of wealth today, it is surely not the last source of wealth in this country.

There are other sources of wealth preserved for the future generations which no desperate ‘awks’ in this generation can discover.

Epilogue

Those who see oil as Nigeria’s ultimate wealth and want to own its control or die over its possession should engage in a rethink. You can only have the privilege of presiding over the wealth of a nation for a while and not for all times. The experience of some past regimes in Nigeria should serve as a sufficient lesson. And those in government today should also note this very well. The privilege of the past did not extend to the present and that of the present will surely not extend to the future. Every era is a transit. And every transit has a time limit. Contentment is the only wealth of inestimable value in human life. God bless the readers of this column.

Femi Abbas

“We cannot always build the future for our youths but we can build our youths for the future”. – Franklin D. Roosevelt (a onetime American President)

 Monologue

The above quoted reasoning is   fitting only to to a serene society where institutions are built to nurture their managers and not one in which some dubious elements are fraudulently groomed to fracture institutions to the detriment of serenity in the name of managers.

Preamble

The writing of this letter to Nigerian youths of today is warranted, not by the current calamitous situation of insecurity and hunger into which today’s Nigerian youths have fortuitously found themselves but also by the seeming thorny path to the future which is lying dangerously ahead of them and threatening any certainty of their passage to the same future.

This letter is, technically, a response to a Yoruba axiomatic adage that compares the reaction of an elderly person with that of a young person in a situation of downfall. The adage goes thus:

“When a kid slips and falls down, he looks forward to see if someone is around to lift him up. But when an adult slips and falls down, he looks backwards to see the cause of his fall”.

That is an adage that clearly shows the distinction between potentiality and experience.  Youths who symbolize potentiality are supposed to be the heirs to men who personify experience.

And, the only way they can demonstrate their readiness to become their hairs is for them to prepare to convert the invaluable legacy of the elderly citizens into a worthy heritage for themselves.

Until those youths have attained the maturity that is capable of qualifying them for the status of the elderly, they must not aspire to hijack leadership from the elderly in their own interest.

Doing so will amount to jumping the queue of life which is a euphemism for erecting an insuperable huddle on their way to the top.

Contents of the Letter

Below are the contents of the letter: 

Dear Nigerian youths,

This historic letter being addressed to you through this medium (The Message) today is not coming to you by accident but by design.

Nigerians of our own age (about 70) never had to be so addressed during their youthful time.

Let it be known to you that besides life, sound health and freedom, no Allah’s bounties for man is as treasure-able as youthfulness.

Definition of Youth

The definition of youth varies from place to place and from culture to culture. But generally, youthfulness spans from teenage or puberty through adolescence to the age of reasoning (at about 40).

That is the second stage of human life after teenage or adolescence.

You must have noticed that all Prophets of Allah, except Isa (Jesus) were designated as Messengers and Prophets at the age of 40.

That is a confirmation that the juiciest segment of human life is what people call youth. And whoever is blessed with valuable youthfulness is surely blessed with positive hope and sustainable life.

Spur of Ambition

It will be well with you to note that youthfulness is the spur of ambition and propeller of risk taking. It is the period of determination and resolution.

It is the period that sparks off the feeling of attraction between male and female genders and elicits the sense of associations across the   boundaries of societal stratifications.

All efforts in human life that yield results at old age must have been made at youthful age. To an average youth, anywhere in the world, the sky is never the limit.

There are still many firmaments beyond the sky. Youthfulness is the stage at which hard work becomes manifest. It is the stage of planning.

It is the stage of vision and mission. It is the stage of planting today’s seed that will germinate and grow into gargantuan trees which will yield edible fruits tomorrow.

That is why the youths of any nation are seen by foresighted observers as the future bone marrow of such a nation and the beacons of the future.

Incidentally, it is the youths that invariably constitute majority of the existing human beings at any given time in any given nation.

Experience

In the years past, when life had meaning and culture had value, youths were seen as the pride of the nation. They were the natural arrows fixed to the parental bows which were often shot by parents through the iron gate of life.

This was the case in Nigeria before and during the colonial era. And, after the country’s independence, the youths constituted the glory and hope of their parents as well as that of the nation.

Their role in the family encouraged the bearing of as many children as possible. In that case, the males among those children partnered with their fathers in tilling the farmlands, in tendering the plants, and in harvesting the crops while the females among them joined their mothers in making their families comfortable to enable those families thrive gloriously in dignity.

In short, the youths of those days were, unconsciously, the live wire of their parents and by extension, that of the nation to which they belonged.

Family Wealth

When a father was said to be rich in those days, it was not because of the money or property he possessed but because of the many children (male and female) that he was blessed with to serve as the needed workforce and economic security for the family.

Interestingly, a father’s pride, in those days, was not just the number of children he was privileged to bear but also, the volume and quality of contribution that those children made to enhance his wealth.

Besides, the youths of those days were not just helpers of their parents on the farms or in their trades; they also assisted them in training the younger ones among their siblings.

In short, they were the invaluable assets for those parents as different from today’s situation in which the youths are permanent liabilities to their parents.

Yet, the esteem which the youths of those days accorded their parents in utterances and actions, even in the absence of their parents was nonesuch.

The general tradition in those days was such that boys were handled by their fathers in terms of discipline and sense of responsibility while girls were mostly handled by their mothers in terms of matrimonial training and values of societal decency.

Thus, in the process of bringing up their children decently, no responsible mother ever dared uttering a word while any child was being subjected to discipline by the father.

In a nutshell, the upbringing of a child was the main key to societal serenity as the discipline imbibed by the youths of those days was a foremost heritage from their parents.

Genesis of Change

The current trend of rampant societal indecency and criminal tendencies began in January 1966 when some uncultured youths in Nigerian military uniform who had a blind ambition to become leaders without any training, threw the value of experience to the winds and killed the then leaders of the   country in a military coup d’état that was evidently tribal and religious.

By that calamitous act, the youths of that time fortuitously plunged Nigeria, their home land, into a precipitate civil war that turned the country’s hope into an unqualifiable   despair.

It was the aftermath of that precipitate civil war that eroded the highly valued cultural heritage which would have paved the way for Nigeria’s greatness as Africa’s foremost nation.

Dangerous Side Effect

For 13 years after the first coup that enabled the vagabonds in military uniforms to  forcefully  hijack power from Nigeria’s legitimate rulers, the use of brutal whim, in place of cultural discipline and inheritable experience, became the order of the day.

And, when a brief civilian interlude came in 1979 for only four years and three months, those vagabonds perched on the governance of the country once again like hungry vultures feeding on the carcass of democratic corpses to their fill.

Through that unbridled usurpation of power, the so-called Nigerian military government only succeeded in weaning themselves from the ladle of integrity as they irredeemably destroyed whatever was to retain their nomenclature as embodiment of discipline in Nigerian history.

Outcome

Here we are today, looking desperately like starved hawks swinging restlessly in like a pendulum of no certainty. And, while Nigerian youths are blaming the elders for their multifaceted woes, virtually everybody has forgotten the real cause of the perennial calamity. The cry everywhere now is about the effect of that calamity on the nation and not its cause.

Unfortunately, without looking back to reassess the cause, no corrective regime, civilian or military, can easily rise to get a clue to how Nigeria can rise firmly again on her feet.

And, connotatively, looking back on this situation means initiating a  genuine reorientation for the new generations of Nigeria as a  possible means of rediscovering the country’s lost compass.

Banking on a gun-based potential ability to govern a nation that requires experience, as the eaglet Nigerian military boys did in 1966, could never have brought any meaningful result.

And now, the reality has manifestly confirmed that assertion in a hardly reversible way. In a country like Nigeria that needs all hands to be on deck, both potentiality and experience have roles to play. But neither can take the place of the other.

The difference

You, the youths of today, are quite different from those of yesteryears in many ways and the differences are very clear. The youths of the past were very hardworking, highly dedicated, unswervingly patriotic and resolvedly forward-looking.

They started their training from home by serving their parents diligently and by caring for those parents physically and psychologically in various circumstances of life.

They sought their parents’ advice and learned from the latter’s experiences. It was that home training that propelled them to become national or regional leaders in their time as they built their hope on hard work, contentment and destiny.

On the contrary, you, the youths of today, are very lazy, very slothful, incurably time wasting and orientation ally lackadaisical in your attitude to life even as you are served by your parents from infancy almost to old age.

Yet you despise those parents and treat them with disdain like nonentities in your erroneous belief that, as new school, that you often call yourselves, you are more exposed and more knowledgeable than them.

You believe, thoughtlessly and parochially, that those parents had come into the world to work on your behalves and that you are only in this world to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

The youths of the past were patient, contented and full of respect for the elders. They were humble, obedient, always eager to acquire knowledge and gain experience as they often queued up to learn from the elders.

On the other hand, you, the youths of today, are very inpatient, very pompous  and very greedily ambitious even as you see yourselves as masters of knowledge when, in actual fact, you are slaves of ignorance.

Unlike the youths of the past, you, the youths of today, are mostly empty-headed, implacably arrogant, highly materialistic and hastily avaricious.

You always want to start your lives from the peak of your parents’ achievements without asking about what those parents had gone through before reaching the peak.

That is why some of you joined politics and immediately contested for the office of the President in your visionless concept of ‘Not Too Young To Rule’ which some of your fathers who had stolen public funds tried to encourage vaingloriously to pave your ways through the political nightmare that you call a dream.

You, the youths of today, spend money lavishly without working for it and without asking questions about its source. And, when such abominable ‘booty’ comes your way you never think of bearing any responsibility either in your homes or in the society.

You are generally characterized by all the conducts that were classified as shame in the past. To you shame has its price and going by your myopic perception, it only takes money to pay that price.

That is why you worship money, day in and day out as your ultimate god. And as long as you can pay that price by all means in whatever currency, you are important in your own estimation.

Thus, shame, as far as you are concerned, is a vital aspect of culture which has no negative effect on your lifestyle. As a matter of fact you have taken shame for both pride and prestige.

If a few youths of the past were ever described as a bunch of societal problems, due to their misdemeanor, majority of you, the youths of today, are the real cogs in the national wheel of progress in today’s Nigeria.

To you, life has no meaning except it is heavily coded in money. From all indications, there is no better definition for shame than your conduct.

Life Span

Your slogan that “long life is irrelevant in the absence of money” is a testimony to the above assertion. That life span in Nigeria today has dropped so drastically is due to your disappointing lifestyle which often creates hypertension for your parents and leads to their early deaths.

Few parents talk of heirs nowadays because those of you who are supposed to be their heirs have long thrown away the toga of worthy heirs.

In the past, mothers were not known for staying with their daughters in the latter’s matrimonial homes while leaving their husbands behind without care.

This strange but new trend that has almost become a part of Nigerian cultural norm arose because the incompetence of today’s urban women, even after many years of training, is questionable.

Thus, despite the ubiquity of young men and women, there is scarcity of husbands and wives just as there is a dearth of fathers and mothers.

Virtually everything that matters to you, today’s youths, is devoid of our known core values. By your measure, the value of life can be found only in the volume of naira accessible to you.

Causes of Generational Change

Whenever there is cause to review the generational trend with the intention of righting the wrong, you, the youths of today are often quick in pointing accusing fingers mischievously at the generations before yours by saying they caused the prevailing debacle.

But while pinching the back of the elders you often forget that sooner or later you too may become elders whose back will be pinched by the youths who will succeed your own generation.

You have forgotten that most of the scientific discoveries and technological advancement of your age which lured you into roguery were not available for the past youths.

There were no such things as hard drugs, cybercrimes, armed robbery, kidnapping, sophisticated pen fraud through manipulation of figures and forgery of signatures.

There were no cases of rape, child trafficking, audacious prostitution and day light murder with impunity as are rampant among you today.

Professional Crimes

To you, the youths of today, all the above mentioned crimes are either professions or callings in which you actively engage with strong desire for perfection.

Thus, you do not believe in the existence of any demarcation between decency and indecency, an indication that ‘family name’ which was highly valued in the past has no meaning to you today.

Unlike most youths of the past, you were sent to school but your goal was mere certificate that would legitimize your anticipated fraudulent meal ticket rather than useful education and beneficial knowledge.

And, now, what you acquire in the schools that you are attending, which you call certificate, in the name of education is hardly worth the paper on which those certificates are printed.

For most of the years you now spend in higher institutions, your preoccupation is either cultism or other frivolous activities that have no bearing with education.

That is why most of you turn out to be unemployable University or Polytechnic graduates after leaving those institutions.

A few of you who might have secured public employments by whatever means, have been discovered to be sheer misfits on those jobs as your competence remains questionable.

Implications

The implications of all these are many. While most of you are not quite useful to the present time you are also not hopeful about the future.

There is hardly any major crime in Nigeria today that is not principally committed by you, the youths of today, all in the quest for money.

It seems that the only language you understand either orally or in writing is money and only those who can speak or write the language of money can command your respect.

Many centuries before our time, an Arab poet intuitively came up with a sonnet which fits perfectly into today’s Nigerian situation.

He said: “Here is the era against which we had been warned through the admonitions of Ubayy Bn Ka’ab and that of Abdullah Bn Mas’ud; an era in which truth would be totally rejected while falsehood and transgression would be kept aloft; Should this era further linger without any change, there will neither be any sorrowful mood at a funeral nor any joyful feeling on the birth of a new baby”.

Now, which of the situations narrated in the above quoted poem is not applicable to Nigeria’s youths today? What impact does religion have on the society again?

We used to know of motor spare parts. Today, spare parts are no more those of motor but of human beings. And the most active merchants of this queer business are you the youths of today (male and female, clerics and laity).

When we talk of illegal oil bunkering, it is the business of the youths. When we talk of kidnapping, it is the business of today’s youths. When we talk of suicide bombing and terrorism, it is the business of today’s youths.

And, all these are for money and nothing else. Where is Nigeria going from here?

Conclusion

The aim of this expository article is not to malign or denigrate the youths of today. All the children of this columnist are today’s youths who do not constitute a separate island. But preaching is like a mud pond surrounded by men and women in immaculate regalia.

No one of them will be spared if the mud is splashed. As a onetime youth and now a father qualified to be called an elder, it is not expected of my type to start throwing stones while residing in a glass house.

But truth, like rain, knows no boundary and recognizes no personality. It cruises on like a surging train without minding whose ox is gored.

To rekindle Nigeria’s old hope or create a new one for the future, the youths of today must return to the established values of yesterday.

It was through those values that the tranquility of the world was solidly upheld. On the other hand, it was through a deviation from it that the world became as restive as it is today.

If tranquility must return as wished by many, you the youths of today, must change your loins. And that is the only atonement that the world requires to return to global equanimity. GOD BLESS NIGERIA!

Femi Abbas

Human life is a journey from the unknown to the unknown. No one knows whence he emanated or whither he is bound. But the invisible vehicle that conveys all human souls to the same destination is only one even if the embarkation and disembarkation ports of the conveyed passengers are different.

That permanent destination is the final abode of every human soul which no Jupiter can change.

As contemporaries, we may be friends and associates for years only if we are alive. We may also be adversaries or even enemies for decades only when we are still alive. But the schedule of our life span and that of our death record are available only in the unseen diary of Allah. We are all from Him and to Him we shall all return.

Occurrence

Just last Monday, one of us, brother Abdul Wahab Bolaji, a very creditably conscientious personality with a dual identity of exemplary simplicity and contentment, departed this ephemeral world last Monday, July 20, 2020. He left the shores of life through a London Hospital without bidding anyone bye for now. He had been on a sick bed for some time in a London Hospital where he finally beathed his last. With his exit, a model falcon can be said to have flown away forever leaving all the falconers around him behind. We shall miss him for quite some time if we remain alive. But the good deeds he engaged in while alive will never forget him.

On the same day of his demise, but at a different hour, another notable Islamic activist and gentleman of rare disposition who retired as a Radiologist,  at the University Teaching Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Professor Sulaiman B. Lagundoye vacated his space of activism permanently and proceeded to the world beyond.

And, again, on the same day, a prominent Nigeria Statesman, administrator and professional, Mallam Ismail Isa Funtua’s demise was announced through the media. He was said to have died of cardiac arrest. The three Muslim brothers died on the same day, Monday, July 20, 2020, at different places and were buried, on Tuesday, in different graves and at different locations but all in the mega belly of the same mother earth. That is life for you with occurrences that confirm the seal of destiny on the slate of human life. It is, however, gladdening that as Muslims, the corpses of the three personalities were neither kept in any morgue nor tossed around for any glamorous ceremonial event in the name of culture. That is an indication of Islamic understanding. We pray the Almighty Allah to repose their souls in eternal bliss and grant their families and associates the needed fortitude with which to surge ahead positively in life. Amin!

Genesis of Death in Human Life

Historians never agreed on when and where the first human couple, Adam and Hawau (Eve), died. Some of them claimed that they died and were buried somewhere in India but they had no evidence to back up their assertion. Some others believed that they (Adam and Hawau) lived and died in the Gulf area of the Middle East. According to the latter’s account, which Muslims tend to believe, Adam and Hawau met at a place near Makkah called Arafah which later became the global venue for the general assembly at which Muslim Pilgrims converge every year for Hajj. The above relayed account suggested that after the extradition of the first human couple   from the supposed Paradise in which they temporarily lived, they found their hypothetical asylum in the axis of Makkah and in Jeddah where a valley called Makkah subsisted.

The duo, Adam and Hawau, were said to have left Paradise separately only to meet later at Arafah (which means recognition) after a long period of wondering. Their sojourn in that region of the world   shows that the Middle East was the first place of human settlement on earth. The existence of an ancient rectangular house called Ka’bah is a testimony to this assertion. Ka’abah is the very first house ever erected on earth but nobody, except Allah, knows its builders.

The Jeddah Connection

Our ancestral mother,  Hawau, was believed to have died and interned in Jeddah, which is why the place was named Jeddah an Arabic word meaning Grandmother.

The first Human Death 

Neither Adam nor his wife (Hawau) knew anything called death until one of their first two sons killed the other.  The two sons: Habil (Abel) and Qabil Cain) had clashed over the choice of a wife. The tussle led to the killing of Habil by Qabil. But the focus here is neither on the cause of their clash nor the killing of one by the other. Rather, it is on the lesson which Allah wanted to teach humanity through that episode.

Accidental School

Shortly after killing his brother, Qabil fell into a dilemma over what to do with the corpse. He was not worried as much by his conscience over that seeming crime as to what would become of the corpse. But while thinking on what to do, two birds of the Roller family appeared before him and started fighting each other. In no time, one killed the other.  The strange scene attracted the attention of Qabil like a tragic drama. He watched the incident with full attention as the killer bird used its legs to dig a grave-like hole and pushed the corpse of its vanquished rival into it and covered it up. From that wonderful scene, Qabil got the idea of what to do with the corpse of his own brother as he imitated the bird by burying him in the same way. It was an accidental school in which he learnt a lesson that gave him his experience in life.

The Lesson Learnt

The first lesson learnt from that strange scene was that this human being, created from the earth, would eventually return to the earth.

But what Qabil did not know at that time, was that the two birds, which became his teachers in that accidental school, were Angels. And the lesson he learnt from their experience was not just about death and burial alone but also about when and where to bury  human   corpses. If Allah had wanted such action to be glamorously shrouded in ceremony and fanfare the killer bird would have demonstrated it in its displayed drama. Thus, Qabil did not move the corpse of Habil to any other place for burial because his bird teacher did not do that. Like the killer bird, he also buried his brother at the very spot where the latter’s death occurred. That was a way of saying telling mankind that human corpses should not be turned into ‘Tokunbo’ commodities on earth.

When Death Strikes

In Islam, death is supposed to be the determinant of where the corpse of the demised person should be buried. Death takes life at a particular time and in a particular place according to its own natural schedule of duty. It gives no hint of the exact time and place to strike. And, after striking, it does not participate in the transfer of a corpse across any major distance. That is why the body of any demised person starts to decompose just hours after it becomes lifeless. To confirm this, the Quran chapter 31: 24 says: “No soul knows what it will do tomorrow. No soul knows where it will die and be buried”.

Comment

In Islam, death, like birth has no propensity for any display of aristocracy. And, ascribing one to it is an evidence of   ignorance and primitivism. Islam abhors extravagancy in whatever form and it admonishes against it. That is why the great religion does not take kindly to commercial exhibition of coffins and ostentatious funerals. These are actually prohibited in Islam. Coffins can be used to convey corpses from the place of death or from mortuary to the cemetery but such coffins must not be ornamentally decorated. Neither must the Muslim corpses be extravagantly shrouded for burial. That is to avoid any sign of aristocracy in death.

The idea of keeping the corpse of a Muslim in a morgue for a long time after death, to allow for ostentatious funeral and extravagant spending is a sheer act of prodigality based on ignorance. It must be known that neither the expensive shroud nor the ornamented coffin with which the corpse is buried adds any benefit  to the soul of the deceased. It is sheer wastage, which has no use even for the relatives of the deceased. That idea, which is rampant, especially in some parts of Nigeria today, is hardly different from cremation done by the Buddhists of China and the Hindus of India. They are merely a product of ignorance and vain-glory.

Blind Imitation

As usual, Nigerians do not copy anything negative without trying to surpass the original. Fraud and narcotics as well as terrorism and banditry are some examples. The fashion now in vogue in Nigeria is for any public official or private moneybag to travel abroad for medical treatment at the slightest feeling of an ailment. It is as if Nigerian money is prohibited from being used to provide befitting hospitals here in Nigeria. The concept of travelling abroad for medical treatment is one of status symbol tacitly designed to separate the rich from the poor since an exclusive hospital for the rich will sound illogical in a country peopled overwhelmingly by paupers. Even when some of those sick travelers will be treated abroad by Nigerian doctors, they do not see anything wrong in spending their ill-gotten money abroad to the detriment of their home countrymen and women. The designers of that concept   seem to enjoy being flown back home lifeless if only to display aristocracy in death. Thus, your death is not considered newsworthy unless your corpse is flown back into the country via Muritala Muhammad airport in Lagos or Nnamdi Azikiwe airport in Abuja, just for public display of affluence. Ironically, no lesson is learnt in the fact that even Murtala Muhammad and Nnamdi Azikwe died and were buried here in Nigeria.

Leveler of Mankind     

Death is a leveler of mankind. It does not distinguish between the rich and the poor.

We shall all die willy-nilly and we shall all be buried in the mega womb of the same mother earth where the skeletal bones of masters and servants as well as those of sworn enemies will struggle together for space.  Incidentally, the mother earth, which harbours the earthly inexhaustible womb is so caring that it accompanies man day and night, in life and in death. It is evident that she surpasses biological mothers in playing her role in the life of man. From a chip of her natural being, man is said to have been created. Allah tells us in the Qur’an that “From her (the earth) ‘We’ created you and into her (belly) ‘We’ shall return you”.

In playing the role of a mother, the earth carries man on her back while the latter remains alive. And, in death, she incubates him in her belly in readiness for the resurrection that will see him through the inevitable Day of Judgment. In that process, there is a similarity between the duties of a primary mother (the earth) and that of a secondary mother otherwise known as biological mother especially in respect of conception and delivery.

But while the biological mother cares for man only when she and man are alive, the mother earth cares for him both in life and in death. Unlike the mortal nature of the biological mother, the life span of the mother earth is indefinite.

Age of the Earth

Some scientists have given us different ages of the earth using all sorts of technological instruments. But the only authentic statement on that can come from the Almighty Allah who created the earth. If scientists have the means of telling us the age of the earth, do they also have the means of determining her life span? The earth is not just a carrier of unlimited weight; she is also a scale of unlimited measure. She weighs the load on her head as well as the one in her belly and balances them up for natural equanimity.

Without the earth, mountains and oceans would have no habitat to call their own and the long term fossils which turn into what we call minerals would have had nowhere to hibernate. Before all these and millions of other unidentified matters came into existence, the earth had been. And when all of them might have vanished into permanent oblivion, according to their scheduled time, the earth will continue to be until natural termination time comes.

We know that man was created from the earth. We know that the earth accommodates all living and non-living things on and in her. What we do not know is the source of the earth in creation. From what was the earth created?

Divine Induction

As a way of luring us to correct reasoning, Allah has severally called the attention of man to the nature of certain creatures like the mountains, the valleys, the oceans and the seas, the minerals and the human and animal fossils buried in the earth as well as the varieties of plants and insects which dot the earth like a galaxy of stars on the Milky Way. He has also challenged man to observe the very nature of the wonderful carpet called the earth.

 No Difference

The earth in America or China or Australia is not different from that of Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or Italy. And no earth is superior to another except with Allah’s conferment of sacredness.

Were the aristocrats privileged to calve out a separate portion of the earth for themselves, they would have restricted the masses to a disadvantaged area of the earth. That is the intention behind the competition for spaces in the various spheres of the orbit. But the thinking of man is different from the planning of Allah. Celebration of funerals so flamboyantly as often exhibited in Nigeria is nothing more than celebration of vanity which fetches the celebrator no profit. In Islam, it is ordained to care for the dead in spirit and in action. But such should not be at the expense of the living. Doing so is a glaring evidence of ignorance which no civilized people would ever want to pursue. May Allah guide us aright while we are alive that we may have no cause to regret our sojourn on earth after our death. Amin!

FEMI ABBAS

Monologue 

Today, Friday, July 31, 2020, is Eidul Adha day of year 1441 AH throughout the world. This Eid is a festival of joy

and festivities in Islam which confirms the religious ancestry of Prophet Ibrahim’s faith.

It is the anticlimax of the last pillar of Islam called Hajj. Eidul Adha 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 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 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 festivity for majority of Muslims have been banished in this country. Thus, many Muslims are celebrating today’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 ending up in a painful nightmare. That is an indicator of indefinite despair.

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. Those 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 gone. And they seem to have gone forever.

A Couplet of Warning

Today, we have found ourselves in a situation against which we had long been warned in a couplet rendered by an Arab poet 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 situation.

Ordinarily, in normal circumstances, a forward-looking country would have encouraged her citizenry 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 ask themselves constantly.

But such questions have been rendered irrelevant in Nigeria because the circumstances of life in this country have changed the priorities of ordinary citizens. The only question now in vogue, which virtually everybody in government seems to be asking tacitly is this: ‘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, politicians, legislators, the law enforcement agents and judicial officers, days and nights in their quest for wealth through fraudulent means. It 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 to the stake of endemic corruption. It is the question that presents mirage to Nigerians as the only valuable substance worthy of pursuit.

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 mountains all of which are great sources of wealth for people who are seeking reasonable comfort and are not self-deceptive. What this country lacks is a class of responsible and patriotic leaders who can sincerely highlight its 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 turned into despair.

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 allowances for the legislators are major 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’ farms to justify this? Why must we retain an obnoxious immunity clause in our constitution for certain political demagogues to facilitate monumental corruption?

Besides, 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 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 rail transportation system, without jobs for majority of the 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.

No learn Lesson

Today, Nigeria is not afflicted by drought or famine.

She is not engaged in a war. Yet, Nigerian government has not learnt any lesson from any of the above named countries simply because there is oil in large deposit. Now, the general fear in the land is that of hunger even in times of festivals.

How Nigeria arrived at such a deadly scourge is irrelevant for now. What is relevant is how to get out of it. Like Egypt of yore, Nigeria will need a Yusuf to unravel the mystery surrounding the dream that brought this scourge about.

Irony

It is ironic that people who live by 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 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”. Eid Mubarak!

By Femi Abass

Breaking news are invariably the causes of throbs in the media waves. They hardly come without carrying with them some disturbingly touching effects. Sometimes such effects may be positive and comforting but most times they are negative, discomforting and heart breaking.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020, was another day of throbbing news that fortuitously ravaged the global media waves with a reverberating effect that broke the hearts of many Nigerian Muslim brothers and sisters.

The mission of that breaking news was to report the saddening sudden death of the Director of Administration of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), Mallam Yusuf Chinodezie Nwoha who died in a road accident in Okene, Kogi State, on his way to Imo State for the celebration of Eidul Adha festival.

The jitters that accompanied that news alone were like missiles of thunderbolt which often hit to kill.

That was the fortuitous situation that came to forcefully remind us of a philosophical statement with which Nigeria’s first President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, succinctly opened the introduction to his autobiography entitled ‘My Odyssey’ which was published in 1970. The statement went thus:

“Man comes into the world and while he lives, he embarks upon a series of activities absorbing experience which enables him to formulate a philosophy of life and to chart his causes of action. But then, he dies. Nevertheless, his biography remains a guide to those of the living who may need guidance, either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as encouragement or both”.

Preamble

When the great sage popularly known as ‘ZIK of AFRICA’ was writing that philosophical analysis of human life he hardly had the thought of any serious Igbo Muslim in mind. But incidentally, just nine years after the publication of that book, a young Igbo man by name Clifford Chinodezie Nwoha, from today’s Imo State, got an unusual divine guidance that prompted him to change his faith and to adopt a new name, Yusuf, as a reflection of the beaming light of Islam that brightly illuminated his way in life within the darkness of his cultural environment.

Thus, like Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer ever in history, who fortuitously embraced Islam in Kenturkey, United States, in 1961, Yusuf became a rightly guided Muslim in 1979 at Bayero University where he embarked on an intellectual journey in search of a spiritual identity. And, also, like Muhammad Ali, Yusuf Nwoha held on tenaciously, not only to the guiding light of Islam but also to the unbreakable universal cord of Islamic brotherhood until he left the shores of the earth 48 hours before the Eidul Adha of 1441 AH (year 2020) lat week.

Igbo Muslims

One major fact that most Muslims do not seem to know about Igbo Muslims is their utmost readiness to be well informed about Islam, an intellectual trait that has made them the most Islamically educated tribal group of Muslims. They are though conspicuously overwhelmed by the gross disadvantage of minority within their tribal environment; they have, nevertheless, succeeded in turning that disadvantage into a formidable advantage. Without them, Islam would have remained alien to the Southeast. Today, an average Igbo man or woman does not embrace Islam except on the template of knowledge with which he/she can confirm the required spiritual conviction.

Meanwhile, like most Muslim brothers and sisters from the Eastern region, Mallam Yusuf Nwoha effectively exemplified that impeccable trait. Alhamdu Lillah!

REACTIONS

Following the reverberating effect of the breaking news that revealed brother Yusuf Nwoha’s demise, a torrent of lamentations started to fall like a heavy rain across tribes, regions and nations. He was like an autumn comet that was eclipsed by a densely thick cloud. Some spectacular excerpts from those lamentations are quoted here for brothers and sisters who may care to read them for posterity sake. They are as follows:

NSCIA

After a long period of unspeakable devastation arising from Nwoha’s demise, the Secretary General of NSCIA, Prof Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede reluctantly spoke. Here is what he was able to mutter on behalf of the Council:

“When it comes to talking about this transient life only Allah knows what is next for every soul from minute to minute. As human beings, our track is abstract. And, that track is our destiny which is inscribed on an invisible slate.

Who could have foreseen or guessed that 48 hours before Eidul Adha, last week, Mallam Yusuf Chinodezie Nwoha would be no more alive?

He was a gentleman to the core, a true Muslim for that matter. He was quite intelligent, cool-headed, deeply calculative and thorough in thought and in actions.

His assumption of office as Director of Administration of NSCIA was not just a glittering hope but also a stabilising factor for the council. But now, that factor has become in an unforeseeable forlorn. It was his dignified personality that encouraged the council to nominate him to the National Hajj Commission (NAHCON) as a Commissioner to represent NSCIA on that Board. The exit of Mallam Nwoha is not, in anyway, minor.

While praying for the repose of his distinguished soul in eternal bliss and seeking Allah’s mercy to make Al-Jannah Firdaws his final abode, the NSCIA also seeks Allah’s mercy for his family’s divine fortitude with which to bear the loss.

Prof Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede,

NSCIA Secretary General

NAHCON

As soon as the hint of the road accident that claimed Mallam Yusuf Nwoha’s life came with confirmation, the Chairman/CEO of the National Hajj Commission (NAHCON), Alhaji Zikrullah Kunle Hassan rose like a commander on a battle arena and promptly partnered with NSCIA’s Secretary General, Prof Ishaq Oloyede in arranging the next line of action. They jointly sent a delegation of two staffs each from NSCIA and NAHCON with enough amount of money to settle the cost of ambulance, mortuary and conveyance of the corpse from Kogi State where the accident occurred to Imo, the home State of the deceased. And, like Prof Oloyede, Alhaji Hassan quietly but reluctantly expressed his feeling about Nwoha’s demise as follows on behalf of NAHCON:

“As decreed by the creator of the universe, “every soul shall taste of death….With this reality and total submission to the will of the Most High. I, the Chairman, the Board members, management and the entire staff of NAHCON received the shocking news of the fatal accident that claimed the life of one of our own, Mallam Yusuf Chinodezie Nwoha.

Until his death, Mallam Nwoha was a NAHCON Board member representing the NSCIA. Within the short life of this Board, the deceased made meaningful suggestions on improving Hajj participation from Nigeria’s South-East region, his birth place.

Mallam Nwoha’s short spell in the commission conjures up an image of a focused and dedicated operative ever willing to break new grounds for the development of his set goal. His demise has left a void far more profound than can be imagined.

May I  also use this solemn period to remind us all how transcient life is with the hope that we may utilise the time we have in impacting positively on advancement of mankind.

May the Infinite Lord have mercy on Mallam Yusuf Nwoha’s kind soul and console his family on this insuperable loss.

NAHCON Chairman/CEO Alhaji Zikrullah Hassan

JAIZ BANK

Being a bank for both NSCIA and NAHCON, with which Mallam Nwoha was quite familiar while alive,  the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Charity and Development Foundation of that Bank, Dr Abdullahi Shuaib, became so passionately disturbed that he chose to express his personal feeling about the sad event in writing as follows:

“….My relationship with Mallam Yusuf Nwoha started over a decade ago when I served as Private Confidential Secretary (pro bono) to the late Dr Abdul-Lateef Adegbite, the former Secretary-General of the NSCIA at several meetings under the auspices of NSCIA.

I met the late Mallam Yusuf when the late Dr Adegbite had a parley with some of the leaders of the Igbo Communities in the Southeast. Mallam Yusuf was very quiet and humble at the parley. He talked only when the need became necessary for him to elucidate a point. He was also very intelligent and eloquent”.

According to Dr. Shuaib, “Mallam Nwoha was a grassroots Igbo Muslim leader who had the interest of his people, both Muslims and non-Muslims at heart. He was detribalised and respected both the young and the elderly so much so that he earned the respect and love of the Igbo communities, especially in Owerri, Imo State. What made Nwoha stand out vertically among his contemporaries was that Mallam Yusuf was a principled person in his dealings with people of different walks of life as he had zero tolerance for injustice”….

“Alhaji Nwoha was well accepted by the Imolites on both sides of religious divide because of his exemplary character.” Which made him “a rare gem….”

Dr. Abdullah Shuaib

CEO, Jaiz Charity and Development Foundation

KUNLE SANNI

What a season of death, what a season of sadness.

Alhaj Yusuf Nwoha has also left us. Yusuf was unequivocally one of the best among us. He accepted Islam in 1979 and acquired the necessary knowledge of Islam with the speed of sound. He was educated at Bayero University Kano. We, in NACOMYO, employed  him as Director  of our Islamic  Propagation Center In Owerri financed by the then Baba Adinni  of Yorubaland, Alhaj  MKO Abiola, before he was employed by INEC where he retired  as Deputy Director sometime last year. Due to his dynamism and honesty  he was  employed  as the Director  of  Administration  of NSCIA. We spoke on Monday, July 27, 2020 without knowing that we were I was discussing with him for the last time. Yusuf was one of the most dedicated brothers from theSoutheast. He was dynamic and humble to a fault.  Oh Allah! You know why you are taking away the best among  us but we seek  your mercy, halt this trend, forgive Yusuf and admit him to Al-Jannat  Firdaws. Make his family steadfast on the part of Islam.

Kunle Sanni

Chairman, Oyo State Muslim Community

MSSN

We appreciate Allah for the life of our brother, Alhaji Yusuf Nwoha. We testify that he lived a meaningful life and served well in the path of da’awah. He was one of the brothers who usually facilitate MSSN activities in Southeast region of the country where Muslims are in the minority. His commitment to the religion of Islaam despite the non-conducive nature of the area lend credence to his commitment to virtue that he believed in.

May Allah reward him with Al Jannah and grant his family and the Ummah the fortitude to bear this serious loss.

Taofeeq Yekinni, MSSN National Amir

NACOMYO

The late Nwoha was a reliable gentleman and strong Islamic devotee who can be trusted with responsibility. Brother Yusuf was quiet thorough, organised, trustworthy and a dependable Islamic worker.

He was quiet, yet a goal getter whose noble conduct qualified him for nomination to represent the NSCIA on NAHCON’s Board.

We pray Allah to forgive his shortcomings and grant him divine mercy that his soul can be reposed in eternal bliss.

Kamaldeen Akintunder

Former National Amir of NACOMYO 

MMPN

Words cannot express the depth of our grief but as Muslims we have no choice other than to submit to Allah’s will. We take solace in the good life Brother Yusuf led. We testify that he was a Muslim who lived a life of service to Allah and to humanity.

May Allah accept his contributions as sadakatun jarriyyah. May Allah reserve for him a noble place in Al-Jannah Firdaus.

Hajiya Fatima

National Amirah, FOMWAN

MMPN

The news of the sudden death of our dear Brother and media-friendly administrator,  Malam Yusuf Nwoha on Wednesday July 29, 2020 came to us as a rude shock.

The death of Malam Nwoha is a reminder to all of us that death is certain and we should prepare for it at any time.

Events culminated to his death when he had an accident in Okene on his way to his home town Owerri for Eid- Adha celebration with his family was quite unfortunate.

It is disheartening that the Ummah lost Yusuf Nwoha when his services are needed most, especially at the NSCIA, where he was the Director of Administration

We are, however, consoled that he died as a Martyr and pray to Allah to grant his immediate family, the NSCIA and the entire Muslim Ummah the fortitude to bear this irreplaceable loss and grant him Al-Janah Fridaws. Aamin.

Abdur-Rahman Balogun (ARAB) 

National President, Muslim Media Practitioners of Nigeria (MMPN)

FEMI ABBAS ON

The writing of this article   was motivated by two major tragic factors with which the world is now agonizingly grappling by force. One of those factors is an invisible Corona virus pandemic codenamed COVID 19 which is mercilessly ravaging the livelihood of mankind and recklessly rendering millions of people lifeless across continents. The other is a one word solo song that is universally being chorused with unlimited reverberation. That word is TERRORISM. A chunk of this article is culled, as an excerpt, from a lecture which the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), under the leadership of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, prevented yours sincerely from delivering at Nigerian Interreligious Council (IREC)’s meeting in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, in January 2013.

The Juggernauts’ Focus

Perhaps the world is aggressively restive today because some juggernauts do not agree with the above quoted axiomatic poem. Today’s global juggernauts who constitute the topmost twig on the tree of life, are hardly convinced that the food which sustains and keeps them aloft on that tree is supplied by the roots of the same tree hence their trampling on those roots.

The Qur’anic Position

The Almighty Allah who created the entire universe and everything in it tells us in Qur’an 49:13 thus: “Oh mankind! We have created you as males and females and classified you into races and tribes that you may interact (and benefit from your diversity); surely the best of you are the ones who fear God most”.

The Tree of Life

On the tree of life, there can be no foliage without stem just as there can be no stem without roots. The fact that the roots of the tree of life are buried beneath the earth while the stem stands tall above the earth does not make the roots inferior. As a matter of fact the stem subsists above the earth because the roots hold forth for it beneath the earth.

It will be parochial and self-deceptive for any sensible person to think that the current trend of terrorism around the world is all about religion. That kind of thinking can arise only from the agents of the Lucifer who are benefitting from the largess of terrorism through religion. There are indications that the hub of that devilish thinking is the Southwest of Nigeria from where the smoke of blackmail and propaganda is constantly polluting the country’s peaceful weather.

Reminiscence

From the available historical  facts, it can be confirmed that the factors which initially gave rise to terrorism clearly transcended religion. Other prominent factors such as political, economic, social and cultural ideologies, which had been the bones of contention for centuries among nations, are, by far,   more attributable to modern terrorism than religion.

If violence is what constitutes terrorism, then, it never emanated from religion though religion has mostly been used as a cover up and blamed for it as often demonstrated by certain religious adherents.

First Act of Terrorism

At the time when the first act of terrorism was perpetrated by a Jewish Zealot group, over 2000 years ago, neither Christianity nor Islam had taken any firm root. And Judaism, in practice at that time, was more of business struggle than religion.

Although Prophet Isa (Joshua) who the Greeks renamed Jesus had just come and gone by then, his divine mission had not reached the Gentiles who named that mission Christianity and spread it to other parts of what is now known as Europe. Also, by that time, Muhammad (SAW), the Prophet of Islam, had not been born.

Therefore, the seed of terrorism planted by those Jewish Zealots’ in year 6 AC was rather a violent expression of resentment for domination of the Jews by the Roman gentiles than a fight between two religions.

International Terrorism

Tragic and condemnable as it is, international terrorism only accentuates the bitter resistance of certain cultures to the domination of others especially as exhibited by the relationship between the West and the East. In modern time, the origin of bomb detonation as an instrument of that resistance which came to be called terrorism today goes started 1939.

How it began

In August that year, a German American physicist Albert Einstein sent a letter to the then U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt to hint him of the possibility of discovering a powerful explosive device through the fission of uranium and warned Roosevelt against the danger in allowing other nations to precede the US in developing that device. In response, the U.S. government hurriedly established the top secret Manhattan Project in 1942 (three years after receiving Einstein’s letter) to develop an atomic device. The leader of that Project was a U.S. Army Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves whose team worked in several locations but largely at Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The team designed and built the first atomic bomb which was test-exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945.

The Power of the Bomb

The energy released from that explosion was equivalent to about 20,000 tons of Trinitrotoluene (TNT). And towards the end of the World War II, precisely on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima killing about 60000 to 70000 people within minutes. And another was dropped on the city of Nagasaki three days later on August 9, 1945, killing about 40000 people. Most of the people killed by those bombs were on their beds sleeping as the bombs were dropped on them in the nights.

The Effect of Atomic Bomb

The single atomic explosion on Hiroshima destroyed 68% of the city and damaged 24% of what remained.

As a result of that unprecedented calamity, Japan which fought the war on the side of Germany was forced to surrender unconditionally to the allied forces on August 14, 1945. Thus, in less than one week, America conquered Japan with the help of atomic bomb thereby sending a frightening signal to other countries on the side of Germany.

From the Hiroshima/Nagasaki experience, atomic bomb became the darling weapon of all rival powers and the race for acquiring it thus began. If that was not terrorism what was it? Yet, it was with that historic calamity that competition for marketing weaponry around the world evolved.

Audacious Declarations

After the World War II, the United States and seven other countries openly declared, with a tone of marketing, that they possessed atomic weaponry and they have since conducted one or more nuclear tests to demonstrate their capability. Those other countries include: Russia which first tested her own in 1949 under the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR); Britain (1952); France (1960); China (1964); India (peaceful test in 1974 and nuclear weapons test in 1998); Pakistan (1998); and North Korea (2006).

Other Nuclear Nations

Besides those listed countries, Israel is generally believed to possess atomic bomb, although she has not formally owned up to that fact since she has never openly conducted a nuclear test like others. Thus, the total number of countries generally recognised as possessing nuclear weapons, including Israel, is nine.

A tenth country, (South Africa), has also admitted that it developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons which she completed in 1977, but which she claimed to have dismantled in the early 1990s.

Break up of USSR

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, three of the 15 newly independent countries, in addition to Russia, had nuclear weapons on their territories. By the mid-1990s, however, the three countries: Belarus , Kazakhstan , and Ukraine had transferred all their nuclear weapons to Russia. Of the nine states recognized as possessors of nuclear weapons today, only five have developed advanced nuclear weapons known as thermonuclear arms. They are the United States which first tested it in 1952; Russia (1953); Britain (1957); China (1967) and France (1968). The five countries have since constituted themselves into super powers having created monopoly for the device. One noticeable fact, however, is that some other countries are believed to have secretly developed thermonuclear weapons but refused to test them in order to avoid drawing negative global attention to themselves unnecessarily and thereby attract UN sanctions.

Non-Proliferation Treaty

The fear of proliferation of nuclear arsenal has compelled the so-called super powers to initiate the idea of Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty which was signed in 1968. By that initiative, virtually all countries of the world besides the known nine nuclear nations have since formally pledged not to manufacture those weapons. The pledge was made under the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons policy, which came into force in 1970. Meanwhile, that treaty was ratified by 187 non-nuclear weapon states.

However, efforts to curb nuclear proliferation have faced a series of new major challenges. For instance, the nuclear smuggling network established by one Abdul Qadeer Khan (a Pakistani nuclear expert) has shown that proliferation can be actively assisted not only by national governments, as in the past, but also by private, non-state persons and organisations that have access to key knowledge and equipment. Following the arrest of Khan, a UN Security Council Resolution 1540 was passed in 2004 to further emphasize the importance of non-proliferation Treaty. This Resolution is expected to encourage countries like Pakistan and Malaysia to better control activities related to weapons of mass destruction within their borders and to prevent improper exports.

Uncertainty

The effectiveness of this new element of the non-proliferation “regime” however remains uncertain.

The original treaty which is still in force has five nuclear weapon state members and 187 non-nuclear weapon state members. India, Israel, and Pakistan never joined the treaty, thereby reserving the legal right to develop nuclear weapons. North Korea which was a party to the treaty in 1985 renounced it in 2003 to enable her exercise her rights under the treaty’s withdrawal provisions. North Korea’s action highlighted one of the treaty’s major limitations.

The problem concerning terrorism here is neither about the signing or breaching the treaty per se, nor about armament reduction. It is rather about some nations’ determination to balance power with rivals. This was the factor that led to the invention of atomic bomb by the US in the first instance. And this factor has now advanced into balance of terror not only among nations but more between those perceived as oppressors and the non-state groups that feel oppressed as the knowledge of developing nuclear weapons keeps spreading.

It was for this reason that the US turned herself into the policeman of the world tormenting countries like Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and other Middle East countries that can pose any threat to Israel.

Policing the World

Policing proliferation as is the case now is a mere euphemism for policing the entire world which can never ventilate a peaceful coexisting atmosphere for mankind. It will rather aggravate the existing conflict situations. The fact that the US and China or India and Pakistan have not been able to use nuclear weapons against each other despite their open hostilities and tight suspicious  diplomacy is simply because they all possess such weapons.

From Militancy to Terrorism

Terrorism often begins with unfounded allegations and baseless suspicion   leading to militancy. But when the threat of state power is intensified against the militants, an all-out violence becomes the necessary weapon with which to freely counter what those militants consider to be state terrorism. Thus, to those called terrorists, violent activities are only a means of countering State terrorism.

Nigeria Under Watch

If Nigeria had been a nuclear nation, the US would not have listed her as a nation under terrorism watch as she did in 2009 on the account of an isolated case of attempted terrorism by one single Nigerian. After all, an American citizen, Timothy McVeigh, committed a devastating act of terrorism in the US City of Oklahoma on April 19, 1995 killing 168 people at once and the US did not, as a result, list herself as a nation under terrorism watch. The worst that happened to McVeigh was a trial that earned him a death sentence in 2001. But thereafter, we were not given the privilege of knowing what happened to that terrorist as par the judgment that earned him death sentence.

Internal Terrorism

As for internal terrorism which is far more dangerous than the external one, only good governance and people’s patriotic devotion can safeguard it.

Nigeria is terribly wrecked today because the so-called leaders since 1999 have sold all that were considered national assets to themselves in the selfish belief that by virtue of being in government, they owned the country and could do anything to take possession of it. Now, after massively empting the national treasury to convert the country into their private property, they came to realize how futile such vainglorious efforts are and decided to block any credit accruable to those who can expose them.

In a country like Nigeria where the wind of multifarious terrorism are forcefully and incessantly blowing with an active clandestine role of certain religious vampires who are feeding   exploitatively on the blood of the masses and are sponsoring terrorists to cover up their evil acts how can individual or group terrorism be stemmed? Well! We can only pray God to save Nigeria.

By Femi Abbas

Monologue

The appearance of today’s title in this column once in a year often looks strange and even odd to most Nigerian readers because it does not come in January.  In Nigeria, like in most other African countries south of the Sahara, the idea of ‘New Year’ is ignorantly believed to be peculiar to January which is the first month of Christian Gregorian calendar. That is the effect of colonial scar on the smooth body of  our continent.

From whichever angle it is viewed, European colonialism has a thick Christian colouration that still portrays African culture in a rainbow of colonial Christian religion and tradition.

Public Holiday

It is a well-known fact that out of the 109 days of official religious holidays in Nigeria today, Islamic religion enjoys only five days as public holidays (two days for Eidul-Fitr, two days for Eidul-Adha and one day for Mawlidun-Nabiyy). The remaining 104 days are for Christianity.

At least, it is undeniable that in every one of the 52 weeks in a year, two days (Saturday and Sunday) are ceded to Christianity as religious holidays.

Yet, the Nigerian Christians continue to incessantly and maliciously allege islamization of the country especially whenever a Muslim becomes the President.

Even at the State level, the monotonously sour song of islamization gets loudest whenever a Muslim is elected as Governor. And the hatchet job is invariably done by the Christian dominated media. Incidentally, this irredentism originates mostly from the Southwest which is the main hub of Nigeria’s hate media despite the very large population of the Muslims that put them in the majority in the country.

Why this Article?

The event that motivated the writing of this article came up yesterday,   August 20, 2020. That event was the celebration of the first day of Muharram. And, Muharram is the name of the first month of Islamic year of Hijrah calendar. That is an occasion that is yearly celebrated by millions of Muslims around the world, in commemoration of Prophet Muhammad’s triumphant entry into the city of Madinah as the climax of his emigration from Makkah for safety, following a plot to kill him in Makkah by the pagans of that city, in 622 CE.

The celebration of that event has been on course for almost one and a half millennia. Thus, yesterday was the beginning of 1442 Hijrah year.

Implication

In a country like Nigeria, celebration of new Hijrah year is like a coin with two sides. A fading face of one side of that coin neither debases the coin nor renders it invalid.

While the celebration of this festival brings joy to Muslims, it attracts sadness to the antagonists of Islam. But gladly, Islam is like the Sun which aids the ventilation of oxygen to all living organisms and photosynthesizes all plants in the environment. Any blind person can deny the existence of the Sun because of his inability to see it. But such a person cannot deny its scorching effect except he does not walk under its rays. Besides, any sincere observer will notice that this divine religion called Islam is like a surging train. The barking at it by over one trillion dogs can never halt its surging force.

The Fastest growing Religion

Despite all  odds, intrigues, blackmails and all evil machinations being constantly and surreptitiouslyerected on its way by its antagonists, Islam continues to wax stronger even as it remains the fastest growing religion in the world today. AlhamduLillah!

Colonial Reminiscence

Throughout the 99 years of the British colonial rule in Nigeria (1861-1960), the Southern Muslims were never granted any public holiday to celebrate their festivals. It took Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister, Sir AbubakarTafawa Balewa to address that malicious injustice by granting religious holidays officially to Islamic festivals at national level after independence in 1960. Hitherto, the only recognized religious festivals granted public holidays by the British colonialists and their successors in the Southern partof the country were Easter, Christmas and the so-called New Year. That was in addition to the weekly holiday every Sunday.

Holiday by Military Fiat

Prior to 1972, Nigeria was a six working day country in which public workers worked statutorily from Monday to Saturday. It was General Yakubu Gowon, a Christian military Head of State, that granted Saturday, by fiat, to the Seventh Day Adventists denomination of Christianity as a weekly religious public holiday at a time when the total population of that denomination in Nigeria was less than 700,000 within the then Nigerian total population of about 56 million people. Following that unjust imperial action, Nigerian Muslims could have kicked against Gowon’s declaration of Saturday as holiday which further expanded the tentacle of Christianity to the gross disadvantage of Islam in Nigeria. In the alternative, the Muslims could have demanded equal right by asking for Friday as a public holiday for their religion. But since granting multiple  public holidays to enable Nigerian Christians to worship according to their faith did not, in anyway, hinder the practice of Islam, the Muslims decided not to contest it in order to give peace a chance. That is part of what makes Islam a religion of peace.

Yet, the Nigerian Christians still believe that their Muslim counterparts do not deserve any right at all even as they consider the declaration of one day public holiday declared by some States for Hijrah celebration, as a religious aberration amounting to islamization of Nigeria. Isn’t that ridiculously laughable?

Islamic Calendar 

Islam has its own calendar called Hijrah calendar. And, like in other calendars of the world, there is a beginning and an end for every Islamic year which consists of 12 months. However, unlike those other calendars, the Islamic calendar, otherwise known as Hijrah calendar, is divinely ordained because it originated from Allah. This is confirmed in chapter 9, verse 36 of the Qur’an as follows: “Surely, the number of months ordained by Allah when He created the heavens and the earth is twelve. Therefore, do not wrong yourselves in them….”. That verse is a confirmation   of Islam as Allah’s divine religion.

The Months of Islamic Calendar

The 12 months of Islamic calendar as follows: Muharram; Safar; RabiulAwwal; Rabiu-th-Thani; JumadalUla; Jumada-th-Thaniyah; Rajab; Shaban; Ramadan; Shawwal; DhulQadah; and DhulHijjah. Out of these 12 months, four are specially designated as sacred. They are the last four months of Islamic year thus: Ramadan, Shawwal, Dhul-Qa’dah and Dhul-Hijjah. Some of these months have 30 days while others have 29 days. No more, no less.

Islamic Education

It takes well- educated Muslims to understand the facts stated here and relate them to their lives. It is such education that prompted the former Governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola to be the first Nigerian Governor to declare a public holiday for new Islamic year in Osun State in 2013.

That historic declaration by Ogbeni Aregbesola was not only an exhibition of sound education and civility on his part, it was also a clear evidence of justice which had hitherto been denied to Nigerian Muslims in that State despite their demographic majority. And, was he not frontally attacked and called all sorts of names in the Southwest media for declaring that holiday? That is Nigeria for you as far as religion is concerned. Meanwhile, to emulate similar justice, either out of conviction or for political reason, some other Governors, including the late Alhaji Ishaq Abiola Ajimobi later joined the train of sanity along that line by declaring Hijrah holiday in his State. And, that historic gesture which had been considered anirreversible in Nigerian history has now been audaciouslly reversed with unbridled impunity.

Genesis of Hijrah Calendar

Hijrah calendar took its name from Prophet Muhammad’s migration from Makkah to Madinah which is otherwise known as Hijrah, in 622 CE.

The use of Hijrah calendar began shortly after that migration  when Umar Bn Khattab who was later to become the second Caliph in Islam suggested the idea of a distinctive calendar for Islam which should be named after the Prophet’s migration from Makkah to Madinah and he classified that incident as a watershed for the success and survival of Islam. Without that landmark event in Islam, it would have been difficult for the sacred religion to survive. As a matter of fact, Hijrah is foremost among the three main factors responsible for the survival of the religion of Islam. The second was the victory of the Muslims in the battle of Badr which the Makkah pagans waged on them in Madinah, about 500 kilometres away from Makkah,   shortly after the Prophet’s migration to Madinah. And the third factor is Allah’s great promise that became an everlasting fulfillment. That promise is contained in Chapter 15 verse 9 of the Qur’an thus:

“It was ‘We’ (Allah) who revealed the Qur’an and it is ‘We’ who will surely ensure its preservation…”.

Question

Now, after about 1500 years of the inception of that divine religion which was ushered into the world by the Sacred Book called the Qur’an, who can doubt the ability of the Almighty Allah to make promise and fulfill it? But for those three fundamental factors mentioned here, perhaps Islam would have joined the legion of defunct religions in human history. It is only with Allah that all things are possible.

Social Effect

It was only after the Prophet’s migration (Hijrah) that people began to see Islam clearly as a total way of life which paid attention to, and reformed every facet of human existence. It then became evident that Islam was the divine religion that gave mankind directions regarding almost every moment of a believer’s conscious life. Hijrah also enabled the Arabs, in particular, to see what a Muslim’s matrimonial home should be in a Muslim society as against what it was in the days of ignorance. Hence, it was only after the Prophet’s migration that the world could see the aspect of human social decency and decorum prescribed by Allah through Islam.

Economic Impact

The second reason for the importance of Hijrah is its economic significance which manifested in the lifestyle of the pioneer Muslim immigrants who were led by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) himself in migrating to Madinah. The unsurpassable hospitality of the people of Madinah towards the Muslim emigrants at that time did not only provide a new peaceful home for the immigrants, it also showed the hosts’ passionate self-sacrifice in philanthropic gesture. And with Hijrah, those immigrants vividly came in contact with advanced agricultural acumen and ingenuous artisanship which they never experienced in Makkah. These resulted in an unprecedented economic revolution for the city of Madinah. Since the hosts shared virtually everything they had with the immigrants when the latter first arrived, a lesson was learnt by those immigrants that they should not continue to be a burden on their brotherly hosts. Thus, every one of them adopted legitimate way of earning righteous income, an action which enabled the city’s economy attain an unprecedented leap.

Moral Effect of Hijrah

Initially, the Muslim Immigrants in Madinah worked as labourers in the agricultural fields, and construction sites of their hosts. But later, they, being traditional traders before migration, started small scale trading activities which brought them into economic competition with the Jews of Madinah. One aspect of the Islamic economic revolution at that time was that the Muslim immigrants paid the right price for every product they consumed since the Prophet had forbidden the practice of acquiring products on reduced prices in return for loans given to the artisans or to the land cultivators as was the practice in Madinah before Hijrah. That practice was prohibited because it was considered to be a form of usury. Thus, it was only after Hijrah that agriculture, industry and trade freely helped the Muslims to bring about an integrated, balanced and unfettered economic growth to the Ummah.

Judicial Effect

The third reason which made Hijrah a very important event is the enjoyment of political freedom by the Muslims. Before Hijrah, the Muslims in Makkah had no say in any matter, internal or external. They were a minority against whom the hearts of the majority were full of poisonous enmity simply because they were considered to constitute an insignificant fraction in a society overwhelmingly dominated by unbelievers.It was Hijrah, therefore, that made the Muslims masters of their own internal affairs, external relations as well as other matters relating to war and peace. If there was any disagreement between the Muslims and the non-Muslims in Madinah, at that time, the privilege of taking the final decision on it was conceded to the Prophet by consensus because of his unbiased sense of mediation. The agreement to that effect was by all the leaders irrespective of race, tribe or faith.

This concession accentuated the autonomy and fair judgment enjoyed by the Muslims in that city for the first time in their Islamic religious lives. Thus, Madinah became the nucleus of a city-state which, within a period of ten years 622-632 CE, in the life time of the Prophet, which rapidly expanded to most parts of Arabian Peninsula. It is therefore evident that the event of Hijrah turned the city of Madinah into a highly successful society in commerce and agriculture.

But when celebrating the Hijrah day, you are celebrating not only the historic success of the Prophet’s migration but also the triumph of Islam as the everlasting password of the Universe. That is why Muslims, during the period of Hijrah celebration do exchange pleasantries by congratulating one another and by chanting the slogan of HAPPY NEW YEAR!

FEMI ABBAS

Monologue 

The  Sultan of Sokoto and President General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), His Eminence, Dr. Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, is 64 years old. He attained that golden age precisely last Monday, August 24, 2020, a date of birth he shares with the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, the Nigerian President-elect who was prevented from assuming office.

His Eminence was about 50 years old when he ascended the exalted throne of the great Sokoto Caliphate in November, 2006 as the 20th Sultan of that Caliphate. But typical of his exemplary humility and dedication to man’s humanity to man, His Eminence does not celebrate birthday for two reasons:

In emulation of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), he deliberately abstains from ventilating a joyous atmosphere for himself in a situation where many ordinary people are wallowing in penury.

He personally perceives aristocracy of birth, if there is one at all, as a rare privilege rather than a right. To him, such a privilege must not be flamboyantly celebrated in a way to arouse any psychological chagrin in underprivileged people. Thus, instead of sitting down glamorously, last Monday, in his royal palace to celebrate birthday in royal regalia, like his royal colleagues, His Eminence was in Kaduna to deliberate with the Governor of that State and share thoughts and ideas with him on how to settle the crisis in the Southern part of that State. That was because, as usual, the Sultan abhors any act of violence let alone killings and counter killings as a perennial case in that State.

That is Sultan Mahammad Sa’ad Abubakar for you. And, he had embarked on similar mission severally in most parts of the country ever since he ascended the Sultanate’s throne in 2006.

Preamble

Leaders are not those who ascribe leadership to themselves politically by whim or by caprice. The real leaders are the very few ones who are sincerely acknowledged by their followers, publicly or privately, as effective leaders in intent and in action. This Sultan is a typical example of the latter category. The great man’s leadership traits are not, in anyway, hidden. He neither speaks just to be heard nor acts just to be seen. His utterances which are in tandem with his actions, are always timely and meaningful, not just for the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria, but also, for the entire black race. And, he combines certain qualities, the likes of which distinguished the second Caliph in Islam, Umar Bn Khattab, clearly among the first four Caliphs.

For Nigerian Muslims of today, Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar is a vivid reminder of Umar Bn Khattab’s leadership prowess at the early stage of Islam. This Sultan is a bold and charismatic soldier like Umar Bn Khattab. He is visionary, firm, humble and affable like Umar Bn Khattab. And, he believes so much in leadership by example just like Umar Bn Khattab. Perhaps that is why he is so close to the ordinary people in his day to day running of the Sultanate administration in Sokoto and that of the NSCIA just as Umar Bn Khattab was.

His royal antecedent

Over a decade ago, Sultan Abubakar spoke passionately with touching concern, at a public function, on three important issues, each of which is now vividly manifesting in Nigeria. First, he advised the three tiers of government to use the then booming oil revenue to ventilate the economic environment for possible mass employment of the teeming youths in the country. Secondly, he warned the people in government, at that time, against sustenance of mass unemployment of youths which he described as a time bomb that could explode anytime. Thirdly, he attributed the rising rate of criminal tendencies in the country to mass unemployment of able bodied youths and ravaging poverty in the land. He then cautioned those in government against criminal consequences of that ugly situation. At the time the Sultan made that speech, the menace of banditry, kidnapping and Boko Haram /ISWAP insurgency had not become as much a threat as they are today.

Admonition

On the occasion at which he delivered the above mentioned highly valuable speech, His Eminence also admonished Nigerian Muslims not to be bellicose towards non-Muslims in reaction to provocative utterances and obnoxious conducts of some disgruntled charlatans in the country who were masquerading in the cloak of religion.

He counselled the Ummah to rather educate any non-Muslim who might want to tread the path of religious transgression against Islam than resort to hate speech and mudslinging. In that speech, His Eminence concluded that it was only in a peaceful atmosphere that people of diverse spiritual and temporal backgrounds could comfortably co-exist in a multi religious and multi tribal society like Nigeria.

Impact of his leadership

Since his assumption of office as the Sultan, the impact of His Eminence’s leadership both as a royal father and the Commander of Nigerian Muslim Ummah as well as the CUSTODIAN OF NIGERIA’S NATIONAL MOSQUE, has been unprecedented in history. This Sultan is one of the most mobile personalities in thoughts and in action in Nigeria as well as in the entire world. The reverberating echoes of the historic lectures about peace and harmony which he delivered at Harvard and Oxford Universities in 2011 are vehement attestation to the above assertion about his leadership.

In Retrospect

When this great man was five years old on the throne in 2011, yours sincerely wrote an article about him in this column which remains as relevant today as it was then. An excerpt from that article is as follows:

“In every crowd of horizontal men there is always one vertical man who deserves honour not much because of his vertical position but because of the significant difference which that position makes in a society.”

History and Man

“History and man are like Siamese twins or a pair of scissors. The one cannot function effectively without the other. History makes man just as man makes history. And, the reciprocal baton that symbolises their togetherness continues to change hands between them as long as they remain in existence”.

“In November 2006, an official announcement of the sighting of a human crescent which had remained hidden in the firmaments of the orbit was made. That crescent turned out to be the towering personality generally known today as the Sultan of Sokoto. His name, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar did not ring any bell in Nigeria before the referred historic announcement. But thereafter, he was crowned ‘The Sultan of Sokoto’ precisely on November 6, 2006.

Thus, the emergence of Brigadier General Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar (rtd.) as the successor to the exalted throne of the great Sokoto Caliphate without any controversy came as a surprise to many Nigerians. At 50 years of age then, many people thought that he was one of the youngest men to ascend that throne in many decades. But he humbly disagreed with that assumption as he recalled that his own father, Sultan Abubakar Sadiq III who died in 1988 ascended the throne at the age of 37.

His pedigree

With a sound military background coupled with a sound intellectual aristocracy and a high level diplomatic exposure, this Sultan has been perceived, since coming into office, as a millennial royal Commander divinely designated to pilot the affairs of Islam and the Muslim Ummah with unequalled success.

Philosophers’ assertion

Given the qualities highlighted above, only a few people will want to disagree with the Philosophers who once asserted that every new century has a way of producing a great leader. The example Dr. Abubakar is a manifest attestation to that assertion. Ever since he assumed the exalted royal office of the Sultan 14 years ago (2006), this great man has convincingly exemplified all the qualities of genuine leadership in an aura of personification. Every statement he has made socially, religiously or politically and every action he has taken publicly or privately has proved to be a school from which all well-meaning people continue to learn one lesson or another.

As ABU Chancellor

Five years after his assumption of office, the symbiotic relationship of history and man was reconfirmed in Zaria, on Wednesday, (November 23, 2011), when a galaxy of well-meaning men and women from all walks of life and from all parts of the world, assembled to say “we are here to bear witness”. That was the day His Eminence was installed as the Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. The occasion was just one of many on which laurels that have been accruing to him since he assumed the royal office as Sultan.

An American President, Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), once described a leader as “a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like it”. By his activities and functions so far, Sultan Abubakar has proved Truman right by demonstrating to the Ummah that the time has come for the reformation, not only of the NSCIA, but also of the Sultanate.

Education in Islam

In Islam, education is the first law. It is only through it that man can understand life in all its ramifications. That was why Allah’s very first revelation to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in the Qur’an, ordained education for Muslims thus: “Read in the name of Allah Who created; He created man from clots of blood; Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One, Who taught man by the pen; He taught man what he (man) did not know…”Q. 96:1-4.

To further emphasise the compelling need for education in Islam, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was reported to have said in one Hadith that “knowledge is a lost treasure. Muslims should search for it and pick it wherever they could find it”.

But information is the main source of education just as education is the source of knowledge. Without information there can be no education. And without education there can be no progress. That is why the Sultan started his reformation of the Sultanate from the premise of education. It is only with education that most problems in man’s world can be solved without much ado.

Sultan Abubakar also believes that education without social harmony is like a virtue without value and that there can be no harmony in a society where people are overwhelmed by ignorance and poverty as in Nigeria. Thus, he has consistently focused on both.

Installation as Chancellor

At his installation as the Chancellor of ABU in 2011, Sultan Abubakar told the crowd that “the current socio economic indices in Nigeria were a clear indication that the country had begun to drift”. He lamented the fact that despite the nation’s unprecedented resources, development had failed to match the national wealth.

In his words: “Corruption has emasculated our progress even as poverty and unemployment have pushed citizens to the brinks, fueling and confounding social conflicts even as inter-communal crisis has extracted heavy toll in both human lives and property”. He went further to say that: “Persistent insecurity has generated panic and anxiety; our social and physical infrastructures are far from meeting the needs of the nation; the country appears to be adrift and at the core of all these is moral decay engendered by ignorance and greed.” He also noted that no reformation of the tertiary education sector in the country could be effective without putting in place, the progressive developments required in the basic and senior secondary education sectors”. His Eminence insisted that: “our state governments, especially those of the North, must begin to realize the enormity of the challenges facing the education sector and take urgent and necessary steps to address these challenges.” He lauded the founding fathers of the ABU, particularly, the late Sarduana of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and urged the authorities of the school to continue to abide by the cardinal principles on which the institution was founded.

Royal voice against corruption

This Nigeria’s renascent Sultan is a man who, though at the topmost echelon of the tree of comfort still feels so much concerned about the plight of the peasants who are hopelessly consigned to the weeding of the shrubs by official policies. He has never relented in his advocacy for good governance, denunciation of corruption and religious intolerance.

Interfaith Engagements

When His Eminence was invited in January 2010 to a religious seminar organiSed by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) with the theme: ‘Knowing Your Muslim Neighbour’, he delivered an historic speech that reverberated meaningfully across the entire world. And in May, same year, he also invited the leadership of CAN to a special conference of the NSCIA held in Kaduna. The theme of that conference was: ‘Islam in the Eyes of the Christians’. He is the first Nigerian first class Monarch ever to engage in such an interfaith affair at the national level and his speech on that occasion was quite electrifying as usual.

Electoral Reform

In his special counsel to the National Assembly, and indeed all tiers of Government, His Eminence said those in government should not relent in their efforts to engineer electoral reform and to ensure that Nigerians have a genuine electoral process that guarantees free and fair elections. “Unless and until we do that, our nation will continue to be haunted by the unholy alliance between fraudulent elections and illegitimate electoral outcomes, the consequences of which we all know very well. We must break away from this vicious circle and confer on Nigerians the power and indeed the ability to decide, freely and willingly, who leads them at all levels of governance”.

“….There is also the urgent need for us to re-evaluate our conception of leadership as a nation…. needless to add, that there is no way we can make genuine progress as a nation when a significant number of our populace wallows in abject poverty unable to secure the requisite means for their sustenance and to cater for the health and educational needs of their families. Democracy must build a humane society capable of looking after the legitimate needs of its citizenry. For it to be truly successful, it must be able to bring real progress to all sectors of our diverse society. “Finally we must all work hard to limit the influence of wealth in our society and to support those values that promote social responsibility, excellence and hard work”. Now, where is the role of birth in all these?

Grassroots Interaction

Sultan Abubakar is, no doubt, a leader who knows the problems of his followers and associates with them in solving those problems. Through his humble interaction with all Muslims in Nigeria irrespective of tribal or geographical boundaries, he has become the first Sultan to create a strong feeling of a united Muslim Ummah under a competent and kind leader. And by speaking out incessantly against policies which seem to deliberately impoverish ordinary Nigerians across board, this Sultan has brought a rare hope to Nigeria and the Muslims are the luckiest for it. Such a leader deserves allegiance, loyalty and regular prayer from the Ummah. We pray for the elongation of his life with very sound health and continued Allah’s guidance. Amin!