Jonathan is the solution, not the cause of Nigeria’s woes!
TO assign to President Jonathan the woes that are plaguing Nigeria today is one of the greatest ironies in Nigerian contemporary history. This essay is geared to prove without any fears of contradiction that he is the solution not the cause or the source of Nigeria’s problems. For now, let’s consider the verdict of Nigerian history as it relates to the Nigerian romance with Muslims and Muslim leaders in Nigeria.

According to Kenneth Cragg in his book - The Call of the Minaret, Islam has always been confidently a political religion. He said that Muslims by definition were never meant to be alien-ruled. Their state is an inseparable part of their religion. In history, Islam is a supreme displacer of Christianity. This fact is proven by Jenkins, a keen researcher in Middle Eastern Christianity. He observed “that in 1050 the population of Asia Minor was mainly Christian, but by 1450 Christians were reduced to 10-15 per cent of the population. Also, between 1200-1500 the number of Christians in Asia Minor fell from 21 milliom to 3.4 million.

“Even as late as in 1900s Christians were about 11 per cent of the population throughout the whole of the Middle East.” Thereafter, Jenkins concludes “for practical purposes Middle Eastern Christianity has within living memory, all but disappeared as a living force.” Historically, the path of dialogue between Christianity and Islam has not worked out in practical terms. This is due to the fundamental belief of the Muslims in holy Jihad through which they seek to subjugate the entire world into submission to Allah and his law-sharia.

In view of this, it seems impossible to have any meaningful dialogue with Islamists who are committed to violent Jihad. Islam, it should be noted, is not just a religion; on the contrary it is a complete political, economic, social, educational and religious network with its own forms of governance. It exercises its own laws, teaches the young and controls the society. Ideally, the Muslim Ummah or community encompasses all the Islamic nations which operate as one empire. The goal of Islamist idealists today, is to restore this union of Islamic peoples and then extend its power and control over the entire earth.

Today the unfolding ugly drama of Boko Haram atrocities culminating in the broad day light abduction of 234 secondary school girls under the very watch of the State Governor – the State’s chief security officer, is not a surprise because that’s part of the calculated strategy of Muslim leaders to render Nigeria ungovernable and discourage the sitting President from running for the presidency in 2015. Their main organ of insulting and frustrating the efforts of the incumbent President is through the print and electronic media under their control. They insult the office of the President as if they do now know that it is a sacred office. They carelessly and thoughtlessly blame all the woes inflicted on Nigeria by Boko Haram on the presidency. They think that nobody is seeing them, they forget that the God of Israel and the Christian God is the “all seeing God”.

He sees everything that happens everywhere in the world, including Nigeria. Not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without His knowing. Some of the Muslim leaders forget they are flesh and blood and not God. However, in spite of how much they might blow up their images in their Newspapers to look like gods, they are not. They are mere mortals, ash and dust that shall one day be swept away into the dustbin of history to face the wrath and judgment of God, for “it is appointed unto man to die once and after that judgment.”  In view of the foregoing, I state categorically that it is the Muslims in Nigeria that are the real cause of all the woes that have befallen Nigeria since 1914 not Mr. President. All their grouse is that they are not in power and they can’t imagine the contradiction of being ruled by a non-Muslim.

Hence a man, Dapo Thomas in Sunday Nation (May 11, 2014 P68) could write with lamentable display of ignorance: “God, Why Punish us (Nigeria) for Jonathan’s Failure?” Rather than ask God, Why Punish Nigerians by injecting Muslims into our body politics?” Let’s examine the historical facts to prove this point: Major Religious Crises in Nigeria after the Civil War (1970-2014)

The Sharia Crisis (1976 -1979): The Sharia issue is as old as Islam itself in Nigeria. It was the aim of Usman Dan Fodio to implement it in the northern emirates in order to reform what he perceived as the lax in the practice of Islam among the Emirs. Matthew Kukah made reference to this point when he said: “the jihad of Usman dan Fodio was the establishment of an Islamic State based on the Sharia” (Kukah: Religion, Politics and Power …pl15).  That the Sharia issue is major source of conflict in the Nigerian body politics, is incontestable. It was this Sharia debate that set the stage for the prevalent religio-political crisis that existed at the time when Alhaji Shehu Shagari became the president during the Second Republic (1979 -1983)

The Shagari Regime Religious Crises (1979 -1983): Although the Sharia provisions were not included in the 1979 Constitution in exactly the same way the Muslims demanded, they at least saw the election and the swearing-in of President Shehu Shagari as Allah’s will for Nigeria. With Shagari, a Sokoto prince and a Muslim, Muslims felt that the stage was set for the achievement of the will of Allah: effective Islamization of Nigeria.

Kano Riot (18-29 December 1980): The December 1980 Kano Riot, because of its bloody nature and high level of destruction involved, has come to be referred to as the first religious and bloody riot in contemporary Nigeria. However, according to the report of the Tribunal of Enquiry set up after the 1980 riot, it was observed that prior to the Kano outbreak, there had been over thirty violent incidents of religious riots in the northern states. But these were nothing compared to the December 1980 event.

Burning of Churches in Kano (October 1982): The burning of Christian churches in October 1982 is an example of an inter-religious crisis in Nigeria. This was the first open and violent religious conflict between Christians and Muslims. The action of the Muslims was probably fuelled by the laying of the foundation for a Christian Church near a mosque in Kano.

To be continued

E. M. UKAH
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