A review of Usman Bugaje’s ‘Muslims and the Nigerian Political Space’

There seems to be no letting up in the stream of books coming out of the prodigious pen of Usman Bugaje. ‘Muslims and the Nigerian Political Space’ his latest book is a collection of papers written for a conference that took place in Kaduna in January 1999. Bugaje was prominent among the conveners of the conference and a major contributor in the proceedings. It is therefore appropriate for him to edit the book and release it for general consumption.

January 1999 would fall into a defining period in our march into democracy as a nation because it was only then that there was a glimmer of hope that the soldiers were really on their way out of government. Suddenly there was an air of freedom to associate and to express one’s views freely, and in the open.

The conference was a collaborative effort between four Muslim groups, some local, some national, that were in the forefront in organizing Muslims across the country to take an informed view of happenings around them. These groups which included the Kadunabased Vision Trust Foundation (VTF) and the WAFF Road Mosque Forum (WRMF), as well as the Federation of Muslim Women Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN), the Movement for Islamic Culture and Awareness (MICA) and Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP) all met in Kaduna in their attempt to get the Muslim community to begin to engage. The fact that Usman Bugaje is now publishing the proceedings close to twenty years after the event clearly point to the fact that the issues raised at that time of our history have not gone away and would not unless the Muslim community addresses them properly.

In an extended introduction in the book, Usman Bugaje, laid out the reasons why since the imposition of colonial rule there has been restiveness among Muslims in the Nigerian State who have always refused to accept British cultural superiority. The refusal to be enthralled by the British system of education, law or governance, was a sore point and a constant source of friction with colonial regimes and all their successors. Bugaje says: ‘It should not be difficult to understand why Muslims are not happy with the Nigerian State. Not only has it failed to deliver on its greatest promise, material development, but it has kept reining them in, all in the name of peace and development which has turned out to be a mirage. This is not to suggest that other citizens are happy, far from it, no one really seems to be happy with the Nigerian State; every group is sulking in some corner.’

Understandably, Bugaje heaped his greatest scorn on the Nigerian Muslim citizenry and their leaders, that is, both the Ulama and the elites who served as political leaders. He had angry words for the Ulama who forsome reasons give blind support to incompetent and corrupt governments. He had angrier words for the Muslims in government or in other political positions who hide behind the veil of religion to enrich themselves and their families. He believed that there was a collective failure in the Islamic duty of enjoining what is good and forbidding what is evil (Amr bil maarf wa nahyi anil Munkar).

Besides the introduction there are five chapters that constitute the book. The first was the keynote address, titled ‘Muslims and the Political Future of Nigeria’ delivered by the late Sulemanu Kumo in which he expressed his wellknown views on the stifling effects of the unitary system of government instituted by the military regimes. His address contains proposals for a federation where the federal government restricts itself to just a few federal matters while leaving the rest to the federation units. Sulemanu Kumo was Director, Centre for Islamic and Legal Studies, Institute of Administration, ABU, Zaria in the early 1970s, where I was myself a student in the School of Business. He was later to take over as Director of the Institute in 1975. A fiery speaker who was very critical of military regimes Sulemanu Kumo gravitated into political activities, becoming a member of G18, which later became G34 and founders of the People Democratic Party. Very sadly the nation lost him in 2008.

One of the most illuminating chapters in the book is the one written by Hamid Bobboyi. Those of us acquainted with Hamid know that he is a thoroughbred from the stables of ABU Zaria’s famous History Department. He was Director Arewa House, Kaduna, and has just assumed duties as the Chief Executive of Universal Basic Education Commission. His paper, ‘Muslims and Political Development in Nigeria’ gives an overview of the struggle and engagement of Muslims in the political processes in the country from the pre-colonial through the colonial to the present. In his concluding remarks, he was, like Bugaje, equally saddened by the realities of the condition of Muslims in the country. He said, ‘given the high Islamic standards of accountability and probity, one would have expected that Muslims would display more accountability in governance than others. But Muslims in power have not performed dramatically different from non-Muslims, in certain circumstances they have actually performed far worse. We cannot continue to make claims to probity and have only Umar Ibn Khattab, who lived some one and a half millennium ago, to keep coming back to, for example.’

Tajuddin Gbadamosi, a Professor of History in the University of Lagos and a leading light of the Lagos Muslim community discusses the general issues relating to the establishment of the Pax Islamica as a political objective which would be a way of raising the moral and spiritual health of the Muslim citizenry. As a means to achieving this objective he also raised the specific issues of the establishment of Sharia, Islamic Banking, Zakkat and the federal system. He attached to his paper the well-known document issued by Ali Ibn Abi Talib to the then Governor of Egypt Malik bn Ashtar, as an example of the high standard of governance to be expected by any polity that claims Islam.

The chapter, ‘Muslim Women in Politics’ was a paper presented by Nimah Modupe Abdulrahheem, a lecturer of Jurisprudence and International law in the Faculty of Law, University of Ilorin. Nimah posited that despite the injunctions in the Qur’an and the Hadith on the participation of women in public affairs and the outstanding performance of women in position of leadership over the years, women in this country were still being deliberately denied their rightful places in politics and other endeavours in public affairs. She urged the society to give women their dues as ‘to deny them the right to all key positions in the society on the grounds of their faith will amount to giving their counterpart of other faith undue advantage over them’.

In the final chapter Bugaje attempted developing a vision for the Muslim citizenry after considering the fact that the world had gone ahead and left the community far behind. He brought out all the grim realities affecting Muslim communities in the country: the poorest section of the nation known to abandon their children to beg on the streets, the least educated whose land is being nonchalantly allowed to be eaten up by desertification. In crafting a vision for the Ummah, Bugaje believes that particular areas must be identified and acted upon. ‘The first thing’, he said, ‘is to get the Muslim community 100% literate in any script, Arabic, Latin, Sanskrit, Chinese etc’. Then, even more important: a new generation of Ulama who are comfortable in both Western and Islamic tradition of learning must emerge to guide the community through the political and the social mine fields.

As usual the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar 11, with a keen eye for good books, has written a supportive forward in which he recommends the book,’ to all in the Muslim community, and indeed all other Nigerian citizens in our collective effort to build a peaceful and purposeful nation for our benefits and those of future generation’.