] Watch] Civil Society That conference and our future (I)

Hajiya Bilkisu

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We were in Sokoto for a town hall meeting of stakeholders on Maternal and Child Health. I sat at the registration table with the members of AdvocacyNigeria network, the nongovernmental organization hosting the meeting with support from SURE- P. One of the members of the network started discussing the events unfolding at the conference.

I have been listening to those disparate groups of delegates at the Abuja National conference and wondering when they will finish their debate on the President’s speech. I found some of them boring, some are articulate and some are definitely out to create discord by making false and provocative statements. So sad because they are supposed to be leaders.

I am also amazed at the divisive agenda some of the delegates have been promoting but one delegate made my day. His speech gave me hope .A young man who is now showing his elders, some of them old enough to be his grandparent what civility is.

Who is this delegate? Auwal: He is my friend, Malam Nurudeen Lemu a delegate representing the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, from Niger state, a young man in his thirties who provided an interfaith perspective to the Conference. He got a thunderous ovation.

What did he say to attract spontaneous ovation?

Auwal: Malam Nuru Lemu, reminded other delegates that ‘as a people representing people of faith in God from the Islamic perspective, one thing we believe is that God will protect the community that stands for justice even if they are not Muslims and God will not protect the community that goes contrary to justice even if they call themselves Muslims. God is not a religious bigot.’

Well said. He was echoing Sheikh Usman Danfodio the nineteenth century Islamic reformer and founder of the Sokoto Caliphate. The sheikh said ‘A country can live with unbelief but cannot survive with injustice. Malam Nuru also spoke

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the truth, a principle enshrined in Danfodio’s code of ethics. The Sheikh said ‘Conscience is an open wound, only truth can heal it.”

Very true. No nation can survive when there is injustice and the best place to talk about the injustice meted out to poor Nigerians is at that conference. There are powerful people there who have sustained the machinery of injustice.

Malam Nuru also drew attention to gender injustice and other types of unjust cultures. He said ‘God is not a male chauvinist. He is not an ethnocentric tribalist. God is not the oppressor of anyone. God is with those who care; those who want for others those things they want for themselves.’

There is gender imbalance in the composition of that conference and there are extremists of all shades. From Niger Delta militants who see us as ‘parasites’ feeding on the oil that belongs to them because Allah put it under their soil, to secessionist who want Biafra recreated to ethnic and religious extremists who intimidate Nigerians who are not from their own ethnic or religious group.

Malam Nuru addressed all of them when he said ‘ one tendency for people who claim to follow a religion is to slide into the position of believing that we are better than the others. We overestimate our virtues and underestimate the goodness in others. The tendency is for us to become spiritually arrogant; to forget that others are people like us. There is always a tension between representing our religious communities or our ethnic communities and our loyalty to the virtues and values and teachings of our religion even those lofty ideals of our ethnic groups. ‘

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I don’t know of any religion or ethnic group that preaches violence. However the way some of the so called leaders who are now delegates at the conference have been making inflammatory statements is disturbing. One can’t explain how they got appointed to discuss the future of this country.

Well Malam Nuru

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Editor’s note: Our Editorial of yesterday, “INEC can hold all elections in one day,” was inclusive; a production glitch caused the excision of the last

paragraph. The error is regretted. set the record straight when he said ‘It is our prayer that delegates will try and ensure that the spiritual strength we have in us will keep us from not getting angry and not allowing our bitterness from others to make us sail from justice. It is in this vein and as a delegate from the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, we condemn the murder of all Christians, we condemn the murder of all Muslims. Not because they are Christians or Muslims, but because they are human beings – creatures of God. There is no compulsion in religion. We all own Nigeria. We all belong here. And we all have the right to self-determination. ‘

Coming from Jos, a city that has had more than its fair share of senseless killing of innocent people, I was glad that he mentioned the settler/ indigene dichotomy. He said ‘Every ethnic group is an oppressed minority somewhere. Every group is a religious and ethnic minority somewhere. Every majority or settler is an indigene somewhere. In one way, we are all settlers; we just don’t remember where we came from or why we came.

But ultimately, we are all visitors to this planet, from God we come and to Him we return.’

Am from Zangon Kataf in Kaduna State and this strand resonates with me. My great grandparents settled in Zango over three hundred years ago. We can’t trace our original home but we are still being referred to as “settlers.” So how many years do we need to live in a place before we qualify to be ‘indigenes? The state capital Kaduna is also a divided city like Jos. We need to accommodate diversity and bring an end to ethnic cleansing.

Malam Nuru addressed that too when he reminded delegates that ‘ we should respect that right and do unto others what we will do unto ourselves. There are many other countries that have ethnic and religious diversity far greater than what we have here in Nigeria. But something that distinguishes us from them, be it Singapore, United States, they have been able to respect the rule of law so that any bigot, any nepotistic individual who tramples on the right of anyone especially that of the minority, the rule of law will catch up with them. Satan will only find a hole if there is a crack in that rule of law.’

There is certainly a crack in the wall of our various communities and Satan has established his home in people’s minds.

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It is our responsibility to make peace in the minds of people so that we can have peace in our country.

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