As Nigerians propose, God disposes
Today, Saturday February 16, 2019, is historic in Nigeria’s political history. It is the day when the All Progressives Congress (APC) which was once an opposition party will be standing as a ruling party in the country`s general elections. Although three elections (presidential, senatorial, and house of reps) are taking place today, the presidential seems to be of greater concern to most voters. Today, the efforts of some candidates contesting in the elections would positively or otherwise be trumped by fate.
While voters have the constitutional right to propose or decide leaders of their choice, it is God’s prerogative on the hand to dispose of voters’ proposals. This divine law is not only peculiar to elections and electoral matters alone but applies also to every human aspiration on earth. For every elective position, only one among several contestants is due to emerge as a winner. Islam teaches that possessing power and authority or losing such is dependent upon Allah’s Will.
Irecently came across an interview granted by Dr. ChiChi Aniagolu-Okoye, the Country Director at Girl Effect Nigeria, where she discussed, among other things, northern Nigeria’s educational disadvantage. In the interview, Dr. Aniagolu-Okoye tried to debunk the fact of northern Nigeria’s educational disadvantage. She said the region cannot be said to be educationally disadvantaged when the country had never had an apartheid government, and that, in fact, for the most part of its history, Nigeria had been ruled by majority northerners.
While I do not dispute some of the arguments put forward by Dr. Aniagolu-Okoye such as that it is high time northerners moved away from associating themselves with the often devaluing ‘educationally disadvantaged’ tag so that they could liberate themselves from being ridiculed by the competing forces in school admission requirements and government employments, I, however, disagree totally with her view that northern Nigeria has never been disadvantaged, educationally.
Dr. Aniagolu-Okoye also said that northerners are not educationally disadvantaged as there are brilliant people within the north such as Emir Muhammad Sanusi II. She said what northerners lacked was an environment for Allah, the Omnipotent, states in Qur’an 3:26 “Say: O Allah! Lord of Power (and Rule), Thou gives power to whom Thou pleases and Thou strips off power from whom Thou pleases; Thou endues with honour whom Thou pleases and Thou brings low whom Thou pleases; in Thy hand is all Good. Verily, over all things Thou has power”.
The above verse teaches that neither the popularity of a powerseeker nor his deep passion or desperation for it is enough to place power in the hands of its seeker. More fundamental and above all human calculations, intrigues, campaigns, intimidations, hate-speeches, promises and pleadings is Allah’s irresistible Will when it comes to attaining power. As candidates or their supporters, we should accept the verdict in Allah’s Will when leaders emerge from today’s elections, which according to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is designed to be free and fair.
While Allah’s verdict would excite candidates that emerge from the elections as winners, good education. This is a no brainer and it goes to even further dispel her earlier position on the educational disadvantage of northerners. No serious person will even debate that a given group of people are naturally more intelligent than another group, but what is certain is that no matter how intelligent you are, you remain a potential until you are exposed to a systematic process of learning to awaken that potential. So, yes, northerners are very brilliant people like other people in the world, but they have suffered from educational policies that contributed to their problems today. Emir Sanusi II, whom Dr. Aniagolu-Okoye quoted, agrees with this position very well, and he even espoused this thesis in of one of the recent lectures he gave at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Thus, in the paragraphs that follow, I summarise the main points of Emir Sanusi’s London lecture as a tailor-made response to Dr. Aniagolu-Okoye.
It is clear from the interview that Dr. Aniagolu-Okoye is not well acquainted with the history of education in northern Nigeria from the colonial periods and unto the modern day. She was not aware, for instance, that the first three governors of the northern region during the colonial periods have had a bad experience in the Mahdist Sudan in the late 19th century which the same verdict would sadden others. As believers, we are expected to take whatever comes our way in life, good or bad, as destiny over which we are urged to patiently persevere. We should learn to accept Allah’s decision in every matter as the best thing to happen to us. If the outcome of the election conforms to our expectation, it is only reasonable that we give gratitude to Allah (SWT) without resorting to any wild celebrations. If the outcome, on the other hand, runs contrary to what we hoped for, we must not take recourse to violence or actions that could lead to it. We have a duty to suppress the tendency by individuals or groups to breach public peace.
Let us desist and encourage others to abstain from daring Allah’s wisdom when He (SWT) choses a person as a leader. Allah’s choice for a people can never be wrong because all that comes from Him is blameless. To consider Allah’s verdict as Good is conformity to His Will. A believer who submits to Allah and His Will shall not suffer impatience against anything (event or moment) that led to the Mahdist War (ath-Thawra al-Mahdī) prior to their deployment to northern Nigeria by the colonial administration. History is replete with the causes of the Mahdi uprising led by the religious leader Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, against British colonial officers. The British participation in the war was well documented by Winston Churchill (a participant in the war, who later became prime minister of Britain) in his book “The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899).” Because of the experience in the Sudan, the British colonial officers came to northern Nigeria with the intent to not reproduce the type of radical Muslim intellectuals that they had to confront in the Sudan, and even elsewhere in Egypt and India.
With that resolve in mind, the British had a set of policies that included the need to keep most northerners as much illiterate as possible. But when there is a need to allow northerners to have access to education, the British equally resolved to educate people only in the sense that they could become competent employees of the Native Authority, and thus, be subservient to the colonial administration, always. It was therefore a categorical policy that included, principally, a fortitude to instruct northerners to respect colonial hierarchies while gives him pain or sorrow. Allah is Good; and He only does what is good. As believers, we have faith in destiny. All that has been willed to be must be, right in the end.
Any person who refuses to accept Allah’s Will is only declaring a war against himself. It would seem to be an illusion to believe that everything our hearts covet is good for us. It would equally be erroneous to assume that everything we detest is actually bad. For example, those who believe that President Buhari do not deserve to win todays presidential election could be very wrong. Only Allah (SWT) knows best that which is good for us as a people, and therefore, His choice overrides all human choices. Allah (SWT) states in Qur’an 4:19 “…it may be that ye dislike a thing, and Allah brings about through it a great deal of good”.
No matter how an individual or group of people hates President Buhari’s victory in today’s election for a second term in office, if it is Allah’s Will that he wins, nothing of course would stop that from happening. The story of Prophet Yusuf (AS) as told in the holy Qur’an explains how Allah’s plan plays out against all human plots. It is the same lesson which the 19th hadith in Annawawi`s collection of 40 traditions teaches. In this hadith which is classified as Qudsiyy, Abdullahi bn Abbas(RA) said he was once behind the Prophet (SAW) when upholding the primacy of the white man; and to also teach northerners technical skills that were required at the time, while making sure that the education they receive do not make them develop a capacity for independent thought that could lead to a revolt against the system. The effect of these policies was visible in northern Nigeria in the mid-20th century. For instance, of all the protectorates of imperial Britain, northern Nigeria had the least number of schools. As at 1959, Barewa College was the only college in northern Nigeria which offered the Higher School Certificate (HSC), while there were 20 schools in southern Nigeria which offered the same qualification. At the time Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960, there were approximately 2000 elementary schools in the north with an enrolment figure of 200,000, while there were 9000 elementary schools in the south with an enrolment figure of 1.2 million. More interestingly, these figures were before the Universal Free Education was authorised in the southern region by Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
It is also true that nowhere in the imperial British colonies around the world did we have the wide gap between education for boys and girls than we did in northern Nigeria. These gaps were because of the British colonial policies on education in the northern region. The first boys’ school in northern Nigeria was set up around 1910, and the first girls’ school was set up almost 30 years later, and even more interestingly the girls’ schools were aimed at teaching mostly children of the noble families with curricula that was designed to educate the girls on how to become good wives and daughters of the educated boys; he said : “…know that even if the (entire) community where to make a united effort to benefit you in any matter, they would not benefit you in anything except that which Allah has prescribed for you. And if they were to make a united effort to harm you in any matter, they would not be able to harm you in anything except that which Allah has prescribed for you. The pens have been lifted and the pages are dry”. That is the simple and concise explanation of the workings of Allah’s Will and command. Therefore, if it is Allah’s Will that President Buhari will serve two tenures of 8 years, everything will work in Buhari`s favour to win today’s presidential election. This, indeed, is the wish of all patriotic Nigerians who want Buhari to finish the war he is waging against corruption and insurgency.
As echoed by President Buhari within the week, Nigeria is greater than any political party. Peaceful, free and fair elections are, thus, not negotiable. There must be Nigeria before there could be any political party. Nigeria, not a candidate or a political party, must win the 2019 general elections. Nigeria becomes the winner if all elections hold under the freest and fairest atmosphere. May Allah (SWT) give us leaders that will take Nigeria to the next level in everything that will make the country great; especially in the difficult fight against treasury looters and insurgents, amin. without any attempt to give the girl child a reason to think about constructing her own economic existence.
To worsen the situation even further, the northern Nigerian commoners were hesitant in sending their children to schools until so many years later, simply because they did not see a reason to do so. In the mid-1940s for example, most boys from humble backgrounds who had finished schools in northern Nigeria could not find jobs in the Native Authority, and only children of the nobility did. There was a reason for this-the British Indirect Rule system was primarily instituted to give advantage to the traditional system in northern Nigeria so long as the traditional system, where the children of the nobility came from, remained loyal to the interests of imperial Britain.
It is important to state, however, that northern Nigeria was not entirely an illiterate society before colonialism. There was the Ajami literature where Hausa language was written using Arabic characters, and this was stopped because imperialist officers at the time of colonialism felt that if they allowed the continuation of Arabic inscriptions, they would basically encourage a persistent surge of the Mohammedan religion. This detestation and fear of the Mohammedan religion continues in Nigeria even today where nonMuslim Nigerians advocated for the removal of the Ajami script on the national currency. The president and the central bank governor at the time agreed to the removal of the Ajami inscriptions on the naira because they believed that it was Arabic, and therefore, Mohammedan.
February 16, 2019