National Christian Centre
The above was how NTA Network captioned
proceedings at the National Christian Centre, formally, the National
Ecumenical Centre, where interdenominational services are held, which, I
think, would be more apt in capturing what really happened at the centre. That
was not a church service. It was an interdenominational service for 2012
Democracy Day.
The online community’s comments and media reports have dwelt
more on the aspect of corruption as addressed by the guest speaker ARCHBISHOP
PETER AKINOLA, and it is with this aspect of his speech I shall begin.
Credit must be given to Archbishop Peter Akinola for his firm
words against corruption, the part of his speech that got media attention, as
mentioned earlier. The pulpit has never been so frank on the issue of
corruption. This aspect of the speech did not leave anybody out – we are all in
it together; ‘almost everybody is stealing either with his pen or gun’.
Everybody is part of the corruption monster in Nigeria, he said: public and
private office holders, the politicians, the clergy and everyday people who
steal everything they set eyes on, from streetlights to bridge rails, anything
in Nigeria is stolen ‘like an abandoned wreckage’.
He also said that ‘Government has only a half-hearted resolve
to fighting corruption, or punishing those guilty of corrupt practices.’ Only
those who lost favour with the government of the day are punished. Those with
the right political connection are spared. ‘Those fighting corruption in the
judiciary and police have no clean hands’. Even National Assembly’s invitations
are addressed only to such government ministries, parastatals and agencies that
have not remitted part of their loot to individual members of the committees
overseeing them. ‘Those who have made their way with’ our commonwealth ‘and are
living far beyond their means’ are further rewarded by our traditional rulers,
making them high chiefs. ‘Our universities have joined the queue by inviting
such people and giving them honorary doctorate degrees’. Corruption will
continue to strive ‘in full gear because Nigerians and their governments have
chosen to give only lip service to its eradication’.
He concluded by what is called Mubaahalah in Islamic parlance as in Qur’an
3:61, for two disputing parties to gather together, ‘earnestly pray, and
invoke the curse of Allah on those who lie!". He said, of course
paraphrasing Ezekiel 18:20 (The soul who sins is the one who will
die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share
the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited
to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him...):
‘I believe there is a way out, as a Christian, as a preacher, as one who reads
the Bible; I believe there is a way out. Corruption is another word for
stealing; stealing is a sin, God commands us all not to commit. And as you
know, every soul that sins and fails to repent shall die in its sin and end up
in Hell. So, let us resolve here today, to take to the Court of God, beginning
from this place, all those thieves who have failed to repent.’
Archbishop Peter Akinola
At this point he perused the audience carefully as if to make
sure who and who was there. Seated right in front of him was President
Jonathan, state governors and leaders of the National Assembly or their
representatives. Also present were ministers and other top government
functionaries. Then the guest speaker, Archbishop Akinola asked ‘Will you join
me?’ in connection to what he said earlier of taking ‘all those thieves to the
Court of God’. No response. Nobody said amen. You could hear a
pin drop. Quiet, save a faint murmur! ‘Are your hands clean enough?’ He charged
further. No answer.
The scenario would have been the same if this mubaahalah
were conducted in any mosque in this country. Thievery knows no bounds or
religion. The counterparts of the same people who gathered at the Christian
Centre among the Muslims are also stealing the country blind. If any imam would
be courageous enough to invoke Allah’s curse on thieves of our commonwealth only
a few or none of his congregation will dare say ameen.
The few minutes of that silence in the Christian Centre
lingered, then the guest speaker broke it ‘There you go’ said he, ‘corruption
is corruption but you are not ready to fight it, because you are all
beneficiaries of it. Whether you steal in a small way or you steal in a big
way, stealing is stealing.’
He then turned to his constituency, the clergy, and
challenged them for eating people’s property in vanity, devouring what does not
belong to them and interacting with the thieves in government without speaking
truth to power. ‘Let us take our case to the Court of God if you dare!’ On this
also there was complete silence. ‘So,’ he continued, ‘who is deceiving who? You
are only deceiving yourselves, not God.’
It takes courage and sincere passion to say the words he said
and more so in the presence of the country’s sitting president. He minced no
words and the elite present meekly listened to these outpourings of a distressed
heart. It is as he said: the rich and the political class are running this
country aground. They do not steal by the millions any more but by the billions
and lately, trillions! Exactly how long any sane person thinks this can last, I
do not know; but I know it is not sustainable for any length of time.
I admire courage whenever it is honestly displayed and I
would like to think this particular one was not stage-managed but sincere.
Akinola has a good track record in calling a spade a spade in the presence of
authority. I recall his encounter with the Anglican Communion leadership in
England when he threatened to secede with millions of Anglicans from the
central body for what he believed to be immoral interpretations of the Bible
which were used in support of same sex marriages.
Unfortunately, the media neglected the inflammatory and
inciting part of his presentation which was full of historical incongruities
and erroneous interpretation of facts. It is only a Christian evangelist that
can speak so openly in the presence of the custodians of security in Nigeria
which included the Commander-in-Chief himself, distorting history, preaching
hate and goading Christians against Muslims without the press calling for his
arrest, or his establishment expelling him. If any imam were to speak thus he
would have been stopped, accused ‘of inciting people against the government’
(as happened to me at the National Mosque same time last year), and
subsequently removed from his position. Many were the imams that have been so
expelled in not a few of Northern states for speaking against injustice,
corruption and electoral malpractices during the 2011 elections.
Close study of the First Scripture Reading in that Democracy
Day Sermon betrays a deep level of congruence between the verses read and the
import of Akinola’s presentation which portrayed a grand design by the Muslims
in Nigeria, ‘under different names and guises’, to annihilate the
Christians. That First Scripture Reading was from A song of ascents of
David in Psalms 124:1-8 I will quote from the same New
International Version (NIV) of the Bible as did President Jonathan during
his Second Scripture Reading at the event, whatever his reasons were. “If
the Lord had not been on our side—let Israel say — if the Lord had not been on
our side when people attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive when their
anger flared against us; the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would
have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away. Praise be to
the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped like a
bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. Our
help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
President Jonathan delivered the Second Scripture Reading in Romans
8: 28-39 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those
who love him… If God is for us, who can be against us? …… Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or
nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are
considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through
him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither
angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither
height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate
us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
That was the Second Scripture Reading by the number one
citizen, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Federal Republic
of Nigeria. The Islamic community is bereft of political leaders who are proud
of being Muslims or who desire even to be identified with the religion in
anyway.
After the First and the Second Scripture Readings Archbishop
Akinola started by quoting Luke 5:36-37: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment
to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the
patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old
wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out
and the wineskins will be ruined….”
On the strength of these verses Archbishop Akinola questioned
the subsistence of ‘the geographical expression’ called Nigeria based on
the 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates. According to
him the amalgamation was effected illegally ‘for the political and economic
interests of the colonial overloads’, without consultation or permission of the
ethnic nationalities from these Protectorates. In other words, Nigeria is a
consortium of unwilling partners; we remain fragmented and mistrust ourselves.
This situation led to the civil war which could not keep Nigeria one despite
the popular slogan portraying why the government took up arms against its own
people. ‘Unity’ he posited, ‘cannot be attained by military fiat or by war. You
get unity through the collective will of the people in the atmosphere of mutual
respect and trust.’
In Akinola’s estimation bringing the Northern and Southern
Protectorates together has
been ‘the root cause of our problems which governments continue to deny by
patching up the unpatchable’
and ‘putting new
wine into old wineskin, and the wineskin has been bursting…. The problem is not
about this government or about President Jonathan. It is because, ab initio,
we failed to do the right thing – seeking the consent of all nationalities. If
we had sought for the consent of all before the amalgamation, those now calling
for a religious state would have chosen a different path.’
This is quite revealing! Actually, I doubt if this
balkanisation agenda was a unanimous position of all Christians gathered for
the Democracy Day Sermon. It begs that question: what gave Archbishop Akinola
the nerve to preach his divisive gospel in the presence of President Jonathan,
and knowing that the proceedings were beamed live on national television
stations? Is President Jonathan privy to any surreptitious design to break up
this country along ethnic and religious divides? And why is this coming now? Is
the current state of insecurity in the country fashioned in consonance with
that design?
Archbishop Akinola said ‘killings and political insecurity
have been with us from the beginning of our nationhood; it is not new.’ The
North has a history of violence and political pogrom that ‘are older than most
of you sitting here today’, he told his audience. According to him the mayhem
that preceded the civil war in which millions of Igbos were massacred was
called ‘Araba’ in the Hausa language. Araba, in Archbishop
Akinola’s dictionary ‘means to separate infidels from real people of God…. It
was a clear case of religious and ethnic cleansing.’
This is not true. I thought the Archbishop was unaffected
when he, at the commencement of his sermon, declared to reveal ‘the truth about
us in our past; the truth about our beginning as a country, to determine from
where we are and where we are going….’ I am taken aback by this employment of canard
history to preach hate at a time that we need to foster Christian-Muslim mutual
respect and understanding.
Araba, Let Truth Be Told, conjures up the sad events of the
first military coup of January 15, 1966, which, actually, was The Siege
of a Nation, and the motivation of the principal actors or, more
appropriately, the executioners – Nigeria’s Five Majors. The perceived
selective, gruesome murder of Northern leaders during the coup will necessitate
An Intimate Portrait of Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, and why the
violent overthrow was described in some quarters as “Igbo Coup”.
Araba and also Aware were words used to signify separation after the
violence occasioned by the counter-coup of that despondent period of our
history. It is not uncommon for some people due to their ignorance of the
bigger picture and their selfish motives to call for secession; it is still so
today. Pogroms had been unleashed against Igbos in the North as well as against
Northerners in the East, which sad event necessitated the mass exodus of people
across both lines of the divide to their ancestral homelands – the Igbos from
the North to the East, and the Northerners from the East to the North. The
calamitous results of this mass exodus brought about the position taken by the
late Ojukwu, the then Military Governor, that since the property and lives of
Igbos and Northerners cannot be guaranteed in either North or East of Nigeria,
as the case may be, the Igbos shall assert their independence by having a
separate country of their own. That was the context in which Araba was
used; it was not a ‘means to separate infidels from real people of God….’ It
was not ‘a clear case of religious and ethnic cleansing’ as the Archbishop
presented. Besides, Akinola seemed to have forgotten that the North has always
had its fair share of Christians who until the advent of political religion
lived in harmony with their Muslim neighbours. This sad occurrence, if
anything, reminded us of our inherent ability for brutal reprisal whether justified
or otherwise. None of us is an epitome of ethics when it comes to turbulent
circumstances; many of us, not withstanding our professed faiths, whether as
Christians or Muslims, permit our compassion and sympathy to desert us, and we
end up descending into the bottomless pit of belligerence and massacre.
I find no rationale for a man to avenge the death of his
innocent brother by killing more innocent people. The South East chapter of CAN
gave a last warning of sorts to Muslims recently that they would start killing
innocent Muslims in reprisal if there was another bombing of a church. There
was no reaction to this by security agents; as stupid, unchristian and
ill-thought out as it was to say that. What we are in fact witnessing is the
reign of bigotry and mediocrity on both sides. People who have no business
being religious leaders have found their way into positions of leadership, and
erudition is now mistaken for wisdom; selfishness and callousness for courage
and bravery.
Whatever the circumstance of our coming together; as at 1914,
Nigeria had a heterogeneous religious community in both the north and the south.
Akinola in saying the amalgamation was a forced coupling of 2 unwilling parties
is letting us into the inner workings of his mind; a mind that sees the north
as black and the south as white or vice versa. He could not fathom or
countenance any shade in between. This is either religious bigotry or
sectionalism. From Sokoto to Adamawa to Yobe and Kaduna, there has been a long
history of Christians and Christianity.
The late Sardauna of Sokoto had the late Sunday Awoniyi, a
Yoruba speaking Christian as his secretary. He once travelled over 500
kilometres to a remote school to personally congratulate a Christian pupil who
had just done the north proud in WASC examinations. That boy has risen to
become one of the most respected and one of the few rational voices on the
matter of insecurity on the Christian side; my good friend Archbishop
John Onaiyekan. In the South West most especially, the population of
both Muslims and Christians is roughly equal. If there was a grand design to
exterminate Christians like Akinola was insinuating, what took the Muslims so
long? By the way, Muslim leaders have been having reports, for long, of a CAN Army
complete with branded CAN rifles and camouflage uniforms and even armoured
vehicles. The responsible leaders among us have been quelling these in the
minds of their followers. This is to douse any tension and avert any trouble
that it may occasion later. Distrust breeds more distrust ad infinitum, ad
nauseum. I hope both sides will understand this and work for once for real
peace and not mere surface politeness.
‘Fourteen years later’, continued Archbishop Akinola, ‘came
the Maitatsine riots targeting Christians, destroying their churches and hard-earned
properties.’ This unsound narrative relates to the bloody clash of December
1980 between the militant followers of Mohammadu Marwa (alias Maitatsine) and
the Police. That crisis was the aftermath of flawed exegesis of the precepts of
Islam and its practices by Maitatsine, against the known and right
interpretations of orthodox Islam. The Maitatsine
group was outside mainstream Islam and rejected what it termed as “crass
materialism of orthodox mainstream (Tijjaniya/Qadiriyya) while ascribing
divine power and authority bordering on blasphemy to its leader Mohammed Marwa,
Maitatsine”. Therefore, the Maitatsine riots were more of an intra-Muslim
crisis on the one hand, and Maitatsine and the police on the other. It was not
an uprising ‘targeting the Christians, destroying their churches…’
The sermon also touched on ‘the 1987 Kafanchan and Kaduna
riots’ that ‘claimed 1000’ Christian lives; the ‘1992 Zagon Kataf’ mayhem ‘and
the killing of those considered as infidels’; the slaying of Christians in ‘Tafawa
Balewa’ in 1991, 1995 and 2000; the ‘persecution of Christians in Plateau from
1994 to date, due to the question of emirship of Jos, a predominantly Christian
community…’
If politicians lie or twist
historical facts to achieve a mundane end, it is no surprise, for they are wont
to attain to power by any means necessary, lawful or otherwise. But one should
be disturbed nay be fretful when blatant untruth is uttered from the dais and embroidered
with scriptural authorities. I still fail to understand why Archbishop Akinola
chose to go into many sad periods of our nationhood and at the same time
presenting it in a way that will incite his audience against the Muslims.
The Kafanchan unrest was the outcome
of a ‘crusade’ tagged ‘Mission 87’ organised by the Fellowship of Christian
Students (FCS) of Kafanchan College of Education. During the crusade
a Christian convert, Abubakar Bako, was the guest speaker. He used the occasion
to deliberately misinterpret the Qur’an to which action the Muslim Students
Society (MSS) took exception. Trust youthful exuberance to make a mountain
out of a molehill and before you know it, things went out of hand and later the
crisis erupted in the campus with spillages in the town of Kafanchan and Kaduna
state as a whole. So, it was a seemingly calculated act of provocation on the
part of the FCS on the campus to organise a crusade featuring a Christian
convert to use the scripture of his former religion to asperse its teachings. That
was the cause of the crisis.
Economic reasons brought about the
disturbances of Zagon Kataf in 1992. It was a crisis over the resettlement of a
market from its old site to a new one, and who would have control of what in
the way the market was run, between the indigenous Atyab and the 17th century settlers
among the Hausa-Fulani. The Atyab happened to be predominantly Christian, and
the Hausa-Fulani predominantly Muslim just like in Jos. The crisis, at its
infancy, had nothing to do with religion; but it later assumed a religious dimension
with devastating consequences. This has been the trend with most of the insurrections
in the North; a purely ethnic, political or economic clash of powers turning
into a religious crisis because one side happens to be Christian and the other
Muslim; the one a so-called indigene, the other settler.
The crisis in the Plateau is a good
example at hand. Archbishop Akinola said it is ‘due to the question of emirship
of Jos’; nothing could be further from the truth. I’m certain most people among
his audience did not believe what he was saying on this. The truth is that the
indigenous Christians of Birom and other confederate tribes purposed to
ethnically cleanse Jos of the Hausa-Fulani who they claim to be settlers, and
who happen to be Muslims. Was it emirship tussle that led to the massacre and cannibalisation
of Muslims on Eid day in Jos? On September 28th, 2011, armless Muslims who went
out for the Ramadan eid prayers were ambushed by a mob of Rukuba, Afizere and Birom
Christian youths, killed, their flesh roasted and devoured by some of the
murderers. It would have been godlier for the pulpit to condemn such acts of
barbarism as unchristian and against the teachings of Christ, with the same
abhorrence that the issue of corruption was addressed.
I must state in the strongest terms
that any Muslim who targets any Christian who has in no way attacked or abetted
an attack on Muslims is playing with Hell. Only Allah can forgive such a major
crime if such repent before it is too late. It is one of the most abhorrent
things a Muslim can do. I must also urge my Christian brethren; at least those
who have not been blinded by hatred and bigotry to see that killing an innocent
Muslim for the death of an innocent Christian is equally barbaric, unchristian and
indefensible before our Creator. We must together condemn evil not minding
whose ox is gored.
On Boko Haram Archbishop Akinola
said, ‘The Boko Haram therefore, is a continuation of the Araba agenda
of 1966 under a new name, guise….’ And he admonished the congregation: ‘People
of God! Don’t be deceived; and I urge you, in the name of God to shun all political,
religious and hypocritical claims by some of our religious and political
leaders that the Boko Haram attacks were not an act of Islamic aggression
against Christianity. Foul! It is. This has been going on for the past 36 years,
under different names and guises, unabated.’
Here the truth is out naked! The Nigeria
Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) which is the official government censor of radio
and TV broadcasts did not deem it fit to censor such inflammatory broadcast. But
pray tell me why they should? The ‘man of God’ needed not look further for approval;
the C-in-C was part of the congregation that listened to all that junk.
In other words, Akinola was urging
all Christians not to trust all Muslims no matter how sincere they are when
they say that Boko Haram is on its own and not part of the rest of us and that
his flock should not be deceived into believing the Muslims mean well. With friends
of Nigeria like Akinola, who needs any enemies from without? The Yorubas have
two grades of elders; the ones that know how to bring harmony into homes and
those who don’t. I leave you to determine in which of the categories he falls.
I am not familiar with the standard
of civility and etiquette that the church enjoins on worshipers during such
gatherings. I kept wondering what was going on in the mind of President
Jonathan, members of his cabinet and other functionaries there present; what would
his response be when it was his turn to speak?
Archbishop Akinola has a new
interpretation for Boko Haram, ‘The word Boko’ he said, ‘is a Hausa word for book.
Haram, of course, for abomination, forbidden; in the scriptures of
Islam, the Jews and the Christians are often regarded as the People of the Book,
Ahlel Kitab…. So, put together, therefore, Boko Haram
means, Jews and Christians are contrary to popular understanding…Jews and
Christians are an abomination!
I am at a loss for words to express
my utter shock at this “twist in the tale”. This is a gross and deliberate
distortion of facts. Akinola would not attain the position of Arch Bishop of
the Anglican Communion without taking several courses in comparative religion.
They study the Qur’an in that process. Hence, his definition of Ahlul Kitaab
in a way which insinuates it is the same as ‘Boko’ in the phrase Boko Haram is
not only mischievous but unpardonable. The Hausa word Boko was coined
before all currently living generations. It was used to dissuade a Muslim from
giving his child or ward to the missionaries who came along with their
partners, the colonial masters. It was well documented that there were forced
conversions, change of names and faith and calculated coaxing of children into
Christianity under the guise of giving formal western education. This was
resisted by the mainly Muslim northerners.
The group which Mohammed Yusuf headed
was tagged Boko Haram not because they called themselves that but because it
was the easiest way to describe them to others since they also think that the
western education we get in schools today is ill-conceived and heretic and
hence haram. This was very apparent to anyone who listened to the last
interview he gave to the army officers who caught him before handing him over
to the police. So for Archbishop Akinola to now say what that phrase means is that
Christians and Jews are an abomination is dishonest and inciting.
The president took his turn on the
dais and did not see anything worthy of comment in that blatant call to hate
and disharmony by a so-called man of God and proceeded to thank the army for
not truncating democracy yet. He did not rebut or refute or correct any
impression Akinola gave. We call that positive reinforcement of negative ideas.
This is tragic and sad. Former
President Obasanjo would not have done that. His encounter with a Birom bigot
during his visit to Jos is still fresh in our minds.
