Mujahid Asari Dokubo
Peace to all who follow guidance, (Ta Ha 20:47)
Mujahid conjures up the image of a warrior against the repudiators
of faith, who desire to blight the Light of Islam. The recent tirades on the
issue of insecurity in Nigeria put me in doubt as to what meaning I may attach
to the Mujahid in your name. Will I be wrong to reverse the definition
of Mujahid in your case to be a warrior against Muslims?
Your residence at Wuse 2, Abuja, as you know,
was the next to mine. One of your wives, a Muslim from the North, is a friend
of my wife’s; her namesake, actually; that is neighbourhood in every meaning of
the word. This correspondence, therefore, is not a rejoinder to anything you
said, for you do not merit one, given the level of your knowledge and
intellect. This is just a counsel from one neighbour to another. Believers
always benefit from counsels.
What will be the fate of your wife, her friends, her kindred,
your in-laws and neighbours when the ‘tanks will roll out’ heading towards
Maiduguri and Yobe and you start to “shoot and shoot till they say what kind
of a man is this?” So the killing will be indiscriminate, mowing down the
guilty and the innocent? What a Mujahid! But this position is at
variance with that taken by your President who said recently that “members
of the dreaded Boko Haram sect are our siblings and you cannot set the army to
wipe out your family”. By no means! It is but a word he says (Mu’minun,
23:100); I have no kinship with Boko Haram whatsoever.
The Qur’an exhorts us not to punish the innocent for the sins
of the guilty (Israa 17:15), and you know that as a Muslim. If Boko
Haram, though siblings of your benefactor gave condition that Jonathan should
be a Muslim before they accept him as President or he resigns; a condition that
you flawed as being against the ways of the Prophet, peace be upon him, why
will the innocent be punished?-Especially as that would also be against the
teachings of the same Prophet (PBUH). And if as a Muslim you concede that Boko
Haram is going against the teachings of the Prophet (SAW) in the issue of
coercive conversion to Islam (Al Baqarah, 2:256) and other matters, why
do you assume that Boko Haram is the creation of Northern leaders, who are
mainly Muslims? You even said: “The prophet (SAW) did not attack innocent
people in the church or synagogue, or idol worshippers.” Who is that
Muslim, then, who will knowingly support a sect with doctrines contrary to
those of the Prophet (SAW)? But you said: “To me Boko Haram is the dumbest
product the North has produced and it is not in their interest as it will
destroy the North.” You are absolutely right in one sense; it IS destroying
the North. What I cannot fathom is the rest of the charge; why would anyone cut
his leg merely to spite his shoe? Why would the Northern leaders bring their
towns and cities to utter destruction and infamy just to spite President
Jonathan? Surely the fact the he was dishonourable to renege on an agreement is
not worth even a tenth of the carnage and destruction - any idiot can
understand that! Forgive my German.
My grandparents’ generation had a word to describe reverts
into Islam: tubabbe. To them tubabbe will hardly understand Islam
and its teachings very well; tubabbe lives a quasi-Muslim life while
carrying part of the baggage of his pre-Islamic ways. Therefore, my
grandparents’ generation was not surprised by any uncalled-for modes of
behaviour from tubabbe because it expected that from him. I reject this
notion of that past generation. I believe that whoever professes Islam is
indeed a Muslim. Reverts around the world are doing wonderful work in the field
of da’wah, writing books, propagating Islam using their substance and
person, in ways more effective than what I and people like me are doing. I was
counting you among this honoured class of reverts, but your disposition since
your freedom from detention is urging me to look more closely at the definition
of tubabbe as held by my grandparents’ generation. Now that’s a pity!
Rather than insult and accuse Northern leaders like IBB and
accuse them of creating Boko Haram; albeit without any proof, you should rather
thank them for starting by cancelling the June 12 elections up until when they
brought Nigeria under the grip of shoeless leaders and their foolish
kinsmen! But for annulling June 12 we would not have seen the eight nightmarish
years of Obasanjo or the wonderfully rigged elections of late ‘Yar Adua, and,
the worst or best-depends on who is talking, of course Nigeria would not have
ended up with an inexperienced, ill-equipped, incompetent and ill-informed
President. So, you see, your tribesmen should rather be grateful to Northern
leaders who worked hard to bring us this far, including the Northern governors
who betrayed their people and supported your kinsman to the throne; the evil
that these governors did is now living with them.
It is even too late to regret. Thanks, you must give, also to
Jega’s INEC for everything! But praise be to Allah, we are all in it together,
breathing the Fresh Air and enjoying the Transformation
together. Change is the only constant thing in life; I never thought that in my
lifetime people would steal trillions of naira. The wildest my imagination
could muster was billion naira thieves. There has been a transformation and
behold, people now steal in trillions! That’s some fresh air, isn’t it?
I cannot understand why you are upset because Nigerians
attribute cluelessness to your tribesman. “This insult is too much.” You
said, and further asked: “Did you do it to Abacha? Did you do it to IBB? You
see, I see the arrogance as un-Islamic, the arrogance of Shekau and his
followers“ The past leaders you deride – IBB, Abacha, Obasanjo, etc. –
possessed the leadership traits of charisma, intelligence, coherent utterance
and decisiveness in dealing with trouble makers. When Nigerians see a leader
with the right qualifications they recognise him; your kinsman is not one. Even
Boko Haram, it appears, knows whom to ask what, and during whose tenure. Also,
it is only when Aso Rock is occupied by cluelessness that war mongers
and secessionists can challenge the peace and still walk the streets as
freemen. Whatever the flaws of Obasanjo, it is on record that he never brooked
any nonsense- not that I think your principal would understand what that means.
And speaking about ‘un-Islamic’ arrogance in relation to Boko
Haram’s pronouncements; so, you quite correctly labelled what ‘Shekau and his
followers’ did as such, but you fail to see as un-Islamic the arrogance of
pilfering Nigeria’s oil resources, what you euphemised as ‘to benefit from my
resources’, questioning the rationale behind criminalising oil larceny if the
culprits are from the region that produces the oil. This stupefied reasoning
can only come from the ignorant! I want to believe you were misquoted because I
do not think you would stoop that low to justify stealing and brigandage; even
from your own state.
My people say: ‘A child does not know the fire until he
touches it.’ Let this serve as an allegory against your declaration of war.
‘The North will suffer’ according to you, “what will happen is
unimaginable in human history”, because of economic blockade and woe betide
its people as destitution and famine shall be their lot; no food will reach it
from any quarters. Food?! I did not think your obliviousness has reached this
proportion. The North has not discovered oil yet, but it does not wait for
nourishment from other parts of the country. The blockade, if anything, will
make our rural farmers put their donkeys to better use as beasts of burden,
rather than load the poor animals on trucks to those of your people who devour
them. We don’t eat donkeys you know!
I pray Allah to grant you total control of your resources,
your region’s self-determination and your presidency. Nobody is afraid of that.
But one thing is clear: Nigeria is what it is in spite of ourselves and our
differences; tribal strife and sectional dissention within each zone will
hardly permit any region subsist independent of the rest of Nigeria. Let us see
how the South-South will fare given the rivalry inherent among the various
nationalities. I am sure you know the import of this verse: “…thou wouldst think they were united,
but their hearts are divided: that is because they are a people devoid of
wisdom.” (Hashr, 59:14)
Let me educate you on VAT and ‘proceed from alcohol’
which formed basis for your conclusion that “everybody in the north have
been eating haram.” This requires a separate article; suffice it to say
that let the proceed be from something worse that alcohol, as far as the wage
earner is paid with such money for legitimate work that he has done, that money
is halal for him. The dictum, if you can fathom what this means, is that haram
does not overlap to the remuneration of a legitimate recipient.
But I write as a Northerner thus far; let me write as a
Nigerian. There are distinctions we should make when we categorize those who
make comments on public discourse. There are those who speak for their pockets,
there are those who speak for their people alone and there are those who speak
for their conscience. This last category is the scantiest.
I do not want to say you belong to the first group even if your
grandstanding and showboating is a characteristic of that group. I want to
believe you know that ethnic jingoism is an abomination in Islam and abhorrent
to common sense. I earnestly hope you know what it means to clean faeces with
urine because that is what a lot of what you have said amounts to.
Consider that the North is the most affected by the tragedy
of Shekau and his horde of mad men. Remember that this ideology they proclaim
is alien to Islam. Think about the number of real Muslims who curse them daily
across the country. Now recall the sceptre of non-Muslims disguised as Muslims
who have been apprehended for attempts to bomb and maim lives; how many got
away with it? Remember the numerous lies we have been fed so far by our
security agents on issues like these. Think deeply about how easy it is for
anyone to claim responsibility on behalf of another. Even your president became
a lawyer for MEND in 2010- they claimed responsibility for a bombing and His
Excellency begged to differ; he had his own set of culprits ready-made before
the crime and MEND was getting too meddlesome, I guess. Add these up and see
whether a picture forms in your head; an answer or strong guess.
Have you seen the efforts of Muslims and Christians trying to
make order out this chaos? Have you seen the hands of government-manufactured
poverty in all these? Only those who have no hope of a better future will take
a measly amount of money and strap bombs on their person to blow up as many
innocent people as possible. Have you not seen the incompetence of our leaders
in general at the crux of this matter? If a president knows what he is doing,
how do aliens flock in through the country’s borders? How do weapons find their
way into a country with borders and men in charge of those borders? What
happened to the so-called street cameras they installed at mind-boggling cost to
us? Do they work? In what way have they helped us fish out the perpetrators?
Who is stealing the money meant to properly equip the police? What was the
amount they requested to do their job since Jonathan became president and how
much has been released of that amount?
Brother Mujahid, I could ask these questions ad
nauseum, ad infinitum and the president won’t even give a damn! After all,
he has people like you to tell him what a wonder he is and how much he has
brought salvation to this nation. You can even persuade him to rename Nigeria
after his wife. We will show patience and hope for good luck come 2015, insha
Allah.
