"Harmony Comes Through Reorientation"

(Published Saturday, 20 December 2008)

As if he had a premonition that the Jos Crisis was about to happen, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, Governor of Kano State and Limamin A Daidaita Sahu, had spoken just a few days earlier at the Summit of the Nigerian Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) in Kano. Mallam Shekarau argued that it is through societal reorientation that peace and harmony can be assured for this country. Excerpts from Mallam’s Address: “Let me begin by quoting foremost Islamic scholar and thinker, Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi in a recent paper wherein he advocates a continuous dialogue between ‘between Islam and Christianity, for they must be seen to be standing in the face of the atheist and materialistic trend that confronts all the Messages of Heaven; in fact, dialogue was one of the means of promulgating the Call that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) started in his historic letters to Persian and Roman Emperors and religious leaders’. “In the same vein, the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, President of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty says ‘I cannot deny that...conflicts exist. But I do believe that it is a mistake to allow their existence to shape our minds to the point that we find it impossible to imagine how human beings might get along in day-to-day affairs. A conflict-only view of human affairs makes us blind to the remarkable ways in which society manages itself in peace and harmony. It is human cooperation that is in need of explanation and understanding...’ “Similarly, making a presentation titled The Role of Faith in Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution at the European Parliament in 2001, two intellectuals, Abdul Aziz Said and Nathan C. Funk stated that ‘One of the most important findings of cross-cultural conflict resolution research is that religion is an...inevitable factor in conflict resolution. Religion, after all, is a powerful constituent of cultural norms and values, and because it addresses the most profound existential issues of human life, religion is deeply implicated in individual and social conceptions of peace. To transform the conflicts besetting the world today, we need to uncover the conceptions of peace within our diverse religious and cultural traditions while seeking the common ground among them’. “I opened my presentation with the above quotations because they capture the current dilemma of modern society. This is a dilemma where our understanding of our personality and society is not allowed to develop from our own humanity that is shaped by our innate tendencies and natural social interactions, but from external forces which are mostly deliberate manipulations of vested interests of a few, exacerbated and inflated by the mass media. Increasingly, as the quotations above indicate, we have been made to believe it is impossible for human beings to get along peacefully in their day-to-day affairs. “This situation is made possible mostly due to fact that the world’s mass media are skewed to reporting conflict news rather than development news. We are daily bombarded, every minute, by news of social conflict than by news of social harmony. Observers from another planet will be forgiven if they listen to our media and conclude that our world is at war with itself. But is that the true nature of humanity as created and placed in this world by the Almighty? That is the big question to which I am bold to say NO. Conflict is NOT the innate tendency of human beings. “The bedrock upon which every society is built is social harmony; from the family unit to the most complex level. In other words, societies are glued together by the thread of social harmony which is the peaceful interaction of human dynamics among members of a social group. Therefore, we must weave that thread into a beautiful fabric of social harmony. And we do that by emphasis on what unites us rather than what divides us. We must accommodate our individual differences so that we can achieve social harmony which is the sine qua non of our existence. “In a study titled The Economic Costs of Violence commissioned by the World Health Organisation in 2004, it was stated that conflicts drain away the resources of many countries. Giving example of some Latin American countries, the WHO report stated that the economic costs of violence as a percentage of 1997 gross domestic product (GDP) in Mexico was 1.3%; in Peru it was 5.1%; in Brazil 10.5%; in Venezuela 11.8%; in Colombia 24.7%; and in El Salvador a staggering 24.9%. It remains to be seen what percentage of our country’s GDP is being drained by our own conflicts. Therefore, conflicts are simply unaffordable. “Kano State Government is conscious of the fact that peace and harmony will translate into development. Therefore, it spares no effort as far as security is concerned. When there is security in Kano, it is not only for Muslim Kano people, it is also for the Christians living among us, it is for everyone. Therefore, it is disheartening, to say the least, for some leaders of the Christian faith, as reported in a recent newspaper interview, to always want to unnecessarily raise tension in this country. A national leader of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) recently turned the truth on its head by making insinuations that can only continue to cause disharmony and insecurity in the nation. By quoting me out of context in a recent statement where we said that we can spend every kobo in our treasury to ensure security, the Reverend gentleman rather mischievously stated that we said we are going to spend all our money to promote Islam. “How does spending money to ensure security and social harmony translate into spending to promote religion? If Kano State fights alcoholism and drug abuse, are we not fighting vices that even the Christian faith instructs that we fight? Changing the meaning and purpose of a statement is injurious, dangerous and unfair. If people drink alcohol or ingest drugs which make them potential armed robbers, is it only Muslims that they may ultimately rob? Similarly, when the Federal Government allocated a sum of money to help rehabilitate Qur’anic schools, institutions which have predated the coming of the colonial masters to this country and which have been our sole education system for centuries, this same leader of the Church condemned the move. “We all believe, don’t we, that we consider the almajiri problem a gigantic social issue. Now that we have started in earnest to address the issue through our Tsangaya Reform Programme, and we are getting some counterpart assistance from the Federal Government to intervene and bring sanity into this social problem, our compatriots now turn around to say it is money not well spent. We believe religious leaders should be in the fore-front of seeking peace for their followers, and sabre-rattling can get us nowhere as a nation. The trust being built between us should not be cleft asunder by people who have nothing better to do than to enjoy the benefit of crises, people who feel that peace does not pay them. It is time we stop adopting other people’s agenda, and consider our country first and foremost. “Our most important weapon to ensure harmony in Kano State was to launch a massive Societal Reorientation campaign, the A Daidaita Sahu programme (literally ‘strengthen your rows’ or, figuratively, ‘be disciplined’). In my quest for political office, I was more concerned with the manifest decay of our cherished values, rules of behaviour, sense of civility and decency all badly damaged by corruption, poverty, failure of leadership and the unbridled greed of our elite. This concern drove me to state, at different forums, that I would like my Administration to be remembered not by the number of physical structures we shall ultimately put in place, but by the level of achievement we hope to record in restoring our cherished societal values. And to achieve that, we made ‘societal reorientation’ the centrepiece of our vision and mission. “Kano State, with the highest population in the country, has more than its fair share of social problems ranging from drug abuse, unemployment, traffic chaos and insecurity, to mention but a few. ‘A Daidaita Sahu’ policy is expected to be among the varied ‘social re-engineering’ programmes that will lay a solid foundation for the transformation of attitudes, perceptions and practices of the people such that they champion their own social renaissance. “And we are not blinded by that weakness of many politicians: that a programme must succeed in one’s own time. We believe strongly that Allah’s time is the best, and changing human behaviour and attitude is the most arduous task anyone could ever undertake. We take solace in the fact that, as narrated in the Qur’an and the Bible, Prophet Nuh (Noah), may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, spent 950 years calling people to God, but only a few ultimately believed in him. Who are we, mere mortals, to aspire to change the world in only four or eight years? Ours is but to strive to show the way; it is Allah’s to guide. “Our societal reorientation is for posterity; it is for the future as well as for the present. But alhamdu lillah, suffice is to say that because of this unique programme, A Daidaita Sahu, we have seen tremendous improvement in all aspects of our lives, and especially in peace, harmony and tranquility in Kano State. We give the whole credit of this achievement to Allah, exalted be His Name. “We have done what we think is best for our society. We only wish other states and countries will help themselves by adopting this novel approach to addressing societal issues to achieve societal harmony. After all, the late Emir of Katsina, Alhaji Muhammadu Kabir Usman (may Allah forgive him) had in 2005 told an A Daidaita Sahu delegation that visited him in his Palace that: ‘Please after you Daidaita Sahu in Kano, come to Katsina and other states to Daidaita Muna Sahu, for if you do not do that, we may come over and re-spoil your own Sahu.’”