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By Aminu Nuru

 “The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted”. – George Lichtenberg

It is not uncommon that some public commentators and analysts could be mischievously deceptive in their narratives and analyses of history to accomplish an end. They could quote historical facts, mix them with fiction, and frame narratives to promote a single story. In some cases, they deliberately relegate and ignore some significant events or points to suit the writer’s bias. Recent writings on the origin and rise of Boko Haram demonstrate how some writers distort facts to frame narrative and promote bigotry.

For instance, if one can closely study the framing of Boko Haram and how it is brazenly becoming one-sided, then one can say that the whole history is rewritten to massage and satisfy the ego of some group’s bigotry. It is not farfetched to say that some of these bigots will soon claim that the generality of the Muslim North endorsed and supported Boko Haram and Nigerian Christians were the only targets and victims of the group’s deadly attacks. Why would I make such a sweeping projection with every sense of finality? To respond to this question, let’s go back to 2013.

While speaking at the 14th meeting of the Honorary International Investor Council (HIIC) held at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa on June 22, 2013, former Nigeria’s President, Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, disclosed that the Boko Haram sect had killed more Muslims than Christians in Nigeria. This is not just hearsay but a verifiable fact that is naked in vision to people that are not be-clothed with hatred, ethnic and religious jingoism.

However, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) couldn’t swallow this fact and, therefore, issued a statement to disagree with him vehemently. In a press statement credited to the Northern chapter spokesperson, Elder Sunday Oibe, CAN said that Jonathan’s assertion was “misleading and unacceptable”. They further stated that,

“We want to believe that the president was misquoted; we don’t want to believe that with the security apparatus and report from security intelligence network at his disposal, he made this assertion. If it is true that Mr President actually made this assertion, then, we are highly disappointed and sad at this veiled attempt to distort the fact as it concerns the activities of the Boko Haram sect. The purported statement by the President is highly disappointing considering the facts that Christians, churches and their businesses have been the major targets of Boko Haram” (Sahara Reporters, June 23, 2013. http://saharareporters.com/2013/06/23/northern-can-disagrees-jonathan-says-boko-haram-has-killed-more-christians-muslims)

For CAN, the Boko Haram crisis was/is “religious by nature” – the familiar we-versus-them religious clashes and conflicts in Nigeria, although in different outlooks and techniques; it is a plot by some Muslims to reduce the populations of Christians in Nigeria and crackdown their businesses. Since then, CAN sympathisers subsequently frame their narrative of Boko Haram from this angle. An article titled “Cornflakes for Jihad: The Boko Haram Origin Story” by David Hundeyin, widely shared on social media in the last few days, aimed to promote this kind of narrative. Unfortunately, the author skillfully filled the article with half-truths and a mixture of facts and fiction to push the CAN’s sentiment. Hundeyin is practically siding with his former religion.

Firstly, Hundeyin makes an effort to link Sheikh Abubakar Mahmoud Gumi with the origin of Boko Haram. Many people think that Hundeyin’s “Cornflakes for Jihad” is the first futile effort by an “investigative” journalist, analyst, historian or whatever to make this manipulative effort. However, Andrew Walker’s thesis, “Eat the Heart of the Infidels: The Harrowing of Nigeria and the Rise of Boko Haram” (Oxford University Press, 2016), preceded it in that exercise. Therefore, it is not likely to be a false accusation if it is argued that Hundeyin copied the idea of featuring Gumi in discussing Boko Haram, almost verbatim, from Walker. From the arguments of Sheikh Gumi’s “influence” in the “political” realm of Nigeria to his “friendship with Ahmadu Bello”, to pioneering the “propagation of Wahabism” in post-independent Nigeria, to his contribution in the creation of Izala and his “Saudi connection” are equally and loudly echoed in Walker’s thesis.

For both Walker and Hundeyin, Sheikh Abubakar Mahmoud Gumi championed the Sunni/Salafi/Izala movement in Nigeria. Therefore, any account of the origin and rise of Boko Haram – a so-called Sunni/Salafi-fundamentalist terrorist group – must be traced back to him. Albeit impliedly, their submissions suggest that there would be no Boko Haram if Gumi did not “disrupt” the Sufi order and influence of Qadiriyya and Tijjaniya in Northern Nigeria. They claim that Gumi’s campaign of a corrupt-free practice of Islam inevitably gave birth to the radical movements in Northern Nigeria. This is to say, although without explicitly stating it in their works, every Sunni/Salafi-based movement in Nigeria, whether moderate or violent, must have had their inspirational source from Gumi. On the link between Boko Haram founder, Muhammed Yusuf, and Sheikh Gumi, Walker writes: “The title of Yusuf’s book deliberately echoes the titles of similar treatises by Sunni preachers, like Sheikh Gumi’s “The Right Faith According to the Sharia”, perhaps in order to lend his ideas credence…the two clerics share a revulsion for secularism..” (Walker, 2016:144).

This line of argument is even less faulty in logic and spirit of “balanced story” than what Hundeyin further orchestrated in his article. According to Hundeyin, Sheikh Gumi admonished Muslims, particularly his Sunni/Salafi followers, to reject a non-Muslim as a leader and advocated “for insurrection against a Christian Nigerian President” and, of course, his Christian followers. In the successive paragraphs that supported this claim, Hundeyin apprises his readers on the “consequence” of Gumi’s propagation; he states that after Gumi’s death, a Sunni/Salafi-indoctrinated group, which bears the name “Boko Haram”, toed to the path of his admonishment to carry weapons against Nigerian Christians, killing and bombing them in their churches. He wittingly makes reference to the bomb blast at “St. Theresa Catholic Church”, Madalla that “killed 37 people”, and other subsequent “killings of Christians” in Jos and Damaturu.

The implication of this narrative on an outsider, who does not know the context of Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria, is that s/he would begin to see Sheikh Gumi as “problematic” and a source of Boko Haram’s inspiration and violent extremism. Secondly, a non-pragmatic reader may also assume that the group only targets Nigerian Christians in their series of attacks in the country. Hundeyin’s article aims to peddle that twisted narrative for no reason other than the writer’s hatred for the Muslim North (Arewa) and their Islamic culture. In one of his previous tweets, he heedlessly says that: “The world will be a significantly better place when Arewa culture completely dies off and is replaced with something fit for human civilisation” (David Hundeyin/Twitter, November 29, 2020).

In the spirit of fair analysis, it is expected that an impartial analyst would compare the socio-religious ideas Gumi propagated in his lifetime and the ideologies of Boko Haram. But this would not sell out Hundeyin’s bigotry, and so he ignored that vital aspect. The core centre of Boko Haram dogmatic tenets is a war against “western-styled” education, democracy and civil service. On the other hand, Sheikh Gumi was both a product and proponent of western-styled education; he worked with the government as a civil servant and received salaries from the state resources. As he proudly opined in his autobiography, “among [his] children were army officers, civil servants, medical doctors, an engineer…lawyers, teachers and workers in finance houses and private businesses. There was hardly any profession in which [he] did not have representation from [his] family” (Gumi with Tsiga, 1991:202).

Gumi was also pro-democrat, as evidence from his recorded preaching suggested so. He is famously quoted to have said, “siyasa tafi sallah”, which could loosely mean “politics is more significant than prayers”. This was the extent Gumi had gone to support democracy in Nigeria, and believe me, Shekau would not hesitate to call him “taghut” – an idolatrous tyrant. He had also worked closely with the Christian Head of States. They had a cordial relationship and respect for each other: Ironsi invited him to lead a delegation to North Africa and the Middle East to carry goodwill messages of his new regime; Gowon appointed him Chairman of the Nigerian Pilgrims Board and gave him “all the necessary support, although he himself was a Christian”; with Obasanjo, he could “freely talk” and express his mind on relevant socio-political issues (Gumi with Tsiga, 1991:203).  However, Hundeyin willfully refuses to draw this analogy to give a sense of what Achebe called “a balanced story”. Instead, he purposely portrays Sheikh Gumi on the wrong page in the book of terrorist origin in Nigeria.

Contrary to the insinuation of Hundeyin moreover, the truth of the story is that Boko Haram did/do not target Christians only. In fact. Nigerian Muslims suffer(ed) more causalities than Christians in the Boko Haram conflict. Hundeyin refuses to mention the main enclaves of Boko Haram activities and the population ratio of Muslims and Christians there. Stating this factual data will indeed not favour his intended, warped story. The reality is that Muslims have the predominant population in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. Arguably, the cumulative of all Boko Haram killings of innocent people would show nothing less than 70% of Muslim casualties.

On a specific, direct attack on religions, Hundeyin only mentions the bomb blast at St. Theresa Catholic Church, ignoring similar incidents on August 11, 2013, at a mosque in Konduga where 44 people were killed and on November 28, 2014, at the central mosque in Kano where 120 people were killed (BBC Hausa, 2013, 2014). It is understandable if Hundeyin re-echoes the bomb blast at St. Theresa Catholic Church in his article; it is a show of solidarity to his ex-religion. However, what is faulty and even worrisome is the selective exemplification of the direct attacks on religions by the Boko Haram insurgents. A reader who is unacquainted with the details of Boko Haram attacks on places of public worship would feel that churches and Christians were the only victims.

To further promote this half-truth, Hundeyin moves on to tell us how a Salafi/Sunni preacher was directly linked with the funding of Boko Haram. I will neither attempt to exonerate Sheikh Yakubu Musa nor believe those serious allegations in toto without reading or hearing the Sheikh’s version of the story. However, my problem here is with Hundeyin’s failure, which is intentional, to mention the Salafi/Sunni preachers that fought Boko Haram vehemently and even paid the ultimate price with their lives. It is on record that at the early stage of the Boko Haram crusade, Salafi scholars debated Mohammed Yusuf. In Bauchi, for instance, Ustaz Idris Abdulaziz Dutsen-Tanshi, a Salafist to the core, invited and challenged Muhammed Yusuf at his mosque and in the presence of his followers; so also a young Isa Ali Pantami – the then Imam of ATBU Juma’at mosque.

These Salafists continued to be critical of Muhammed Yusuf and his sect. They consistently delivered lectures to denounce his fatwa. Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmoud Adam, an unapologetic Salafist, was particularly vocal in his public censure and condemnation of Boko Haram. Unlike Hundeyin, Walker states this fact in his book:

“In 2007, Yusuf ’s former teacher, Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmud Adam, himself an ardent Salafist, had gone on record to denounce the group and warn that these ideologues were heading for a violent confrontation with the state” (Walker, 2016:148).

For many, Sheikh Ja’afar was the spiritual successor of Sheikh Abubakar Mahmoud Gumi. Some influential people requested and later attempted to transfer his annual Ramadan Tafseer to Gumi’s preaching base, Sultan Bello Mosque, Kaduna. He conducted his annual Ramadan Tafseer in Maiduguri, the early and central territory of Boko Haram terrorism. During his Tafseer sessions, Sheikh Ja’afar was not reluctant to criticise Yusuf and his new sect. On April 13, 2007, a day to general elections in Nigeria, and barely 48 hours after delivering a talk in Bauchi on Islamic views on thuggery, violence and widespread killing of innocent souls, Sheikh Ja’afar was murdered in Kano while observing Subh prayer and “it is thought to be members of Yusuf’s sect” (Walker, 2016:148).

Another prominent voice among Salafists in the fight against Boko Haram was Sheikh Muhammad Auwal Albani, Zaria. But, unfortunately, he was also killed in cold blood. In a video released to the public, Muhammed Yusuf successor, Abubakar Shekau, took responsibility for the assassination (Sahara Reporters, February 20, 2014, http://saharareporters.com/2014/02/20/bo-haram-leader-claims-responsibity-killing-kaduna-cleric-sheikh-albani-threatens).

Hundeyin has ignored all these facts about Salafi preachers in Northern Nigeria but brought a single dubious claim to frame a narrative that would deceive an uncritical, vulnerable audience. His motive is clear: he wants to rebrand the entire population of Salaaf and the Muslim North as pro-terrorist, supporting the killings of Christians in Nigeria. It is rather unfortunate that this is where the discussion is heading, and it is a wake-up call to those of us that witnessed and had a first-hand experience of the Boko Haram crisis to begin to write our counter-narrative. If we don’t write it, others will write for us. And before we retrieve our consciousness, we will be afloat in a sea of half-truths and stereotypes on Boko Haram, Islam and the North.

Aminu Nuru wrote from Bauchi. He can be contacted via aminuahmednuru@gmail.com.

By Hussaina Sufyan Ahmed

By Muhammad Sabiu

By Aisar Fagge

A Kano-based civil society, Kano Advocacy Organization (“Kungiyar Matasan Kano“) wrote a petition to the Public Complaint and Anti-Corruption Commission (PCACC), Kano State against the telecommunication companies operating in the state for abandoning their corporate social responsibility functions which they execute in the Southern part of the country.

The chairman of the organization, Comrade Alhassan Haruna Dambatta led the executive members of the organization from various local governments to the Anti-Corruption Commission where they dropped their six-page letter signed by their national legal adviser, Barrister Murtala Bala Abubakar Esq.

The reason for taking this action according to Barrister Murtala is “to ensure the telecommunication companies abide by laws on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as provided by various subsisting Acts passed by both the National Assembly and the Kano state House of Assembly.

They cited the Federal Government’s Local Content Act 2010 sponsored by Hon. Dr Abubarkar Amuda-Kannike and “An Act to establish the Corporate Social Responsibility Act and for other matters connected herewith’ sponsored by Hon. Ossai Nicholas Ossai, which states that Corporate Social Responsibility means action taken by a company to address key social, economic and environmental problems of a particular area in which the company operates.

The Corporate Social Responsibility Act, in section 21, has identified the activities expected of these companies to engage in and not limited to;

(i) Contribution towards educational development of the people in the area, (ii) Provisions of infrastructural facilities, contribution towards rural electrification projects and road construction,

(iii) Collaboration in partnership projects with local governments,

(iv) Environmental stewardship and protection mechanism,

(v) Construction and improvement of healthcare delivery system.

(vi) Provisions of pipe-borne water, improvement of existing waterworks and construction of boreholes and public convenience.

Furthermore, the Kano State CSR law on Corporate Social Responsibility of 2011 has repeatedly exposed the need for multinationals and other companies operating in Kano state to uphold the provisions of the law as defined by both Acts of the National Assembly and the Kano state House of Assembly on Corporate Social Responsibilities.

According to Kano Advocacy Organization, “Many if not all of these companies [MTN, Airtel, 9Mobile] operating in the Southern and Western part of this country do provides these services to the people of that area, but the case is entirely in contrast to what is available and obtainable here in our state. Last year, the Ijaw Youths Council as reported in the mainstream media, among other campaigns, violently went and demobilized Ten (10) of the telecom’s mast in Bayelsa state and their reason as stated is that the contract for the supply of diesel was awarded to a non-Ijaw contractor, hence, the reason for their anger.”

“Because of the fear of threat of violence from these Southern and Western Youths, These companies operating there ensured that the Youths of the South-south, Southeast, and Southwest are assisted through Youths Empowerment programs, start-ups, vocational trainings, Hub creation, ICT Training, Digital marketing training, App development training, Computer trainings and many other concepts that are designed to empower and promotes the Youths and people of those states so that they can become productive and self-reliant. However, the case in the Northern part is entirely in contrast to what is obtainable in the Western or Southern part of this country and most especially and specifically in Kano state with the highest population of phone users where these telecommunication companies are making billions of naira without commitments to the provisions of the various laws that protected the right of the people and communities where they conduct their businesses.”

In view of the above, Kano Advocacy Organization calls for Kano State PCACC to investigate the following among others:

1. What are the records of MTN NIGERIA, AIRTEL, GLOBACOM, 9MOBILE in the provisions of social Amenities, like, building and refurbishing of schools, recreational centres, health care facilitates, Youths Empowerment programs among others in Kano state?
2. Record of Youths Empowerment programs conducted by these Telecoms in Kano state.
3. How much profit they made in our state and what part of it has been utilized on the people as provided by both CSR laws?
4. How many schools and health care facilities were refurbished or built from scratch by these Telecoms in Kano state?
5. How many youths in Kano state benefited from these Telecom’s scholarship programs widely celebrated in the Southern and Western parts of this country?
6. Record of permanent and pensionable employment of Kano indigenes by these Telecoms.
7. When and how did these TELECOMS partner with the Kano state government in the provisions of social Amenities in our state?
8. Find out what are the future plans and programs of these telecommunication companies operating in our state on community development, provisions of social Amenities, scholarship, etc.?
9. Provide evidence of the established and constituted Corporate Social Responsibility ‘policy committee’ referred in the act as ‘CSR Policy committee’.
10. A copy of their CSR performance report of the last five years as made under sections (3) and (9) of the Act.
11. Record of the unspent amount deducted for CSR in the last five years.

By Muhammad Sabiu

Nigerian soldiers working under the platform of Sector 5 of Exercise GOLDEN DAWN in Enugu have successfully neutralised three unknown gunmen who raided a police checkpoint on October 7.

This was announced today by Brigadier-General Onyema Nwachukwu, the Director of Army Public Relations, via the Nigeria Army’s official Facebook page.

The soldiers engaged the gunmen in a shootout which forced the latter to flee the duel scene, and the soldiers recovered one vehicle and two motorcycles.

However, Mr Onyema regrettably stated that one soldier lost his life.

The southeastern region has been seeing a series of tensions and rampant attacks on government facilities by suspected IPOB members, which could not be unconnected with their secession agenda.

By Tahir Ibrahim Tahir (Talban Bauchi)

By Ahmadu Shehu, PhD.

My previous article titled If there was Biafra generated debates around Biafra’s disadvantages (and advantages) to the Igbo people. Many of these comments were very insightful, and in line with the thoughts I presented. While I cannot respond to all the commentators, I will briefly address the most salient rejoinders. But, once again, let me quickly state that this conversation does not target the Igbo as an ethnic group. Instead, I aim to provide an outsider view to these pressing issues of national unity on which all Nigerians share equal rights and responsibilities to tell ourselves the home truth.

Some commentators say that the article was biased as I only focused on the disadvantages and neglected the “obvious” advantages the Igbo will gain from Biafra. However, I do not see a single demographic, economic, geographical or even political advantage the Igbo will gain by simply seceding from Nigeria. That is the thesis of the previous article. In fact, the post-exile writings of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the architect of Biafra himself, buttress this point.

The most critical observations from many prominent Igbo elites and friends claim that as much as the Igbo people enjoy Nigeria’s unity from both economic and political perspectives, we should equally be thankful to the southeasterners for the jobs they create for other Nigerians. In other words, the Nigerian market saturated by Igbo traders is also lucky to have the Igbo money as capital for the employment of other Nigerians.

Well, this claim might seem valid at face value. Still, it may not be entirely accurate when Igbonomics – a term I use here to refer to the economic strategy of the Igbo people – is subjected to a critical view. In the said article, I noted that one of the weaknesses of the southeastern economic model is that it is closed to other Nigerians. The resentment the Igbo folks have against the majority of Nigerians do not allow “strangers” from any region of the country to freely establish or run businesses in Igboland. That is why most Igbo billionaires today were made one hundred per cent in and by other regions of this country, but not the other way round. There is hardly a non-Igbo billionaire made by or in the southeast.

This xenophobia is not only applied against the Hausa-Fulani northerners or the Yoruba south-westerns but also their closest cousins, the Niger-Deltans. This approach is based on three exclusionist strategies of Igbonomics: First, the market and product, and indeed the value-chain must strictly remain an Igbo affair. Second, other regions’ markets, their products and value-chains must be proportionately shared with the Igbos. Third, to drift public attention from this ongoing reality, maintain the victim card by crying louder than the bereaved – the real victims of marginalization. While the first two tenets are lawful but greedy, the third is a clear case of hypocrisy. Here is a simple example to foreground this scenario.

The Igbo form the largest group of Nigerians in the diaspora. Since Nigeria is an import economy, the Igbo people in diaspora serve as business agents for their brethren in Nigeria. Therefore, the import business is basically an Igbo – Igbo transaction. Here in Nigeria, these goods are transported mainly to the southeastern markets, such as Abba and Onitsha. Instead of Lagos or Port Harcourt, most Igbo traders, who are widely dispersed across the nooks and crannies of this country, buy their goods mostly from Igbo distributors in the southeast. Another Igbo – Igbo transaction.

Up here in the north and other parts of the country, the Igbo employ strictly Igbo artisans, mostly from their own villages or communities in the east, and in some cases, the so-called northern Igbos. From sales girls and boys to messengers, marketers and suppliers, the Igbos domiciled in the north only trust their own ethnic brothers regardless of the opportunities employing locals might portend to their businesses.

For instance, you find a single Igbo shop owner in a village. By the following year, s/he has brought two, three or four Igbo artisans, thereby growing in population, manipulating the resources and seizing the business opportunities further away from the local people.

In most cases, the deal is that a separate business in the same line is established for the younger artisan, expanding further the grip of the Igbos in that line of business in the communities they are domiciled. Thus, the profits, gains and resources of the business in any of these communities become an Igbo affair entirely. Therefore, in this arrangement, the Igbo create jobs primarily for themselves while other sections of Nigeria serve as their consumers.

While the Igbos living in the north own properties and investments in the region, they return their proceeds to their homelands. Thus, I can bet my last penny that Igboland has more properties and investments built from profits and wealth acquired outside the Igboland than those made from the businesses run within the Igboland. Moreover, I had said earlier that businesses domiciled in the southeast largely depend on the larger Nigerian market to thrive.

Therefore, it should be clear from the foregoing that Igbonomics in the north is an Igbo economic affair that largely – if not only – benefits the Igbos. The brutal truth is that the Igbo are NOT marginalized in Nigeria. Instead, they are playing a victim card to maintain the economic status quo. While the various sections of this great country have a lot to thank one another for, none of these sections should claim any superiority. Neither should any of these play a gimmick of marginalization. We are equals in the hands of God and our country.

Dr Ahmadu Shehu is a nomad cum herdsman, an Assistant Professor at the American University of Nigeria, Yola, and is passionate about the Nigerian project. You can reach him via ahmadsheehu@yahoo.com.

By Muhammad Sabiu

David Hundeyin, a self-styled investigative journalist who has in recent months become popular on social media, has come under fire over his about-a-year-old tweet condemning “Arewa” and its culture.

According to Mr. Hundeyin, the world would be a better place to live in without the “uncivilised” Arewa culture because he has“[n]ever seen a culture that hates outsiders and somehow detests its own women worse than it hates [the] said outsiders.”

“The world will be a significantly better place when Arewa culture completely dies off and is replaced with something fit for human civilisation,” he added.

The digging up of the tweet could not be unconnected with a recent, viral, controversial article he wrote titled “Cornflakes for Jihad: The Boko Haram Origin Story”, in which he tried to give the history of Boko Haram in Nigeria and presented what many described as “conspiracy theories” and “hasty conclusions.”

Airing their grievances against Mr. Hundeyin’s derogatory tweet, many Facebook users from the North took the issue to their timelines.

For instance, Dr. Ahmad Shehu suggested that legal action should be taken against people making such negative stereotyping.

“The north should make an example of these idiots. I hate it when we seem passive against these kinds of bigots. I enjoin our legal activists to take these kinds of people to court for stereotyping,”Dr. Shehu wrote.

Similarly, another user, who goes by the name Abubakar Sulaiman, sees him as somebody with a dangerous mindset. “The question that crosses my mind is simply why do they hate us? This is the dangerous kind of mindset David Hundeyin and his ilks use to delve into archives.

“So what was made to look like an investigative journalistic endeavour by the likes of David Hundeyin was simply a pre-conceived idea supported by witty though foolish biased selection of data while ignoring a significant portion of related data that may contradict that pre-conceived idea. A clear case of cherry picking,” he said.

Also, according to Adam Baba Yamani, Hundeyin is nothing but a bigot and hater of anything that has to do with the North and Muslims.

He wrote,“Hello my people of the North (Arewa), if you think David Hundeyin is not a bigot and a hater of anything North and Muslims, take your time and glance at what he wrote on his Twitter handle, don’t be deceived by the cloak of journalism he is wearing, his intent is to replace you, your culture and Way of life with the one of his choice, for those among us that are applauding David Hundeyin for his “Conflakes..”, please read, research and cogitate.”