Ourselves, Our Safe Heaven -By Ismail Misbahu

Ladies and gentlemen,

‘Existence wants ourselves to be ours’. To be ours means to be God-fearing, to be catering and caring to each other; to love, fight and conquer together a common enemy.

Uttering a terrible cry, he sprank to his feet clutching in all directions, trying to seize all of us but we have all fled different ways, and thrown ourselves flat upon the ground in corners we know nowhere to! He’s our common enemy, the devil in ourselves. Oh you think it is the president! No. Senators and House members, Governors, business entrepreneurs, defeated political aspirants, frustrated Emirs and all the jamboree traditional title holders shouldn’t also be all alone, simply because they’re not a alone. There’s rather something fundamental within ourselves beyond the plebeians-versus-patricians’ rigmarole! We, the mass poor, are craving for wealth accumulation with powerful pangs of jealousy, resentfulness and envy, and such had refracted our ways to killing each other. We lost the spiritual light of our humanity and we tend often times to look upon others’ wealth with covetous eyes; competing with greed through mammonism, grabbiness and pleonexia to that which is cupidity. What a mean-spirited generation?

In this ‘house-of-ill-fame’, mischief makers triumph by the blowing wind of kidnappings—engaging in the ballyhoo of ransom rituals, taking into custody of quite number of innocent citizens; indiscriminately raping and killing them without fear of deterrence or guilty. It is a tragic end for a nation where criminal acts are guarded under the ‘protection’ of lawlessness! In its ensuing panic, insecurity breeds contempt, mistrust and, through chronic circumspection caused individualism and chaos. This state of affairs leaves no group of individuals, identity or institution in mutual cohesion, contentment and harmony throughout the North, and indeed the whole country. The culprit lives nowhere outside our hearts—a coldly desperate one full of enviously unending ‘poymathematicals’!. Begrudging our common effluence, we connive in the kidnapping of our full-blooded brothers, sisters, uncles, nephews etcetera—many of whom are also pious Muslims! What of a neighbour with smiling teeth, and how worse do we define our neighbourhood in this sense? The wisdom in the old adage that ‘everyone should be his/her neighbour’s keepers’ has come back to haunt on us! We really are cursed O my God! Where this World is taking us ladies and gentlemen,? Are we really humans?

Having a job, securing a business, building a house, marrying, dressing for work etcetera, all have become symbols of hatreds. Yet you remain without them and still not safe, what a pity! Those who attain these with arrogance seem to have even stirred up the hornets’ nest. This ‘black eye’ has never been a crying one calling for help but that which is at the back of our heads, watching over our movements and following up against at the least expected! Drawn from this ‘black eye’ are today’s so called ‘informers’ who’ at the midst of ransom rituals, call life to ‘rest in jail’!

Then does questioning our Caesars become ridiculous? Or is it part of a whole? But why do we not interrogate ourselves first, and I thing is the foremost ko? Before we call a rich by the name, let’s interrogate how we enrich ourselves with love, affection, humour, respect, sympathy, care, assistance, etcetera, only after which we question why the obligation (in Islam), on a rich person, to donate a certain proportion based on the value of wealth (zakat) each year to charitable causes (such as the poor and needy, struggling Muslim converts, slaves, people in debt, soldiers fighting to protect the Muslim Community and those stranded during their travels, has been abandoned or hap-hazardly observed by the few.Where’s the religion?. The mass poor and needy are left helpless while handicaps are no longer considered humans. Widows with orphans are left ill-starred—no hope for the future! Where’s the neighbourhood, and where’s the kinship? It is a dangerous wound in the Psyche!

Before calling our traditional rulers irresponsible, we must also ask how responsible and committed we are to each other; how we keep with one another in times of trials and tribulations, as well in time of peace and joy. Only then could we ponder on the fact that, while Emirs, district and village heads were known in the past for their judicious role in keeping track records on any visiting stranger, as well as watching over against criminal act of stealing etcetera, they have today graduated into mere agents of disorder and chaos in the society! Reporting as it was alleged, about 5 Emirs (‘Sarakuna’), 33 District heads (‘Hakimai’) and ‘Dagacis’ as well as 10 Army and Police Officers involved in the ransom rituals — collection of bribes at the midst of killing, raping, stealing of cattle, destruction of food and other properties. (Reported Premium Times, October, 12, 2019). The audio (WhatsApp) message of Retired I.G. Abubakar (which seems to be the source of the newspaper supra), seems to have proved this beyond allegation! The recent announcement of the suspension of Hakimin Kankara, Alh. Abubakar Yusuf Lawal by the spokesperson of Katsina Emirate Council, Sarki Iro Daudawa suited the fancy of the narrative. Similarly, the alleged involvement of Sarkin Maru and the questionable attitudes of Hakimin Tsafe, also fit the nuance of the lyrics. Where is the responsibility?

Again before calling our leaders corrupt, let’s ask ourselves how do we become untouched to corruption, betrayal, hypocrisy, cheats, double-standards, rip-off and above all, the falsehood that has become our today’s ‘silver tongue’! Where’s the truth? What of the corruption in ourselves that’s our all today’s lifestyle? The corruption that becomes the ideal principle of our thought and ideas? The secret behind the success of our businesses and daily transactions? The fashion of our dress and code of ethics? The fashion of our politics, identity, and self-determination? The fashion that’s all ‘we’ [ourselves], miserable sinners! Where’s the justice? Only then we question why the Army, the Police and indeed all the ‘officio’ and ‘ex-officio’ members at federal, state and local government levels, in part outside, or within the arms of government, are potentially corrupt.

What then does it salvage when after all we call ourselves names, and designed for ourselves identity this, and that, which only dig more holes for thriving hatreds and divides. Where’s the unity? On its demographic landscape, the racialization of Nigerian ethnic groups is a mirage! This is a fact most proven even in the genetic relations of her diverse cultural groups. Research by Uche Isichie (1983) shows that in the genetic map of Nigeria constructed from the available data, there’sa significant similarity in the genetic constitution of most Nigeria’s peoples. Although, as she carefully noticed, differences may be seen between certain communities within the country, these differences in the vast majority of cases however, are not as great as what is found when they are compared with other racial groups or even some groups within the continent of Africa. Ourselves, our safe heaven!

The North that we always been called upon by its name (Yan Arewa—Northerners)—echoing something as legendary as ‘faultless’, and conservative as it is given, does not, by the definition of its attitudes today, stand the right claim; neither does the south too. The society was completely different when ‘Almajiri ‘was a real student—a true soul searching ‘Talamiz’ full of spiritual, moral and psychological training. He was never abandoned, nor was he called upon with the nuance in today’s ‘Almajiri’—a sort of ‘which’—that unwanted child! The society was even more calm and spiritual when this ‘Almajiri’ was financially responsible to himself—fairly enough to have heard a ‘hand-in-marriage’ to a 13-15-year old daughter without cursing the kinship tie (‘Auren zumunci or zumunta’)! How is it today when all these become mere aberration? Forced marriage and abuse of child under the cover of Qur’anic schooling are one among many ‘faultless traditions’ of the North! Ourselves, our safe heaven!

The society was more egalitarian, morally secured and administratively just and responsible when the ‘Ulamaa’ could not even think of becoming ‘agents of political parties’, who, through taking various side campaigns in their daily Sermons have today become the ‘whistle dogs’ of a political opponent! What an insult? Where’s the faith? The ‘Deen’ (Islam) which they sold in the marketplace has been the reason why the West could not consider the ‘north-south’ divide as its first priority. It will never allow the North to assume ‘an Islamic statehood’! Rather it uses the religion as a vehicle for pushing in the frontiers of terrorism and human extinction. Islam has been the biggest enemy of the West since the defeat of Communism in the 1980s, and this had forever remained the ‘Northern devil’ that we all become: the ‘Salafi—Izala—Western-firewoods, the Shite propagandists and the Sufi immortalizers, all cursing the faith apart! Where’s the legacy?

Unless we reclaim our soul to the fullest definition of our reality, our faith to the fullest ideal of our religion, ourselves to the fullest safety that we all dishonour, we will never have the safety of ourselves as humans, as Muslims or Christians, as brothers and sisters, as any identity we may give to ourselves as individuals, community or a group with unique identity! Ourselves, our safe heaven!

Mr. Misbahu wrote via
ismailmusbahu15@gmail.com