“Only Muslims can defeat Boko Haram”

Brigadier-General Gumi (retd), who is a son of the revered late Grand Khadi of Northern Nigeria, Sheik Abubakar Gumi, and brother of Kaduna-based Islamic scholar, Sheikh Mahmud Gumi, noted that apart from the ongoing effort by the federal government, the Muslim community in the country had the obligation to complement the fight against the insurgents.

According to Leadership Newspaper, in a position paper made available on Tuesday, June 16 he noted that this edition of his paper on the topic is a little digression from the first edition published in this paper in February.

He said this edition, entitled ‘How To Break Boko Haram II’, was guided by democratic principles that seek “to reiterate the need for checks and balances without which projections and sharing of responsibilities may not be equitable.”

Gumi opined that beside the roles being played the executive, legislative and judiciary arms of government, the North and the Muslim community must brace up to the situation.

This, he said, is informed by the fact that “Muslims were hitherto designated as the main complainants/victims of the insurgency and, by extension, the entire Northern Nigeria which formed the battleground.”

He faulted the situation whereby the war against the insurgents was left for the federal government to contend with, saying it was “erroneous for the Northern establishments to rely fully on the government or the National Assembly for all initiatives needed to prosecute the BH (Boko Haram) insurgency.”

“They (North) should bear in mind that no federal body is structured to either project the North, faith, regional-based entity or targeted situations. The North, being directly devastated by the insurgency as ground zero, needs to design its peculiar defence mechanisms common or suitable to its heritage.

“This would fill in survival gaps or at the least improve its disposition as to compel the constituted federal structure to be alive to its responsibilities whenever its social fabrics are threatened.

“The attitude to wait for an election year before action would amount to accepting the kind of casualties and losses realized within the period for the democracy we have chosen for ourselves”.

Besides, Gumi added that the law expects every victim, complainant, native, domicile or citizen to defend himself through complaints and preserving records, as well as sustaining cooperation with those assigned with the responsibility to secure citizens as a public duty.

He continued: “Apathy and total reliance on government structures for all obligations, checks and balances turn silly a critique as to deserve no ears of a serious responder. The law itself, after all, does not rise up to the indolent.

“It behoves on ‘the Cloaked one,’ the waiting to be fed, the victim, every Muslim, group of Muslims and Christians of the North who insist that the situation must change, to come out and isolate himself/themselves from the violent ideology that sets itself on war path with fellow countrymen.”

According the anti-terror fight demands united actions.

“Just like any meaningful effort,” he said, “this cannot be achieved except by harnessing concerned energies into one direction that leaves no room for the enemy to exploit. Therefore, in the search for solutions, there is the need to first identify common denominators that bind groups and heritages that held the past.”

He listed other areas to identify as the primary and secondary causes of rifts that were overblown, latent and apparent dividing lines, foreign or extenuating influences and a fashion that prioritizes one direction over another.

Gumi lamented that much has still not been done on the principles that created the platform for recruitment of Nigerian citizens against their own country.

He noted that “some forms of system failures, ignorance, shock and corruption among others have evaded the judicial and legislative exploits that would have defined the nation’s position, locate and isolate the strange creed and its foreign roots.

“Apart from the use of force in defeating the enemy, forums that would formulate a counter narrative against the enemy was either not made, or failed to involve major stakeholders for the fight to be potent.

These stakeholders include the Bar, Bench, university academia, traditional institutions, Sharia jurists, Muslim and Christian clergy and the victims.

According to him, rooting out Boko Haram which is falsely claiming to propagate Muslim tenets “without distinguishing it from the majority of Muslim orthodox or traditional teachings will only leave Muslims generally hanging as accused persons.”

He added that situation was even worsened by the fact that many of the Boko Haram suspects had been in and out of police or prosecutors’ charges and arraignments but let off the hook for one reason or the other.

Accordingly, he recommended a de-radicalisation process that would basically influence a change of ideological and common narratives tested and known to all must therefore be rehearsed together again, even as he said the joints that ensured peaceful divides, tolerance and preservation of national goals in the past must be rekindled.

Gumi further recommended that all parts of the country should make do more with religion as the most veritable bond to forge genuine relationships that are capable of withstanding all manners of rigour or minimize them to the barest minimum whenever they have to strike.

He stressed the need for Muslims of Northern extraction and the nation as a whole “to hold a summit of all the known Islamic groups in order to achieve common declarations on the BH phenomenon, reaffirm respect and mutual confidence in Christians across and reiterate the universality and commonality of the local and orthodox content of Islam to fellow countrymen.”

Insisting on convening a summit, Gumi said, “It stands out that there is urgent need for a Muslim summit to discuss the items of the agenda and to re-establish gaps that had eroded in the past to have paved way for the current unfortunate situation.

“The aegis of the Jamatu Nasril Islam (JNI) is suggested as the umbrella body under which all Muslim organizations will come in to marshal the communiqué required for government support and other parallel actions.

“Firm declarations need to be made that will re-establish the confidence of Christians and the international community in the Muslims of Nigeria, that they are peaceful and law-abiding like they have always been in the past.

“The summit may also wish to conclude by a recap of the universality and ‘immemorability’ of Islamic heritage and its contribution to the making of the modern World.”

Gumi noted that Boko Haram would not have become a national security menace if former President Olusegun Obasanjo had reined in the activities of its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, and those he accused of practising “political Sharia” while he was in power.

The 33-page discourse which he entitled “The Cloaked One”, laced with analogies and quotations from Islamic jurisprudence and Common laws, recalled that Sheikh Jaafar Adam (of blessed memory) had alerted the government (of Olusegun Obasanjo) and anyone who cared to listen then that late Muhammad Yusuf was up to some dangerous games in very good time but no one listened to him.”

He observed that the administration of Chief Obasanjo wasted time by playing politics with religion.

“Consequently, even when Jaafar Adam was mowed down, it could not trigger a suspicion or reaction to use the clergy as the counter narrative solution against the BH group.”

Muslim clerics, he said “continued to fall until fear gripped the flock as to jettison any other solution outside of waiting for the military resolve,” because of the lethargy of the Obasanjo presidency.

He queried the efficacy of the military solution, saying six years after the death of its founder, the group had become even stronger and more daring.

In Gumi’s opinion, if Obasanjo had prevented the Zamfara State government under Ahmad Sani Yerima from introducing what it called Sharia criminal law, the risk of misinterpreting the Islamic penal code would have been averted.

He argued that the application of Sharia by Yerima and his co-travellers “was not only hard on Muslims in ‘uquba’, but amateurish and narrow in perception. It sent dangerous signal to the public that the Nigeria project had sidelined Sharia criminal law and that Muslims had been marginalized before then, not minding the modest achievements yet in place.”

According to Gumi, if there is anybody to blame for the current travails of Muslims and the North, it is Obasanjo.

“He has been on the scene for too long to claim innocence, and for his own quality and experience. He has danced along the fault lines of secular and religious Nigeria since 1975 when, as head of state, he collected missionary schools from the churches and Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) and simultaneously recruited retired soldiers to government schools to impose corporal discipline in place of clergy and moral dominance in our schools.

“He again supervised and restored the first walkout of Muslim representatives to the constitution drafting committee of 1979 and was again to benefit from another similar walkout in 1999 after which he became the next civilian president”.

Gumi described Obasanjo’s handling of the ‘political Sharia’ introduced by Yerima as ’reckless and extra-judicial.’

“His government denied the federal courts an adjudicative opportunity that could assuage the situation to probably fill in the gaps that Sharia needed to have natural growth and level-playing field like any other sensitive aspect of our lives.

“The various legislative houses at different levels were consequently also denied the opportunity to pick up better initiatives from the judiciary, to carry on together with the executive arm the Sharia discourse and development across those places it needed to make positive inroads like all other matters of common concerns.”

Incidentally, he noted, President Obasanjo was privy to the robust role of the judiciary in all matters that included politics, like in the interpretation of two-thirds of 19 states and many more pursued by Nigerian courts which mainly also upheld public policy to the wide acclaim of Nigerians.

“Methinks Obasanjo knew the greater implications to the polity and that was why he was bent on a third term to manage it fair enough. When the third term bid failed, Baba Obasanjo could only be scanty to the incoming Yar’Adua/Jonathan‘s regimes over the full brief to the Sharia crisis and its logical link with the BH for them to remain clueless in its management.

“The guilt may explain why Obasanjo remained too interested as to seek compensation to the BH leader’s family even ahead of the government initiative while prescribing a carrot and stick approach to the counterinsurgency effort.

“On the sight of a free and fair election, Obasanjo was again quick to shift ground, dance and arrive at the change pulpit even before the imam’s arrival in order to assure himself of a credible role thereafter,” he contended.

Similarly, Gumi observed, former president Obasanjo, who introduced what the retired one-star general called “so many laudable national projects” that could have stopped the insecurity at the earliest stage, shirked his responsibility by failing to implement them.

He cited the National ID card and the registration of mobile phone lines as measures that could have come in handy to nip the Boko Haram criminality in the bud.

Gumi also said that the sales of federal government landed properties made alienation and social exclusion issues that heightened tension in many states of the North.

“The attitude”, he concluded, “gave the room for system arbitrariness, adjustments, corruption and impugned consequences.”