By Turaki A. Hassan (Special Adviser on Media & Public
Affairs)
For many devout Christians, the idea of
combining the practice of their faith with active
partisan politics is so antithetical that the mere
thought of it is seen as a sign that one has
backslidden from pure Christianity.
This is because active partisan politics,
especially in Nigeria, is said to be a dirty game
and adjudged to be associated with the things
that Christianity vehemently preaches against:
lying, covetousness, stealing and mentioning
God’s name in vain ; amongst others.
Therefore when a group of politicians under the
aegis of Northern Nigeria Christian Politicians
converged on Abuja penultimate Saturday to
honour the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Yakubu Dogara and the
Secretary to the Government of the Federation,
David Babachir Lawal; many critical observers
were quick to dismiss it as an incongruous
gathering.
Not a few also wondered aloud the
capacity of politicians to hide under any guise to
advance their cause.
But when Speaker Yakubu Dogara was given an
opportunity to speak there was no room for
political rhetorics, he hit squarely at the very
issue that has continued to draw the northern
part of the country backward: distrust among
Christians and Muslims.
According to Dogara, rather than accentuating
the areas of division among the various groups,
ethnicity and religions in the north, what
politicians of every colour and creed should do is
to emphasise our common humanity and our
areas of strength thereby underscoring the
miracles that will be performed if all of us:
Muslims, Christians, other faiths and the diverse
ethnic nationalities come together to further our
collective aspirations of building a better society
and country that all of us would be proud of.
He noted that these faith based prejudices are
not stereotypical of the north and are indeed a
latter day phenomenon adding that there are
many among our Muslim brothers who sincerely
believe that the Christian community in the North
deserves a fairer deal and more equitable
patronage.
According to him it is the presence of
those with such disposition and the dogged
efforts of some such leaders who worked in the
spirit of unity in his support, that resulted in his
election as Speaker of the House of
Representatives.
“There are those who said look, time has come
for the North to go back to those days of
Sardauna where those who call themselves, or
are referred to as the core North, will
deliberately fashion out ways of patronizing their
Christians brothers in the North,” he said.
Dogara, who praised the efforts of some notable
northern Muslim political leaders in cementing
the hitherto fractured relations between the two
dominant religious groups in the north, admitted
that had northern Muslim leaders prevailed on
their Reps not to vote for him, he would never
have emerged as Speaker.
It is his belief that the support he got from
northern Muslims and the appointment of
Engineer Lawal as SGF by President
Muhammadu Buhari, is sending strong signals to
all northern Christians that there is now as open
invitation to them from their Muslim brethren for
a renewed friendship that will foster unity and
religious tolerance in the region, as in the days
of the late sage and Premier of defunct northern
region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of
Sokoto.
As the speaker noted, one can say without fear
of contradiction that it takes only a person of
President Muhammadu Buhari to appointment a
Lawal, a Christian from Adamawa state as the
SGF, which is the first time such a plum position
is ceded to northern Christians despite strong
opposition from those who believed in
maintaining the status quo.
“It may interest you to know that among Sokoto
State Members, we lost only two votes. If all the
Members from Sokoto State alone had decided
to vote for my opponent, there is no way we
would have won that election. And in Zamfara,
we lost one vote. But what does that speak to
us? It speaks volumes: Its an invitation to all of
us to go back to the ways of our founding
fathers.
What ways? When we used to work
together and when we used to live together as
brothers and sisters.
That is the only way that
we can live in peace which is a key ingredient
for development. Without peace, we cannot even
practice our religion.
And as long as we don’t
enjoy peace in our region, there is no way that
we will experience development because even if
we are developed, lack of peace will destroy it.
Syria is a case in point. So that is the challenge
before us. As they open their arms to embrace
us, we should also open our arms to embrace
them so that we can write a new political
history” he told the gathering amidst thunderous
applause.
Speaker Dogara also used the opportunity of the
occasion to send a message to other Nigerians
who think that their nests can be better
feathered if Nigeria is dismembered into smaller
units.
Sounding deeply religious as he always is, the
speaker told the audience at the packed main
hall of the International Conference centre that
those who habour such sinister thoughts had
better perished them as God did not make a
mistake in creating the Nigerian nation.
He said: “For some of us who think Nigeria is a
mistake, or that the North, having aggregated so
many ethnic groups and then two dominant faith,
is a mistake, I want to advise us to have a
rethink.”
According to him, “the one who put together
Nigeria and the North is God and He has a
purpose or reason for putting together the North
or Nigeria that way.
Therefore, anyone fighting for the disintegration
of this country will not succeed because I
believe God has a plan for Nigeria and likewise,
anyone fighting to eliminate any faith in Northern
Nigeria or for the destruction of Northern Nigeria
will not succeed because I believe God has a
plan for northern Nigeria too and until God is
done with his plan, the north will remain as it is
and similarly Nigeria will remain as it is.
If
anyone can upturn that, it means he is greater
than God”. Gladly no one is greater than God.
Instructively, the emergence of Dogara as
speaker, though supported by many prominent
northern Muslim leaders; as he himself
acknowledged in his speech, one man stood out
among them all, and that is Rt. Hon. Aminu
Waziri Tambuwal, who worked tirelessly along
with the others to bring about the present
leadership of the House so as to give a sense of
belonging to northern Christians in the APC
government.
Indeed, the unity and northern nationalism that
existed in pre-independence Nigeria up to the
end of the first republic; which has continued to
remain a reference point and is being preached
and talk about till today, was brought about by
the two prominent leaders of the time-Sardauna
and his friend and confidant, Sir Abubakar
Tafawa-Balewa, the first and only Prime Minister
of Nigeria.
Coincidently, whereas Dogara, hails from same
place as Tafawa-Balewa, Tambuwal is not only
from Sokoto just as Sardauna but he is also the
governor there.
It is worth recalling that just as Sardauna was
able to galvanise support and rally people from
all ethnic and religious groups in the north and
even appointed northern Christians such as
Sunday Awoniyi, Jolly Tanko Yusuf and others of
blessed memory as his close aides and
associates, Tambuwal too, seems to be
threading Sardauna’s noble path in his time.
It can be recall, with nostalgia, that on August
18, 2014, Tambuwal who was then Speaker of
the House of Representatives along with the
then Sokoto Governor Aliyu Wamakko, on the
invitation of Dogara, visited Tafawa-Balewa to
lunch constituency outreach programme and
projects embarked upon for his Bogoro/Das/
Tafawa-Balewa Federal Constituency; which was
the first of such visits by any top ranking
northern Muslim political leaders in our recent
history.
They went not for politicking but with a strong
message: peace and unity.
When he mounted the rostrum to speak at the
event, Tambuwal reminded the people of the
long term relationship between Tafawa Balewa
and the Sokoto caliphate which started with the
late Premier Sardauna and Prime Minister
Tafawa Balewa and urged the people to embrace
peace. Less than one year after, Dogara, with the
support of Tambuwal and others became
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
This is why the speaker appealed to his Christian
brethren to, as a matter of necessity, reciprocate
the gestures extended by our Muslim
counterparts and forge a new era of northern
unity as it existed in the days of Sardauna and
Tafawa-Balewa.
Not only that, he also had a strong message to
the rather disparate Christian groups in northern
Nigeria, “your growth will remain stunted for as
long as you fail to provide a leadership for
yourselves that is focused and ready to lead.”
“We really need leadership and this event speaks
to leadership. Without leadership, you cannot
achieve anything. And if we thought in the
Christian community in the north that progress is
automatic, then we are mistaken.”
“Alexander the Great said something which was
quite true of his time and even now. He said he
is never afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep
but that he is always afraid of an army of sheep
led by a lion.
So that tells you that without
leadership we cannot make progress.
Leadership
is so central and important that with the wrong
leadership we won’t make progress.
Therefore, as
a community, we cannot afford to just stay
without leadership, without organisation, without
a platform where we articulate visions and how
we can pursue them and hope that we can make
progress.
If we do that, we will be deceiving
ourselves”.
It is Dogara’s conviction that working together,
we can forge a strong union and take back the
region to the good old days when it was the envy
of others.
Indeed, no other Christian who was not a
politician would have been able to deliver such a
poignantly blunt message to politicians without
ruffling feathers as Speaker Dogara.
