I had a conversation with friends in my car on the
way to work on Tuesday morning, and was amazed
that all four of them, in their late twenties to early
thirties had no idea what I was talking about. It
dawned on me that many in my generation do not
know much of what happened in Nigeria of say,
thirty years ago, and we therefore miss the lessons
from our history. Hence we repeat the mistakes made
a mere generation ago.
The question I asked was “who knows about
Maitatsine?” It is interesting that none did, in spite
of the obvious similarities between what Maitatsine
was in the late seventies to early eighties, and what
Boko Haram has been for the past five to six years.
Let me elaborate.
Maitatsine, whose real name was Mohammed Marwa
was born in a town called Marwa on the hazy border
of Nigeria with Cameroun. He started preaching in
Kano in 1945 and was exiled by the British Colonial
government when he began to foment trouble. While
preaching Islam, he claimed to be a prophet and a
Mujahid in the mould of the founder of the Sokoto
Caliphate, Usman Dan Fodio. He preached against
radios, watches, bicycles, cars, and possession of
any excess money. His following grew in Kano,
drawn from both almajiris and some middle class
youths who left home. They refused to mix with
other muslims, living in their own enclave, and it did
not take long before their practices conflicted with
the authorities. His growing following was such that
the Islamic religious leaders in the north at first
didn’t know what to do with him and his message.
Then they accepted him after he went on hajj to
Mecca in 1975. But in 1979, they rejected him, after
he rejected the prophethood of Mohammed (SAW)
and the Hadith and Sunnah .
However, at that time, Abubakar Rimi’s government
in Kano State belonged to Aminu Kano‘s People’s
Redemption Party, which was in the opposition to
Shehu Shagari ’s National Party of Nigeria which was
at the center. Hence, rather than nip Maitatsine in
the bud, the federal government and the state
government chose to dilly dally and play politics
with the matter, until Maitatsine’s sect grew. He was
arrested by the police a couple of times but always
managed to be released.
In the late seventies, people began to disappear in
Kano. Reports of people entering the sect’s
compound and not coming out became rife. The Emir
of Kano became very worried, as the sect members,
unlike other regular muslims did not respect his
authority – they respected only one authority, that of
their leader. In the years leading up to 1980, the
number of violent confrontations between Maitatsine
members and the police increased as the number of
sect members increased. The town was saturated
with expectations of the inevitable. When it
happened, it was on a Friday, after the Jumat
prayers. Maitatsine members had been stockpiling
weapons and more sect members from outside Kano
had come in, but the governments at the state and
federal level (represented by the police) had done
nothing about this. When the onslaught began, the
sect overran the mosques, churches, and police
stations. Clearly, the authorities had underestimated
the strength and organization of the sect. At the end
of the days of violence, over five thousand people
were dead. There were reports of sect members being
impervious to bullets, of sect members having a gaze
that paralyzed people that went out to fight them,
leaving the fellow helpless to be finished off.
The army eventually moved in, and overpowered the
sect, killing Mohammed Marwa, the leader.
Now, let’s do a little exercise, shall we? Imagine
everything as a mathematical equation, where each
thing I mention is a mere variable, replaceable with
another value. Now, replace Mohammed Marwa with
Mohammed Yussuf . Fast forward from late seventies/
early eighties to the present. Replace Kano State
with Borno State. Replace Shehu Shagari with
Goodluck Jonathan and NPN with PDP. Replace
Abubakar Rimi with Ali Modu Sherriff and PRP with
ANPP. Does Maitatsine increasingly look like Boko
Haram? In the way it started, grew, and in how the
governments at state and federal level played ruling
against opposition politics with them. How they were
allowed to create an enclave governed by their own
rules? How they had increasing confrontations with
the police as the sect members grew? How they held
themselves separate from other muslims and the
general condemnation by other muslims? How they
attacked and killed other muslims? The anti-
government, anti-tech message? How they were
allowed to stockpile weapons? The explosive
confrontation that led to many deaths? The killing of
their leader?
Now, let’s see how Maitatsine grew after their
leader’s death. Did they end? You guessed right,
they didn’t. The same way a Shekkau led the Boko
Haram insurgency after Mohammed Yusuf was killed
in Maiduguri , after 1980, a certain Musa Makaniki fled
to Yola with other Maitatsine members and in 1984,
Kano was repeated in Yola, with one thousand
people dying and half of the sixty thousand
population of Yola ending up homeless. That was
after the 1982 riots in Bulumkuttu near Maiduguri by
Maitatsine members who had fled Kano, and in
Kaduna, leaving three thousand dead. After Musa
Makaniki’s Yola riots were quelled by the military
under Buhari , he fled to Gombe where, a year later,
sect members again killed hundreds. He was then
pursued into Cameroun. He was finally arrested in
2004.
If we observe the way the sect fragmented after
Mohammed Marwa was killed in Kano in 1980, and
how the killings followed them to all the places they
fled to, we will do well to take the lessons from
these incidents in dealing with Boko Haram today.
There’s a State Of Emergency plus military onslaught
against them in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe today,
and a bounty on Shekau’s head. As the military
crushes the sect in those places, they must not lose
sight of the fact that fragments of the sect can and
will attempt to flee to other parts of Nigeria. They
will attempt to do exactly what they have done
before in the new places they flee to. Already, we are
seeing a prelude to this with the attack on Daura , in
the North West, an area where there had never been
a Boko Haram incursion until the full scale military
action against them in their former haunts. We must
learn from history, and use the lessons to prevent
this from happening, and save future thousands from
dying at the sect’s hands. The way the two sects
rose, plus Kalo Kata (read that up, dear reader)
between them in the nineties shows that the
emergence of each sect is symptomatic of some
deeper seated issues in the north that need to be
dealt with, otherwise, after Boko Haram is crushed,
in another decade, we’ll be dealing with another
insurgency. Finally, our politicians need to stop
irresponsible politicking with issues like
insurgencies. The same way NPN/PRP allowed
Maitatsine to fester due to politics, PDP/APC
politics contributed to Boko Haram’s ability to grow
into the monster it has become. The knee jerk
reactions from the yet to be fully formed APC to the
state of emergency is another example of playing
opposition politics rather than contributing to
dealing decisively with an insurgency. This has to
stop.
“Muhammed Marwa aka Maitatsine…a
precursor of Boko Haram leaders”
Äbubakar Shekau, a reincarnation of
Maitatsine…”

Hmmmmm...I just thought about it, and all the variables do add up. That's just how all insurgency and terrorist groups begin. Their modus operandi are all the same.

Good write up.

SeverusSnape:
Hmmmmm

lol

misreal:
hmmmm took.

I've modified my post.