One of my favourite writers from the Muslim North, Dr. Farooq Kperogi, wrote this timeless piece a while ago. It will explain to you why President Muhammadu Buhari who never gave anyone any scholarship, who never built a youth vocational centre or any industry to employ youths or get almajiris off the streets between 2003 and 2015, and whose children schooled abroad, continued to get millions of votes from the core North when he ran for President four times

Someone suggested a few weeks ago on Facebook that President Buhari’s irrationally wild popularity in the Muslim north (including Kano) would require an entire doctoral dissertation to explain. I disagree. It doesn’t require that much effort to explain. It’s simply the product of a mix of amnesic nostalgia, visceral emotions, and Muslim clerical tyranny in the north.

Here is what I mean. Nigerians generally have a predilection for sentimentalizing the supposed glories of bygone days. The past is always greener than the present, and the further a memory recedes into the past the more its putative glories are celebrated and romanticized. Add that to the fact that Buhari’s first coming was short-lived. But you can actually map the genealogy of the myth of Buhari’s “Mai gaskiyaness,” which is the immediate trigger for the worshipful admiration he enjoys among the masses (and some elites) of the Muslim north.

It started in the year 2001 after former President Obasanjo summoned a Council of State meeting in the aftermath of the Sharia-inspired sanguinary fury that drenched Kaduna in oceans of blood. The Obasanjo government, speaking through then Vice President Atiku Abubkar, said the Council of State, of which all past presidents and heads of state are members, had agreed that all Sharia states should revert to the “status quo ante,” basically meaning they should discontinue the implementation of Sharia. Buhari disputed the accuracy of the Obasanjo government’s rendition of what the Council of State recommended. He said Sharia didn’t even come up in the discussions of the Council of State. For being the only person to openly disagree with the Obasanjo government, he began to be called “Mai Gaskiya.”

Thereafter, he became an open advocate for Sharia and even went so far as to say the northern Muslim electorate shouldn’t vote anyone into office who wasn’t committed to Sharia. "I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria," Buhari said at a seminar organized by the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria in August 2001. "God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of the Sharia in the country."

Although Buhari himself isn’t a deeply religious person, his open, full-throated but politically motivated (some would say opportunistic) support for Sharia (at a time no other former president of northern Nigerian Muslim extraction was willing to do so) caused him to be wildly popular among northern Muslim masses and the conservative clerical elite of the region. Now, Islamic clerics in the north preach that Buhari is divinely ordained to be president and that criticism of his policies amounts to blasphemy. That’s why northern Muslim critics of Buhari like me are seen as heretics—or, worse, not even Muslim at all. I recall a northern Nigerian university teacher and foreign-based PhD student exclaiming “SubhaanAllaah!” when I first shared my criticism of Buhari with him during a WhatsApp chat. He was so distraught you would think I committed blasphemy. So it isn’t just northern Nigerian Muslim masses that literally worship Buhari.

Given the oversized influence of Islamic clerics in shaping public opinion in Muslim northern Nigeria, no amount of logic, evidence-based reasoning, economic hardship, etc. will make the littlest dent on Buhari’s popularity in the Muslim north. In his widely shared articled titled, “Advice On Buhari Media Centre,” Dr. Aliyu Tilde beautifully captured the complicity of the conservative northern Nigerian Muslim clerical establishment in the deification of President Buhari. “The same thing applies to religious leaders who are invited to the villa (by the President, said one of them) for the same purpose of propaganda,” Dr. Tilde wrote. “They return and tell their followers all sorts of stories that they have met an angel there and witnessed miracles at the foot of Sinai. I just heard a Whatsapp audio of one of them from Sokoto who was telling his followers, amidst Allahu Akbar, this kind of stories: Buhari ya yi kira. Kuna ga sai a zauna?…kun san da Nijeriya ba ta da uba. Yanzu na tai uba. Na je villa, na ga abin ban mamaki… What a shame."

It’s interesting that Buhari was particularly unpopular with the northern Nigerian Muslim clerical establishment in the 1980s. He was resented for a number of reasons. His wife then, as now, made sartorial choices that didn’t conform to the clerics’ expectations of a Muslim woman. Buhari also banned open-air preaching, stopped/drastically reduced state sponsorship of Hajj, and forbade the building of new Jumu’ah mosques without the permission of emirate councils.

This put him at odds with Muslim clerics, particularly the emergent Izala sect, which now enjoys hegemony in northern Nigeria. Sheikh Abubakar Mahmood Gumi, in fact, said during a preaching session that “Allah will not forgive the regimes of Shagari and that of Buhari because they blocked the way of Allah.” Fast-forward to the 2000s and Buhari’s support for Sharia when it wasn’t politically wise to do so, especially by a former head of state, set the stage for his deification and worship by a clerical elite that a generation ago invoked curses on him.

In a way, Buhari is reaping the “benefits” of the choices he made in 2001. Now millions of people in the Muslim north would rather die than withhold support for Buhari, however much his government’s policies, or lack thereof, smolder them. Support for Buhari in the Muslim north isn’t just politics; it’s now religion. There is no precedent for this in Nigeria’s history.

Farooq Kperogi

In a way, Buhari is reaping the “benefits” of the choices he made in 2001. Now millions of people in the Muslim north would rather die than withhold support for Buhari, however much his government’s policies, or lack thereof, smolder them. Support for Buhari in the Muslim north isn’t just politics; it’s now religion. There is no precedent for this in Nigeria’s history.

CharlotteFlair:
Nobody can blame them. Are they not the brainwashed lot? What they have in common with the dullard is their imaginary 72 virgins.

Sapiosexuality:
Buhari is a myth. That man of integrity and meek leader doesn't exist. He is the product of media and religious brainwash. He is a proof that the media control even the ones who claim to be educated. The man is bias in every ramification and never had the mental anatomy to make Nigeria function. They'd still vote for him. I keep telling my bro Buhari will win in 2019 and he thinks I'm talking rubbish. But he will.

To the educated people who fell I think this lines below captures their state now:

'It is very difficult to admit you were scammed by a person whose intelligence you consider mediocre. It is difficult. So you go to a great length telling the world how he didn’t defraud you. Within, you know he did scam you, but because that will make you appear dunce, something you despise, you pretend he didn’t defraud you. You defend him instead. Only those whose goodwill are above their egos say the truth'.

http://www.mortalpoet.com/things-learn-change-government/

raumdeuter:
Before the 2001 speech on Shariah, the average hausa man has been a supporter of Buhari.

I have many Hausa friends who will beg me to see reasons to support Buhari over all the other corrupt people

Atiku and IBB might be popular among the Northern elites, but the people on the street, Buhari is it for them

Ishilove:

Word...minus the 'defend' part. I don't defend him

seunmsg:


Truly, nobody can blame. Northerners got brainwashed by Buhari's sharia posture, Igbos got brainwashed by kanu's "Biafra or nothing" stand and Igbo's are now getting brainwashed by Atikus fake call for restructuring. You see dear, different brainwashing strokes for different folks. At the end of the day, we all get brainwashed one way or the other.

doctokwus:
One of the most divisive and incompetent leaders Nigeria should ever have.
Some of us didn't know what the word bigotry truly meant,till Buhari came to power.
Clannishness/parochialism was taken to new depths under him.
Corruption is now fully entrenched and he struck the greatest hammer blow to any corruption fight anywhere in the world:selectiveness and cover for family/associates and loyalists.
Record numbers of Nigerians are now committing suicide due to the untold hardship he has unleashed.
Incompetence does not have to look further than Buhari.

Ratello:


Good morning doctokwus, remember we warned you back then. Buhari is even arrogant in power which makes it worst. Very terrible leader to rule a divided nation already

seunmsg:


I agree in totality with the submission and conclusion of Dr. Kperogi. The support for Buhari in the North is far more than just political support. Atiku is a very rich and popular politician but he doesn't command the kind of heroic support that Buhari enjoys. The calculation of Atikus camp is to win bloc votes from the south and share the votes from north central. Very faulty assumptions as Buhari will win significantly in north central and south west historically doesn't even vote en bloc. If they will start in 2015, it wont be in favour of an Atiku/igbo vp against Bubari/OsinbJo. Atiku stands no chance in 2019!

doctokwus:

I never in my widest dreams imagine he would be this bad.
I looked into his history and the well oiled propaganda of him having integrity and not being corrupt and felt here is the man at at last.
Alas,he has in his 2yrs,starting from just a yr into his tenure,given me a rude awakening!

Ratello:

I knew back then that you didn't really see through who Buhari was back then likewise many of you guys then. Too unfortunate the Monster is spending 4 years but thank God he won't spend another 4 years that is guaranteed.

hucienda:


Don't be too sure.

In an ideal world, he would be thrashed in the coming election. But Nigeria is far from ideal.

He could still retain the seat - by hook or crook.

Ratello:

he won't spend another 4 years that is guaranteed.

A7:
I grow up seeing people adorning their houses/shops/vehicles with Buhari's photo with mai gaskiya boldly written.

This practice existed even before i was born.