Jarus:

that, like that of Faruk Mutallab, are exceptions. but I still hold, that[b] poverty is secondary cause though[/b].

Well said. But i wasn't excluding poverty, just pointing out that its beyond poverty.

@all4naija
good analysis.

Jarus, i think what SLS and Clinton said r different.
I also don't totally agree with clinton on this. Violence is poverty driven most times, but in northern Nigeria's case it is 90% hate/illiteracy driven and less than 10% poverty driven.

True talk Clinton

Bill clinton is wrong, it is not poverty that cause the problem of Boko haram.

You have to know why there is Boko haram. Nigeria has a history and the satellite picture is been access by millions of Nigeria through cell phone and Iphone. While the Nigeria govt continue to tell lies about the whole thing because they dont want to make change.

The only solution is to make change . And I have said it over and over with it is the removal of the Western Niger from Nigeria that is the only solution .


The north will never agree to the satellite pictures. The north lives better than the south. Northerners live better than southerners. Food is cheap in the north than the south. While southerners receive the same amount of salary like northerners. Northerner spend less than southerners and things are cheaper in the north than south.

The issue is, it is hard for people who have dominated a country for so long to discovery that they are now minority. It is hard. And that is why boko Haram is asking for a separate state from Nigeria.

Jarus:

My own take is this: The root cause of Boko Haram is misinterpretation of religious texts by a few religious extremists, but poverty fueled it by provided an army of illiterate, easily brainwashable, vulnerable youth.

SLS blames it on poverty, and you call him a religious/ethnic bigot; Clinton says same, you call him senile. Poverty-violence relationship is almost unimpeachable. The poorest countries/regions in the world(Somalia, Congo, etc) are the most violence-ridden.

My problem with that SLS statement is the time, not the statement itself, and a wrong assumption that making more funds available for the violence-ridden region will eliminate poverty, where histiry shows that more allocation=more money into governors private coffers.

If you want to disagree with these people(SLS, Clinton etc), intellectualize it, compare facts, not imputing motive to their view.

Soludo said same thing 2008.



Soludo accuses Northern elite of foisting poverty on people





The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, on Saturday in Kaduna, blamed the elite in the North for the acute poverty ravaging the majority of the people of the region.

Soludo, who stated this while delivering a lecture entitled, “Banking Reforms in Nigeria” at the 2008 Arewa Inspirational Leadership Award and Public Lecture, organised by the Northern Development Initiative, said that the high incidence of poverty in the North had become so alarming. He said the region was constituting a drag on the development of the other parts of the country.

He argued that the lack of interest often displayed by Northern elite towards the socio-economic development of the region had been responsible for the “crippling poverty” and acute under-development in the area.

According to the CBN governor, whose comments intermittently drew loud applause from the audience, the lackadaisical attitude of the Northern elites and the affluent towards investing in viable economic ventures had resulted in the region trailing far behind the other parts of the country in almost every aspect of life.

He regretted that poverty in Nigeria had become a Northern phenomenon, as each of the 19 states in the region exhibited incidences of poverty ranging between 60 and 95 per cent.

Soludo noted that crippling poverty in the North had assumed the dimension of a national crisis just like the problems in the oil-rich but troubled Niger Delta region.

The CBN governor, therefore, stated that only an inclusive developmental process in which the North could compete with the other parts of the country on the same pedestal would ensure that Nigeria realised its dream of being part of the 20 largest economies in the world by the year 2020.

Soludo also tasked the elite on the development of agriculture and industry, especially generation of employment opportunities to sustain its economy and education. He said that knowledge and skill had become critical elements of human and economic development.

He therefore urged the Northern elite to pick up the challenge by striving to bring the region to the same level of development as the other parts of the country.

http://archive.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200807201123582

On Soludo and the North

By

Oduogu Okpo

IOKORAFOR@cenbank.org





Some of our countrymen who reside in what we all refer to as Northern Nigeria have just proved me right once again. As soon as I read the comment made by Professor Chukwuma Soludo somewhere in Kaduna some time ago to the effect that Northern leaders should be held responsible for the poverty in the region, I knew that hell would be let loose on the poor and unduly bashed Govenor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. And like I had expected, all manner of reactions have trailed the comment. First the Northern Governors have come up with sarcastic response and the elders of the region under the auspices of the Arewa Consultaive Forum (ACF) have also responded in an expectedly mature manner. During my trip to Abuja last week, I bought Leadership and Daily Trust newspapers and I found them replete with all kinds of insults and tantrums on Soludo. And on the internet, it was total war on one single man and his comment.



This is essentially the main problem with Nigerians. The way a typical Nigerian will react to a criticism is, like one philosopher said, “to provide an answer to a question only by first knowing who has asked it”. Although every part of our country has its own share of the collective folly of our nationhood, including poverty and corruption. In Anambra, Soludo’s home state, there is poverty. Indeed as I look at the poverty figures again, almost 25% of Soludo’s kinsmen are below the national poverty line. Here in Abia, it is much worse than in Anambra, but in no way near the figures in the North. The poverty level in the North is peculiar and it requires a peculiar response not brick-bats. The earlier we all accept it and swallow our pride, then the earlier we can begin to honestly plan to confront it. It is in the nature of Nigerians all over the world to arrogantly present themselves much better than they are in reality. Solutions to life’s problems do not come in arrogance, they come in humility. Poor governance is the bane of Nigeria today. In all parts of the country, , there have been failed attempts at governance, but the situation in the North is not exactly what it is in most other parts of the South. This should be of great concern to all Nigerians if we still profess one country. Since after the death of the Ahmadu Bello, Sadauna of Sokoto (May God bless his soul) and after the era of the Aminu Kanos and Balarabe Musas I have hardly heard of any determined effort at purposeful governance in the North.



From the newspaper cuttings I made last week, almost every Northerner that has written on Soludo has poured invectives on him and called him names. Yet, not one of the commentators has offered any better statistic on the poverty challenge either in the North or in the entire country. It will be helpful for instance to know if what Soludo said about poverty in the North was not borne out by credible research or whether he only drew attention to a fact that most of these writers have conveniently chosen to ignore in the past. I also see a large dose of naiveté in the whole episode. Soludo’s critique of the Northern elite should have provided the needed opportunity for the same elite to put forward an argument for a special Federal attention on the poverty in the North. But none will have that. They will rather ask for Soludo’s head on a spike, or that he be sacked and/or that the position he occupies, that is, the CBN Governor’s seat, be delivered to them in fine leather. Not one person has offered any alternative source of the massive poverty in the North and how this can be tackled. The nearest thing to such effort was the conference organised some time last year by The Leadership newspaper on the De-Industrialisation of the North. Why is it that all the states that are contiguous to the sahel region are recording high incidences of poverty? Is in the geography, culture, people, governance, or just the accident of history? If the country became independent in 1960 and all the regions and states started sending their people to school and training them in the various skills, why is there so much differential in the level of literacy and skills between the North and the South?



I have read Ishaq Modibbo Kawu, Garba Deen Muhammad, Abubakar Sadeeque Abba, Kabiru Mato, and others, they are only lashing out at Soludo and none is discussing the issues raised on poverty. The writers enumerated above do not even understand what the average Northern person goes through. They appear to me to be the mouth-piece of the elite. They are the ones who insist that Soludo must be banished and that the North must control the CBN in order to eradicate poverty in the North.



When I was in service and even now as I make my business trips,I have met Northern young people who are angry with the state of the region. They are the ones whom we read were hailing Soludo at the Kaduna speech. They are the ones that will possess the courage and moral strength to confront the subject of Soludo’s speech and react to it in a positive sense. They have interacted with their age mates in Nigeria and abroad, they have decided never to accept a system that subjugates them without reason. They yearn for a system that will allow them to ask questions about stolen public money and a betrayed social contract. They are impatient with those who think that the way to grow is through government contracts and unproductive rent. They are well educated and world-class-skilled like Sanusi Lamido who has justifiably and competently taken charge of First Bank Nigeria PLC, They are the new developers in Abuja. They are building factories and linking up with their peers in Dubai and Johannesburg. They are not asking that Government should go back to introduce regional banking so that they can use political links to steal from poor depositors. In a nutshell, they do not want to be spoon-fed.



This crop of leaders in the North will like to put the blame where it belongs – the elite. Danjuma said it, Babangida Aliu has said it. Norther leaders have failed their people! There is no other way of saying this in English. The main problem this time appears to be that it is Soludo who has said it. A man alleged by the same Northern elite to have impoverished the North through the bank consolidation programme. No politician, either in the North or in the South has had the effrontery to publicly say what Soludo has said. No traditional ruler in the North or South has had the gut to say so. It takes courage and forthrightness to tell truth. Part of the problem also appears to be that Soludo has told the truth repeatedly.



As I read through a copy of Sunday Trust I bought as I left Abuja last Sunday, I see its motto as “Truth is a Burden”. The burden of truth must continue to be on the Northern elite until they do something about the brazen looting of their people’s resources, whether there is a Soludo or not. There is a saying here in Aba that it is the cow that allows itself to be killed that has invited the butcher’s knife. How I wish that Minister of Agriculture Oga Ruma or Alhaji Sanusi Dagash could tell the Igbo political elite how years of stealing especially, our share of the Federation account, has forced our youth into yahoo crimes and our girls into prostitution. What of the ecological fund which was meant to close up the huge erosion gullies that litter the East and threaten lives and limb of our people.



Soludo’s Igbo kinsmen may decide not to forgive him for helping the North make a case for more developmental action, whereas there is also poverty in the South-East. I recall during the consolidation programme, the man ruffled feathers in the East when he virtually made available over N30billion to Bank of The North by way of debt forgiveness to enable the institution survive. I remember writing to insist on equal treatment for all the other regional institutions. I do not think any eyebrows were raised by the Northern elite. I also remember that the Nigerian labour congress declared war on Soludo for “subsidizing elitist mismanagement” of the regional bank.



So when I read from one of the writers that Soludo’s charge against the Northern elite was an act deceit, I mused. Why would Soludo want to play to impress the North? I understand he has a fix tenure which expires next year. Well, perhaps he might want to be retained for a second term. But what for? If what I read in the papers and on the net ia anything to go by, the hassles of the office are not worth it. If there are people who would want Soludo to stay on I, personally, am not one. The young man should go abroad and make money and fame. The real strength of this country lies in the destruction of its promising youth, those who have been sent by God to lift it up from the pit of rubbish in which charlatans, brigands and graded rogues have dragged it.



Thus, instead of calling for Soludo’s head, and addressing him in the most vicious expletives the swarm of writers should be grateful to Soludo. Iam worried about the North because this country will be playing the fool if we are expecting to reach the goals of Vision 20 20 20 with the level of poverty in the country.



Oduogu writes from 16, Nwala Street, Umule, Aba, .Abia State


http://www.gamji.com/article8000/NEWS8166.htm

Soludo’s “northern phenomenon”

Written by Ochereome Nnanna
Thursday, July 24, 2008


LET me start by congratulating the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, for summoning the courage to go to Kaduna and tell the elites of northern Nigeria the patriotic home truth last weekend about their neglect of Nigeria’s lower classes of northern origin.

Soludo shrugged off the real or imagined moves by some northern hawks to hound him out of office in order to take over the CBN.

Let me also commend the Northern Development Initiative (NDI), which organised the Arewa Inspirational Leadership Forum, the platform upon which Soludo stood and identified the socio-economic cankerworm he called a “northern phenomenon”.

It took courage on the part of the Arewa intellectual group to ask Soludo to come and expatiate on a point he made in passing in January, 2007 at a presidential economic forum in Aso Villa, Abuja.

After reeling out a number of socio-economic indicators among the various geopolitical zones of Nigeria in which Jigawa State was ranked as Nigeria’s poorest state, Soludo had concluded with the expression: “poverty is still a northern phenomenon”. I took up this matter with the outgoing governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Saminu Turaki, who had run the affairs of the state for eight years. He called Soludo names and dismissed his analysis.

But when I took it up with the man who had just been given the ticket of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for the governorship of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido, he described it as “an embarrassment” and a serious cause for concern for all northerners and Jigawa indigenes, irrespective of how Soludo arrived at his conclusion.

By inviting Soludo to say more on this topic, the NDI obviously belongs to the group of northerners who are not afraid to confront the entire scope of this problem, possibly with a view to devising means of tackling it. They are not among those who would rather play the ostrich.

Part of Soludo’s disclosures included that the nation’s largest and most powerful geopolitical block, the North West zone, is actually the poorest, not only in the country but also in the north itself, with some states having 90 per cent of their population mired in “high poverty”.

A report of the event in Sunday Vanguard of July 20th 2008 quoted the CBN boss thus: “educationally, he said that the north was seriously lagging behind the south as the number of students who seek education from Imo state in one year, for example, is higher than 16 states in the north put together”.

Space constrains me here to bring out more facts, but as a way out, Soludo advocated some sort of emergency measures on the northern economy.

He said many members of the northern elite can help their states by establishing microfinance banks with branches all over their states to help the hard-working grassroots people who are mainly farmers to tap into the economy.

A lot of activity in that area is taking place in southern states. The situation right now is that “if you put together 12 to 15 states in the north, the (microfinance banks in them) are not up to the number you find in one state in the south”.

We cannot very well be talking about becoming one of the twenty biggest economies in the world in the year 2020 when the social indicators in a purportedly larger part of the country are so unbecomingly abysmal. Northern leaders must sit down and search their consciences.

The North West has called the political and economic shots since our independence.

They have their multi-billionaires. In fact, Africa’s self-acclaimed richest person, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, is from that zone. And yet the people who have complained of their domination are the ones whose grassroots are ahead in the social scale, with the gap widening by the day.

Northern leaders are fond of asking south-south leaders what they do with the oil money they have been collecting. Good question. We also know that the north has benefited so much from the number of states, local governments, electoral constituencies and population censuses, based on which huge sums of money are allocated from the federation account.

The question is: what do they do with the money?

The answer is simple and obvious. The elites of the north use it on themselves and their family members. Their offspring are educated in the best schools in the world. But apart from alms, little else percolates to the grassroots. Fertilizers don’t get to the farmers as intended.

Civil servants and politicians hijack them and sell to traders who now sell to farmers at exorbitant rates. And here is a zone where over 90 per cent of the people are farmers who, if encouraged, can feed this nation and produce for exports.

They are already feeding the nation even with little support. Where would a mega-city like Lagos be without the toil of northern peasant farmers?

The Nigerian grassroots are poor by universal standards. But the situation of poverty and educational backwardness in the north should be a source of concern to all well meaning Nigerians. The northern elite need total reorientation to begin to show more concern for the welfare of the less privileged ones among them. The ball is in the court of the NDI.

So you agreed that Soludo, Clinton and SLS have all stated the obvious.

Let me also call attention to this line from the second article
", They yearn for a system that will allow them to ask questions about stolen public money and a betrayed social contract. They are impatient with those who think that the way to grow is through government contracts and unproductive rent. They are well educated and world-class-skilled like Sanusi Lamido who has justifiably and competently taken charge of First Bank Nigeria PLC, ". So it is ridiculous to think that SLS as noted in this 200x article, who has constantly tasked and challenged northern leaders will be the one to aid and abet them today.

No, I dont.
Only Soludo said the truth. Just the way it is.
The Northern Leaders have failed their people. Sanusi inclusive.

The Southern leaders have also failed too but it cant be compared to the bogus deceit from the North.

The North is enmeshed in absolute poverty because their leaders want it.

Elenu, tell us something wey we been no know

Clinton is right on point, there leaders brainwashed them and created this sort of environment were two-third of the population is poor.poverty breeds violence be it religion, ethnic or race.

Clinton should go get his dic'k sucked and stop talking shi't!!


All the rich folks are up north, all their companies and warehouses are up north, the bulk of our corrupt leaders are in the north so what the Bleep is he talking about?!

He had better go get some head from Condolezza rice and shut the Bleep up about Nigeria.

Good talk Bill Clinton,

See, what I find funny about this thread is this: THE ONLY ONES LAUDING CLINTON FOR HIS SPEECH ARE NORTHERNERS. Ok, lets assume you guys are right, and the only way now is to improve on the points mentioned by Mr Clinton. Then tell me, how come Jobs creation and youth empowerment isn't on Boko Harams list of demands? Isn't that a strong indication that - that isn't what they are concerned with?

Truth is always bitter ,but the real truth is that, Bill Clinton is absolutely correct.

i think religious extremism is the first issue. i live in the north and i hear many educated scholars preach. i know also that if more northerners have jobs to do violence will reduce. but apart from blaming others for the condition of the north and blaming 13% revenue sharing formula we should also blame the ordinary northerner who without any reasonable means of livelihood marries wives, divorces them, marries some others and gives birth to many children and puts them on the street to beg. anytime i pass around a mosque or market place in the north and i see many young boys hanging there without what to do and what to eat i fear because i know these are ready tools for violence. the issue with Sanusi in my opinion is his gross lack of tact in managing the public in country like Nigeria where the people are enmeshed in mutual suspicion and divided along religious and ethnic lines.

GEJ and his co-travellers as citizens of the government of the federal republic of nigeria would not listen to this true talk because its probably not coming from Obama. Time only will fore-tell what these rehearsals by MEND, Boko Haram and the others would bring. We need not only imagine what the scenerio would be like when the poor would make good their threat to start eating all rich folks in not too distant future.

@Jarus, To solve the problem facing Nigeria we have to be honest and willing to take criticism.

Mallam Sanusi did not mention poverty, what he said was that the reduction of revenue allocation for Northern states was the main cause of Boko Haram, meaning reduction in the money available for Northern leaders to steal hence they have resulted to violence, but Clinton on the other hand is talking of the gap between the rich and poor especially in Northern Nigeria being a cause for concern.

Sanusi is only interested in protecting the interest of the rich and powerful Northerners who have made their people the poorest Nigerians. Saludo said it the way it should be said, Northern leaders have failed their people and are the ones responsible for the high level of ignorance and poverty eating away at the average Northerner who as no future other than to beg or be a Boko to survive. People like Sanusi have kept the North poor, ignorant and violent. They refuse to educate or teach their people the skills necessary to survive in this modern World, but fought to force feed them sharia, turning potential great minds to zombies ready to be used to fight for the interest of these feudal lords.

Who is going to speak up for these poor voiceless Northern kids who nobody seems to care about, when will the northern leaders start to educate and enlighten these abused Almajiri kids, instead of only brain washing them with religious dogma of the dark ages?

@Okunoba

What Sanusi said and Clinton said are the same thing, the resources that these northern regions have can not sustain them, because the resources can not, social upheaval will always occur and will naturally lead to violence, if we call ourselves Nigerians, we need to redistribute resources more evenly within reason, the parasite I see in all of this is the FG, that arm of the government should not get more than 25% of total revenue.

^^
That's not the solution. The Northern states needs to utilize their allocations for something meaningful, through channeling them into other areas  of diversifying their economies. The North was once world largest producer of groundnuts and that is now a thing of the past. Why would they have to stop growing groundnut at such record?It is due to the mentality held by most of them(either they are born to rule or seeing the Southerners as enemies for their differences). Why is the violence very high at this time around? Then, we can easily find out from a general scrutiny that they are politically motivated and ignorantly exercise to make the situation dire for the incumbent, due to the fact they are against Western education( which has always been part of the Nigerian system) has contributed to these evidences.

Before supporting this poverty popularity, there have to be evidences to prove beyond reasonable doubt it what's the reality on ground( there is high poverty but not the reason for the suicides). A situation where the people rejected to be educated and held on to ignorance is absolutely absurd to conclude that poverty is the root cause. If that seems to be what it is, for example, they should come out and air their views to reduce poverty and unemployment. Their governors and other leaders should be held accountable not the innocent citizens(it is surprising, those who are well off are sponsoring the group - that by itself is a clear evidence)for their own faults.

I still strongly believe poverty is over speculated, in this regard, to be the causative factor. Whereas, the case study proves beyond that in general term. It proves that it is more politically and ignorantly accepted ideological process to cause harms in the society and to destroy the country.

@Hercules 07, Sanusi wants more money for Northern states that is never spent on development but shared amongst the feudal lords of the North, of which he his a part of, Clinton on the other hand wants a more equal distribution of wealth, where money meant for the people is spent on development.

The Igbo states with no oil get less than Northern states yet they don`t go about killing the innocent based on religion or ethnicity. Since the end of Biafra the Igbo`s have been marginalized and get less of the National cake than any region  yet today they have the least level of poverty in the country. If the North is poorer than the South East its because their leaders are the worst thieves who don`t give a damn about the Talakawas, it doesn`t matter how much u give to these States, it never trickles down to the poor masses of the North. Wanting more money for the North is just asking for more money for the Northern elites to share among themselves.

I grew up seeing Northern baggers in SW Nigeria even when they where getting more allocation money than the rest of the Country due to fictitious population count.  I never saw anyone from the east beg, even after the war when they lost everything they had worked for in many parts of the Country. The North needs to learn from Ndigbo and the rest of Southern Nigeria, the art of hard work and determination to succeed instead of depending on hand outs.

Sanusi needs to start fighting to get his people educated and enlightened instead of promoting sharia, Islam and asking for more hand outs for his feudal gang members to steal. The Holy Quran or begging  will not develop the North, only education and hard work will.

Okunoba, you definitely don't Sanusi, because your allegation that SLS is part of those that impoverished the North is laughable, and you appear to assume that everybody that holds positions is automatically part of the oligarch . SLS has never been part of northern feudals. He has always been on the side of the masses. He has criticized the northern oligarchs for using their people. I will bring few quotes from him to buttress this.

[b]“Very recently, the Katsina State Government tried to pass Bills banning the sale of alcohol and the operation of LovePeddler-houses in the metropolis. As a consequence of this move (and, it is said, failure of the House to approve the Bill), irate Muslim youth, shouting Allahu Akbar decided to burn not just beer parlours, hotels and whorehouses, but also Christian churches.

“Now, the Qur’an (Hajj. (ch. 22): 40) specifically forbids tearing down monasteries, churches, synagogues and mosques. Yet the leaders of Muslims have not come out strongly enough to condemn this violation of the rights of Christians, nor considered the implications of Christians in turn burning mosques in retaliation. It is also worthy of note, that christian morality does not approve of alcoholism and prostitution.

“A second example is the recent furore over Obasanjo’s appointment of northern Christians into his cabinet. I have elsewhere made my views on this known although several people have branded me, and others like Col. Umar, anti-Islamic or anti-north for not joining this hypocritical farce

“In failing to rise above bigotry and chauvinism, northern Muslims act against injunctions of their faith. The Qur’an expressly preaches freedom of religion [see, for example: Al-Baqarah (ch.2): 256; Yunus (ch.10): 108; Hud (ch.11): 121-122; Kahf(ch18):29;  andAl-Ghashiyah (ch.88) :21-24]

It is also pertinent for those who criticize us to recall that Allah specifically instructed that trust and leadership should be given only to those worthy of them and to judge between men with justice (Al-Nisa (ch.4): 58). Also, if anyone believes that false witness should be given for or against a man simply because he is a Muslim or Non-Muslim, he should read [Al-Nisa (ch4): 135; also 105and Al-Ma’idah ((ch.5): 6]. Finally for those who object to our inviting good muslims and good christians to come together and give the poor people of this country the good government preached by both faiths, please read [Al-Imran (ch3): 64] which provides a basis for coming together on common ground.”[/b]


- Sanusi Lamido Sanusi(Issues in Restructuring Corporate Nigeria, 1999)

The Adulteress Diary
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, November 2001

If you choose to read my diary you must forgive my often vulgar, some times irreverent language. I hope you will also find the moral courage to give the following entries wide circulation, my crude vocabulary notwithstanding. The world should know what injustice is being perpetrated by northern Nigerian Muslim males against their women in the name of Allah and under cover of Shariah.

You see, my name is Safiya Husseini, recently convicted for the crime of having been born a woman by a Shariah court in Sokoto. I know you have been told that my crime was adultery, not womanhood. I also know, being a mere woman, that you think I am most probably talking rubbish. When you finish reading this record of my own thoughts, possibly after my death, you will make up your mind. My punishment is to be death by stoning at the hands of men.

I cannot tell you where I am, because I am hiding from the men of the Hisbah corps, the fanatical Muslim militia saddled with the task of bringing Shariah offenders to book. I have been told by the scholars, the mallamai (who happen to be men), that I should give myself up and face death like a good Muslim woman. Doing this is a patriotic duty that will cleanse my society of corruption and purify me from my sins.

You see our society has become rotten. We are fast becoming like the Jews in the time of Christ. You know Jesus called them a "wicked and adulterous generation". There is too much adultery, fornication and homosexuality. Women, as our mallamai swear our prophet said, are the source of all this evil and our scholars are convinced that the only cure for the fitnah is to put us to death.

I can understand how men can accuse women of being the source of all adultery and fornication. But what do women have to do with the widespread fitnah of men chasing men? Surely it shows that men also are evil and need no women to lure them? Do not mind me. I am but a woman-daft and senseless. Do the mallamai not say that the prophet said that women are deficient in religion and intelligence?

Back to the point, it is believed that my death will lead to a near-magical transmogrification of the caliphate’s ethical landscape. Our holy land, the land of Dan Fodio, Abdullahi and Bello, will witness a termination of the crepuscular routines of illicit carnality that regularly take place in shadowy alleys, state houses, guest houses and five-star hotels. Our men shall no longer be victims of temptation by evil women. Their purity shall no longer be stained by Intimate pursuits. In short every man shall become as clean and sinless as our Shariah governors whom I am told can each swear on the Qur’an never to have committed the capital sin of adultery.

This I am ready to believe. You see in Islamic Law it is the governor, as the Imam of our state, who is expected to step forward and cast the first stone. We will on that day prove to the Christians that we are better than Jews. When the Jews wanted to stone a harlot, Jesus threw them a challenge. "Let he among you who is without sin," said he, "cast the first stone". They all sulked away, the hypocrites.

If you heard our governor in his BBC Hausa interview, in all his righteousness, then you know that he is not like those hypocritical Jews. Allah ya sauwake! He will step up majestically and after giving me a magisterial rebuke cast his stone. The other sinless members of our society-the emirs, the mallamai, the politicians- will follow. With my death, as you have heard often, the land shall become cleansed of crimes of the flesh. In addition to this service to the community, I am told on the authority of no less than the prophet himself that submitting myself to this punishment is my ticket to heaven. I shall no longer face the humiliation of being treated like a lumpen-slut. I shall be transformed into a voluptuous, voracious virgin in paradise.

You laugh at this because you do not know the value of virginity to our men. I too did not understand this obsession until I read Jarasimus Mhanna’s Rasa’il al-Jahiz (The Letters of al-Jahiz). In one of his letters, the African poet quoted the second Caliph ‘Umar as saying to fellow men: "Marry young virgins; they have perfumed mouths and narrow vaginas."

Only Allah knows if ‘Umar actually said this, but I know our men have taken this advice far beyond ‘Umar could ever have intended. They marry the girls at too young an age when the opening is so narrow they end up with VVF when giving birth, at which point the men abandon them. But this is not my concern right now.

I was saying that I will become a heavenly virgin. No more menstruation, no more toileting, no more pregnancy and yes, I will enjoy pure unadulterated sex. I like that word unadulterated. I suppose unadulterated sex means sex that will not be called adultery. I know I am probably murdering the English language but who cares at this point? I will have my choice of men and believe you me I will ask for our shariah governors whose own ticket to heaven is through whipping, stoning and amputating the fornicatresses, adulteresses and common thieves in our society. Their own sins are forgiven if they ensure that we poor sinners, especially the women, are subjected to Allah’s laws.

I am told not to grieve over all those posh totties who hang around the high and mighty in this world and laugh at us because they use condoms and pills and can have abortions. Our illiteracy is in reality our saving grace. This is why we were removed from school and married off at a young age. Now I also understand why our mallamai have stoutly opposed sex-education. Those so-called "educated" high-class whores may escape in this world but they will pay in the hereafter. They are going to hell. Ditto the men who fornicate and commit adultery with us but get away with it.

Imagine that twit Yakubu denying that he was the one who impregnated me! But the alkali (bless his soul) could do nothing. His hands are tied. How could he take my word, mere woman that I am, that Yakubu was the father of my baby? The law says I should produce four male, honest, reliable witnesses who are to testify to having visualized the twittering ’s you-know-what physically embedded in my you-know-what like a kajal stick inside its hollow case! Unfortunately we did not Be Intimate in a nudist camp. And even if we did, the term honest, reliable male is an oxymoron. No man can possibly be honest and reliable, especially if his honesty would convict a fellow-man. How could I ever produce four? Since I could not meet this order then I am a liar, like all women. In the unlikely event that I speak the truth, Yakubu will pay on the day of judgement. As for me, I shall have the honour of a union of sorts with the holy governors.

Forgive my language, but just imagine what I would do on laying my hands on their collective Cores, with the angels looking the other way! But that will be in heaven, if they manage to make it there.

I listened to the mallamai with all respect, but packed my things and ran away the moment they left. You see I happen to believe that the law under which I was convicted is not Allah’s law. It is true that the alkali, (Allah bless him again), has told journalists this is Allah’s law and anyone who questions it is not a good Muslim, perhaps not even a Muslim at all. Somehow I have my reservations. It seems to me the law is what the alkali understands of what some men living at some time in some foreign land claim to be the Law of Allah. His understanding may be flawed.

Other men may have made different claims than these in the name of the same Allah. And of course in all this we have not heard the voice of women. Surely if I suggest that it is not Allah’s law I do not lose my faith? But you see I am only a woman. So I tell myself to stop thinking and challenging these things. It is not my place.

Let me tell you a few of the thoughts that crossed my mind and made me run away from this perverse judgement. Who knows, perhaps there may be some sense in me, after-all. You see according to press reports, my case started when some "unnamed informants" told the police that I, Safiya the divorcee, was pregnant without husband and "manipulated one Yakubu Abubakar, a married man in the same village, as being responsible for the pregnancy".

Ya Salam! Any one who knows Islamic Law knows this is not a case of adultery but of slander. These "reliable sources" should have been arrested immediately and charged to court. They are to produce four eye-witnesses to the crime of zina (illicit sex) of which they accused a believing woman behind her back.

This much is clear from books of Law and Ibn Rushd, the Maliki jurist, stated in his book al-Muqaddimat al-Mumahhidat that if anyone says "so-and-so is an adulteress" he must produce four witnesses. It is not enough for us to have been seen playing together, you know.

In the time of the second caliph ‘Umar, some companions reported one of his governors, Mughira Ibn Shu’ba, for adultery. Three of them testified to having visualized the governor’s dinky in the woman’s pinky but the fourth witness faltered. He said he saw some swinging bum bums but as for the real thing he could not swear. So the three of them, including one of the Holy Prophet’s closest companions ‘Ammar Ibn Yasir, were given eighty bulalas for slander.

This story is there in the books of Law as a precedent. I hear even books of history, like Ibn Katheer’s al-Bidaya wa ‘l-Nihaya have the record. Why was my case different? Why was I called to defend myself when the charge of slander had not been prosecuted? Point number one. May Allah bless the companions of the prophet who gave women the benefit of doubt.

A woman was brought before ‘Umar with pregnancy and she said; "O Caliph! I am a heavy sleeper and a man came upon me one night. I did not wake up until he had finished and turned his back." He let her go.

Another woman said to ‘Umar: " I was thirsty and I asked a shepherd to give me water to drink but he refused unless I lay with him so I did." ‘Umar said to ‘Ali, "what is your view on her?" ‘Ali replied, "I think she was pushed by necessity". So ‘Umar gave her a few lashes and asked her to go.

In fact a woman was brought to ‘Ali when he was caliph and he kept saying to her, "perhaps he romanced you? Perhaps he merely rubbed himself between your thighs? etc" until she took the hint and said "yes." It is not that the Caliphs believed these incredible tales. But they believed that the gates of Allah’s mercy were very wide. They knew that it is better for 1,000 adulteresses to escape stoning by man than for one innocent Muslim woman to be so stoned. Those who escape can always repent and be of use to their society and religion. Allah is a Most Merciful God.

This much the Caliphs, but not our generation of mallamai, understood. For this reason in every Sunni School of Law today I can go back to court and say I lied, that I do not know how I got pregnant, or that I was charmed or tricked or anything and I am free.

But not the Maliki school, which we insist on following in this matter. Here, pregnancy is evidence of zina and I am presumed guilty until I prove my innocence. If I say I was violated I must prove it. If I say I made a mistake it will be accepted only if "reliable men" in my village testify that I am a nice girl. It is a Law that contravenes the general principle that I am innocent until proven guilty. The fact of pregnancy is taken as proof of guilt even though zina requires, in addition to proof of intercourse, proof of consent and knowledge.

These points are documented in books of Law. You can check Ibn Qudamah’s al-Mughni, or al-Jaza’iri’s Kitabul Fiqh ‘ala ‘l-Mazahib al-Arba’. I know some Hanbali jurists, notably Ibn Taimiya, support Malik’s view. Fortunately, our mallamai have always taught us not to listen to that puritanical predecessor to the Wahhabiya and ‘Yan Izala. So who decides for me that I must be judged by Malik’s Law?

To ask me to prove my innocence contravenes Islamic Jurisprudence, Fundamental Human Rights and the Nigerian Constitution. To bring me to court, even after I ran away in terror the first time, nullifies my confession. It was clearly extracted and not voluntary by virtue of the circumstances. This seems clear from Shaikh Wahba al-Zuhaili’s work, al-Fiqh al-Islami wa Adillatuh.

If my confession is invalid, then my conviction is based on the fact of pregnancy and valid under Maliki Law only. Why can’t I be judged by the Law of Shafii, Abu Hanifa or Ibn Hanbal? If Malik’s Law is "Allah’s Law" then whose Law do the Shafii Muslims (of Indonesia, Malaysia, East Africa etc), and the Hanbali Muslims (of the Arab Gulf), and the Hanafi Muslims (of the Indian sub-continent) operate? But you know I am a woman. I cannot argue with the alkali.

There are other interesting points to note is that stoning to death, as punishment for adultery, is not mentioned in the Qur’an. Believe me. The Qur’an says in Chapter 24: Verse 2: "The woman and the man guilty of zina flog each of them with a hundred stripes." This is what the Book of Allah says and the word zina refers to intimate intercourse between a man and a woman who are not married to each other. No verse of the Qur’an was revealed abrogating this judgement or amending it ( If you discount the problematic claim by some that ‘Umar said that such a verse existed at a point. Its text was abrogated but its verdict remains!).

However, Muslim jurists make a distinction between fornication (or zina by one who has never been married) and adultery (zina by one who has passed through Ihsan and become a Muhsan). A Muslim becomes a muhsan once he/she consummates a valid marriage in a state of adulthood and sanity. So if he/she is found guilty of zina the punishment, according to jurists is stoning to death, based on the Traditions of the Prophet, not the Qur’an. Most jurists of Sunni and Shiite Islam accept this position. Some early jurists, particularly among Kharijites, reject this distinction as a baseless innovation.

In addition to the verse quoted above, a second verse makes the matter most problematic. In the Qur’an Chapter 4: Verse 25, Allah encourages Muslim men who cannot marry free women to marry Muslim slaves with the consent of their families or owners. He then adds: "If, after their Ihsan, they are found guilty of indecency their punishment is half of the punishment of Muhsanat." Now if the punishment of the free-born adulteress is 100 lashes then the punishment of the slave adulteress is 50 lashes and there is no problem there. If however we say the punishment for the muhsanah is stoning to death, what does Allah mean by prescribing half of that for the slave?

You must forgive me, for I am a mere woman. I am unable to calculate half of stoning to death. Is it stoning to half-death? Or half-stoning to death? Or stoning half to death? The Kharijites gave our ulama a lot of trouble on this point.

One of our best brains, Ibn Qutaiba, wrote spirited defences in two books, Ta’weel Mukhtalaf al-Qur’an and Ta’weel Mukhtalaf al-Hadeeth. On this point, though, I am not sure he answered more questions than he raised. It seems to me he ended up saying that Ihsan does not mean consummating marriage so he turned everything we read in Law on its head. He also resorted to drawing an analogy between woman, on the one hand, and a cow or she-camel, on the other, to wriggle out of the problem.

Anyway all this is water under the bridge. The reality is that this debate has been buried so deeply it cannot be revived-certainly not before my sentence is due to be carried out. In any event, the Kharijites are counted among the lost sects (al-firaq al-dhaallah) so their view carries no weight with our scholars. 

You see, dear reader, I remain faithful to our scholars. I do not challenge them, even where I have my doubts. Ask the alkali. As he pronounced his sentence on me, I said nothing to indicate I knew these things. I am a woman, totally invisibilized behind the veil and inside kulle. I know my place. But one thing I cannot accept is to die alone when I know and the alkali knows I could not have made this baby alone. I mean I am not the Virgin Mary! Even that inyamiri, Anyim Anyim, has said so.

The jurists, including Maliki jurists, who produced the body of knowledge called fiqh (or law) lived at a point in time in history when there was no way of establishing the paternity of a child. I can understand if they said pregnancy is evidence of zina, even though it is a harsh verdict, but I know the only reason they prescribed nothing for the man was because they had nothing to go on apart from the woman’s word.

Today the alkali has options. Science can establish who is telling lies between Yakubu and I, and DNA tests are used by courts all over the modern world to settle these matters. Of course they are not 100% faultless but my guilt has also not been 100% proven. At least he should take that one step of testing for paternity. But no, this will not happen because men will also die. If we stick to the law as inherited from the past, men of the present can impregnate us and deny us. Brilliant, aren’t they, these men? They commit a crime in the 20th Century with rooms and curtains and air conditioners available but can only be convicted based on a Law of Evidence made for the 7th Century with

people doing it in the open desert or makeshift tents!

Four eye-witnesses to sex in the NICON Hilton in 2001? So Bariya was whipped, Safiya will be stoned, who next? All the men escaped because of lack of evidence. So long as men are not punished for impregnating women nothing will change. And herein lies the injustice of the Law. I sleep with Yakubu and get pregnant. Because only I will be punished, I insist that my crime is not adultery, but pregnancy. Since only women can be pregnant this means that the real crime is being a woman. The man will always commit adultery and escape. The woman is the only one who can ever conceive, the unknowing depository of the traitor’s Fluid.

It is not Allah or his Prophet or even Malik who says so. It is our scholars, our men, who hide behind the lie of being loyal to the past to perpetuate the crimes of our present and escape. Now you know why I said I was convicted of being a woman. Maybe it makes sense to you, maybe it doesn’t. I have no illusions, for I am a mere woman.

I am glad Nigerians are talking. I have already filed an appeal. I am not asking for my death and Yakubu’s. I want to be given the benefit that the early Caliphs gave all those women. I want the chance to repent. Allah has opened His doors to his servants who go astray and wish to repent, why should men close that door in my face? I want the Law to be truly Allah’s Law and not a concoction by men. And if men themselves differ on what Allah means, who is to decide Allah’s true intent? With your help I may yet live. I only pray I will not be back on trial for murder.

You see, given my experience with my husbands, my lover, my fellow-villagers, the police, the judiciary and even my governor; I have come to see men in their true colours. I have seen, first hand, the extent to which they have cheated women, and the lies they have spun in the name of Allah and His Messenger. Now this is my fear. If any man after this as much as winks at me, I will most joyfully slice off his you-know-what.


http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=861:the-adulteress-diary&catid=25:politics&Itemid=37
For this article, Sanusi was pilloried (even threatened with death or physical harm) by stooges of the decadent regressive feudal lords of the North. In fact, that article so struck awe and demystified the hypocritical  leaders of the North that its link, at Gamji.com, is disabled.

Muslim Leaders And The Myth Of Marginalisation

By

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

Lagos, March 29, 2004



On Easter Monday, Muslim groups met in Kaduna under the aegis of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam and the chairmanship of His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto, to decide on a collective line of action in response to the “marginalisation of Nigerian Muslims” by the federal Government under Olusegun Obasanjo. According to newspaper reports, the meeting was rowdy and passionate. A leading Emir called for a Jihad by Nigerian Muslims against the Federal Government, before storming out of the meeting. Indeed so high was the temperature inside the Kaduna International Trade Fair Complex that, according to one newspaper, a leading northern politician, Second Republic minister and traditional title-holder from Bauchi state was slapped by a delegate. Every one who was present at the meeting reports that there was a charged atmosphere and that Muslims were angry at their alleged marginalisation.



As I read and listened to the reports, my mind went back to 1998 when southern politicians, and particularly Yoruba and Igbo politicians, launched an aggressive campaign against northern Muslims and “Hausa-Fulanis” who were accused of marginalizing the rest of the country. In those days the clarion call was for a “power-shift” to the south, and every one joined the fad. In that year, I gave a public lecture at Arewa House, Kaduna, (later published by the Trust newspapers), entitled “Power-shift and Rotation: Between Emancipation and Obfuscation.” To place the present intervention in context, I reproduce below and extensive quote from that paper:



‘To claim that the “north” has “exploited” or “marginalized” the south is linguistically incorrect and politically nonsensical. It is the equivalent of claiming that all or most of the human beings who are from the “north” possess or control the means of production, persuasion and coercion which are the source of power, while all or most of those in the South are dispossessed of these. Only the most hypocritical of analysts would pretend that he holds this to be even possibly true. A group made up of people hailing from different parts of this country controls these means to varying degrees and the vast majority of Nigerians, northerners and southerners, have been dispossessed and exploited by this group. What we have on the political stage today is an internal conflict among various subsystems of this class of oppressors, each trying to drag us into his camp by appealing to native instincts.’



Not too long after this lecture, elections were held and Obasanjo came to power. In 1999 when Obasanjo appointed his first cabinet, Muslim politicians and religious leaders claimed that Muslims were marginalized because the appointments were lop-sided in favour of Christians. Again I made a contribution to the debate in my published article entitled “Religion, the Cabinet and a Political Economy of the ‘North’.” In that paper, I was even more explicit and detailed in stating my position and I quote:



“That issues have come to this state is partly attributable to a patent lack of political education. Due to illiteracy of the masses and their manipulation by the dominant hegemony, the northern people are yet to comprehend the nature of the state, which is, as aptly described by Gramsci, ‘ the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules.’ Through a dialectical interaction between structure and superstructure, between the objective and the subjective, a form of consciousness is diffused through the mediation of agents of ideological control to the extent that it has become part of the ‘common-sense’ of the northern masses. By manipulating the intoxicating agency of religion, the dominant classes have been able to create a contingent, socially constructed form of correspondence between essentially contradictory economic and political regions of the northern social formation. Consequently, the poor Muslim peasant farmer in Zaria, condemned to life-long penury by the circumstances of his birth, the inadequacy of his education and the deprived state of his general existence, feels a stronger bond with and affinity for his rich, capitalist emir than his fellow Christian farmer in Wusasa. Similarly, the poor Christian peasant in Zangon-Kataf is willing to kill, maim and destroy his poor Muslim neighbour on the orders of a retired general who was, and remains, part and parcel of the oppressive establishment.



“This anti–reductionist emphasis on the specificity of the ‘popular-Islamic’ or ‘popular- Christian’ in contradistinction to class demands and struggle, has enabled the dominant northern classes, Muslim and Christian, to appropriate under their respective wings the so-called ‘Hausa-Fulani’ and ‘middle-belters’, as instruments in what, ultimately, is competition and struggle among various class-fractions of the bourgeoisie with the state as the principal arena. Viewed in this light, the northerner is in a pitiful state, crying for a saviour he does not know. Only education of the northerner, and up-liftment of his consciousness, will provide him with the requisite power of introspection through which the nonsensicality of his common sense can become apparent. Only then will it occur to him that although Babangida, Abacha and Abubakar were Muslims, and although Useni, Shagaya, Mark, Bamaiyi and Dogonyaro were Christians, the rising social profiles and increased personal opulence of these members of the establishment was accompanied by the continued impoverishment, ill-health, and deprivation of the Muslim and Christian masses. Only then will he wonder where his emir obtains his fancy limousines and well-fed horses, where his church gets its millions, where his pastor finds his wealth when the school to which his child goes is empty and teachers are not paid, when there are no drugs in the government hospitals, when he can not afford one square meal a day. Only then would it dawn on him that the issue is not one of Islam Vs. Christianity, but of competing vested political interests in which he has no stake. He can never be a minister even if there were one hundred ministers from his faith. Nor would his son be one. He fights and is willing to die in the name of Islam or Christianity, only to facilitate access of some lurking and predatory kleptomaniac to the Federal treasury, whose license to this access is his capacity for the manipulation of religious symbols and effective use of slogans and other tools of opportunistic propaganda.”



These two quotes sum up my historical view on marginalisation. It was on this basis I criticized and debated with the tribalistic elements that formed Afenifere (see “Afenifere: Syllabus of Errors” for example). It was the basis for my debates with Urhobo nationalists like Darah and Ekeh. It was the basis for my long and intense altercations with Ike Okonta and his fellow-travellers among Fulani and Islam-hating Igbo intellectuals. I did not criticize southern advocates of the “marginalisation” thesis because of where they come from or where I come from. I criticized them on principle. I do not believe, period, that because the cabinet has more people who are Muslim then Muslims are better off. Each minister is an individual and he/she either performs or does not perform. Obasanjo’s government has failed to deliver on many of its promises. For the north in particular, the problems of poverty, unemployment, collapsing infra-structure and illiteracy are myriad and reflect incompetence and corruption on the part of Christian and Muslim public officers at federal, state and local government levels. We have every right to criticize the Obasanjo for incompetence. The North as a whole, has many reasons to complain. But to reduce Obasanjo’s crime to the number of members of the Muslim elite he has appointed-or rather not appointed- to key positions, and to pretend that if we had more Muslim appointees then Muslims would be better off automatically, to say this, is to speak from an ethically blind perspective.



The marginalisation thesis has too many flaws. The most obvious is that has not been borne by history. Indeed in 1998, northern supporters of power-shift like Balarabe Musa hinged their argument on the fact that northerners had not benefited from the political dominance of the north. The second, which is captured in my two quotes above, is that the real issue is not about the people, and what the government must do for them, but about the elite and which positions and perks they should be entitled to as their share of the national cake. To call this fight over the sharing of offices a jihad is to make a complete mockery of the Muslim faith. Third, it has nothing to do with religion. No Muslim has claimed that he has been stopped from practicing the five pillars of Islam. Our personal and civil laws-marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody, burial rites, contracts etc-are all governed by the shari’ah. Our courts have been given the right to implement Muslim criminal law, including amputations, even where controversy rages about the propriety of these punishments in the present circumstances among Muslims themselves. We build our mosques all over the country, and Muslims of all sects and denominations and orders from Shiites to Wahhabites, Malikites to Salafites, Tijjanites to Qadirites etc continue to worship God in the manner they choose without hindrance. So the problem is not about the freedom of Muslims to worship or practice their religion, but about sharing the spoils of political office. This is a legitimate political struggle and politicians have the right to negotiate for a larger share of these spoils. But it is not a struggle about the religion or the quality of life of the poor Muslim in the street and he should not be deceived and co-opted into it through the manipulation of sacred concepts.



But there is a more fundamental dimension to this. When a group is marginalized this is only possible because it is weak. Marginalisation, if anything, is a symbol of political fragility and decay. In other words, when a leader complains about marginalisation, he is like a doctor who addresses the symptom of a disease (say a fever) instead of addressing the underlying illness or infection. The point is this. If the Muslims, and particularly northern Muslims are today marginalized as is being claimed, this marginalisation is but a symptom of a more profound problem. We are marginalized because we are weak and divided, and our weakness comes from the loss of our solid political and negotiating base in a unified, multi-cultural, multi-religious north. As partners with Christian neighbours and compatriots, northerners in the First and Second Republic were able to form a formidable political group that was unbeatable in the race for office. The marriage was not always blissful for both parties and it had many internal problems, but while it lasted it served the best political interest of the North and, in particular the Muslims. The protection of Shari’ah and the preservation of our cultural values would have been impossible without control of politics. By losing this simple sense of political pragmatism and reducing ourselves to religious bigots, we weaken our hand in the game of politics and everything we cherish is now vulnerable. The rise of Muslim and Christian fundamentalism has been a major contributor to the fragmentation of the north and its binarisation through the reactionary process of reciprocal “Other-ing”.



We may dispute the reality or extent of marginalisation of Muslims, or Christians or northerners or southerners. I am even willing to concede, for the sake of argument, that because a smaller fraction of northern Muslim elite has access to the spoils of power then northern Muslims as a whole are marginalized. But this much must be acknowledged: The political asphyxiation of Muslims has been directly collateral, diachronically correlational and causally conjoined with the above-mentioned fragmentatory processes.

We are therefore left with a paradox. The more we resort to claims of marginalisation, construct religiously-charged political identities and threaten jihad, the more we divide the north and weaken its Muslim and Christian elite alike. We fell into a trap.



The problem of religious conflict and parochialism bedevils the north. Of course it is not the only problem, which is why a unified northern forum must address the common problems faced by all northern people. The north suffers from the neglect of agricultural production, the lack of proper access of cash-crop farmers to the international market, the collapse of industry, the debilitation of its infra-structure, lack of alternative source of power to hydro-electricity, among others. Most of all the north suffers from the general massification of its population that is to say, its collective subjection to the intense and deliberate processes of qualitative leveling for the purpose of quantitative maximization. As a result of this, politicians and religious demagogues and fanatics have a ready army of uneducated, unemployed northerners willing to participate in bloody riots and attend rallies where emotional inanities pass for patriotic leadership.



What we expect our leaders to do is to ask Obasanjo what he is doing about these things. More important, to ask our governors and legislators and Local government chairmen and councilors what they are doing to address these things. This should be done on the platform of a unified north, with common problems. Our jihad should be about changing these pathetic circumstances and this can be done by competent leaders. It is difficult for me, for obvious reasons, to take a position that is critical of the Muslim leaders who gathered in Kaduna. But I took this position on principle against those who claimed they were marginalized by the north. Where principle is concerned-and this is the real point-what is good enough for the goose has to be good enough for the gander.

http://www.gamji.com/sanusi/sanusi48.htm


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It is therefore quite strange that you, Okunoba, said Sanusi, who has vocal against northern leaders all his life, is part of the northern oligarch that use the masses to achieve selfish aims.

I know a lot of people here are biased and will never change their mindset but there is nothing I can do to that, I can only bring facts to argue, I cannot crack people's heads and make them reason.

@Jarus, I commend you for your effort in defending Mallam Sanusi, but honestly I can`t see anything in all this sweet write ups where his shown any concern for the millions of poor voiceless Almajiri kids roaming the North begging for food, I have not seen anything  calling a spade a spade. Which means telling the Northern elites they have regressed from their responsibilities since the death of the great Saudana of Sokoto.

If Sanusi means well for the Talakawas then he  should be at the forefront  fighting to get the North educated so they can fill most of the positions being filled by Southerners in their own back yard. The great Saudana predicted this scenario, that if the lack of educational and job opportunities in the North is not addressed, allowing Southerners to take jobs that should be filled by Northerners, it will bring social discontent, which is what we are having in the North today. With all the years of leadership by Northern leaders they still have not been able to educate and enlighten the average Northerner.

Sanusi is more concerned sharia and the power struggle between the Northern elites and their Southern counterparts. He wants more money for his Northern friends to steal. Sanusi is the CBN governor because of his ties to the Fulani ruling class.

Sanusi and stealing in the same sentence? I'm done with you. Bye bye

wtf?The dude is on point pls!