In 1804, Shehu Othman Danfodio led itinerant Fulani from the Futa Jallon Heights in present day Gambia and Senegal to settle in present day Northern Nigeria. Danfodio led a revolt against the existing Habe dynasties and supplanted them with Fulani emirs. The Hausa were forcibly Islamized. The Fulani Jihad, and Islam made inroads into other areas not inhabited by the Fulani or Hausa but were successfully resisted in much of today’s Middle Belt. It was British Colonial Rule that brought non-Hausa/Fulani peoples who were never conquered by the latter under the rule of the emirates. Called Indirect Rule, it suited British colonial design to bring the different ethnic nationalities under the rather developed emirate system for the purposes of maintaining law and order, recruiting for forced labour and exacting taxes to run the colony with. After power was transferred to nationals and Sir Ahmadu Bello, the late sardauna of Sokoto, became Premier of the Northern Region, non-Muslim communities were denied potable water, roads, post offices, schools, hospitals and access to civil service absorption. Under the premiership of the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, forcible conversions were effected. From 1961, till he died in 1966, Sir Ahmadu Bello went on annual Islamisation drives all over the Northern Region. Traditional rulership of communities became a preserve of only Muslims. The resistance against Muslim traditional rulers led to the Tiv Riots 1960-64, and restiveness in old Gongola (today’s Adamawa and Taraba states), Southern Kaduna (Kafanchan), Tafawa Balewa (Bauchi State) and Plateau State. Promotion in the civil service depended on if a candidate had converted to Islam. The late Sardauna promised to “dip the Koran into the sea” meaning he will spread Islam from the far North across the country to the Atlantic Ocean before he was done. This agenda of “dipping the Koran to the sea”has continued unabated till date by consistent terror attacks and killings in the middle belt followed by mass movement of new communities of Hausa Fulani into the middle belt all the way down to the south states near the Atlantic Ocean. In 1960, the late Sir Ahmadu Bello said “The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great-grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities of the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us, and never allow them to have control over their future.” (Parrot Newspaper, 12th Oct. 1960; republished on November 13, 2002, by the Tribune Newspaper, Ibadan.); • The Conference of Northern Chiefs, in response to a letter from the UK-based West African Students’ Union (WASU) to the Northern emirs asking them to support the constitutional evolution of Nigeria into an independent nation, had declared “holding this country together is not possible except by means of the religion of the Prophet. If they want political unity let them follow our religion.” (Obafemi Awolowo, Path to Nigerian Freedom, London: Faber and Faber, 1947, p.51.); • During military rule in the 1970s Christian missionary schools were forcibly taken over by government, and in many instances their names changed to Islamic ones; • As late as 1997 under General Sani Abacha’s rule, all Police Commissioners in Nigeria were Muslims; • In 1990, all members of the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) were Muslims except General Ike Nwachukwu, an Igbo, whose mother was a Fulani Muslim; • During military rule, General Ibrahim Babangida surreptitiously registered Nigeria as a member state of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) without tabling the issue before the AFRC. The then second in command, Rear Admiral Ebitu Ukiwe told the world that he heard about Nigeria’s membership of OIC like everybody else in the media. He was promptly removed and retired from the Navy; • Babangida hosted the first Islam in Africa conference in Abuja and donated Federal Government funds to its operations, including its vision of transforming Nigeria to an Islamic state and enthroning the Sultan of Sokoto as its “supreme ruler”; • Under the presidency of General Olusegun Obasanjo, 1999-2007, the Sharia code of Islamic law was re-introduced in the North in an expanded format. Islamic Police (Hisbah) was introduced and Christian girls were abducted, forcibly converted and married off to Muslims in Bauchi, Kaduna, Niger and Zamfara states. The Sharia Commissions of the states merely write parents informing them that their daughters had converted and had been given out in marriage; Part of a statement issued by the Middle Belt Dialogue. Part 1 of 3.
Posted on: Sun, 15 Jun 2014 13:54:54 +0000
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