Saving Nigeria’s cemeteries (Contd from Tuesday) The Rigasa cemetery in Kaduna has become a kind of thoroughfare. Anyone can walk through it, and freely laugh, play, scream or shout, if he so wills. At a point the popular ‘Okada’ or commercial motorcyclist, would ride through the cemetery with his passenger, on a path which has been neatly cut through, owing to many years of movement through the place. A gutter was quickly dug by locals to stop the movement by the ‘Okada’ through the cemetery. It seems to have worked. The cemetery is unfenced, and has no gates. Daily Trust is told that the cemetery has been in use for 40 years, and that it is presently full. But someone says burials still take place there every month. 30 burials a month, another adds. It has a Christian side, as well as a Muslim section. But the constant stream of persons through the cemetery is clearly a cause of concern for many. A crowd gathers and begins to lament over the burial ground. Children can be seen playing in the cemetery, and this is a common sight a local mentions, and expresses the hope that the place will be fenced someday, putting an end to the constant acts of trespass. Hamza Abdullahi is the security man who watches over the cemetery. He does not receive any salary. He also lives on charity. When there is to be a burial at the cemetery, he is sure of getting some money from the bereaved family. Now, fate has pushed him to eagerly look forward to burials. A burial means money, he implies. Here too, there is no place to wash the departed ones, and the washing has to be done at home before the affected family leaves for the cemetery. At Rigasa cemetery there is no water, and no light. There is no building within. Nothing. It is just like any other plot of land. No sanctity, no honour here for the dead. It is a bit of a rigour just reflecting on the Rigasa cemetery. Much work The Islamic Foundation has big work before it, given the poor state of the cemeteries nationwide. It is equal to the task, Mustafa Bello, the Chairman of the Foundation quickly says, drawing attention to the famous Arlington cemetery in the USA. His words “In my mind each time I look at the Arlington cemetery I feel happy. You see how it is finished, how people come in, stay around a particular grave and leave flowers. It gives me joy that these people are looking after their dead very well. I think we should try to emulate that kind of orientation. Our burial sites are not doing very well, and we need to intervene to rehabilitate them.” He now tells the moving story of the origin of the body, which aims among other things, at creating ‘environmentally friendly and visitor friendly’ cemeteries across the country “In July 1999, Mallam Salihijo Ahmed died, and he was buried in the Gwarimpa cemetery. We went for the burial, and my attention was arrested by the unkempt nature of the place. It was a place that was clearly in isolation, and had been left in the hands of one or two persons who were looking after it. It was essentially a thick forest. They barely managed to create a space where they would dig the pit where Mallam Salihijo was laid. At the end of it we prayed, and everybody went away. I started asking myself is this how each and every one of us that was there at that time, would be laid and forgotten about in that kind of environment? We went there again and again for several such burials,and each time I went, my worry was we were turning our faces away from something which is real,which is obvious. I then said this time we will not just lament, we will do something. I said we will create a special purpose vehicle to look after this type of premises, to at least make an effort to clean it up, make it look fine, such that anyone who goes there will not be embarrassed.” In keeping with his words the Foundation has started some good work in the FCT as well as in Kaduna, and it has a chapter in each city. A simple formula is employed in generating the necessary funds for the work of the Foundation. Mustafa Bello argues “If we have 1 million people all over the country,each giving 10 Naira per week, this is ten million Naira per week, it enables you to do projections, that you can now budget to do a lot of work.” He explains that people are encouraged to donate anything between one naira to a hundred Naira, and this is mainly done through the Mosques with the help of the various Imams, and Kaduna is a brilliant illustration of how this strategy works to the ultimate benefit of man and the community.The Kaduna chapter of the foundation was launched recently. This was done in a burial ground, but the turnout was not very good. His words “The Kaduna chapter decided that the launching should be done in premises of one of the burial grounds in Ungwar Rimi.We extended invitations to 300 people, but I don’t think we had 60 persons who turned up.” ‘We empower the people’ Next he explains the method used in Kaduna to spread the message of the foundation. According to him “The arrangement we have in Kaduna is that we are going to use the mosques, through the Imams, and those who manage the mosques, to identify one Friday per month. On that Friday all the collections that are made from the mosques, will go to this foundation. We agreed with the Imams that we will not task people to give us more than a hundred naira, that is anything between one and one hundred naira from each person. Whatever you can afford, you please leave for us.We are not squeezing anybody beyond what he can offer.We have also agreed that 20% of the collection will be dedicated to maintaining the Imam and his deputy of the mosque that generated the resource.Part of the challenge mosques face, is that of the collections made on a weekly basis, nothing goes to the Imam,his deputy or the workers.Its all dedicated to one thing or the other in the mosque. It’s absolutely difficult to attain an honest account of that kind of collection, when you say those who are involved in that kind of collection cannot have access to whatever has been collected. What we are saying is that a certain section of the collection should be dedicated to support those who work for the collection, and 80% will go to our account and 20% for the Imam and his deputy.” He explains the full significance of this when he reasons “If you have a community of 10,000 people ,and every week ,each member can afford to give 10 Naira, then that community can budget a hundred thousand naira per week, over a year. This means in a year, then we are sure of 5.2 million Naira. With 5.2 million Naira, they can build their schools.With the same amount the next year, they can build their dispensary. If you can do this successfully, you can sell the idea to others. So, there is no need to wait for the wealthy. Thus, we are empowering the people.” He ends by emphasizing “We focus on cemeteries, but we empower the living.” Finance & cynicism Alhaji Bawa Garba opens up on some of the challenges that confronted the Kaduna chapter when it began its work. His words “First, there was the issue of finance. We then started by taxing ourselves, and raising money to develop on e of the biggest burial grounds in at Bachama road at Tudun Wada, Kaduna. It is one of the biggest and the oldest cemeteries in Kaduna.When we finished Bachama road cemetery, we went to the one at Ungwar Rimi,and we were able to raise 6-7 million naira by volunteers. On the day of the launching at Ungwar Rimi, Kaduna, we raised about 500,000 Naira.” Another challenge faced by the Kaduna chapter he says is “in the beginning people were not willing to take us seriously, but we were not discouraged. Today, we have many people gathering around the work. We are now involving all the Friday mosques in Kaduna in this project.” The next challenge faced by the chapter in Kaduna is the fact that there are at least 6 other sites in need of attention within Kaduna. “But we give priority to a burial ground that’s in very bad shape which requires attention or rehabilitation.” Life, rather than death Alhaji Aliko Mohammed, Chairman Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), and Chairman, Kaduna chapter of the Foundation, speaks on the poor societal attitudes to the cemetery “This is something not many people want to discuss or be involved with. People normally prefer life, rather than talking about death. Kaduna has many cemeteries. In some areas pigs go in and eat the dead bodies.As far as we Muslims are concerned, this is a very terrible thing for any society. For their dead to be devoured by pigs and other animals is a terrible thing.” He adds that the work of the foundation also extends to full cemeteries.When a cemetery is full, it is usually left for some years, usually 10 or more years, before people start going there again to use it. In Egypt they bring earth to cover the whole of the cemetery and leave it for a period of ten years. Then they will go back later to the same place to start again. Maybe, we will start doing that sometime, but Nigeria has plenty of land.” He adds that 2 million Naira was spent on the Tudun Wada cemetery by the foundation. “In the Ungwar Rimi cemetery we did the walls, the gates, and it cost a little over 2.5 million Naira. Now, we are working at the Kabala cemetery, and we have spent close to a million Naira right now. Later, we will be going to Sarkin Musulmi cemetery, but we don’t know how much it will cost to carry out work there.” He adds that someone has volunteered to sink a borehole in each cemetery the foundation works on. He also comments on the state of the cemeteries today, by drawing attention to the surge in the country’s population. His words “Nigeria’s population growth is really surprising. Not too long ago the population was 34 million, now it’s some 150 million people. Of course, certain categories of people will die anyway, and unless you have some people who are going to look after the cemeteries, the cemeteries will be left without any care.” Gates of Paradise 500 graves wouldn’t have been ‘seized’ by heaps of filth at the Nyanya cemetery, as detailed in part one of this series, but for the force of materialism, as well as the firm hand of Satan, Ustaz Shehu Mohammed explains as we continue the discussion. His voice rises and falls with passion and pain as we go deep into the topic, and he felt much anguish when he visited the Nyanya cemetery. According to him “Because of materialism people forget where they have come from and where they are heading to. Satan has taken control of people’s lives, thus today people are not very spiritual. One example of this, he says, is that in the past a Muslim would buy the white cloth (Likkafani, in Hausa) which is an essential part of the Muslim burial rite. Today, people are so rooted in material thoughts and deeds, they no longer think of buying this cloth ahead of physical death or the moment of passing. This is a strong symbol of the present time, he implies.” In a country which has the highest number of private jets owned by its citizens after China, this point is significant. In every capital city in Nigeria, there are magnificent mansions each with an array of expensive cars, owned by Nigerians, which testify to an awesome hunger for material properties, a need which rises above tribe and faith. Everyone is involved in this blind all- consuming rush or craving for earthly properties. Ustaz Mohammed calls on well to do Muslims to “use what the Almighty has blessed them with to look after the cemeteries. It is a charitable work, and in Islam someone can gain Paradise by simply doing it. Sadly, people are not thinking of the next world,” he adds. It’s the economy Mustafa Bello, who is also the head of the Nigeria Investment Promotions Commission (NIPC) sheds light on the economy as an explanation behind the utter neglect of the cemeteries.According to him ‘I think the challenge of the economy might have affected the cemeteries. When we were young, we were even afraid to see a dead body. When they say that somebody is dead, everybody disappears. Nobody wants to see the body, not to talk of going to the cemetery. In those days the cemeteries were not fenced, and you hardly found people tampering with them. “He shows that things changed with the worsening economic climate. His words ‘As the challenges in the economy set in, people began to look for means of making money at all cost. Those with weak minds may have been told that if you do this or that at a cemetery, you will become rich. Maybe somebody tried and by coincidence he was lucky and became a role model for others.” He says that the system of decay and negligence at the cemeteries set in because, basically, nobody owned the place. According to him “The local governments may not be getting funding from the state. Obviously, its ability to do much within the cemeteries now became limited. The burden was nobody’s except those who offered to do it.So, once in a while you see a community saying let’s all congregate there, come with cutlasses, hoes and shovels to see how much we can do to clean up the place. Then it is left again, until when the weeds have grown again.” Wise counsel Senator Adamu Abdulkadir tells Daily Trust of an example from Arab countries where people buy or dig their graves years ahead of their passing. His words “In most of the Arab world, because of the faith that people have in their religion, they go and buy graves themselves while they are alive. They model it in such a way that it looks like what they want to lie in when the hour comes. In most cases every Friday they go there to look at their final resting place, and how well it has been kept. This shows that people believe that death is coming. In our own case if you tell someone that he should go and pay for his grave, he will think that you do not wish him well. But that’s not the case. We must do everything possible to keep our burial sites in good shape, and to do everything possible to make people realise that the cemetery is the last resting place for all of us.” On the possibility of this idea catching on in Nigeria, he says “We may not be able to encourage it easily because we have so much land. But where land is becoming scarce, people on their own will realise that this is something that needs to be done, because people are only looking for a place to build houses, because they want to enjoy life and live.They do not think that one day they will die.” Steve Daniel of the Department of Theatre and Performing Arts, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, explains that the population explosion is behind the challenges facing the cemeteries. His words “The growing population, especially around Zaria, can explain the problem, for there are too many dead being taken to the same site. The land for the cemetery has also not been expanded, and people have not thought about getting more land. There is disinterest too, in terms of how to preserve such places. In the past people saw it as a sacred ground, where the parents or grandparents were buried. They thought that it should be preserved. It seems as though the generation which we now have is thinking more of the living, or of life, rather than the dead. People are even buying cemeteries and building on them.There are many stories of such events, especially around Zaria.” Ali ‘go slow’ Kakakin Samaru, laments the poor modern attitude to cemeteries in the country. He exclaims ‘People do not like going to cemeteries today. They would only make a contribution only after a lot of pressure has been exerted on them. But Islamically, it is good to contribute to the cemetery. I don’t know what the problem is really. We ought to be contributing to cemeteries, but our people don’t contribute. I want to ask our people, that is the local governments and the state, to put some money in the budget so that the cemeteries are kept in good condition. Then we will be happy if we go to the cemetery. “He also speaks of an occasion when he went to pray at a grave a day after a friend of his had been buried. To his surprise the corpse of his friend had been expelled from the grave by the heavy rain of that morning. He uses this illustration to show that people always hurry to dig graves during the funeral. Sometimes the graves are not deep enough, and are poorly constructed. Five years down the line Mustafa Bello opines that staff of the cemeteries will be on a proper salary. The cemeteries will be fenced, all will have electricity or solar power, and there will be rooms within where the deceased will be washed ahead of the burial. Above all the cemeteries will be green places, radiant with flowers, walkways and gardens.The cemeteries will become beautiful places. His words ‘Something that has been so beautified that you are encouraged to go in and pray for the dead.One should be able to do that with all comfort and happiness, rather than going in with fear. Those lying there will be lying in a place that befits them. The impression we have is that Heaven is a green place, with beautiful trees, flowers, and rivers flowing. This is what we are trying to create.”
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 22:21:49 +0000
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