O YE HAUSA PEOPLE!

God in his infinite wisdom, has through the millenniums, always chose the most unlikely person to send as a messiah to a particular people. Taking our progenitor, Father Abraham, he was chosen from the house of chief priest of the olden polytheistic gods and charged with debunking idolatry and enlightens people about the most high God. Down the line we also saw Moses, an adopted Prince of the Pharaoh, raised and loved as a true prince of the dynasty that was steep in magic and the occult, to challenge the system. Jesus, whose lineage was of kings and prophets born into a monastic and spiritual family of Imran, was seen as bastard by his community having no human father. Mohammad, the last of the prophet, was born into a prestigious family in a highly capitalist and idolatrous society, though poor, unlettered and orphaned at tender age.

God’s wisdom in sending disadvantaged people to spearhead a revolution was born out of the need to teach humanity the golden rule of accepting truth for its sake, not based on any affiliation or bias. You can only accept a message from an unlikely messenger if only you opened your heart for the truth. Supposed God will send another prophet today to Hausa people in particular, I think he might send an Okonkwo/Chukwu to really test us. Can anyone imagine such a person, no matter how golden the truth he brings along, being able to sway Hausa people to abandon their religion and follow him? As the gate of prophethood had been sealed, we should go back to our roots and start applying the true teachings of our noble prophet.

I remember as a child, reading the Arba’una Hadith, where the prophet admonishes a child, who happens to be Ibn Abbas with one of the greatest teaching in saying “O boy! When you love a person, love him because of God and when you hate, hate for the sake of God” The prophet is certainly amplifying what God has enjoined him to proclaim in Q4:135 “O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents or your kin and whether it be against rich or poor” This is the golden rule of justice even recognized by non-muslims, as the same verse was posted at the Faculty of Law of Harvard University in the US. (Can you imagine a biblical verse posted at UMMUL QURA University in Mecca?). The highest form of justice is the one applied on oneself and those closest to us. Had the Hausa people imbibed these teachings, we wouldn’t be in our present quagmire. Simply put, imbibing these basic religious teachings, in observing equity and justice, would have stripped us our present shortcoming of depending two things that had been the clog in our wheel of progress.

First, most of us were conditioned, no matter our training and education, to rise blindly in defense of elites. The good, the bad and the ugly of our elites enjoyed unfettered loyalty from us to rise in their defense when they erred and are attacked or condemned, especially by someone we see as inferior. Secondly if anything has a coloration of religion, instinctively we rise in its defense whether it is well deserved or not.

Our forebears built and bequeathed to us a society based on equity and justice which enabled them to become industrious and adventurous, thus traversing foreign lands and export Hausa trade that was backbone of the Tran-Saharan trade which enriches our northern neighbors across the Sahara that eventually caught the eye of Europeans across the Mediterranean and led to the subsequent colonization of Africa.

Dan Fodio, an almajiri, raised the banner against injustice and rallied support from the masses that saw the overthrow of the powerful but tyrannical Habe Kings. A century or so later, his Great-Grand-Son, Ahmadu Bello the Sardauna, led the north in the cry against colonial rule and the subsequent independence ushered in a new set of Hausa elites, the Yan Boko. Unfortunately, the Sardauna, despite setting the pace of modernization of the north through education had also unwittingly bequeathed to his successors the two destructive tendencies that misdirected us to the present decadence. By his actions, the rising elites saw that using public funds for political gains or personal use is alright and nepotism is a shortcut towards regional advantages. Those two destructive tendencies got foothold in our political and military elites and they adorned their lives with it, which as a result kills excellence and promotes corruption. The Yan Boko that Sardauna nurtured, were the same that sow the seed of our backwardness by relishing nepotism and corruption.

All subsequent governments, mostly led by the northerners, adopted the same gambit and it slowly eroded whatever values we cherish as a people with rich culture guided by great religious principles. I don’t think there were ever a people in this country, nay in the whole world that lost its values in a few short decades like the Hausa people. We were people that once valued knowledge more than power, as even the most powerful kings bowed down to our scholars. We were the most accommodating people as evident in the nature of our cosmopolitan cities. We were so industrious that unemployment is one of the lowest you could find anywhere. An immigrant could be assigned for apprenticeship in under a week of his arrival, integrated in less than a year and made a full citizen by being granted a wife. Children learn trade as soon as they can, thus traditional arts and crafts survived for centuries. You can appreciate the level of our security by venturing into the lands immediately bordering us and trust is sacred in all our relationships. There was a time that committing a shameful thing will leave you with no choice but to voluntary impose self-exile on yourself. Social misfits were ostracized by their communities which serve as a great deterrence for aberrant behaviors. The list is endless but alas it is all gone now, thanks to materialism that breeds our corruption and nepotism which escalates into envy between us. If there is anything that finally destroyed us as a society, it is envy, which is no longer seen as the greatest sin. Envy has devoured our senses, beclouding even our faith in God, in fact it has become the new God we breathe in and out. It is attenuated in our psyche to an extent that we are no longer aware of it, as it becomes our second nature. So pervasive in our way of life, that it graduated from its natural territory (between siblings and friends) unto no go areas like between Mother and Son, Father and daughter, married couples and even total strangers (like a fellow road user, ATM queue etc). Envy was the mother of all evil, as it is the original begetter of evil in the garden of Eden when Satan refused to bow down to Adam. If one would have the chance to take a peep on Satan’s to-do-list, I doubt if the Hausa people will be among the top of that list, we must occupy the bottom list considering we have subscribed to his most dangerous weapon, lock, stock and barrel.

The Hausa elite are expert critics, they can pinpoint with 100% accuracy where it went or is going wrong and they also know of the solutions, the problem lies in they can never come together, proffer and execute the solution. Ego massage and envy will cripple any effort made to bring people together to fight a common cause.

Religion, instead of being a savior has become our bane, as we failed to imbibe its true teachings. We promote the ritualistic aspect of religion rather than its practical aspects and as a result it doesn’t help us anymore. The basis of peaceful co-existence among communities is justice and proper distribution and redistribution of wealth as embodied in Zakat. This great pillar of Islam was sidelined to insignificance thus despite economic growth, the prosperity of the citizenry, forever more, declines towards the poverty line. Banks dumps mind boggling amounts in their vaults without recourse to financing SME’S that could fight poverty.  Paradoxically, the richer we get the poorer we became, worthy of being tagged the poverty capital of the world.

Figures between 40-60% are brandished as our unemployment rate despite having one of the most concentrated river system, dams and arable land in the world. We also lead as the fastest birth rate region in the world with the Guinness record of the highest out of school children. Our indices on education are the worst in the world so is our philosophy towards it. The twin evils of poverty and illiteracy had been our scourge as a people and our solution to it lies on the twin remedies, education and redistribution of wealth. Well, it hasn’t been long since Boko Haram came calling and we have seen the mayhem and destruction of lives and livelihood it left in its wake. What is about to come, if we continue to fold our arms and continue making noises without proper long and short term plans on how to cater for our rising population, I am really afraid to envision or imagine.

My dear Hausa elite, we either learn to genuinely and actively start sharing our commonwealth with all and sundry, or else end up sharing the looming Armageddon. We have talked enough (for over half a century) it is time we act…and expediently please.