Lasisi Olagunju, A Few Words From Malam
By Malam Hassan Sani Indabawa
This week’s column, ‘Monday Lines’, of Monday, 20th May, 2024, penned by Lasisi Olagunju, the editor of Saturday Tribune, turned out to be a latest in one of his several relentless expression of resentment and contempt against the north and its leadership. His anger, this time around, was against the Imams and other northern elite for their reprimand of women affairs minister, Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye for her thoughtless intrusion into a matter that was entirely out of scope of her ministry. Her failed attempt to stop the marriage of some 100 orphaned girls in Niger State, suffered defeat due to an outcry from generality of peace-loving Nigerians, including northern Imams and other religious groups.
Lasisi Olagunju, in his disdain and contempt for the north and its way of life, found a ready excuse to rile the northern elite, especially the Imams. In his attempt to portray the Muslim north as a backward and archaic, he started his essay with a long letter allegedly written by a northern “slave girl” and published in _Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo,_ a Hausa vernacular newspaper of 8th March, 1950. In the letter, the “slave girl” was requesting for approval of the authorities to allow her marry a “well-to-do-man” already having four wives. She offered her reason behind her willingness “to become his concubine…so that this will be better than our walking about in the towns and giving births to children without proper fathers.”
Olagunju admitted to have got the above letter from Joseph Schatcht’s _”Islam in Northern Nigeria”,_ published in Studia Islamica, 1957, no 8. There are many great titles authored by Hausa scholars, which are more objective, without prejudice, discussing Northern Nigeria and its way of life. Olagunju, however, deliberately, preferred to read and quote Schatcht.
Joseph Schatcht is an Orientalist. In its Islamic context, the Orientalists can be described as a group of non-Muslim authors, particularly from the West, using the traditional western ideology to study Islam, deliberately distorting truths and misleading the unwary.
Muhammad Waseem Saeed and Munazza Sultana, in a research paper titled: _”Islam and Orientalism: An Analysis of Maryam Jameelah’s Thoughts”,_ had this to say: “Orientalists targeted Islam from all sides according to their own goals and their own mental level. People [amongst the orientalists], who possessed certain moral values or a sense of justice appreciated some of the teachings of Islam, but their stubbornness and prejudice against Islam prevented them from accepting the truth at every stage.”
The research work was based on a study published by Maryam Jameelah, an American Muslim who published a book, _”Islam and Orientalism”_. An outstanding writer on Muslim thoughts in the modern world, Maryam Jameelah has logically confronted the approach of the orientalists by using her intellect and life experiences as the native of America (she was born and grew up to a Jewish family in New York, before converting to Islam in her teens). She has refuted all the anti-Islamic undertakings by the orientalists, like Schatcht, and penned down a valuable literature on their scholarship.
This literature, _”Islam and Orientalism”_ is a collection of reviewed essays which provide the reader with a full understanding of the ideological weapons of the Orientalists which are deliberately being used to mislead the Muslim intellegentsia into cynism, heresy and apostasy and it is intended to show the Muslim reader how the West sees them. Olagunju should read the book to rescue his mind from “cynism”, which may lead to heresy or apostasy for regarding the likes of Professor Joseph Schatcht as supreme authorities on Islam.
The reason offered by the “slave girl”, for choosing to be married off at a young age, even as a “concubine”, was convincing and valid and still subsists today. To maintain family value and uphold the marriage institution, it is morally required to avoid “giving births to children without proper fathers.” However, Minister Uju Ohaneye and Lasisi Olagunju did not share this worldview with the Imams of northern Nigeria. If Olagunju can be honest enough, he would admit the asymmetrical differences between South West, where he comes from, and northern Nigeria in the prevalence of number of children born “without proper fathers.”
In Nigeria’s Muslim North, it is a taboo and morally reprehensible to allow a girl give birth out of wedlock. Where Olagunju comes from, it has even become part of their culture, especially the non-muslim community, to allow youngsters live and bore children out of wedlock. These children are variously known as out of wedlock or illegitimate children. Where we come from, the Muslim North, we know them as bastards. They may grow in life, acquire good education, succeed in life by even establishing a family of their own, but they are still perceived as despicable and thoroughly disliked. In his attempt to express his empathy with the Niger State 100 orphans, Olagunju disclosed that he is also an orphan. “I am, like the girls of Niger State, an orphan.” What he did not explain, however, was if his parents were lost. Or, he had none!
In his relentless and unprovoked attack on northern elite and our way of life, Olagunju betrayed his irredentism by campaigning for separation, especially of his Yoruba west, from Northern Nigeria. “I strongly believe they [the north] still prefer their isolation from ‘modern ideas’ and from the south. And we are still in the same country. Shouldn’t we just restructure and redefine boundaries and contacts?…the north’s way of life hurts where I come from — Western Nigeria.”
He was arguing that the north, especially Muslim north allegedly still avoids some contamination from the south. He was referring to Professor Schacht’s remarks that he found the Muslim North, in 1954, “generally afraid of being contaminated by modern ideas, and particularly by the non-Islamic South.” In the north of 1954, there was no serious crimes like armed robbery, drug peddling, examination malpractices, 419 etc…
In a book he published, _”Cowries of Blood”,_ Lasisi Olagunju mercilessly dwelt on Northern Nigeria and its diseases more than the South. This is because, as he said, “the north is the index region for the virus of terrorism, banditry and general insecurity threatening the very existence of Nigeria as a united country.”
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The North and its elite perceived the emergence of these terror groups as a destabilisation process, organised and orchestrated by the enemies of the region. The extremist groups, insurgents and bandits are well organised and well financed in a region ravaged by multidimensional poverty. Enemies of Islam and the north are the top suspect, as northern Muslims remain the hardest hit by these murderous groups. Recent revelation of unclassified information suggested the hand of USA and Israel, revealing their complicity in forming these extremists groups. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are best example of how murderous groups are trained, armed and financed by the USA, to perpetuate dominance and imperialism. They even employ the services of cheap souls, some mercenary writers, in their destablisation campaign. We would not be surprised if Olagunju turned out to be part of the plot, one of the cheap souls, for his incessant deconstruction campaign against the Muslim north.
In his column of Monday, 29th May, 2023, “Tinubu, fix the north, embrace the East”, on the very day President Tinubu was sworn in, Olagunju cried, “the North is Nigeria’s problem incubator” and goes on to pray for President Tinubu to decimate the region that massively voted for him, enabling him to emerge as President. He went on to urge President Tinubu, by warning him that “he will be judged not by the number of roads or bridges he built; he will be judged by how well he tamed his own personal foibles; how well he detoxified northern Nigeria,” whatever that means. This underscores the level of contempt and resentment Lasisi Olagunju has for the north and our way of life.
Surprisingly, Olagunju disclosed that he is also a Muslim from Southern Nigeria and “each time strange things happen in the North in the name of Islam, I exchange glances of surprise with my brothers HERE.” (emphasis mine)
We are also surprised to learn that Lasisi Olagunju is a Muslim, as he claimed. But his implacable hate and disdain for certain class of people, his ethnic jingoism, his open resentment and contempt for anything Islamic and his open nonchalance to the Islamic cause in Yoruba South west, are absolutely alien to Islam, and unfortunately portrayed him as an either a heresy or a Munafiq (hypocrite).
Muslims form the majority in the South western Nigeria and yet they are the most persecuted, oppressed, suppressed and abused. The Yoruba Christian elite ensure the subjugation of Yoruba Muslims to second class status, by denying them even their fundamental Allah-given rights. The right to wear Hijab by Yoruba Muslim girls and women is still a burning issue in Yoruba land. As I write this essay, Nigeria’s foremost Islamic human rights organization, Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, secured another landmark judgement against International School, Ibadan, over hijab. In a swift reaction to the court judgement announced on Wednesday, 22 May, 2024, MURIC described the judgement as “profound, cerebral and arcane.”
MURIC had in June, 2018, joined the parents of 8 female students of the International School, Ibadan, under the leadership of Alhaji Abdulrahman Balogun, on behalf of the parents of the female students, and dragged the school authority to court for sending out the 8 female students, for wearing hijab. This is all because Yoruba Muslims are denied the right to have Shari’a courts. The marriage practices, burial rites and inheritance are fundamental universal rights of Muslims which Sharia is the principal source of guidance and adjudication. But the few but powerful Yoruba Christian elite deny their Muslim brothers to implement Shari’a, that only affects the Muslims. In the whole of South west, there is no single Shari’a court. Whereas, the Muslim north, the punching bag of Olagunju, and other hate mongers, has been practicing Shari’a for over 200 years.
In the several articles Olagunju had written, we can’t recall a single advocacy demanding the fundamental rights of Yoruba Muslims. If he is truly a Muslim, he should have been in the forefront, demanding for fairness and justice. In all the agitations for the inclusivity of Yoruba Muslims, in politics, economy, education etc, Lasisi Olagunju maintained an eerie silence. Muslim’s fundamental rights in his South west, either does not concern him, or he may even be in line on the side of the oppressor, thus his constant and relentless bashing of Muslim north and our way of life.
One of the tragedies that befall our Muslim brothers in the South west, is their adoption of westernization and distancing themselves from strict practice of Islam. Majority of Yoruba Muslims are brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing that religion is a private matter, a doctrine pushed by secularalists and the West. While Islam is a complete way of life with every daily life activities, culture, etiquette, practices, worship, dogma, politics, diplomacy etc were all encapsulated by the two primary sources of Islam — Qur’an and Ahadith. These two formed the basis of Shari’a. So, Olagunju, I ask you, _tori Oloun,_ what type of Muslim are you? You are too comfortable without being guided by the codes, principles and tenets of Shari’a.
But for the valour, candour and irrepressible advocacy by the likes of Professor Ishaq Akintola, late Adetola Kazeem, SAN, Kunle Sanni, Professor Wole Abbas, Alhaji Abdulrahman Balogun and other several illustrious Yoruba Muslim brothers and sisters, the likes of Olaguju would have sold Islam for a “pot of sweet soup!”
Another smack of derision Olagunju hurls at the north, and his display of ignorance was his claim that “Sixty-Four years after independence, we are still struggling to understand Nigeria’s Muslim north and its ways.” He is referring to a region that has over 1000 years of recorded history as civilized Hausa Kingdoms. Kano, for instance, for the past 700 years, (by the 14th century), had developed into a major Islamic, trading and industrial centre.
But yet Olagunju, a journalist, researcher, and a PhD holder, claimed he and his fellow Southern mischief makers are “struggling to understand Nigeria’s Muslim north and its ways.” Well, we acknowledged this as a self admission. Let me enlighten Olagunju and his comrades-in-mischief by recalling an answer once given to some Southern demagogues by the late Umaru Dikko, in 1990s. While reacting to their open contempt and prejudice against the Muslim north and its leadership, the former Minister of Transport educated the demagogues by informing them that an average Northern elite has what he called “double brain”; educated in the eastern way and the western way, whereas a Southern non Muslim Professor Emeritus, for example, only has the privilege of a western education. He, therefore, termed such Southern noise makers as an “educated illiterates.”
That Lasisi Olagunju limited his scope of study and commentary on Nigeria’s Muslim North to post independence era only shows his complete ignorance of a people he derides with passion. His stubbornness, prejudice, resentment, contempt, jingoism all compelled to propel his relentless attack on the Muslim north and our way of life; which exposed him as an irredentist. Simple. And Olagunju, all along, for his inability to rise above primordial sentiment, fits the perfect example of an educated illiterate!
*Malam Indabawa lives in Kano.*
May 2024
