The harm Aregbesola does to South-West

Azuka Onwuka
| credits: File copy

On August 24, 2012, my article entitled, “Are the Yoruba the number one in religious tolerance?” was published in The PUNCH. In that piece, I said that the Yoruba are not just the number one in religious tolerance in Nigeria but in the world, as I had never seen an ethnic group or race that has achieved such high level of religious harmony and tolerance among Christians, Muslims, adherents of African Traditional Religion, and those with no religion. Not even the so-called developed countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan could boast tolerating people from outside the mainstream religion of their countries like the Yoruba. I advised the Yoruba to devise a means of making the world know about this unique trait as well as fashion out a way to teach this secret to communities and ethnic groups that are fraught with religious intolerance.

Most Yoruba people who commented on The PUNCH website or sent me mails said that I was the most honest Nigerian since Amalgamation, the type of people Nigeria needs to achieve greatness. I laughed because the same praise singers would easily call for my head the day my article does not favour their views. And this article may not.

Like every other group, the South-West people of Nigeria disagree on political matters. But they have little tolerance for their kinsmen who are outside the mainstream political leaning of the South-West. They scorn such people and treat them like turncoats. They hardly forgive them. But matters of religion never cause any misunderstanding among the Yoruba. It is only among the Yoruba that I have seen a Muslim man marry a Christian woman, and both still retain their religions, with the children split between the two religions, and yet there are no religious quarrels. It is only in the South-West that a Muslim, for example, can easily win an election in a predominantly Christian neighbourhood, and nobody even uses the man’s religion as a campaign point. Candidates are treated as Yoruba, not Christians or Muslims.

Unfortunately, the Governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola, seems to love to be in the news for religious controversies. Some people may argue that he is merely misunderstood, but the bottom-line is that Aregbesola is the only South-West governor whose actions seem to cause bad blood between Christians and Muslims in Osun State and, by extension, the South-West.

Aregbesola may be very open-minded and tolerant in his personal religious affairs. Some say that even though he is a Muslim, his wife is a Christian. But the way he continues to handle religious matters in his state has shown that he does not understand that religion is delicate and sensitive. Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State is also a Muslim with a Christian wife. So also is former Governor Bola Tinubu. And in spite of Aregbesola’s beards, there is no evidence that he is a better Muslim than Fashola or Tinubu. But no crisis or controversy on religion is associated with the tenures of Tinubu and Fashola. It did not happen because they were lucky. It happened because they did not allow religion to be an issue for discussion in their administrations.

The South-West may assume that it is immune to religious crisis, so there is no cause for alarm. That will not display long-sightedness. The experience of the North should tell the South-West that religious harmony is not a birth right, neither does it flow in the veins. It is nurtured and watered to keep flourishing. The first premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello (the Sardauna of Sokoto), groomed and built a North that was the bastion of religious and ethnic harmony. Men like Chief Sunday Awoniyi attested to the fact that the Sardauna did not draw a line between a Muslim and a Christian, or between a person from Offa and the one from Kano. What mattered to him was that the person was from the political space called Northern Nigeria.

Consequently, he was able to build what was described as the monolithic North. Hausa was the lingua franca of the North, in spite of the local languages of the different ethnic groups that made up the North. Muslims and Christians saw themselves as Northerners, not as Muslims or Christians. The unity the former Premier achieved among the Northerners was the envy of his contemporaries, for it helped to sustain the Northern political dominance for decades, despite the fact that the then Eastern, Western and Mid-Western regions were educationally advantaged.

Even after his killing in the first coup of January 1966, the North was still one. After the counter-coup of July 1966, Northern soldiers decided that the most senior soldier among them, Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon – a Christian – would be the head of state. His religion or ethnicity was not an issue at all: What was paramount was that he was a Northerner.

That same Northern unity continued all through the Nigerian Civil War and after. Nobody can say for sure when the schism in the North began but the creation of 12 states in 1967 by Gowon may have done the damage. The string that held the North together was slightly loosened and people began to see themselves as distinct people in the North. But the most pronounced was the coup against Gowon by Gen. Murtala Muhammed on July 29, 1975. It seemed like a knife had been put on the string that held the North together. Six months later, a group of soldiers mainly from the Plateau area staged a counter-coup which failed but claimed the life of the head of state, Muhammed. Things were not to be the same again in the North.

Terms like the Middle Belt, Christian North, Muslim North, Core North, Far North, Mainstream North, etc, gained currency. With the Sardauna dead, nobody took over the role of the unifier. Instead, those who were in positions of authority took actions that directly or indirectly drew a line between a Christian Northerner and a Muslim Northerner. When this consciousness reached the tipping point, it snowballed into ethno-religious crises in Kaduna, Bauchi, Plateau, Benue, etc, among the Northern peoples of these states.

It may take 100 years to build, but it does not take more than one day to destroy. Anything – no matter how innocuous – that raises a controversy along religious lines is a potential danger. It is dangerous because it increases the religious consciousness in people of their differences. People start asking questions on issues that they ignored before. People start checking the religion of every new appointee. They check the religions of the commissioners, directors-general, special advisers, etc, to know how many are Christians or Muslims. They check how many Muslims and Christians had been governors in the past.

Ultimately, what did not matter before begins to matter. And the peace and harmony that had existed for centuries start to crack. From one state, it spreads to another, and people become shocked that such a people so tolerant on issues of religion have suddenly done a 360-degree turn. Jos was the symbol of peace and ethno-religious harmony until some years ago. If someone who had left Jos 15 years ago were to return to the same city today, he would find it hard to believe that a people who had lived peacefully together for decades would suddenly turn on each other with such savagery.

A stitch in time never fails to save nine, the old adage goes.