God, Let This Cup Pass Us By!

In the finest Latin tradition, the adherents of Roman Catholic Church are fond of a particular Iconic chant that goes thus: “mea culpa; mea culpa; mea maxima culpa,” meaning “through my fault; through my fault; though my most maximum fault”.

This legendary Latin song is usually sang by Catholics to atone for their individual and collective sins as finite beings who are created in the image and likeness of God but who are inevitably lacking in the divine attribute of perfection and/or infallibility.

This Song reverberated in my sub conscious as I ruminate on the seemingly unending war on terror raging in most parts of North Eastern Nigeria with significant impacts on the lives and activities of millions of Nigerian citizens who have either fallen prey as victims to the raging violent Islamic terrorism or are part of the unfortunate larger collateral damage occasioned by the ongoing military operations in those terrorists-infested Northern region. Needless, to mention that since three months that emergency declarations were pronounced by the President in those terrorism afflicted states in the North East, the normal social, economic and religious lives of the people have been severely restricted and abridged.

A cursory look at that Latin Confeteur (Confession of guilt) cited above will inevitably occasion the question of why we need it as a national antiphon at this terrorism-infested period of our national life.

To derive a pertinent response, I will remind my readers of a piece I did some years back titled; “growing talibanizatin of Kano” in which I tackled the then governor Shekarau [ANPP] of Kano State for brazenly flouting section 10 of the Nigerian Constitution by elevating a particular religion as a state religion and also Constituting a religious police force which also violates section 214(1) of the Constitution which unambiguously provides thus; “There shall be a police force for Nigeria, which shall be known as the Nigeria police force, and subject to the provisions of this sections no other Police Force shall be established for the federation or any part thereof”.

As it was then just as it is now in Kano, the state government runs a parallel religious police force patterned after Islamic law that breaches the aforementioned section 10 of the Nigerian Constitution and neither the Attorney General of the federation nor the President clothed with the power to protect the sanctity of the constitution, have thought it wise to use the instrumentality of the law to compel Kano State to respect Nigerian Constitution.

About the same time, Katsina State government was recently in the news for budgeting over N300 million of public fund mostly derived from federally allocated financial resources [shared from largely crude oil revenue from the Niger Delta oil rich region] for the construction of a number of mosques for a section of the population even when section 10 of the Nigerian Constitution provides thus; “The Government of the federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as state religion”.

In Katsina as well as Kano state, grinding poverty has contributed to the scourge of out -of -school children who are now estimated to be over 9 million children and except in Kano whereby the state government has recently made deliberate effort to end the scourge of street begging, Katsina state is not known for any policy/ideology of welfarism.

While Katsina, Kano, States are among the number of states that abuse relevant sections of the Nigerian law thus institutionalizing impunity, the Nigerian government has continued to fund private religious pilgrimages of the two dominant religions of Islam and Christianity. As I write, nearly two hundred federal government delegates are in Jerusalem, Israel on a frolic in the name of Holy pilgrimage and the President of the federal Republic is at the head of this obscenely large delegations.

Previously all Muslim-born presidents of Nigeria have also observed this pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia at huge public expenses while the pilgrimages are backed up by some extant statutory provisions which are however undemocratic, the extreme positions of Kano and Katsina in elevating a particular religion as state sponsored religions remains unconstitutional.

Soon, I will return to establish the sinister nexus between these various state- sponsored perfidy [ies] that are unconstitutional and treasonable and the Latin antiphon (mea culpa) earlier cited, just as I will establish the indubitable fact that our current security challenges arose from the apparent failure of government to stamp its foots down and enforce the tenets and provisions of our constitution which now gave rise to the growth of Islamic extremism that branched off into armed insurgency.

Before I do that, let me return quickly to the raging issue of arrest of Nigerians in Kano State of our 21st century, for guess what, dressing in modern fashion regarded by the unconstitutional religious police as “Immoral”.

From the Times of India, of October 22nd, 2013, quoting foreign agency [AFP], we read regrettably that; “Police who enforce Islamic law in Nigeria's northern city of Kano have arrested 150 people in the last week, including for indecent dress, as part of a crackdown on immorality”.

Some people in Nigeria's second city have been picked up for sporting hair styles inspired by prominent international football players, said Mohammed Yusuf Yola, spokesman for Kano's sharia police, or Hisbah.

Others were thrown in jail and fined for wearing their trousers too low on their waists, mimicking a style that became prominent in the 1990s, partly through the influence of some American hip hop artists.

The arrests have followed an order by Kano state Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso to cleanse the city of immoral practices and the trend is set to continue in the weeks ahead, said Hisbah Director-General Abba Sufi.

The Hisbah is a state police force funded by state government and is not part of the federal police, so says this foreign newspaper thus indicating the global dimension of these constitutional breaches by state government officials in Nigeria.

"We have arrested 150 men and women in the past week, including prostitutes and their boyfriends, transvestites, alcoholics and those engaged in indecent dressing in contravention of the sharia legal code," Yola told AFP.

Religion has repeatedly been used as a political issue in Kano and the governor, seen as a moderate, has been accused by rivals of lacking commitment to sharia's guidelines”.

These layers of impunity were responsible for the wave of insecurity ravaging our nation because when constituted state authorities openly violate the sanctity of the constitution, it sends the wrong signal to outlaws that they can always get away with just any crime.

The origin of the current wave of insecurity has a small beginning and because the Borno State government failed to professionally handle the spread of extremists ideology and for the fact that the Nigeria police could not apply rights-based approach to forestall the advancement of violent Islamic extremism, the nation has now wasted and or committed huge human and material resources to wage the ongoing war on terror.

Sadly, our neighbors like Chad; Niger and Cameroon have not actively joined this war on terror since these insurgents do not directly threaten their sovereignties.

Oh God may this cup pass us by!
But before chanting this antiphon, Nigerian governments at all levels must respect the sanctity of our Constitution and resolve henceforth to be law abiding because forgiveness from the divine can only come when frail human beings show contrite hearts.

*Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head; HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS' ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA; [email protected]; www.huriwa.org.