. In a show of utter contempt, indigenous Hausa and Fulani Christians in Kaduna State are given “certificates of non- indigeneship”, meaning that they would not have access to rights and privileges accruable to indigenes of the state; Islamisation is carried out not only by Muslim rulers. Unsuspecting southern rulers are unwittingly used to drive some aspects of the Islamisation agenda:
. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, erstwhile Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi introduced Islamic Banking;
. President Jonathan has set up Almajiri schools for the exclusive benefit of Muslims in spite of robust protest by the Christian community, whose schools were taken over;
. In many Northern states like Kano, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Bauchi, Borno, Yobe and Gombe state governments refuse to give building permits for the erection of churches. As a matter of fact, a disclaimer contained in building permits in Kano State specifies that the building permit is not to be used to erect bars, brothels and churches thereby classifying churches among undesirable establishments like bars and brothels;
. In places where churches have been destroyed in the past three decades state governments in several states in the North refuse the owners permit to rebuild. In Borno, Kaduna, Kano, Niger, Bauchi, Yobe, Sokoto, Katsina and Gombe states Christian churches numbering over five thousand have been lost this way. None of the owners were compensated.
The Hausa/Fulani insist that they are the largest ethnic group yet when former president, General Obasanjo wanted to include ethnicity and religion as issues to be disaggregated in the Census exercise of 2006, the Hausa/Fulani elite pressurized him to drop the idea because doing so would expose the lie.
. The Hausa International Media outfits e.g. BBC, VOA, Germany etc. usually employ Moslem Hausa Fulani and they tend to propagate the Islamic views of events in Nigeria in line with their religious perception of not identifying with any government not ruled by a Moslem.
The Boko Haram insurgency is only the latest in the history of Islamist insurgencies in the North and they have vowed to drive away, if unable to kill all Christian and non-Moslems from northern Nigeria:
. There was the Maitatsine Rebellion in Kano, in 1980, that sought to bring to pass an Islamic fundamentalist order;
. There was the Bulumkutu Rebellion in the North East that sought to do the same thing in Maiduguri, Borno State; Jimeta, Yola; and Bauchi, Bauchi State.;
. There was the Kala Kato Rebellion in Bauchi State in the 1980s;
. The eighties and nineties also witnessed riots perpetrated by Muslims in Kano, Zaria, Kafanchan, Maiduguri and Bauchi;
. Since the return to civilian democracy, Jos has witnessed four major religious riots perpetrated by Muslims including the murder of more than 500 indigenes of Dogo Nahawa in the dead of the night in 2010. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for that attack;
. Each time something irks the Muslim world anywhere in the world Nigerian Christians are made to pay for it. In 2003 a Danish newspaper published a cartoon that Muslims felt painted Prophet Mohammed in a bad light. Nigerian Christians were slaughtered in cold blood in Maiduguri, Kano and Bauchi and their property looted and vandalized.
After US planes attacked Tripoli, Libya in the 1990’s Nigerian Christians were attacked and killed in Northern Nigeria. After the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11 2001 Muslims celebrated in Northern Nigeria. After US forces started its war on Iraq Nigerian Christians were attacked and killed.
After late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua fell ill in 2009, there were concerted efforts by the northern political elite to prevent the then Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan, from being elevated to the position of Acting President.
The then Vice President was made to take an undertaking that he would not vie for election in 2011 before northern governors gave their members in the National Assembly the green light to elevate Jonathan. Before he was elevated to Acting President, Nigeria had no leader. As a matter of fact, the 2010 Appropriation Act allegedly signed by Yar’adua in Saudi Arabia was procured through forgery.
Yar’adua was not in a position to sign anything! Highly visible northerners in the ruling PDP (including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former NSA General Aliyu Gusau, former military President General Ibrahim Babangida and former Kwara State Governor Bukola Saraki) banded together to fight Jonathan under the “consensus arrangement”.
One of those leaders, Aliyu Gusau, is today Minister of Defence and this complicates the fight against Boko Haram because Gusau is a dye-in-the-wool ……
The post 2011- election violence was orchestrated in places where Goodluck Jonathan did not win the required 25% (Kano, Bauchi, Maiduguri, Yobe). The spike in Boko Haram violence is a continuation of that episode. Boko Haram has not hidden its ambition to drive away if unable to kill all non-muslims from Northern Nigeria.
The inspiration for the current insurgency of Boko Haram and the murderous activities of the Fulani Militia onrampage in the Middle Belt is about the desperation of the Muslim North to have power at the center returned to it, whether the Nigerian electorate say so or not.
In Gombe State where President Jonathan got over the 25% votes, post election violence was unleashed against the southern Gombe Christians who gave President Jonathan 70% of their votes compared to the few votes he got in Gombe North. This violence led to the house of the State PDP Chairman being burnt and he was never compensated until his untimely death.
Six northern governors namely: Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State; Alhaji Magatakarda Wamako of Sokoto State; Alhaji Muazu Babangida Aliyu of Niger State; Alhaji Sule Lamido of Jigawa State; Alhaji Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State and Alhaji Abdufattah Ahmed of Kwara State banded together with Rivers State Rotimi Amaechi to demand that the sitting President, Goodluck Jonathan, should undertake not to partake in the forthcoming 2015 Presidential Election.
The refusal of the President to give such an undertaking led to an orchestrated crisis in the PDP, and led to the willful abandonment of the party by five of the aforementioned governors. Members of the National Assembly, states houses of assembly and other party faithfuls in those states also exited PDP.
Such is the desperation with which northern muslims want power at the center in Nigeria.
Conclusion:
There is an active agenda of Jihad and much of the rest of the country, especially the South, are sleep-walking into what could be a fait accompli. This agenda is being actively pursued with the imprimatur of the authorities in several states;
The Federal Government seems incapable of appreciating the true dimensions of the problem and is often a facilitator of the Jihad agenda.
All Nigerians must be prepared to play by the rules. The country is practicing democracy and in any democracy, power issues from the ballot.
The international community should not allow itself to be hoodwinked into supporting the attempt by Islamists to conquer Nigeria, because that is what Boko Haram and the Fulani Militia are attempting.
The West, including the United States of America, United Kingdom, France etc. should be wary of information they get about Nigeria if they do not want to be guilty of helping the Islamist agenda. The comments coming out of the West alleging that President Jonathan’s government was anti-North reflects flawed intelligence about Nigeria and misinformation.
The Nigerian public must begin to ask questions concerning how humongous amounts given to the Armed Forces and other security agencies in the past three years were expended. The National Assembly of Nigeria ought to be very interested in how funds it appropriated were spent.
The Nigerian public should go beyond the façade erected by contemporary politicians to tease out what they are not saying publicly. That is the way out of sleepwalking into the Islamist agenda that we are faced with’’.
Pastor Jonah Isah’s contribution is deeply troubling yet it is timely and highly appropriate. Anyone that ignores his concerns or that chooses to treat them with scorn and contempt does so at his or her own peril. Yet sadly Nigeria is a nation that hates to admit the truth and that often shies away from confronting it. That is why we are in a mess.
Pastor Isah represents a new breed of christian leaders that are slowly rising up in Nigeria and that are not afraid to speak the truth despite it’s dangers and attendant risks. Thankfully he is not alone. There are others too like Pastor Bosun Emmanuel of the Redeemed Christian Church of God whose message that warned that there was a plot to wipe out Christianity in Nigeria within 30 years titled ”The Nigerian Church” went viral earlier this year and Pastor Ladi Thopmson, whose strong voice and compassionate work with the victims of Jihad in northern Nigeria through the auspices of his NGO called the Macedonian Initiative has been inspiring and deeply encouraging.
Yet in my view Pastor Isah stands apart. His research is astounding and his contribution to the debate is truly remarkable. Clearly he knows the history of our country very well and his assertions are credible and compelling. He has spoken nothing but truth and he has enunciated and uncovered a hidden agenda which, if not acknowledged and vigorously resisted, is capable of causing the greatest conflagration in the history of the African continent and possibly in the history of the world.
A full scale religious war in Nigeria fought between 65 million Muslims on the one hand and 65 million Christians on the other would not do anyone any good. It would not be fought on the conventional battlefield but it would be fought from street to street and house to house and it would last for many decades.
May God forbid that it should ever come to that but one thing is clear: any attempt to Islamise our country or to destroy or in any way negate the secularity of the Nigerian state will result in that war.
May God guide us all and may He prevent us from going over the brink. May He cause us to live in peace and with mutual respect for one another and may He lead us by His Holy Spirit to be our brother’s keeper.