There is this popular saying in my part of Nigeria which, when translated to English, would read like this: When an elder is in the market, a mother won’t back a newly born awkwardly. It is a testimony to the wisdom of the elders in African society.  That thinking, I am sure, also berthed the saying- what an elder sees sitting down, the young cannot see even from the top of an Iroko tree.  Age, in the African setting, has a huge link with wisdom, and this is something our oral tradition affirms so assuredly.
There are lots of myths around age and the elderly that Africans won’t dare to rationalize, because even though the elders are seen as all-knowing, they also admit that omode gbon, agba gbo ni afi da ile Ife, which means that a combination of the wisdom of the elders and those of the youth led to the creation of Ile-Ife. The reference to Ile-Ife here is in recognition of the source of all Yoruba and maybe the human race. That is confirmation of the fact that even though the elders are always wise, the young equally possess some level of wisdom you don’t wisely discount.
I will stick to the last sentence in engaging the take of our leaders in Islam, who operate as the Nigeria Supreme Council on Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) on America’s President, Donald Trump’s declaration of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).
Last Sunday, the NSCIA spoke on Trump’s designation of Nigeria a CPC and his threat to launch an attack on the criminal elements responsible for killings in the country through the organisation’s General Secretary, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, condemning the claim of genocide and declaring that Trump was hiding under a pretext to destabilise Nigeria.
According to the organisation, the security crisis in Nigeria is attributable to climate change, poverty, and mass unemployment. Professor Oloyede had told journalists that Trump’s declaration of Nigeria as CPC was “part of a coordinated plot by the United States to destabilise the country,” adding that the crisis in the Middle Belt of the country was due to ecological challenges thrown up by degraded pastures and dried-up water sources in the far-northern Sahelian belt.
Even though the group concluded its statement by admonishing the Nigerian government on the need to go after the terrorists and agents of violence, they followed the pattern other contributors to this topic had towed-define the problem and refrain from hitting some hard punches. But we expect the elders to shoot straight, no matter whose ox is gored, because, as the saying goes, they have seen it all.
The NSCIA said: “If the violence in some parts of Nigeria is not religious, what are the real drivers? The first is ecological. As the International Crisis Group has detailed in multiple reports, relentless desertification and drought, products of climate change, have degraded pastures and dried up water sources in the far-northern Sahelian belt. This is not an ‘Islamist invasion’; it is a desperate southward migration of herders seeking survival.
“This climate-driven migration forces herders into direct and often violent competition with sedentary farming communities over dwindling resources of land and water. Historic grazing reserves have been lost to expanding settlements, and traditional conflict resolution mechanisms have eroded. This is the flashpoint for the farmer-herder crisis in Plateau, Benue, and other Middle Belt states.
“The second driver is criminality. In the North-West, North-East, and South-East, banditry is fueled by overlapping factors of grinding poverty, mass youth unemployment, drug abuse, porous borders, and the proliferation of small arms and light weapons over the decades. Crucially, as researchers have noted, it is also driven by illicit artisanal mining of solid minerals. Criminal syndicates and bandits sack villages and displace populations, creating an ungoverned space for their illegal mining operations. This is a violent, organised crime racket for resources, and there is nothing Islamic about it. In the Zamfara, Katsina, and Sokoto axis, Muslims have lost more than 1,200 souls to the same bandits, who answer to crime, not tribe or faith.
“The United States Department itself, in its 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom, stated that banditry and other criminality, not animosity between particular religious groups, were the primary drivers of inter-communal violence. This is not a religious war.”
 The NSCIA, still speaking through Professor Oloyede, stated categorically that the terrorists who are behind the killings in Nigeria are blind to religion. The group added: “For the avoidance of doubt, what Nigeria faces is a complex and tragic perennial security crisis that brings immeasurable pain to all its citizens, regardless of faith or ethnic persuasion. From Katsina to Borno and from Benue to Plateau, as well as in Kaduna and Kwara, Nigeria bleeds through gruesome savagery against Muslims and Christians, Imams and priests.
“Non-partisan experts have refuted this blackmail, and Amnesty International, which methodically investigated the insecurity in Nigeria, has stated that there is ‘no evidence of a religious motivation’ to characterise it as genocide. According to Isa Sunusi, the Director of Amnesty’s Nigeria programme, ‘I don’t think President Trump has any facts. I don’t think he has had a good briefing about the nature of this conflict.’
“Senior researchers like Samuel Malik of the pan-African think tank, Good Governance Africa, have also stated that ‘there is no credible evidence of a state-led or coordinated campaign to exterminate Christians, which is what genocide is’.”
While the body called on the Nigerian government to redouble its efforts in protecting the citizens regardless of their faith and destroy the bandits and terrorists, it, however, believed that there are some “domestic instigators” of the genocide claim by Trump and that there are some “foreign lobbyists against Nigeria.”
I will commend the NSCIA for coming out boldly to tell the government of Nigeria to go after the terrorists and bandits and protect Nigerians regardless of their faith. I will, however, object to their failure to dig further into the causes of the evil, everyone, including Trump, has been condemning. They missed the point when they limited the instigators of the security crisis in Nigeria to mass unemployment, poverty, and climate change.  Yes, those are social factors that are easily attributable to the eruption of crime, but the rise of terrorism and banditry in Nigeria is not only ascribable to such simplistic conclusions. There is extremism, which provides ingredients for terrorism and banditry. Good enough, the group also rightly identified illegal mining as a source of banditry we are witnessing in Nigeria. I am sure the elders know that this is the only country where gold is mined in commercial quantity, but where its worth has little or no effect on the fiscal projections of either the state or the Federal Government. Bandits and their sponsors cart away the precious stones and kill our citizens in hundreds to achieve their aim.  But the government at the centre shows them the way to those golden or, is it Lithium, sites in the first instance. Ask who is in custody of the cadastral survey of mining sites and potential mineral deposits across Nigeria? The Federal Government, of course!
 Though conspiracy theories abound in the unfolding circumstances, I will not agree that the US’s classification of Nigeria as a CPC should only be ascribed to the efforts of some “foreign lobbyists” and some “domestic instigators.”
So, I will see NSCIA’s conclusion limiting insecurity in Nigeria to factors such as-poverty, climate change and mass unemployment as a tokenistic search for causes of the crime and I would say that elders should not in anyway be seen as keeping the words under the tongue, as they would say in my part of the country-speak tongue in cheek-as the English people would say. Why should poverty drive a group of people to carry guns and machetes to attack a sleeping community in the dead of the night? Was it poverty that led to the kidnapping of Chibok girls or the bombing of UN House in Abuja, and the series of bombs that exploded in Suleja, Abuja, and other places? Was it unemployment? Nigeria, as a nation, has a huge number of unemployed youths.  Early morning, you see some of them wield their cutlasses, hoes, shovels, and all that, hopefully sitting at strategic junctions, in different towns and cities. They are in Abuja, Lokoja, Jos, Makurdi, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Aba, name any Nigerian city. They stand in those spots, hopeful of being engaged as farmhands or hands on construction sites. They don’t carry guns if they are unlucky to secure an engagement for the day. Some of them would just relocate to some bad portions of roads and resort to filling the portholes in the hope that minded motorists would dash them some naira notes that would take them home. Some others resort to begging. Yes, some may resort to criminal acts such as 419 and Yahoo, Yahoo, organised criminality cannot be solely linked to poverty, climate change, and unemployment. Hunger can propel petty stealing, not a band of Okada-riding criminals who invade towns and villages, leaving hundreds of dead bodies behind, or those who kidnap children and adults, demanding millions of naira as ransom.
The talk of climate change is one that looks like talking tongue in cheek.  Nigeria, the Sahel, and Africa are not the only victims of climate change. Again, this country is not the home of the highest number of pastoralists. So, how do they handle cows and animal husbandry in other climes that we don’t get to hear of killings or farmer-herder clashes, as some would euphemise? I expect that the NSCIA, being a group of elders, would not just define the problems but identify the solutions.  If there is climate change, a natural phenomenon, why can’t the pastoralists also adapt to change and switch to ranching? Why should the pastoralists keep searching for grazing routes they will never find? And why can’t the elders be in search of a common front in that regard? If the pastoralists need education, why are the agencies of government not leading in that area? What is the job of the Ministry of Livestock Development, which has been in operation for some two years?  I heard one official of that ministry talk about modernising grazing routes, and I said, if that is the policy of the ministry, we can safely conclude that President Bola Tinubu has just wasted precious funds and time in setting up such a ministry that would only compound problems it was established to solve.
To attempt to demonise climate change as one Satan that swayed humanity from the path of God is an overkill.  Modernisation is the thing around the world. Herders, farmers, and all must operate in modern times, adopt mechanisation and maximise their profits.  Why should herders be seen freely roaming the streets of Abuja and other states? Why can’t the owners of the cows acquire ranches and keep the herds, the citizens, and the herdsmen safe?  Why can’t the children of the herders go to school? There is a federal agency whose duty is to educate nomadic pastoralists. What has it achieved in its years of existence?
I think the elders must also go beyond just the definition of terms, as we have seen in their admonition of the government. They also need to dissect the underbelly of terrorism in Nigeria without necessarily absorbing the conspiratorial theory of “foreign lobbyists” and “domestic instigators” in the CPC designation. Remember, this is not the first time the country has been placed on the CPC board. It was there in 2020, via the same Trump, but it was removed in 2021 by President Joe Biden.  So, we should ask, why is Nigeria perpetually fishing in that troubled water?
Rather than identify the trio of poverty, mass unemployment, and climate change as reasons for the unmitigated killings across Nigeria, I think religious extremism plays a greater role in breeding unwanted vices and crimes. Why should a woman preacher be hacked to death at dawn in Kubwa, Abuja? Why should Deborah Samuel Yakubu be killed on charges of alleged blasphemy in 2022? Before that, there was Gideon Akaluka, who was beheaded in 1994, and his head was paraded around the streets of Kano as a precious trophy.
Christian practice could be hell in some Northern states. A fellow youth corps member recounted how she narrowly escaped being stoned to death in Birnin-Kebbi, Kebbi State, because she ran into some almajiri who saw her in trousers. She had taken a shortcut to enter the State Secretariat of NYSC only to run into the attackers. She was lucky to have escaped. Another colleague told me about her experience with Okada riders who would not take her on their bikes because she was holding the Bible and heading to fellowship. That was in 1994. How many of those attackers have grown to become fathers and inculcated the hatred for another religion into their children?
And to think that we can do whatever we like in terrain and keep our mouths shut is not practicable. The world is a global village, and whatever you whisper in the corridors of your room can turn out to be a huge noise in the global square. The Americans don’t need “foreign lobbyists” to understand what has been happening in Nigeria over the years. They can access Nigerian newspapers and all our communication channels, which are on the internet. They read the gory stories of 100 dead, 200 killed, and many more. They saw the reports when churches almost became prisons under President Goodluck Jonathan. They read reports of the killings of innocent citizens while praying in mosques and churches. They saw when churches had to mount huge barricades in Abuja, parts of the North Central, and the South to guarantee worship; they read how human life has been reduced to ordinary statistics. And Trump himself gave a figure in his post. He said there were 3,100 Christian deaths in Nigeria versus 4,476 worldwide; it would be difficult to deny the figure. From January to December of each year, deaths are recorded. We don’t need to ascribe these to foreign lobbyists or insiders. We just need to act and act fast.
I think beyond the niceties of playing the diplomat for one’s fatherland, we must look ourselves in the face and say the truth. Religious extremism is the key danger that is dragging Nigeria into infamy. Some Northern Muslims won’t regard their Southern brothers as believers because they cohabit with Christians and traditional religion worshippers. That’s extremism. We need to adopt religious education as a compulsory subject at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. We need to tell our children that God does not have a religion. He created the Christians, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, and even the animists. If God wanted all of us to speak one language or practice one religion, it doesn’t cost the Almighty anything to do so. Religion is a personal thing; however, how one chooses to worship their creator should be their business. At best, you can preach to him or her, make literature from your religion available to all, if they choose to go to heaven or hell, your God will not place their offence on your head. The NSCIA and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), as well as the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), must tell the governors and political actors, who, in the name of populism, place one religion above the other or force schools to close because of religious injunctions, to desist. Public offices in Nigeria are not won on account of religious inclination; they are won on the tickets of political parties. Religious freedom must not just be mouthed; it must be practiced all across Nigeria.