A smokescreen used to disguise an evil heart and obstruct justice.
To think that the life of your fellow human is worth “any form of ideological disparity” and that you were first ideologically inclined before you became a human being is the greatest irony and fallacy of life.
Think of the fact that we all were first humans, Homo sapiens and human beings before anything else and how we so easily forget this fact is surprising.
The question of Race is a result of environmental adaptation. I am black because my ancestors evolved to adapt to the tropical environment and excessive sunlight and, over a long period, tend to have more melanin secreted as an adaptation to their environment. Thus, the melanin is responsible for the more tanned pigmentation.
I am white because my ancestors resided in the temperate regions. As an adaptation to their environment, they developed white skin pigmentations with less melanin and longer hair to adapt to their cold environment. There was no need for excessive melanin secretion, which is responsible for the tanned skin look, because the weather prompted not such.
Just as a Polar Bear is white and has many furs to adapt to its cold environment, the Grizzly Bear is black/brown with fewer furs as an adaptation to its warm climate. It doesn’t change the fact that both are Bears. The above may sound not factual, but to deny that there is no element of truth in it is a lie.
The killing of Deborah, a twenty-five (25) years old 200-level Home Economics student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, in Sokoto on Thursday 12th of May 2022, is one such occurrence that begins to make one terrified of the effects of religious extremism.
She was beaten to death and burnt afterwards because she made a statement on her class Whatsapp group chat via a voice note. The content of her voice note, originally in the Hausa language, was tagged a blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed by her Muslim colleagues.
BELOW IS THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE VOICE NOTE;
“Holy ghost fire, nothing will happen to us; the group is not created for sending nonsense things. It is created to send past questions, if there is a test, or if we are given assignments, not all these nonsense things. Which kind Prophet, nonsense Prophet.”
The above statement was her death ticket. What bothers me the most is that they killed a fellow human being because of what she said in a country that prides itself on her constitution that recognises freedom of speech as a human right? What happened to the love for us first as human beings, before “the clouds of Religion” began to blur our vision and logical thinking?
One may not be wrong to see religion as a form of ideological colonisation. Religion was meant to bring us closer to God and teach us how to relate with our fellow humans and environment, and this was why laws were created; it was and is supposed to be what inputs morals in us and suppress our evil nature, to restrict lawlessness and to put a check on human excesses.
After such an incident, one may begin to question the ability of “Religion” to protect and bring peace. This is because when we look back into the history of modern society, religion has been the root of all our crises, Beginning with the Jewish persecution, Crusades, Arab Spring and the Christian Persecutions all over the world. The Middle Eastern crises that have lingered for so long now on our television screens in Iraq, Iran, and Libya, trace their roots to the religious extremism of the various Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS, TALIBAN etc.
Therefore, if religion is supposed to bring peace to the world, and we have seen it fail times without numbers, why then do we still persist in adhering to what keeps failing? If the reason for its existence (to bring peace) negates thereby (bringing conflicts), why continue?
In Nigeria, religion has become our major dividing force, the Christians against the Muslims, the predominantly Muslim north versus the predominantly Christian south. It is as if a tremendous cultural chasm exists between the two, and such distance is religiously induced. We keep forgetting that whatever religion we claim to be ours in Nigeria was initially been not ours; it was imposed.
“Therefore religion wey no be our own why we dey carry am for head.”
As for Islam and Northern Nigeria, It is said that the religion was brought to them by the traders from North Africa, Mali, Borneo, and Guinea during their trade exchanges, and they quickly adopted the religion. However, to date, there is a class of Hausa called Maguzaya- they do not practice Islam but instead belong to a cult worshipping natural spirits known as Bori, or Iskoki.
Islam was spread rapidly in northern Nigeria via the 1804-1808 jihad (holy war) by Usman Dan Fodio-a Fulani scholar and his fourteen flag bearers. The original settlers of northern Nigeria (the Hausas) were traditionalists. The Hausa quickly incorporated Islam because it posed no opposition to their traditional practices. It allowed polygamy and other traditional practices. Thus Hausas were fond of mixing both religions together. That was why “Usman” carried out the jihad in the first place, to purge the religion and free its mixing with traditional practices.
As for Christianity and Southern Nigeria, Christianity came to Nigeria in the 15th century (the 1600s) through Augustinian and Capuchin monks from Portugal. And its foothold was further strengthened by the British missionary activities of the 17th century. The original inhabitants of southern Nigeria, majorly the Igbo’s on the east, and the Yoruba on the west, plus other ethnic minorities, were primarily practitioners of the “African traditional religion”. They readily accepted this religion because it came with Western Education because the first schools were missionary schools. And before you were enrolled, you were baptised and given Christian names. The point I am trying to prove is that both religions are alien.
Thus, it is troubling to witness how these alien ideologies in the form of religious extremism are the causes of significant crises in Nigeria. Even more alarming is the government’s response, which is the same as it has always been, Silence.
