I came across this in a forum called Respect Nigerian Coalition on facebook, pls read with an open mind....Deadlytruth Speaks is the writer.
Deadlytruth Speaks
ALMAJIRIS OF THE WORLD UNITE!! – THE DANGERS OF GROUP BLAME
...
Boko Haram Bomb Blasts the Bombastic Base of the Bastards. Two days before, the Chief Bombastic Bastard, IGP Ringim had boasted the burial of Boko Haram. Instead Boko Haram buried the Bombastic Buffoons at their Head Quarters – the rapists of Nigerian democracy, killers of innocent citizens, extorters of hard working people. The evil of the Nigerian Police has met its match in evil. Cry to no one.
Boko Haram is a variant of the Almajiri of the North, the yeast of the post-election violence, and harbinger of our revolutionary rehearsals - condemned by so many in a worthless effusion of bad breaths that refuse to recognise the cause of that violence – rooted in Government corruption, neglect and Shameless election rigging. We chose to eulogise false heroes in Youth Corpers, many of whom were engaged in election rigging - Five Shameless Million Naira was what our Shameless Rulers gave to parents who lost their children - in a Shameless exploitation of their misery, for Shameless political ends. But as they milked the sympathy of fallen youth corpers, the Almajiri, the real heros who became, the anti heroes, lay in the dust of their stand against election riggers - cursed together with the blameless innocents who died. They were not relevant to the political grand standing of our pigs in high places. As they gave their Shameles Five Million Naira, they forgot the Northerners were watching, feeling the anger of knowing that 10 Youth Corpers were more important to a sectional President than the hundreds of innocent people from North and South who died. How can a President be so sectionally myopic? If you give compensation to Youth Corpers, you must compensate all innocent victims. Is that not sensible State Craft? Nowe Boko Haram has called. Congrats Presido.
Wherever there is injustice, violence rears its head. No need condemning or praising it. That is a waste of breath. It is like a sociological mathematical equation. Injustice = Violence. QED. When there is injustice, and you see violence – do not condemn too much. Rejoice! For soon the people shall find their courage to claim their freedom. It is like Jesus’s sign of the Times – “When you see earthquakes and wars ...” then the end is nigh and the joy of heaven is due.
Revolution does not start from the sweet English of armchair internet warriors of Facebook but from the violence of unlikely vanguards. “History teaches us that history teaches us nothing.” – Demosthenes 348 BC. Evil Rulers never learn. Violence always creeps up upon them. They never ever blame themselves. They always blame those who react to their abusive power.
Consider!
The people, poor, uneducated, ignorant, smelly, were at the palace gates baying for bread. The queen asked “Why not give them bread”. And the courtiers replied, “There is no bread”. Then the queen said “If there is no bread, give them cake.” With those famous words the French Revolution (1789–1799) was born. How can there be cake when there was no flour. The peasants broke down the palace gates, fanned out across Paris and set the city ablaze. Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, was beheaded.
There was no plan. There were no ideals. No Buhari to blame. No Northern Cabals either. No great philosophers. No political parties. No facebook. No twitter. Just plain spontaneous effervescence, the stuff of pure revolutions. Only one thing drove them. Hunger. And so democracy was born from the violent vengeance of vagabonds and vermin. The revolutionary rhapsody of ruffians and rascals. The Almajiri of Europe gave birth to modern democracy. They were hasrnessed by the Robespierres and Dantons to kindle the light of Democracy.
In America, their kindred had been fanning the buzz of freedom. It began with the Boston Tea Party of 1773 by miscreant colonists in Boston, against the genteel, aristocratic power of the British Empire and the monopolistic East India Company. On December 16, 1773, a group of raucous ruffians and rascals, mad at the price of tea, boarded the ships of the East India Company and threw their Tea into Boston Harbor. This was the catalyst for the American War of Independence. The Almajiris of American, ill educated, unpolished, have been immortalised in American history. They were the spontaneous fodder that was harnessed by the George Washingtons and Benjamin Franklins to build the greatest country on earth.
In Kenya the search for freedom was through the Mau Mau revolt. Ordinary servants poisoned and slaughtered their white masters in sleep and disappeared into the night. The Almajiri of Kenyan was later harnessed by Jomo Kenya to drive out the British from their country. The Almajiri of Kenya have been idealised and romanticised in Kenyan folk lore.
In Tunisia, a lone frustrated man poured fuel upon himself and lit himself into a human touch that blazed the glory of the Arab Uprising. The first of many North African Almajiris to martyr themselves in the search for freedom. In Libya, another Almajiri, loaded his car with explosives and blew himself up before the Military cantonement in Behghazi. As the Almajiri of the Arab world march everyday in the demand of Freedom across Arabia, the thieving Sheikhs of the wealth of their homeland wilt and the autocrats begin to fall. They shall be romanticised and immortalised in history.
True Democracy is never served on a platter of Gold. It is never about the selfless endeavours of genteel folk writing brilliant tomes on facebook and Sahara Reporters. It is always about the RAW negotiation of class and ethnic greed, power and interests. Democracy is the best system known for negotiating greed and power. To force the brutal power and bullets of autocrats, into the peaceful play of people and ballots. But history shows, regrettably, that autocrats never give up their power without violence. Sometimes, the people respond with violence, sometimes with struggle, sometimes with defiance, but always they shall die in violence they perpetrate in total frustration, or in revolutionary articulation.
In Northern Nigeria, in the last Presidential elections, a rabble of kids, mad about stolen elections fanned out across Northern Nigeria, fuelled by rumours, visiting mayhem on all those they saw, rightly or wrongly, as obstructing their vision of Uhuru, their liberation from oppression. They are mostly poor, uneducated in western education and severed from their home bases. They have no ideals about democracy. They are driven by hunger, economic desire, Islamic dreams, and hatred of a ruling class whose opulence they see and envy. They do not philosophise it. They do not analyse it in the digital dreams of facebook. They live it. They act it. They are the star dust, the stuff from which revolutions are made.
In violent response to crimes of their rulers, their historically oppressive Emirs, their pent up anger and frustration exploded in a sea of death across Northern Nigeria. The rumours said the Emirs took Jonathan’s bribes but gave them nothing. Like all violent raw materials of revolution, they are spontaneous, without direction, looking to spit their venom on all those who stand in the path of the cobra. If we do not allow the Aminu Kanos and the Buharis of the North to organise them, TRUE EVIL will visit us as the Boko Harams will take over, nurse their disenchantment and hatred and build a Nigerian wing of the Al Queda octopus, then all the gentle debates about rigging and zoning will go to hell, as we begin new debates about bombs and bullets.
In my previous essays about Almajiri, I have consistently used Almajiri as a metaphor, in the way Southern Nigerian stereotypes use it - as a faceless group of smelly, nasty killers -without a true understanding of who the Almajiri is. I have therefore rarefied that meaning, into a higher meaning as a symbol of the catalysts of revolution and change, the barometer of social injustice – the lumpen proleteriat of Karl Marx’s “Das Capital” - drivers without direction - ready to be directed.
But as we banter and batter the world Almajiri, which has metamorphosed from its ordinary meaning in Northern Nigerian narratives to the machete wielding Frankestein’s monster of Southern narratives, I wish to pause and investigate the original meaning.
Who is the Almajiri?
The kindly old man with the white hair and beautiful smile places his gentle hands on the hands of the faithful as they bring their problems to him. A reassuring smile. A signal for help. He is the Imam of the National Central Mosque in Abuja. He was an Almajiri. The old man with the brown toothy grin, listened with courage at what he must do to quieten the faithful in the face of provocation. He laid down the rules of the minimum price he was prepared to pay for peace. There was great dignity. A quiet acceptance that his choices may bring peace or death but there was no fear. He was ready to die. He is the Chief Imam of a Central Mosque surrounded by a sea of hostile natives. He was an Almajiri. The Governor of the Central Nigerian State guffawed, and talked of his education and his dreams to transform the State beginning with a new University. He built the University. He was an Almajiri. The Vice Chancellor became a Minister, ruling at the highest realm of the Nigerian nation. He was an Almajiri. From President to peasant, successful businessman to surviving beggar, itinerant illiterate to erudite literate, the Almajiri family is large and diverse.
Almajiri simply means 8-13 years olds that sit at the foot of an Imam to learn Islamic knowledge. Many come from poor backgrounds across the entire North and even as far as Niger. They grow into many things. Some become Chief Imams, some Governors, some Professors, many become foot soldiers of Northern violence pogroms and others follow the extreme paths of Boko Haram. But in Southern discourses, Almajiri now represents the entire encapsulation of Northern evil and the reason for Nigeria to break up. The simplistic minds of those who refuse to think through their one-sided single stories, then reinforce it with the intellectual weakness of Group Blame.
What is Group Blame? WShy is it intellectually and morally weak? Take for instance the post-election violence. A Facebook friend of mine said she saw the sign "PROTECT CORPERS" and she wrote, to quote: “I have told them it should read "PROTECT NIGERIANS". All the children who had machetes taken to their heads and their stomachs ripped apart, do they not deserve protection? How about the journalists who are doing their job, don't these deserve protection? I said I am sorry the corpers were killed but were they 'clean'? They should stop being over emotional over one set of unfortunate people and concentrate on the well-being of all Nigerians ... All Nigerians deserve protection and if we had a decent government there would be better protection for all.” The truth is neat. Group Blame makes innocents of all Youth Corpers and criminals of ALL Almajiri – without differentiation.
What is Group Blame? Let us look at the issue of Youth Corpers further! Before the killings started their were rumours in the North about the Youth Corpers being bribed and used for rigging. In my books, rigging is as evil as killing. Rigging puts evil people in power whose theft of our funds lead to deaths in hospital and deaths on our roads – more deaths than the so-called Almajiri could ever kill. But once the killing started it all reversed on its head. The Almajiri of Southern narratives attacked Youth Corpers because they saw the Youth corpers as riggers. It was the single stories and the Group blaming of the Almajiris” that led them to attack both innocent and guilty Youth Corpers blaming all for rigging. Were they right to kill? No. Were the riggers right to rig? No! But the riggewrs beget the killing. Evil begets evil. If Okorocha had not won in Imo State, there would have been a spontaneous blood bath. Now the Irony here, is that more Almajiri were killed than Youth Corpers. The Almajiri attacked to defend democratic rights, against Youth Corpers who they saw as rigging. Yet the Youth Corpers become heroes, whilst the Almajiri become monsters.
Group blame is when you erect statues for youth corpers, and eulogise all Youth Corpers, some of whom may have been election riggers, whilst throwing a blanket blame on those unlikely and unwitting defenders of democracy, whom you falsely call Almajiri, those Northern miscreants, who are actually the real socio-economic victims themselves.
Group Blame is when innocents are slaughtered by the raging monster Almajiris of Southern narratives not the obedient children Almajiri of Northern narratives – who are merely children sitting at the foot of Imams – the fountains of knowledge or terrorism? – depending on the narratives of your single sided stories and your capacity for Group Blame.
Group Blame is when Northern Muslims take the Single Stories of Nzeogwu’s killing of the Sarduana of Sokoto, Alhahji Ahmadu Bello in 1966, and blame the crimes of 5 coup plotters on the entire Igbo tribe, leading to the slaughter of the Igbo throughout Northern Nigeria and then proceed to the genocide of the Igbo people in Biafra, starving 2 million children to death in what the Government of the day described as a legitimate weapon of war – starvation. The perpetrators of that Group Blame, that genocide, instead of roasting in prison, are still strutting the land, posing as former Heads of State and distinguished Generals.
Group Blame is when you take the spontaneous violence of the disenfranchised ill educated youth of the North, whom you erroneously call Almajiri, who has been let down by uncaring governments – then blame their actions on the entire Muslim North, then decide that Muslim Northerners are stinking cattle rearers from whom you must separate, and break up the great potential of the largest black nation on earth –Naija the Beautiful.
Single Stories and Group Blames are the stuff of Revolution and War. Revolution never starts with high idealists, like our facebook armchair radicals, but always about ordinary people who go on the rampage for a perceived injustice. Democracy started because the French poor and peasants burnt down Paris and beheaded their Queen. They are still honoured in France till today. Spontaneous social upheaval is often the trigger for true revolutions, provided there is someone to harness them positively. In the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre and Georges Danton harnessed the spontaneous violence of the peasants. In America, George Washington harnessed them. In South Africa, Mandela harnessed them. In India the slaughter of the 5000 protesters by the British Raj was harnessed by Gandhi. Still in the USA, the violence of Malcolm X and the black panthers were harnessed by Martin Luther King. But in Nigeria, our rulers heap blames on Buhari, for the violence their greed, corruption and myopia caused. If we do not allow the Buharis to harness our disenfranchised, dispirited Almajiris, - the fodder of our impending revolution - the Boko Haram will harness them – then God bless us all.
Islam battles for survival and expansion in the face of the centuries old onslaught of Christianity, from the crusades to the modern American invasions in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq – Muslims face a sense of overwhelming odds by more powerful Christian nations. It has always been like that since Islam began. It was against that reality of early Islam, that the Prophet Mohammed (SAW) ordered his followers “to fight without ceasing” against the impossible hordes of wicked rulers that overwhelmes the Muslim fighters that wanted to destroy a wicked world of Evil tyrants and replace it with a more humane Sharia at the time. But these injunctions by the Prophet, relevant for its time and place are taking out of context and misinterpreted by Islamic radicals and Western Islamophobic baiters alike, and quoted out of context as an injunction by the Prophet, for all times, for Muslims to kill infidels. It is like taking God’s admonitions to the Israelites to defeat the Philistines in a Biblical War, as a perpertual injunction to continue killing all Arabs.
What we are witnessing internationally, is a clash of civilizations, Islam and Christianity, East and West; and locally in Nigeria, a clash of classes and tribes, within the bigger clash of civilizations. Blame it on Osanma Bin Laden or the Almajiris but the war will continue - from the threats of Al Shabaab in East Africa, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Abu Sayyaf in Philippines, Ansar al-Islam in Iraq and Al Queda world-wide. Armed Islamic resistance are rooted in the fundamental injustice against the Palestinian people. Resolve the Palestinian problem and Islamic militancy will disappear, just like black African militancy dissolved with the resolution of historical injustice against black Americans, in the Civil Rights clashes, and against black South Africans in the Apartheid era.
We make judgements that are creations of our world but does not make sense in the world of the other. Christianity interpretes reality in a way different from Islam. Yet Muslims or Christians imagine their single stories are the absolute truths. Yet our narrowness make us to see only our Single Stories and Group Blames, not the balanced stories that will bring insight, understanding and peace. With our narrow single stories we extrapolate creative Group Blames, blaming the whole North for the crimes of a disenfranchised minority rather than solving the problems of that minority – and on that flimsy evidence, want to break up the whole of Nigeria into tiny little tribal fiefdoms – oh what shame, what narrowness, what idiocy. There is no one I hate as much as the prejudiced racist, tribalist, defender of sides and cultures – whose narrow perjoratives sow the seeds of our own destruction. I hate those who take no joy in discovering the beauty of other cultures – who cannot see the sagacity of the Fulani, the organisation of the Hausa, the colourfulness of the Kanuri, the industry of the Igbo, the courage of the Ijaw, the dance of the Efik, the laughter of the Edo and the owambe of the Yoruba. I hate haters of culture with the passion I hate Hitler – they are the firewood for ethnic cleansing and genocide – Jewish holocaust, Red Indians, Rwanda, Biafra, Bosnia – the list goes on.
God has blessed Nigeria with this unique Kolourful, Kaleidescope of Kultures. A veritable boon for cultural tourism that can make as much money as our Crude Oil. If only we can find the commonsense and wisdom to harness our similarities rather than our differences.
Single Stories and Group Blame: one sided interpretations of reality are the fuel we pour on the ignition of social revolution and turn spontaneous violence to systematic war. I am all for peace, but not the peace of the grave. Malcolm X said: “Extremism in the Defence of Liberty is No Vice; Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice is No Virtue.” With that in mind I penned the Almajiri Anthem which I dedicate to Boko Haram, the logical conclusion of the disenfranchised youth of Northern Nigeria. Like their Southern Niger Delta counterparts they have discovered that violence is rewarded by free education abroad and the Presidency. For them and all Almajiris of Europe, America, Asia, Africa I write in imitation of Karl Marx’s call to the working classes of his revolutionary dreams ...
Almajiris of the world unite
Raise your banner in just fight
Against those that rule by might
That deny you education and light
From the darkness of your ignorance
Come out and take your ragged stance
Against those that steal your inheritance
And casually dismiss your relevance
Resist those that call you miscreant
Yet from their thrones rape and rant
And when they silence your voices
And take away your meagre choices
Sticks and stones shall join the fight
Till Might bows and Law rules right
By Day or by Night
In defence of your plight
I am not a Northerner. I am not a Southerner. The Truth has no tribe or religion. The Truth is Neutral. The Truth is Deadly. But the Truth shall set us free.
Deadlytruth Speaks
ALMAJIRIS OF THE WORLD UNITE!! – THE DANGERS OF GROUP BLAME
...
Boko Haram Bomb Blasts the Bombastic Base of the Bastards. Two days before, the Chief Bombastic Bastard, IGP Ringim had boasted the burial of Boko Haram. Instead Boko Haram buried the Bombastic Buffoons at their Head Quarters – the rapists of Nigerian democracy, killers of innocent citizens, extorters of hard working people. The evil of the Nigerian Police has met its match in evil. Cry to no one.
Boko Haram is a variant of the Almajiri of the North, the yeast of the post-election violence, and harbinger of our revolutionary rehearsals - condemned by so many in a worthless effusion of bad breaths that refuse to recognise the cause of that violence – rooted in Government corruption, neglect and Shameless election rigging. We chose to eulogise false heroes in Youth Corpers, many of whom were engaged in election rigging - Five Shameless Million Naira was what our Shameless Rulers gave to parents who lost their children - in a Shameless exploitation of their misery, for Shameless political ends. But as they milked the sympathy of fallen youth corpers, the Almajiri, the real heros who became, the anti heroes, lay in the dust of their stand against election riggers - cursed together with the blameless innocents who died. They were not relevant to the political grand standing of our pigs in high places. As they gave their Shameles Five Million Naira, they forgot the Northerners were watching, feeling the anger of knowing that 10 Youth Corpers were more important to a sectional President than the hundreds of innocent people from North and South who died. How can a President be so sectionally myopic? If you give compensation to Youth Corpers, you must compensate all innocent victims. Is that not sensible State Craft? Nowe Boko Haram has called. Congrats Presido.
Wherever there is injustice, violence rears its head. No need condemning or praising it. That is a waste of breath. It is like a sociological mathematical equation. Injustice = Violence. QED. When there is injustice, and you see violence – do not condemn too much. Rejoice! For soon the people shall find their courage to claim their freedom. It is like Jesus’s sign of the Times – “When you see earthquakes and wars ...” then the end is nigh and the joy of heaven is due.
Revolution does not start from the sweet English of armchair internet warriors of Facebook but from the violence of unlikely vanguards. “History teaches us that history teaches us nothing.” – Demosthenes 348 BC. Evil Rulers never learn. Violence always creeps up upon them. They never ever blame themselves. They always blame those who react to their abusive power.
Consider!
The people, poor, uneducated, ignorant, smelly, were at the palace gates baying for bread. The queen asked “Why not give them bread”. And the courtiers replied, “There is no bread”. Then the queen said “If there is no bread, give them cake.” With those famous words the French Revolution (1789–1799) was born. How can there be cake when there was no flour. The peasants broke down the palace gates, fanned out across Paris and set the city ablaze. Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, was beheaded.
There was no plan. There were no ideals. No Buhari to blame. No Northern Cabals either. No great philosophers. No political parties. No facebook. No twitter. Just plain spontaneous effervescence, the stuff of pure revolutions. Only one thing drove them. Hunger. And so democracy was born from the violent vengeance of vagabonds and vermin. The revolutionary rhapsody of ruffians and rascals. The Almajiri of Europe gave birth to modern democracy. They were hasrnessed by the Robespierres and Dantons to kindle the light of Democracy.
In America, their kindred had been fanning the buzz of freedom. It began with the Boston Tea Party of 1773 by miscreant colonists in Boston, against the genteel, aristocratic power of the British Empire and the monopolistic East India Company. On December 16, 1773, a group of raucous ruffians and rascals, mad at the price of tea, boarded the ships of the East India Company and threw their Tea into Boston Harbor. This was the catalyst for the American War of Independence. The Almajiris of American, ill educated, unpolished, have been immortalised in American history. They were the spontaneous fodder that was harnessed by the George Washingtons and Benjamin Franklins to build the greatest country on earth.
In Kenya the search for freedom was through the Mau Mau revolt. Ordinary servants poisoned and slaughtered their white masters in sleep and disappeared into the night. The Almajiri of Kenyan was later harnessed by Jomo Kenya to drive out the British from their country. The Almajiri of Kenya have been idealised and romanticised in Kenyan folk lore.
In Tunisia, a lone frustrated man poured fuel upon himself and lit himself into a human touch that blazed the glory of the Arab Uprising. The first of many North African Almajiris to martyr themselves in the search for freedom. In Libya, another Almajiri, loaded his car with explosives and blew himself up before the Military cantonement in Behghazi. As the Almajiri of the Arab world march everyday in the demand of Freedom across Arabia, the thieving Sheikhs of the wealth of their homeland wilt and the autocrats begin to fall. They shall be romanticised and immortalised in history.
True Democracy is never served on a platter of Gold. It is never about the selfless endeavours of genteel folk writing brilliant tomes on facebook and Sahara Reporters. It is always about the RAW negotiation of class and ethnic greed, power and interests. Democracy is the best system known for negotiating greed and power. To force the brutal power and bullets of autocrats, into the peaceful play of people and ballots. But history shows, regrettably, that autocrats never give up their power without violence. Sometimes, the people respond with violence, sometimes with struggle, sometimes with defiance, but always they shall die in violence they perpetrate in total frustration, or in revolutionary articulation.
In Northern Nigeria, in the last Presidential elections, a rabble of kids, mad about stolen elections fanned out across Northern Nigeria, fuelled by rumours, visiting mayhem on all those they saw, rightly or wrongly, as obstructing their vision of Uhuru, their liberation from oppression. They are mostly poor, uneducated in western education and severed from their home bases. They have no ideals about democracy. They are driven by hunger, economic desire, Islamic dreams, and hatred of a ruling class whose opulence they see and envy. They do not philosophise it. They do not analyse it in the digital dreams of facebook. They live it. They act it. They are the star dust, the stuff from which revolutions are made.
In violent response to crimes of their rulers, their historically oppressive Emirs, their pent up anger and frustration exploded in a sea of death across Northern Nigeria. The rumours said the Emirs took Jonathan’s bribes but gave them nothing. Like all violent raw materials of revolution, they are spontaneous, without direction, looking to spit their venom on all those who stand in the path of the cobra. If we do not allow the Aminu Kanos and the Buharis of the North to organise them, TRUE EVIL will visit us as the Boko Harams will take over, nurse their disenchantment and hatred and build a Nigerian wing of the Al Queda octopus, then all the gentle debates about rigging and zoning will go to hell, as we begin new debates about bombs and bullets.
In my previous essays about Almajiri, I have consistently used Almajiri as a metaphor, in the way Southern Nigerian stereotypes use it - as a faceless group of smelly, nasty killers -without a true understanding of who the Almajiri is. I have therefore rarefied that meaning, into a higher meaning as a symbol of the catalysts of revolution and change, the barometer of social injustice – the lumpen proleteriat of Karl Marx’s “Das Capital” - drivers without direction - ready to be directed.
But as we banter and batter the world Almajiri, which has metamorphosed from its ordinary meaning in Northern Nigerian narratives to the machete wielding Frankestein’s monster of Southern narratives, I wish to pause and investigate the original meaning.
Who is the Almajiri?
The kindly old man with the white hair and beautiful smile places his gentle hands on the hands of the faithful as they bring their problems to him. A reassuring smile. A signal for help. He is the Imam of the National Central Mosque in Abuja. He was an Almajiri. The old man with the brown toothy grin, listened with courage at what he must do to quieten the faithful in the face of provocation. He laid down the rules of the minimum price he was prepared to pay for peace. There was great dignity. A quiet acceptance that his choices may bring peace or death but there was no fear. He was ready to die. He is the Chief Imam of a Central Mosque surrounded by a sea of hostile natives. He was an Almajiri. The Governor of the Central Nigerian State guffawed, and talked of his education and his dreams to transform the State beginning with a new University. He built the University. He was an Almajiri. The Vice Chancellor became a Minister, ruling at the highest realm of the Nigerian nation. He was an Almajiri. From President to peasant, successful businessman to surviving beggar, itinerant illiterate to erudite literate, the Almajiri family is large and diverse.
Almajiri simply means 8-13 years olds that sit at the foot of an Imam to learn Islamic knowledge. Many come from poor backgrounds across the entire North and even as far as Niger. They grow into many things. Some become Chief Imams, some Governors, some Professors, many become foot soldiers of Northern violence pogroms and others follow the extreme paths of Boko Haram. But in Southern discourses, Almajiri now represents the entire encapsulation of Northern evil and the reason for Nigeria to break up. The simplistic minds of those who refuse to think through their one-sided single stories, then reinforce it with the intellectual weakness of Group Blame.
What is Group Blame? WShy is it intellectually and morally weak? Take for instance the post-election violence. A Facebook friend of mine said she saw the sign "PROTECT CORPERS" and she wrote, to quote: “I have told them it should read "PROTECT NIGERIANS". All the children who had machetes taken to their heads and their stomachs ripped apart, do they not deserve protection? How about the journalists who are doing their job, don't these deserve protection? I said I am sorry the corpers were killed but were they 'clean'? They should stop being over emotional over one set of unfortunate people and concentrate on the well-being of all Nigerians ... All Nigerians deserve protection and if we had a decent government there would be better protection for all.” The truth is neat. Group Blame makes innocents of all Youth Corpers and criminals of ALL Almajiri – without differentiation.
What is Group Blame? Let us look at the issue of Youth Corpers further! Before the killings started their were rumours in the North about the Youth Corpers being bribed and used for rigging. In my books, rigging is as evil as killing. Rigging puts evil people in power whose theft of our funds lead to deaths in hospital and deaths on our roads – more deaths than the so-called Almajiri could ever kill. But once the killing started it all reversed on its head. The Almajiri of Southern narratives attacked Youth Corpers because they saw the Youth corpers as riggers. It was the single stories and the Group blaming of the Almajiris” that led them to attack both innocent and guilty Youth Corpers blaming all for rigging. Were they right to kill? No. Were the riggers right to rig? No! But the riggewrs beget the killing. Evil begets evil. If Okorocha had not won in Imo State, there would have been a spontaneous blood bath. Now the Irony here, is that more Almajiri were killed than Youth Corpers. The Almajiri attacked to defend democratic rights, against Youth Corpers who they saw as rigging. Yet the Youth Corpers become heroes, whilst the Almajiri become monsters.
Group blame is when you erect statues for youth corpers, and eulogise all Youth Corpers, some of whom may have been election riggers, whilst throwing a blanket blame on those unlikely and unwitting defenders of democracy, whom you falsely call Almajiri, those Northern miscreants, who are actually the real socio-economic victims themselves.
Group Blame is when innocents are slaughtered by the raging monster Almajiris of Southern narratives not the obedient children Almajiri of Northern narratives – who are merely children sitting at the foot of Imams – the fountains of knowledge or terrorism? – depending on the narratives of your single sided stories and your capacity for Group Blame.
Group Blame is when Northern Muslims take the Single Stories of Nzeogwu’s killing of the Sarduana of Sokoto, Alhahji Ahmadu Bello in 1966, and blame the crimes of 5 coup plotters on the entire Igbo tribe, leading to the slaughter of the Igbo throughout Northern Nigeria and then proceed to the genocide of the Igbo people in Biafra, starving 2 million children to death in what the Government of the day described as a legitimate weapon of war – starvation. The perpetrators of that Group Blame, that genocide, instead of roasting in prison, are still strutting the land, posing as former Heads of State and distinguished Generals.
Group Blame is when you take the spontaneous violence of the disenfranchised ill educated youth of the North, whom you erroneously call Almajiri, who has been let down by uncaring governments – then blame their actions on the entire Muslim North, then decide that Muslim Northerners are stinking cattle rearers from whom you must separate, and break up the great potential of the largest black nation on earth –Naija the Beautiful.
Single Stories and Group Blames are the stuff of Revolution and War. Revolution never starts with high idealists, like our facebook armchair radicals, but always about ordinary people who go on the rampage for a perceived injustice. Democracy started because the French poor and peasants burnt down Paris and beheaded their Queen. They are still honoured in France till today. Spontaneous social upheaval is often the trigger for true revolutions, provided there is someone to harness them positively. In the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre and Georges Danton harnessed the spontaneous violence of the peasants. In America, George Washington harnessed them. In South Africa, Mandela harnessed them. In India the slaughter of the 5000 protesters by the British Raj was harnessed by Gandhi. Still in the USA, the violence of Malcolm X and the black panthers were harnessed by Martin Luther King. But in Nigeria, our rulers heap blames on Buhari, for the violence their greed, corruption and myopia caused. If we do not allow the Buharis to harness our disenfranchised, dispirited Almajiris, - the fodder of our impending revolution - the Boko Haram will harness them – then God bless us all.
Islam battles for survival and expansion in the face of the centuries old onslaught of Christianity, from the crusades to the modern American invasions in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq – Muslims face a sense of overwhelming odds by more powerful Christian nations. It has always been like that since Islam began. It was against that reality of early Islam, that the Prophet Mohammed (SAW) ordered his followers “to fight without ceasing” against the impossible hordes of wicked rulers that overwhelmes the Muslim fighters that wanted to destroy a wicked world of Evil tyrants and replace it with a more humane Sharia at the time. But these injunctions by the Prophet, relevant for its time and place are taking out of context and misinterpreted by Islamic radicals and Western Islamophobic baiters alike, and quoted out of context as an injunction by the Prophet, for all times, for Muslims to kill infidels. It is like taking God’s admonitions to the Israelites to defeat the Philistines in a Biblical War, as a perpertual injunction to continue killing all Arabs.
What we are witnessing internationally, is a clash of civilizations, Islam and Christianity, East and West; and locally in Nigeria, a clash of classes and tribes, within the bigger clash of civilizations. Blame it on Osanma Bin Laden or the Almajiris but the war will continue - from the threats of Al Shabaab in East Africa, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Abu Sayyaf in Philippines, Ansar al-Islam in Iraq and Al Queda world-wide. Armed Islamic resistance are rooted in the fundamental injustice against the Palestinian people. Resolve the Palestinian problem and Islamic militancy will disappear, just like black African militancy dissolved with the resolution of historical injustice against black Americans, in the Civil Rights clashes, and against black South Africans in the Apartheid era.
We make judgements that are creations of our world but does not make sense in the world of the other. Christianity interpretes reality in a way different from Islam. Yet Muslims or Christians imagine their single stories are the absolute truths. Yet our narrowness make us to see only our Single Stories and Group Blames, not the balanced stories that will bring insight, understanding and peace. With our narrow single stories we extrapolate creative Group Blames, blaming the whole North for the crimes of a disenfranchised minority rather than solving the problems of that minority – and on that flimsy evidence, want to break up the whole of Nigeria into tiny little tribal fiefdoms – oh what shame, what narrowness, what idiocy. There is no one I hate as much as the prejudiced racist, tribalist, defender of sides and cultures – whose narrow perjoratives sow the seeds of our own destruction. I hate those who take no joy in discovering the beauty of other cultures – who cannot see the sagacity of the Fulani, the organisation of the Hausa, the colourfulness of the Kanuri, the industry of the Igbo, the courage of the Ijaw, the dance of the Efik, the laughter of the Edo and the owambe of the Yoruba. I hate haters of culture with the passion I hate Hitler – they are the firewood for ethnic cleansing and genocide – Jewish holocaust, Red Indians, Rwanda, Biafra, Bosnia – the list goes on.
God has blessed Nigeria with this unique Kolourful, Kaleidescope of Kultures. A veritable boon for cultural tourism that can make as much money as our Crude Oil. If only we can find the commonsense and wisdom to harness our similarities rather than our differences.
Single Stories and Group Blame: one sided interpretations of reality are the fuel we pour on the ignition of social revolution and turn spontaneous violence to systematic war. I am all for peace, but not the peace of the grave. Malcolm X said: “Extremism in the Defence of Liberty is No Vice; Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice is No Virtue.” With that in mind I penned the Almajiri Anthem which I dedicate to Boko Haram, the logical conclusion of the disenfranchised youth of Northern Nigeria. Like their Southern Niger Delta counterparts they have discovered that violence is rewarded by free education abroad and the Presidency. For them and all Almajiris of Europe, America, Asia, Africa I write in imitation of Karl Marx’s call to the working classes of his revolutionary dreams ...
Almajiris of the world unite
Raise your banner in just fight
Against those that rule by might
That deny you education and light
From the darkness of your ignorance
Come out and take your ragged stance
Against those that steal your inheritance
And casually dismiss your relevance
Resist those that call you miscreant
Yet from their thrones rape and rant
And when they silence your voices
And take away your meagre choices
Sticks and stones shall join the fight
Till Might bows and Law rules right
By Day or by Night
In defence of your plight
I am not a Northerner. I am not a Southerner. The Truth has no tribe or religion. The Truth is Neutral. The Truth is Deadly. But the Truth shall set us free.
