What Boko Haram and NADECO have in common?

As we watched troubled President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in his black kaftan with black cap behind the distraught emir of Kano last week, it was apparent that the embattled president needs help. And that s not going to come from those that Ayo Opadokun, the NADECO Secretary, describes as "tiny minority of power hijackers or his self serving friends".
No joy is going to come from those that exploited his human frailties which resulted in the jettisoning of the PDP constitution to which he was a signatory and a beneficiary; those who assured him they would fix the election the PDP way in spite of his protestation that he didn’t want anyone to rig on his behalf. Those who raised stupendous campaign funds by creatively tinkering with our foreign reserve and manipulating the fuel subsidy; the prosperity prophets who prayed, fasted and mobilized their congregation for his election without questioning the morality of his ambition. The self-serving northern state governors who assured him they would manage the mob of uneducated, jobless and hungry youths, they bequeath on the northern part of Nigeria.

Of course the President cannot get succor from those who advised him to set the police after octogenarians and patriotic Nigerians who demonstrated peacefully in support of Sovereign National Conference to forestall the collapse of our nation in 2015 as predicted by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC)
When he told the people of Kano that those behind the Boko Haram who, ‘perpetrated the dastardly acts which left over 200 Nigerians dead ‘are not spirits’, he was merely stating the obvious. If there are no crevices on the wall, lizards would not find a hiding place. One major plank of Boko Haram’s demand is the inauguration of sharia legal system in the northern states. It is instructive that there has not been one single opinion or political leader from the north that has quarreled with this demand. If they have been critical of Boko Haram, it is perhaps on its approach which involve indiscriminate killing of innocent people including Muslims.
For instance, all the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), wants is for government to "stop the excesses of the killer group which has led to wanton and unacceptable disregard for human life". The Jama’tu Nasril Islam (JNI) and NSCIA under the leadership of the Sultan of Sokoto condemned the killing and wanton destruction insisting "life is sacred and therefore must be respected, preserved and protected".
JNI secretary General, Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu on its part ‘wants perpetrators fished out and punished and security agencies to be more proactive’. The ACF also saw the alleged claim of revenge mission by Boko Haram as "an overkill that is clearly against tenets of any religion or faith to kill innocent people and call it revenge".
Since the formal inauguration of our federalism in 1954, the Sharia has been part and parcel of the nation’s penal code. Both the 1979 and 1999 constitution reinforced it as customary law for Muslim adherents in areas of marriage, gift and succession etc. This was the case until Ahmed Sani made Sharia the supreme legal code in Zanfara, a move that enjoyed the support of most northern leaders. Many of them, along with ambassadors of some Islamic countries were present to provide moral support during the launch on October 27, 1999. Indeed many northern governors were ready to follow the Zamfara example but for the violent riot in Kaduna which forced the meeting of the Council of State summoned by President Obasanjo to pass a resolution suspending the northern governors’ planned inauguration of Sharia legal system in their various states. But even at that, Alhaji Shehu Shagari and General Muhammadu Buhari, both members of the council dissociated themselves from the council’s resolution.
While Shehu Shagari insisted that ‘the federal government has no right to direct state governments to suspend or rescind any laws as regards to inauguration of Sharia law, Buhari claimed there was no council decision that directed state governors to suspend introduction of sharia legal system.
But while many southern based newspapers including The Guardian which in an editorial described Shagari’s comment as "legal sophistry" and Buhari’s comment as "unhelpful in a season of emergency" railed against the introduction of Sharia because it ran counter to Nigeria constitution, most northern opinion leaders supported it.
In a paid advertisement in the New Nigerian of October 2010, titled ‘Sharia is a must for muslims-English Common law is for Christians’, Alhaji Isa Umar said "Sharia is Allah’s gift to mankind, and it affects only those who believe in it, to deny the Muslims of it, is to render the whole human race impotent, blind and uncertain as to the objectives of life and ethics of human conduct".
Professor Anwalu Yadudu, Abacha’s Special Senior Adviser writing in the New Nigerian of March 6, 2000 had claimed ‘the adoption of sharia by any state which desires it and the aspirations of others to adopt canon law or turn Nigeria into ethnic republic, is all democracy, the reassertion of individual or group identity, freedom of expression and religion’.
Also writing in Thisday in 2001, Abubakar Gimba, then president of Association of Nigerian Authors in a piece titled ‘Sharia, time to reason for truth and truce’, had said, ‘Sharia to a Muslim is like a blood to a human body. Any voice against Sharia is a voice against Muslim and his way of life…do we have to go to war over Sharia? If we don’t want to live together anymore, let us say so with honesty and dignity’.
It is also on record that neither General Babangida who as self-proclaimed military President surreptitiously took Nigeria to Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) nor General Abdulsalami, another former Head of State has openly admonished those agitating for the inauguration of Sharia legal system contrary to the provision of our constitution. Other opinion leaders from the north have not dissociated themselves from assault on the secularity of the Nigerian state.
What is apparent from the above therefore is that the 1999 constitution which NADECO says ‘is the same thing as Military Decree No 24 of 1999’ is defective. As Professor Ben Nwabueze recently put it, "our military imposed constitution is beyond rebranding or tinkering…requires that Nigeria state be redesigned and re-built…into a more healthy integration of all its parts and groups into a more solid entity, firmly united in its diversity.’
The military created our current problem and this is why 13 years of civil rule dominated by retired military officers and their corrupt new breed politicians have failed to address the ‘burning national question relating to true federalism, revenue allocation, devolution of power and state police’. The major legacy of this period according to NADECO, is ‘institutionalisation of fraud and graft’ by government that has become the corrupter of society’ or imposition of a ‘culture of plunder so brazenly perpetrated’ according to Ben Nwabueze.
What Boko Haram and by acquiescence, the northern political leaders want, is the change in the superstructure which is not different from the objectives of NADECO, Nwabueze’s group as well as other well meaning Nigerians that have identified Sovereign National Conference as an answer to the impending doom. The only difference between advocates of SNC and Boko Haram is that the latter has gone ahead to undermine the constitution without discussion.
Much as the Nigerian state has obligation to protect the rights of the minority indigenous Christians that Boko Haram says are not wanted in the north, the sect and the northern political elite must be offered an opportunity to debate and agree whether they would rather ship those of different faith in their family to other parts of the country where people see themselves as members of same humanity, or not.