HAJJ AND THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT:
TOWARDS A CLEAR AND SUSTAINABLE POLICY ON HAJJ-5

[ Preamble ]    [Hajj in West African History]   [Hajj and European Imperialism ]    [Hajj Policy in Independent Nigeria ]   [Towards a Clear and Sustainable Policy ]    [Concluding Remarks & References ]  Towards a Clear and Sustainable Policy There is, undoubtedly, an urgent need for a clear and sustainable government policy on hajj. But policies don’t make themselves, they are made by people and their clarity and sustainability is largely a measure of the vision, sagacity and not least, sincerity of the policy makers. The policy makers, whether in or out of uniform, including the experts who make the inputs, are invariably western educated elite, whose perception of religion in general and Islam in particular could not have failed to be influenced by the educational system in which their minds were nurtured. The colonial roots of our educational system has made this all the more probable. Indeed many of the spurious assumptions on which this country has been run can be traced to the colonial period and education. It is necessary therefore, to raise some of these issues that appear to be inextricably linked to the development of a clearer and sustainable policy. 1. Colonial Baggage and Islam-Phobia There is an inherent morbid fear of Islam which has been inherited from the British colonial administration. British Imperialism found it necessary to curtail Islam, clip its wings, as it were, and put it under constant surveillance for Islam had been perceived, and rightly too, to be a great threat to the colonial venture. Christianity never had to suffer this suspicion not only because it had been an allay in the colonial venture but also because it tends to engender a subservience to the West and makes it easier for the natives to imbibe western culture and western concept of government and progress. Despite the so called independence, many, some would say most, of our national institutions, education, legal economic etc. have remained unchanged not only in their form and content but even in their assumptions and prejudices. This is particularly true of the Institutions of defence and security which have maintained that colonial posture where Islam is automatically suspect. This posture has been reinforced and promoted by Western mass media and their local agents as the coverage of the recent religious conflicts amply demonstrate. Even those institutions that are purely post-colonial initiative, like the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, have imbibed a lot of this prejudice against Islam, as its published study on religious disturbances in Nigeria(25) clearly betrays. The American government could not hide its shock when it discovered that one of the most devastating terrorist attack was done not by a Muslim, but a full-blooded home grown white American. Now that America is having to revise this century old stereotyping of Islam, perhaps the Nigerian elite, true to type, will follow suit. 2. Pluralism rather than Secularism One of the spurious assumptions on which this country is run is secularism. The word has not yet found its way to the country’s constitution but leaders in their speeches and journalists in the media keep making reference to it. No one is allowed to ask the question, who made Nigeria secular? When and Why? Neither are people allowed to know that secularism, far from being universal, is unmistakably and patently Euro-Christian, a product of Europe’s own experience with Christianity. Muslims, whose experience with Islam has been entirely different, are daily coerced and intimidated into accepting secularism. This is done by among others, Government’s own Institute of policy studies. In the words of the experts of the Institute, "the National Institute regards this secular approach as the best option for Nigeria because it is the best guarantee of individual liberties and National peace and stability in the context of prevailing pluralities."(26) Or so the experts at NIPSS thought! "This secular order" asserted the scholars at NIPSS, "constitutes the point of departure in the Institute’s study of Nigeria’s religious Problems."(27) Researches done under such wrong premises and with such spurious assumptions can only mislead the government into formulating the wrong policies. The reality is that Nigeria is a plural and not secular state. It is made up of people of different culture and religions and they can co-exist peacefully, not by forgetting about this difference but only by understanding them and in fact respecting them. As Dr. Suleimanu Kumo had occasion to tell Rev Fr. Hassan Kuka, "we have a great deal of cultural differences in Nigeria which are irreconcilable and unavoidable and which are quite harmless. What would be harmful and pernicious, is to try to wash them away or to sweep them under the carpet or worse still to try the impossible and fruitless task of forcing upon us a total uniformity."(28) 3. The Positive Impact of Religion The impression has already been created that religion is a source of problem. This view is promoted not only by journalist who rely on sensationalism to sell their scum, but even scholars who ought to know better and on whom the government seems to relay for inputs in policy formulation. The very tittle of a monograph published by government’s own National Council on Intergovernmental Relations, say it all: ‘The Shadow of Religion on Nigerian Federalism: 1960-93.’ The very questions this publication sought to investigate clearly suggests the motivation for the research and the basic assumptions. Prof. J. I. Elaigwu, the author of the study and director of the council, set out to find out, "To what extent has the federal political grid been able to assuage the negative impacts of religious conflict on the Nigerian polity? How dark is the shadow of religion on Nigeria’s federal system? Under which circumstances do these shadows become darker and larger and what has been the reactions of leaders to these problems arising from religious intolerance among Nigerian groups?(29) This is not only mischievous but it is itself a greater source of more problems. Governments gets mislead into seeing only problems in religions and engages in the futile effort of fighting it rather than utilising its positive power of human transformation and moral regeneration. On the other hand, such programmes of inculcating discipline and probity which are based on the empty and spurious concepts of nationalism have never yielded any tangible fruits much less solve the social problems we have been toiling under for decades. And the country keeps going down the drain with every passing day. The closest we came to discipline was the days of the famous WAI. But no one can say it succeeded not because it simply collapsed soon after the departure of the regime that invented it but because the message was clearly skin deep. WAI ignored religion and went by the Western Hegelean assumption that corruption was emanating from lack of nationalism and patriotism. It was thus centred around "singing the anthem, reciting the pledge and saluting the flag - in short worshipping of the nation, which may appear attractive to children ..."(30) Nigeria, however, is not Europe where these ideas originated and may therefore have some meaning. "For all the people of this country including those in Government, the nation does not come first, each morning they recite their first pledge, but it is not the nation. The nation is a tool to be protected and endeared in proportion to its uses."(31) 4. The Role and Responsibility of Government. There seems to be some confusion as to the role and responsibility of government in Nigeria. The government has one notion and the people seem to have quite another. Governments, even in the West, exist primarily to serve their citizens. As Albert Einstein would say, "The State is made for man and not man for the State." Or as Dag Hammarskjold, the Swedish secretary general of U.N., said, "Only he deserves power whoever justifies it." This indeed is more so in Islam, as numerous ayat of the Qur’an and hadith of the prophet testify. Yet the governments we have had in the last three decades or so, with one or two brief exceptions, bear no resemblance in this particular respect, with either the Western or the Islamic conception of responsibility. In other words we have not, in the last three decades or so had the fortune of a truly responsible government even by the more familiar Western standards. Admittedly most of the government we have had during this period are military governments who come power not by leaf of anybody and may therefore not feel the need to justify their hold to power. Yet they have always felt the need to legitimise power but never to justify it. To this extent they are not easily distinguishable from the colonial governments we have had, whose army of occupation knew only how to plunder the resources of the colony and knew how to get away with it. They can thus afford to be insensitive not only to needs of their citizens but also to their sensibilities. They needed neither qualms nor remorse even when in this years hajj they failed to tell the whole nation the whole truth. They may have had cause to borrow Plato’s political philosophy, when he said, "The rulers of the State are the only ones who should have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad, they may be allowed to lie for the good of the State." 5. Hajj in the National Context Hajj for Nigerian government, or the media that informs its perception of it, may be just one avenue for the drainage of the valuable foreign exchange. The benefits if any are never an issue to consider. Understandably, Nigerian governments may have very little interest in the spiritual development of their own citizens, but it is prepared to spend large resources for WAIC. Someone needs to make them appreciate that the relative safety of the northern parts of the country over the south is not due to climatic differences, but due to the degree of Islamisation. Hajj is one source through which this Islam is nourished and by strengthening it the government is helping its own war against crime and such other vices. Similarly hajj, like any journey abroad, is an effective education, and the more educated the citizenry the easier it should be for their government, unless of course the latter has something to hide from the former. Yet hajj has always been and still remains one of the most effective international trade links, not only with the Middle East but also with the Far East. Today the Far East has some of the world’s most vibrant economies, indeed the future is eastern. It is good, even for the government, to go East.