TOWARDS A VIABLE POLITICAL SYSTEM :WHAT OPTIONS FOR NIGERIA
A contribution to a symposium organized by the students union of the University of Sokoto

Ever since the creation of Nigeria by European imperialism early this century, the various peoples who found themselves trapped, as it went, within its boundaries have been undergoing untold hardship. Their history has been uprooted, their values eroded and their worldview coerced into ­the orbit of western European Capitalism, all to give way to Nigeria. Nigerian greatest promise to its victims has been "peace", "stability" and “material progress”. It is begging the issue to say that, nearly a century now, this promise is still to be fulfilled. One cannot infact help asking if indeed the creation of Nigeria was meant to bring about "peace", "stability" and material progress for its people. But before attempts to answer this question let us very briefly take stock of what we have been offered so far. One is not always sure what the Nigerian establishment mean by "peace', and "stability”. But there are reasons to believe that just as the “independent” Nigeria is an extension of the colonial Nigeria so is "peace" and “stability” an extension of "Law and Order" under the pretext of which colonial forces invaded our societies and continue to brutally suppress all form of resistance to their aggression. So "peace and Stability" provides cover for the establishment to undertake any action to maintain the present arrangement as they are. But even when one looks into the ordinary sense of political stability, there is nothing to be seen. For in the last twenty-five years we have suffered seven military coups and counter‑coups. There is nothing to suggest that the last one is infact the last. It is also interesting to observe that each set of soldiers claims to act in the interest of "peace" and "stability". Thus beside the suspicion which surrounds the concept of "peace" and "stability", it has not infact been realized after a quarter of  a century. A more tangible and popular promise is that of material progress. Many of our precious values and even convictions have been sacrificed at the alter of economic development. We are always reminded of the need to catch up with the developments in the “developed” countries. Many a people have been coerced into this blind rush for material progress even when they don't believe in it. After every five years the government comes up with an elaborate development plan and a huge budget to back it up. A lot of speeches are made with every sense of achievement, contracts are awarded and hopes are raised. After another five years these hopes are dashed and new ones are raised yet again only to be dashed once more. This is the sort of vicious circle with all its agony and stress we have had to endure for a quarter of a century now. The official explanation have always, quite naturally, avoided the truth. But Professor Abdullahi Smith of the blessed memory said it all. Talking about these development plans, he said, "But when we get down to putting these plans into operation, we find that the implementation of the great development programme rapidly creates facilities not so much for the development intended but for social corruption of all sorts. The greater the size of the plans indeed, the larger the scale of the corruption which their implementation encourages; and the greater the opportunity for the profiteer, the embezzler, the thief, to move in and take control, diverting the efforts that are being made for the benefit of the community to their private gain at the community's expense. So that in the end the only development we see is the development of corruption, including ever more sophisticated and effective ways of evading its legal consequences. This is precisely why year in year out inspite of the huge sums budgeted annually our hospitals continue to be without drugs, the roads as bad as they have always been, our schools without teaching facilities, our taps without water and we have been unable to produce for ourselves the most basic of the things we require for our day to day existence as a people including even the food to eat. This is also why Sokoto State can spend 300-million naira procured through foreign debt, to build a hotel in Sokoto when most part of Sokoto has no drinking water. So also in Bauchi State millions of naira are spent on sports and a swimming pool while for years the town has been without drinking water. The big corporations: The wearied railways, the improvident Nigerian Airways, the unavailing P&T (or NITEL as it is now called), the unrepentant NEPA, the bountiful NNPC, the great Civil Service, are known not so much for their services but for their inefficiency and, in the last few years when some of them had to be set ablaze, symbols of monumental embezzlements. Meanwhile the sharp contrast between the luxury of the wealthy few and the squalor of the impoverished majority heightens. The rural urban drift and the abandonment of ­agriculture increases as the resources of the rural societies becomes depleted by taxation and exploitation by commercial concerns. Insecurity has become such a menace to life and property that some have begun to wonder if life in Nigeria is worth living at all. Interestingly the closer one moves to the cities and capital i.e. the seats of governments the more insecure one feels for the more one is exposed to armed robbers, and their ilk. EDUCATION The fraud that is called education has not helped the situation, all it has done apparently is to sustain it. For the one single contribution of our educational institutions has been to produce people who will fill in the vacancies in these inefficient and fraudulent neocolonial institutions: the English Courts, the multinationals, the NEPA, the NNPC, the Banks, the Armed forces etc. Infact the corruption and embezzlements, the Abuja contract scandals, NITEL and NNPC fires, the examination leakages and forging of certificates, the "good evening girls" whether on our the streets or in hostels of our Universities are all the direct fruits of our educational institutions. These institutions be sure are not ours, except of course, as Wazir Junaid has observed, in location. The ideas that are taught far from being useful, are infact inimical to our very lives, convictions, values and culture, but these are what these institutions have been specifically designed to do. As Professor Abdullah has rightly observed. "Virtually all textbooks of political theory, economics and sociology are the same (as in western Universities). Nearly all the so-called "creative" writing which students of literature have to read is the prose and poetry of western Europe and North Africa. For our students nothing else exists." Thus the ideas that are nurtured in our educational institutions, the Universities in particular, are alien ideas to the exclusion of ours. Thus it is very possible for a Muslim student to study political science, economics or sociology­ without coming across Islamic political thoughts, Islamic economics or Islamic sociology. We can now see how, it became possible to have Muslims hawking about western liberal or Marxist ideas, for that is all they have been taught. Arrogance will not allow them to admit their ignorance and to learn Islam. It is gullible minds who having fallen prey to this fraud and unable to liberate their minds, constitute the man- power that keep the neocolonial institutions in business. Their idea of progress, their idea of development, their idea of education, indeed the totality of their outlook to life is essentially western, for them, true to their training, nothing else exist. These educational institutions like the institutions they nourish, are all neocolonial structures. These structures are organically linked with each other and none can exist without the other. It is these structures put together that essentially constitute Nigeria. It is also the operation of these neocolonial the corruption, the insecurity and machinery that has generated the social dislocation, the agony that has become the lot of those who found themselves in Nigeria. Every year leaves us more dependent, more exploited and plunges us deeper into social crisis with its attendant apprehension and anxiety. One therefore cannot but agree with Abdullah Smith when ten years ago he observed that, "Nigeria far from being the developing country which so many of us would have it to be, is a country where human society is plunging compulsively into ever greater depth of corruption and decay." This dismal setting that Nigeria has come to be, ought not surprise anyone. For those who created Nigeria were deliberately out to create a state whose land and human resource they will forever exploit to their exclusive benefit. Lord Lugard, the architect of Nigeria, at least, was frank enough to admit this. "Let it be admitted at the outset" he said his The Dual Mandate "that European brains, capital, and energy have not been, and never will be expended in developing the resources of Africa from motives of pure philanthropy; that Europe is it Africa for the mutual benefit of her own industrial classes, and of the native races in their progress to a higher plane; that the benefit can be made reciprocal, and that it is the aim and desire of civilized administration to fulfill this dual mandate'." The motives of British imperialism in creating Nigeria, becomes even clearer when one recalls how Lugard was anxiously trying to convince his government of the justification of the venture in his words, "Prior to the war Nigeria was the latest addition to the  Empire and if against the original payment to the chartered company and all subsequent grants be set the profit derived by the British Exchequer on the import of silver coin, and the contributions offered by Nigeria to the war, it will be found that the debit is on the other side, and the country, with all its potentialities and expanding markets, has cost the British taxpayer nothing. Its trade already: 6,42,000,000 ‑ the greater part of which is with the united Kingdom, is of the kind which is the most valuable possible to the workers of this country ‑ raw materials and foodstuffs in exchange for textile and hardware." These are the words of those who decided the boundaries of Nigeria and instituted such institutions as they deemed necessary for the achievement of their objectives ‑ the exploitation of the human and material resources of the people trapped within the boundaries. Thus the educational institutions they started, the Armed forces they built, the Legal system they imposed, the economy they developed were all tailored to achieve their objectives. Indeed they saw to it that their capital and labour investment was not in vain. The "independence" of 1960 was simply the formalization of the second and more subtle phase of western European imperialism. To believe that there was independence is sheer credulity. For nothing, absolutely nothing, changed of the system that the British started except of course the faces operating the neocolonial machinery. One has to be out of his mind to expect a country created by coercion founded on plunder and exploitation and nourished by ideas that its people neither understand nor believe in let alone respect, to have peace, stability and material progress. A nation built such false foundations, deceit and fraud cannot but exhibit the kind of instability, corruption and social crises that has been our lot in Nigeria. In other words what we see today in Nigeria is the logical conclusion of the historical circumstances that gave birth to this colony. OPTIONS The option, that is there for those who have had the misfortune of falling prey to European imperialism is, as far as I can see, one. They have to purge out all those fraudulent ideas which have been the source of their agony, ideas which were essentially born out of Europe's history and culture; ideas which many of us neither believe nor have any cause to respect. In other words we have to go back to what is really ours and develop our human and material resources in consonance with our conviction and world view invigorated by our values and culture. Of course since I belong to the world view of Islam, I can only speak on behalf of the Muslims, I suppose the non-Muslims are in a better position to speak for themselves. Thus the option that I can see for Muslims in the circumstances, is to come back to Islam which, Alhamdu Lillahi, is a complete and perfect way of life, with its politics, its economy, its law, its science and technology etc. I am of course aware that this suggestion may not go down well with some "educated" Muslims. This is quite understandable, for they have been seized from their childhood, and fed on colonial propaganda in the form of syllabus and text books and eventually hoodwinked into believing‑ that Islam like other religions should be a private affair and should have nothing to do with politics. These poor victims of imperialist propaganda need only be advised to go to Qur’an and find out what Allah has Himself Said, before believing what their enemies tell them. There they will discover that the Most High has not left out any aspect of human life without specifying how it should be operated. They will also find out that it is not allowed that they practice part of the message (like salat, Zakkat, fasting, Hajj etc) and abandon the other part like, politics, economy, Sharia etc. Infact the consequence of this syncretism will be humiliation in this world and a severe punishment in the hereafter (Quran 2:85). In other words a just like it is an individual obligation to pray so is it a collective obligation to operate the Islamic political system. They will also discovered that Allah has forewarned them that non-Muslims will never be happy with them until they see them abandoning, Islam so needn't they bother themselves seeking the pleasure of the non-Muslims rather it is Allah's pleasure alone they should seek, for it is to Him alone is their ultimate return (Quran 2:120)   I am also aware‑that there are some, among the deluded hybrids which our Universities harbour today, who may wish to offer us Marxism as an option. First, let me hope that none of the proponents of Marxism lay any claim to Islam, for this is not tenable. Secondly, the proponents of Marxism should be informed that their borrowed ideas are irrelevant to the Muslims. For Muslims will never exchange their NI’IMA (sheltered life) for KUFR (the wilderness of disbelief) (Q. 14:28) They may pass it to non-Muslims or take it back to Europe where its task still lies uncompleted. They may also wish to share with us the following apt observation made by Dr. Dahiru Yahaya. "While the problems which gave birth to Marxism in Europe were women in mines, children in factories, men in mines, long‑working hours and underpayment, disasters of enclosures, political reaction and Napoleonic wars, our problems today are women in bondage or in prostitution, children begging or hawking in the streets, men sleeping under trees, no working hours and no payment, political inaction and international exploitation. It was Uthman Dan Fodio not Karl Marx, who decried the type of situation (our problems threw our people into) and it was Uthman Dan Fodio who warned us against submitting to external domination while Karl Marx decided to keep quite about western colonial and imperial enterprises then at its height. Therefore the dimensins of our socio‑economic problems lie outside the experience of any Western ideology. There are others who are certain to jump out of their seats to say 'you can't apply an Islamic political order in a secular state.’ They may further add that 'in any case Nigeria or any part thereof is not one hundred percent Muslim.’ As for the secularists, we may ask them, who made Nigeria “secular”? Whoever made Nigeria secular got neither our consent . nor our mandate and we simply do not believe in it. For all I know in Europe, Secularism is a child albeit “a bastard” of Christianity-European sour grapes. In Nigeria and such other colonies, it was an instrument in the hands of imperialism for the maintenance of the status‑quo. So as a Muslim I have no reason to accord it any recognition, it is the problem of whoever believes in it. As for the presence of non-Muslims, the latter may wish to know that it has never been the requirement of the Islamic political order to have a hundred percent Muslim population nor has there been any time in history in which only Muslims constituted the members of an Islamic state. This is because Islam has made adequate provision for the protection of the belief, and culture of non-Muslims groups, as history itself testifies. With the vicious propaganda against Islam especially, in the press, some non­-Muslims may not consent, and should be allowed to move to where they may wish. It must be realized however that it is illogical to suspend the application of the Islamic order on the grounds of the presence of non-Muslims. For in the same vain it can be argued that no non‑Muslim political order can be applied on the grounds of the presence of Muslims. It should also be added, for the avoidance of doubt, that if Nigeria or any part thereof rejects Islam, it is rejecting Muslims and Muslims must reject it. For Muslims know that what Islam offers them Nigeria cannot. Let me now attempt to give a glimpse of the Islamic Order which for the Muslims, at least, is the only option. This has become necessary because I am aware of the extent to which the learning of the Islamic Political System has been suppressed by agencies of imperialism. I am also aware of the propaganda against Islam targeted at non‑Muslims in particular to discourage them from having access to truth. Time however will not allow more than stating, very briefly, four major fundamentals goals of the Islamic State. GOALS OF THE ISLAMIC STATE 1. Upholding the Shariah First, of all, Islamic State is established purposely to make the full application of the Sharia. In other words, to ensure that right and wrong are determined for society as well as the individual by the Quran and Sunnah alone and not any other authority; that men are judged in accordance with the laws established by Allah, and that men live their practical life in accordance with the wishes and dictates of Allah. The supremacy of the Sharia, as opposed to the supremacy of the wishes and caprices of the dominant  such as supremacy, of the imposed English Law interests in society, ensures that people are treated equally  before the law and that the law itself operates to give full and unconditional justice to all; and that justice is not made into a commodity for sale to the richest and highest bidder. As far as the Islamic State is concern the restriction of justice to the wealthy and the men of influence in society, to the exclusion of the poor is not only an unpardonable error, but of which is most likely to lead society to perdition. 2. Social Justice. It is equally the purpose of the Islamic State to maintain strict social justice in society. The Prophet has listed four things as the irreducible requirements of all people and which the state must endeavor to provide. Food, Shelter, Family Life and Transportation. The State does not fulfill it purpose if some of its members are having to go to bed with empty stomach, let alone starve; or if some live like wild beasts, without shelter; or if others are incapable of maintaining a family with decency and satisfaction. Social justice cannot of course be attained if ordinary people are denied access to resources Allah has made available. It is undesirable if the economic system justifies and protects accumulation of wealth for its own sake, or fails to take cognizance of the needs of all human beings to decent life and to economic security. For that reason, equitable distribution of resources, free access to land in particular by all people, and fair taxation, ie. one that excludes the poor from payment of taxes and levies, are some of the priorities of the Islamic State. 3. Freedom The Islamic State seeks to provide the necessary moral and spiritual atmosphere where human beings can develop their moral and spiritual potentials in total freedom; and without hindrance or impediment, it also provides the freedom to all individuals to engage in such trades or occupation as they desire,        as long as the vital interest of the Muslim Ummah can be safeguarded. Freedom, in terms of belief, conscience and upliftment of moral values, and free­dom in terms of the choice of occupation and other vital human endeavours and freedom to proclaim the truth and propagate it form an integral part of the State policy. There are these who may disagree with the ideals and even the very foundation of the State: but as long as they remain loyal to the State, they are deemed to be under the "protection of Allah and His Messenger." In other words, inviolable as to their lives, property and honour. 4.  Commanding the Good and Elimination of Evil As a state founded on moral responsibility to Allah, the Islamic State must, as a matter of necessity, guard jealousy its moral values, and defend its moral integrity. Hence one of its purpose is to command the good and eliminate evil. Whatever brings about the perversion of justice, or deterioration of the human characters, or the vulgarization of the political process or subverts the order of society is considered evil, which must be eliminated. Whatever brings harmony in society aids the cause of justice, and the proper order of society, or whatever can aid the realization of basic human needs is  good, which must be promoted. The Islamic State is required to fight evil tooth and nail and to uproot its roots once and for all. It thus cannot condone corruption, nor allow, under whatever guises, the trivialization of morality. Since society thrives principally on sound moral attitudes, the State cannot afford to treat the issue of morality lightly. Moreover, the State has a duty to continually assess its moral commitment: hence the institution of Hisba, along with the Islamic judicial system, is established to ensure that the economic arrangement in society is free of injustice, corruption or fraud; that citizens deal with one other, especially in economic and social sphere, justly and equitably; that Islamic moral injunctions especially in relation to top of the family, the human intellect and human life and strictly adhered to in society. From the above exposition, it should be clear that imperialism and its agencies will never allow willingly the application of the Islamic order. It will be naive to believe that neocolonial institutions will willingly agree to relinquish their gains and privileges and abdicate for Islam. Muslims should expect oppositions, which can be vehement, starting from the bottom going through the top echelon of the neocolonial power base. The Muslims should be assured, however that there is no endeavor more worthy on this earth than to struggle with all that they are blessed with to establish Islam, (Quran: 61:10‑11) If we should chose to ignore it. It will only be at our own peril Qur’an, 5:57) As for the opposes of truth, the saying of the Most High suffice: "Their intention is to extinguish Allah’s Light (Islam) with their mou­ths. But Allah will complete (the establishment of) His Light, even though the unbelievers may detest (Q. 61:8)