Of Forbidden Handshakes and Buhari's Religious Claimants
Moses Ebe Ochonu
Of Forbidden Handshakes and Buhari’s Religious Claimants
Moses E. Ochonu
That was fast. It didn’t take long before the pan-Nigerian, religiously ecumenical desire for change, of which president-elect Muhammadu Buhari was the face, was shaken by the growing anxieties of those who feel that Buhari had sacrificed his Muslim piety to win the presidency. This is the salient sentiment at play in the condemnation of Buhari’s public handshake with the new Mrs. Adams Oshiomhole by some of his Muslim supporters.
The problem is that the outrage is contrived because its premise, the belief that Buhari is the epitome of a puritanical observance of Islam, is false. This false narrative of Buhari’s religious fundamentalism has endured only because two groups of people who do not stand each other, Buhari’s fanatical Muslim supporters and his malicious detractors, converged on the same theme of Buhari’s supposed Muslim fundamentalism. The result was that instead of challenging the President-elect’s detractors who labeled him an incorrigible Muslim irredentist, some of his Muslim supporters actually confirmed and took ownership of the meme of Buhari’s fundamentalist beliefs, weaving all sorts of puritanical discourses around the man.
Even before the current outrage triggered by some Muslims questioning the Islamic propriety of Muhammadu Buhari shaking hands with a female non-relative in public, I have always maintained that the president-elect's overzealous and fanatical Muslim supporters are as responsible for the myth of him as a religious fundamentalist as his detractors. Some of his Muslim supporters have always projected their own religious anxieties onto him, anointing him Jagoran Musulunci (defender/champion of Islam) even without Buhari declaring himself so.
From then on, they believed him to be who they proclaimed him to be despite evidence to the contrary, and are now expecting him to fulfil the religious fantasies they falsely believed he embodied. It was this determined effort to define, own, and police Buhari's image as a reclusive Muslim fundamentalist that provided fodder to his detractors, mostly Christians, who latched on to the way some of Buhari's supporters portrayed him to caricature the man as a fanatic.
Paradoxically, then, both his fanatical supporters and fanatical detractors reinforced one another and bolstered the charged, contested rhetoric that Buhari was a Muslim extremist. In truth, Buhari has always been a typical Fulani or Hausa Muslim, devout but not fanatical. Moreover, he was a soldier. As someone who has lived in an army barracks, I can say without equivocation that you cannot be a soldier, live in the barracks, or command troops and harbor intolerance towards people of other religions or insist on a fundamentalist religious ethos.
A fanatical Buhari would never have survived the debauched environment of the army, where drunkenness, prostitution, fornication, and other vices condemned by both Islam and Christianity are practiced openly by officers and other ranks. It takes a remarkable capacity for religious tolerance to thrive in the Nigerian army. In fact, I always say that the army is an incubator of religious tolerance, and that, unless things have recently changed, it is probably the most effective institutional teacher of tolerance in Nigeria. None of the Muslims that I knew in the barracks hated their fellow soldiers or condemned them for eating pork, drinking alcohol, or committing other harams, let alone berate fellow Muslims for drinking, womanizing, or frolicking with women.
When I was an undergraduate at Bayero University, Kano, I was friends with the son of a high ranking army officer who was also the chief imam of one of the major army divisions. My friend’s mannserisms and associations did not betray him as the son of a learned Muslim cleric. In fact I did not even know he was a Muslim let alone the son of an imam until I got to know him up close. He was a barracks boy and behaved like one. He was a cosmopolitan son of an army officer, socialized in the multiethnic and multireligious ethos of barracks life, the same religiously diverse and tolerant life that Buhari, like other army officers, would have lived daily in the barracks.
The president-elect's former handlers did the man a disservice through several election cycles. Instead of challenging the parochial religious constructions of the man by some of his more fanatical followers in the North, they embraced the falsely packaged image and sought to sell him to the rest of the country in that garb. Whether out of loyalty or deference to his team or political naivety or an instinctive pander to the base, Buhari didn't do much to challenge his handlers on this. In fact he mistakenly played the script they had prepared for him a few times, compounding and confirming the image for those already primed to believe the myth, and giving more ammo to both his detractors and fanatical supporters to continue to cast him to different audiences in the mold in which they preferred to see him.
I have it on good authority that it took the intervention of people like Kaduna State governor-elect Nasir el-Rufai to unleash the real Buhari, to free him from the parochial religious pigeonhole his handlers and fanatical supporters had put him in. When the real Buhari emerged, he was refreshing to behold, a far cry from the image cultivated among his loud, fanatical supporters; he belied the caricature of a close-minded religious bigot who could not function in secular, cosmopolitan settings. After a few awkward introductory outings, he mixed and mingled freely and comfortably in cultural settings in which he was expected to be out of place. The pressure to pander was off, and the Buhari seemed to genuinely enjoy himself on the national campaign trail and in the social circuits and festive, party atmosphere that routinely marked APC events.
Although it would have been perfectly acceptable if his well-known incorruptibility was grounded in his faith, when the liberated Buhari talked about corruption and other ethical issues, he rarely even referenced a religious moral canon or prescription. What's more, unleashed publicly as part of his political campaign for the first time, his wife, Aisha, did not look like the wife of a Muslim fanatic. She was urbane, approachable, easygoing, and relatable to people of all religions and ethnicities.
Buhari's new handlers also unveiled his well-educated daughter, Zahra, who also did not fit the caricature advanced by those who believed or expected Buhari to be the kind of Muslim they had imagined him to be, either out of religious affection or sheer hatred. These were game-changing decisions that liberated Buhari from those who had, in their zeal to define him, put him in an awkward Hausa-Fulani Muslim box and expected him to play the script and fulfil all their unorthodox Muslim expectations.
Buhari’s old handlers had kept these two electoral assets hidden from public view during previous campaigns because they did not want to offend some of his fanatical supporters who believe that women should not have a visible public political role. We will never know for sure if this effort to conform to some puritanical theological view of women’s position in society affected Buhari’s chances in previous elections, but we know now that his wife and daughter would have helped to broaden his appeal beyond his northern Muslim base.
As a historian, I believe that when the story of Buhari's ascent to the presidency is fully written, his wife Aisha and daughter Zahra will or should feature prominently as those who changed the reputational narrative and image of Buhari. Along with Buhari's own social engagements in Southern Nigerian Christian circles and his willingness to be seen in places, occasions, companies, and sartorial garbs that his fanatical Muslim supporters would disapprove, the decision to show his family as they truly are and damn the grumbling of Muslim extremists in the North solidified his appeal and made the hate campaign against him ineffective.
It really should not have been that way. His former handlers and the fanatical Muslim supporters now accusing him of breaking an Islamic code of gendered conduct should simply have seen the old, widely circulating family photograph from Buhari's army days (we have all seen it), a photograph that, quite frankly, looks like that of a very secular Muslim or Christian family.
Had his former handlers stuck to the image projected in the photo and allowed Buhari to be himself, we would not be having this discussion about forbidden handshakes because his present Muslim critics would have known long ago that the man does not fit their warped, narrow image of a good Muslim man or of a defender of Islam. They would have consequently given up on trying to (re)claim Buhari as model of Islamic piety. If the real Buhari had been allowed to authentically flourish perhaps he might even have won the presidency sooner.
---Mohandas Gandhi
Folu Ogundimu
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Cornelius Hamelberg
There’s nothing to worry about. According to the constitution isn’t Nigeria a secular state – just like Israel?
Tawakkul! The jihad is against corruption …
If all goes well, my man Muhammadu Buhari will soon be laying his right hand on the Quran (and I suppose on the holy Nigerian Constitution too) to take the oath of office whereby he will become President of all Nigerians: the visible and the invisible, all of Nigeria’s men, women and children, the rich, the poor and suffering, the various colours of the rainbow, the Black and the White and every imaginable colour, the corrupt, the not so corrupt, the incorruptible, the Muslims and those who call themselves Boko Haram, the Christians, their bishops and pastors, the adherents of the various traditional African religions, people of all the known ethnicities, nations within the nation, power hierarchies, clans…
Nigeria,
“Where the people are many and their hands are all empty”
Salimonu Kadiri
Moses wrote, ".... Buhari has sacrificed his Muslim piety to win the Presidency. This is salient sentiment at play in the condemnation of Buhari's public handshake with the new Mrs Adam Oshiomhole by some of his Muslim supporters."
The source of Moses' information that some of Buhari's Muslim supporters condemned him for shaking hands with Mrs Oshiomhole publicly is not disclosed, therefore, I suspect it is a made up story. To say that Buhari has sacrificed his Muslim piety to win the Presidency is an incredible lie because Buhari attended the Annual Lagos Thanksgiving Service in the Church on January 4, 2015. His statement in the Church was widely reported in all Nigerian Media, printed and electronic, thus, "I am happy to note that this yearly thanksgiving although it is a Christian Service, yet, it brings together Nigerians of all faiths. Christians, Muslims and those of other faiths gather here annually, just to thank the Almighty God. This is as it should be. Religion must never be used as an excuse to divide, to oppress others, or to gain unfair advantage.
All my life, I have expressed the belief that all Nigerians must be free to worship God according to their beliefs. The duty of government is not religion. The duty of government is to ensure peace and security for all Nigerians regardless of tribe, race or religion." Buhari said this on January 4, 2015, and the Presidential election took place on March 28, 2015, which means that Nigerians were aware of his religious leaning when they voted. Therefore no sane Nigerian would condemn Buhari for shaking hands with the wife of Adams Aliu Oshiomhole, who himself is a Muslim and a party comrade.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act - George Orwell.
S. Kadiri
Date: Mon, 18 May 2015 08:10:36 -0500
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Of Forbidden Handshakes and Buhari's Religious Claimants
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Anunoby, Ogugua
Mixing politics and religion in pluralistic societies portends trouble because while the former should mostly be a secular enterprise, the latter is not. This is always a good reason to ensure that secular and the non-secular matters be kept apart as much as possible.
It should not surprise anyone paying attention to politics in some parts of the North of Nigeria that Buhari is criticized for recognizing the new spouse of a leader he will work closely with as president, with a handshake in public. There will always be politicians masquerading as religious extremists, and fringe elements, who either do not accept that Nigeria is a secular state with a secular constitution, or do not accept some Nigerians as fellow citizens. Some such politicians may even understand Buhari’s success in the last presidential elections as a victory of Islam over other religions.
Buhari should be aware of the said politicians. He must be presumed to be well aware of risks posed to his presidency and all Nigerians, by the ignorance and prejudice of the politicians. He should know to manage including challenge their insularity. Nigerians should be worried if Buhari chooses or is seen to be pandering to them at the expense of his constitutional duty as elected president of all Nigerians.
I do not believe that it matters really that Buhari is a devout or fanatical Muslim. He must know to be a president who is Muslim and not a Muslim who is president. He is no spring-chicken in Nigeria’s politics. He tried on three occasions to run for the office of president as a Muslim first and everything else after. He failed on each occasion. He audited the failures, learned needed lessons, and ran again as a Nigerian first and everything else after. He won. The presumption must be that he will learn the lesson of his success at the fourth attempt.
MO writes:
“A fanatical Buhari would never have survived the debauched environment of the army, where drunkenness, prostitution, fornication, and other vices condemned by both Islam and Christianity are practiced openly by officers and other ranks. It takes a remarkable capacity for religious tolerance to thrive in the Nigerian army. In fact, I always say that the army is an incubator of religious tolerance, and that, unless things have recently changed, it is probably the most effective institutional teacher of tolerance in Nigeria. None of the Muslims that I knew in the barracks hated their fellow soldiers or condemned them for eating pork, drinking alcohol, or committing other harams, let alone berate fellow Muslims for drinking, womanizing, or frolicking with women.”
I am no sure the above claims are as accurate as MO would want us to believe. Public posture is not always informed by secret thoughts of dark hearts. The evidence of the fratricide that punctuates the history of especially the Nigerian Army does not sit well with the claims. That history suggests that many soldiers in Nigerian Army barracks have hearts as hard as rock. The Nigerian Army was for many years the repository of more horrible brotherly hatred than legislative houses. Many brutal murders of fellow soldiers happened in military barracks- in some cases in front of their spouses and children. My point is that it is possible to be a religious fanatic or other extremist ideologue and a soldier inside the Nigerian Army barrack culture at the same time. That wives and children in military barracks apparently seem to get along, is not to say that soldier- husbands and fathers do. The soldiers have to work together until they can no longer work together.
Buhari’s public posture may not solely be blamed on his minders. He picks them. He is not obliged to follow their advice. He knows who he is and who he wants to be. He must have himself to blame if he is misunderstood because he is/was uncritical in the evaluation of the advice he gets from members of his team.
oa
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Dhikru Yagboyaju
Sincerely every true Nigeria cannot afford to keep quiet as some of our Christian brothers and sisters use their ownership of,closeness to mass media owners in the country paint muslims and Islam in bad light.Its an ill wind...
Anunoby, Ogugua
What credible, verifiable evidence is there to support this wild claim?
On current evidence, some Muslims’ actions and inaction in Nigeria are more responsible for any bad light that shines on Islam in Nigeria today, than non-Muslims are. Ever heard of Boko Haram?
oa