…there seems to be a serious effort to return Kaduna to its Golden Age by the current managers of the state. Surprisingly, Governor Uba Sani, a product of the vilest form of exploitation of religious identity politics is leading the way back to the Kaduna I longed to live in. Like a Moses out of the Household of Pharaoh, Governor Uba Sani has taken a decision to put a final stop to the division that has reduced Kaduna from a thriving cosmopolitan city into a sleepy rural rustic town that is sharply divided along religious lines.
Kaduna, the capital of the defunct Northern Region of Nigeria, was my favourite Nigerian city. Now one of the 19 legacy states of the Northern Region, Kaduna, especially its city centre which serves as the state capital, is a microcosm of the larger Nigeria. Highly cosmopolitan yet reserved, liberal but conservative, modern and still ancient, Kaduna signposts the best of Nigeria’s unity and harmony in ethno-geographic and religious plurality. Kaduna, is were the Northerner, Southerner, the Christian, Muslim, the Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Efik, Ibiobio, Ebira, Igala, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Urhobo and others harmonised their various identities into a super identity. The shared geographic entity has Hausa as the common language.
At the height of the unity, peace and prosperity that was Kaduna, it competed well with Lagos as the favoured destination for would be rural-urban migrants in search of better economic opportunities, under a conducive social atmosphere. And yes, Kaduna became the breeding and grooming ground for some of Nigeria’s best in the academia, media, sports, business, labour and entertainment. In fact, Kaduna is also the grooming ground of Nigeria’s elite class of military officers, as the Nigerian Defence Academy is located in the city. As such, from President Olusegun Obasanjo and Professor of Political Economics, Pat Utomi, to business man Sunny Okogwu; soccer stars, Daniel Amokachi, Emmanuel and Celestine Babayaro; to veteran trade unionist, former governor of Edo State and current senator of the Federal Republic, Adams Oshiomhole; to media mogul and founder of Trust Media Group, Kabir Yusuf and famous music star, Zakky Azzay, Kaduna has made a significant contribution to Nigeria’s pool of human resources, while at the same time forging a united Nigerian nation through excellent diversity management.
At that time, Muslim and Christian religious leaders kept faith at the personal level, while preaching love, tolerance and accommodation, just as they refrained from preaching hateful, inciting and divisive doctrines. In Kaduna, Muslims and Christians coexisted in an atmosphere of mutual respect, accommodation, love, peace and unity. And the icing on the cake of the beauty that was Kaduna was the rich Hausa cultural and linguistic commonwealth that characterised the city. The Hausa culture of respect, modesty, generosity, accommodation, honesty, hard work, zero materialism and communal living helped shaped the character of the residents of the city, while the beautiful, phonetically sophisticated and grammatically rich Hausa language was similarly mastered by all. And with the rise to prominence of Hausa as the un-official language of politics and power in Nigeria, many a resident of Kaduna would leverage on this strong network of family and friends to advance both individual and group careers and business endeavours nationally.
As a liberal conservative that I am, Kaduna was an exciting balance of a society for me. While I find its people as urban, cosmopolitan, educated, and enlightened, hence easy to relate with, I also savoured the traditional and cherished societal values, such as modesty, accommodation, honesty and mutual respect, which made Kaduna all the more a liveable place, with the advantages of two worlds (the ancient and the modern). Observing how Nigerians from all sections who are resident in Kaduna seamlessly integrated and were assimilated into the Hausa cultural and linguistic commonwealth, made the city feel like home, and I longed to have a permanent residence there. Seeing an Igbo or Yoruba speaking flawless Hausa language, and decked in a kaftan with “muhadu” cap to match, was such a soul-lifting delight, as it signalled the hope of a united Nigeria of our dreams.
But all these were to change drastically when religious bigotry slowly infected the society like a viral disease, which somehow transmuted into a cancerous ailment that ravished Kaduna and transfigured it from a beautiful society, to one that is ugly and deeply divided along ethno-religious fault lines. The many ethno-religious conflicts, which resulted in sorrow, tears and blood, left Kaduna on the road to Lebanon, with its constituent peoples similarly divided along Christian, Sunni Muslim and Shia Muslim fault lines. Consequently, Kaduna, over the years, has become a ground for fierce competition between its Christian and Muslim populations, as religious identity found exploitation in partisan politics, and its once united peoples separated into a Muslim northern half and a Christian half, due to an imaginary wall of bigotry and hate.
However, there seems to be a serious effort to return Kaduna to its Golden Age by the current managers of the state. Surprisingly, Governor Uba Sani, a product of the vilest form of exploitation of religious identity politics is leading the way back to the Kaduna I longed to live in. Like a Moses out of the Household of Pharaoh, Governor Uba Sani has taken a decision to put a final stop to the division that has reduced Kaduna from a thriving cosmopolitan city into a sleepy rural rustic town that is sharply divided along religious lines. It is often said that to solve a problem, it is imperative to ascend to a higher consciousness than that which created it. In his attempt to solve this age long problem, Governor Uba Sani has decided to transcend the consciousness of “diversity without unity” to a higher consciousness of recognising the problem of Kaduna as of “division in oneness.”
As far as Governor Uba Sani is concerned, the people of Kaduna State are one and the same people, irrespective of their ethnicities or religions, and are deserving of the equal opportunity of the state. It is this recognition of the oneness of the people that is the guiding philosophy of Governor Sani’s effort at rebuilding the Kaduna of our dreams. I describe him as a Moses out of the household of Pharaoh because, though a product of an establishment that instituted “Muslim” privilege in the state, Governor Sani, a Muslim, has decided to replace this unfair, skewed and unjust privilege with a “Kaduna Privilege” that accommodates all, irrespective of ethnicity and religion. The actions of Governor Sani in this regard is not only constitutional but Islamic and a hallmark of a true Muslim, in line with the Prophetic Tradition of Muhammad [PBUH], of justice, equity, fairness and inclusion. After all, all that Governor Sani needed to do was to continue with the weaponisation of politics of divide-and-rule to hold on to power by marginalising the Christian half of Kaduna in favour of its Muslim other half. But just like Moses waved aside his princely privilege to lead the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt, Governor Sani has chosen to lead the people of Kaduna out of the bondage of hate, bigotry and divisiveness through the godly and constitutional path of administering his state within the principles of equity, fairness, inclusion and justice, irrespective of ethnicity and religion.
At a time when some Muslim religious bigots are chastising fellow Muslims against eating “Christmas rice and chicken” of their Christian neighbours, Governor Uba Sani’s appearance at a Christmas Carol event in Kaduna, where he urged a return to the days “when we were young, there was nothing like Muslim or Christian. We all looked forward to Christmas, joining our Christian brothers to look for the houses serving the most rice and meat, unfortunately, things are different today. By God’s grace, we will bring back that” was refreshing in atmosphere that was made pungent by religious bigotry and hate. For these and many more efforts by Governor Uba Sani, Kaduna has been peaceful in the last two-and-a-half years of his administration, with no report of ethno-religious conflict, just as tension in the state has been doused by the governor’s leadership by example.
Majeed Dahiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja and can be reached through [email protected].
