Known for his boldness in speaking truth to the authorities, Sheikh Muhammad Nuru Khalid, popularly called Digital Imam, in this interview by SALIU GBADAMOSI, in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, takes a look at 25 years of uninterrupted democracy in Nigeria, Nigerians’ expectations from governments, the Almajiri system of education and the 2024 Hajj.
On May 29, the current democratic dispensation in Nigeria attained 25 years. How will you assess the last 25 years under successive civilian governments?
First of all, we must give glory to Allah for keeping us alive and for keeping the bond that brought Nigerians together alive. We thank Allah that the county named Nigeria is still one country. This is something very commendable. Secondly, we have to also appreciate the 25 years of uninterrupted democracy. There was no coups, there was no stop, there was nothing. We are still having a civilian government, transitioning from one civilian government to another civilian government. This is also commendable.
Coming to how to assess the 25-year of democracy, it is a known fact that there are two dimensions of assessing things. One is optimistic and the other one is pessimistic. If we want to be optimistic, we will say yes, things will be better. But if we look at it from a critical point of view, you know that there are lots of challenges. Democracy is not all about having an elected civilian government but most importantly having elected civilian government that can keep the vehicle of the nation moving in peace toward development, that would have respect for the rule of law, that the judiciary of the county is very strong and autonomous, that the legislative arm of government of that country is independent and is doing the right thing in checkmating the policy and execution of policies, that the election of that country is free and fair with no foreign influence. I don’t necessarily mean people from the diaspora but also issue of having ethnic influence on elections, religious influence on elections, anything that initially is not part of democracy. If it influenced elections of the county, you would not say that democracy is truly the one we are aspiring for in a better Nigeria.
So, we also have to look at the issue of corruption. Without good governance, democracy is nothing. You cannot get good governance without true fight against corruption. And that will lead us to why we are having insecurity in the country. If you look at the relationship between democracy and internal insecurity, you find that whenever there is a good democracy, there will never be internal insecurity, violent crisis or conflicts because a democratic government is that which has control over the people because it is their government and it is working for them and they are benefiting from it.
My assessment I will rate Nigeria averagely successful in having elections whether free and fair election or election that is not acceptable to many citizens but at least at the end, it would have the acceptance of the country and the world. That is part of the development we can say we have. But if not that, our economy is in danger, our security is being challenged, our judiciary is not respected,our legislature is being manipulated by the presidency and the presidency has been hijacked by a gang of political manouverers and what have you. We need something tangible to improve our democracy.
At the advent of this Fourth Republic, expectations were very high that when the military went back to their barracks, the civilians would rule us better, giving the fact that the military were not trained for governance. Do you think that the successive civilian governments we have had in the last 25 years have truly met the expectations of Nigerians?
One, we have to ask ourselves is it true that the military are in their barracks now? Are you not experiencing the military in the midst of civilians putting checkpoints and other things? We need the military to be in their barracks or if the case warrants fighting to secure the territory of Nigeria. That is their mandate. Coming to the expectations of the civilians, we expect more; our expectation is high and reasonable. The world over, you find the government working for security, good economy, infrastructure and working hard to see that we are helping or influencing other countries not becoming beggars, going round to beg for loans and supports from foreign countries. Internally, we don’t have security. Inflation is high. We can’t even supply ourselves with adequate power supply. Rate of lack of job is high. We are portraying ourselves as health tourism promoters in the world. Our education is not strong. So our expectation is high and it will remain high until when we have good governance. And we cannot have good governance without awareness from the citizens. The citizens must know that their duty in democracy is not only to vote but most importantly to protect their votes. You are not only to protect you votes by making sure that your vote is counted but also by making sure that you voice is important. After voting, you have to voice out that you have not given me what you promised to give me when I voted you in. If we have that kind of democracy, I bet you Nigeria will be in the forefront of development.
The administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has spent one year in office now. How will you assess his administration? Will you say Nigeria has made progress under him?
Well I don’t know which dimension you want me to look at to assess President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Am I going to look at security, the persistent killings of Nigerians and kidnappings? Do I look at the economy with no direction of the Naira against dollar that many Nigerians cannot even afford to use their money to perform Hajj, which is among the pillars of their religion. Or do you want me to look at the high level of inflation? Which one will I use to assess him?
I think if he is to listen to many Nigerians, especially those who don’t care to take from the government but are concerned about how the government will be good, he would change his system of doing things. You cannot build the economy by taxing more the citizens. You cannot build economy because you are removing subsidy from everything. The most important thing that will drive our economy is our capacity in production and you cannot produce without power supply. You cannot have power supply without fighting corruption. You cannot even have security without fighting corruption and without security, you will not attract any foreign investor. These are the forces that drive economy forward: security, power supply and direction in economic growth. I think he has a lot to do.
What you are saying in a nutshell is that the current government has not met the expectations of the people who voted it to power.
Off course, they have not. They are yet to be there. They have to do more. I am not saying they have done nothing and they are doing nothing but I am saying that what they are doing and what they have done are not enough to meet the demands of Nigerians.
A year ago on his inauguration, the President announced the removal of fuel subsidy which invariably has led to a lot of difficulties in the country. Do you see the fuel subsidy removal as a good thing to have been done by the present administration?
Many economists supported the removal of subsidy and portrayed it as one of the things that must be done before Nigeria moved forward. But they have not suggested how to secure the money of subsidy and how to utilise it for the betterment of the nation. That is what brought the problem. Now, they have removed the subsidy but no one can give you accurate account of the amount they have saved. The most annoying part of it is that the masses are suffering and there is no solution in sight. Therefore, they have to sit down and think on what and what they have to subsidise to make Nigeria good because there is no government without subsidy. You must subsidise one thing or the other. That is the nature of government anywhere in the world. So, let them sit down and look. I am not saying they should return fuel subsidy but I am telling them that they must subsidise one thing or the other and it must be something that will make Nigerians happy. And the simple thing to make Nigerians happy is to have food security.
Sometime ago, you delivered a sermon on the pulpit that eventually led to your removal as the Chief Imam of Apo Legislative Quarters in Abuja. You were critical of the government about things that were happening then. Taking a reflection of the situation now and then, has anything really changed since you delivered that sermon?
I don’t see anything that has changed only that there is one thing that is clear: people understood that yes, they need that kind of sermon. People appreciate what I did, especially what is being translated from that time till now. It was true that we need to do something as a people to protect our votes. I can remember the khutbah, I said give us security for our votes, no security, no vote. That was the problem. So, if you say that statement was wrong, you were saying that we should continue to vote without anticipating to gain from our votes security for our lives. That is, you are telling Nigerians that they would live under insecurity forever. That is why I said I would continue this fight, telling Nigerians that we need security, we need good governance. We need respect of law. We must fight against corruption.
There is no doubt about it that there is high rate of insecurity in Nigeria, including terrorism, kidnappings and the rest. In your own opinion what do you think are the causes of this and the probable solutions? What should Nigeria as a country and Nigerians do to bring an end to this menace?
If we can fight corruption, not the big corruption or the small one, generally any form of corruption. You can see that Buhari’s administration failed because Nigerians expected him to bring back war against indiscipline, which he failed to do. And that was his failure. If we want to fight corruption and extend it to ending the menace of insecurity, we must bring back discipline into our minds. Look at what is happening in Hajj, look at it. From a critical mind, you will find that we need discipline. All Nigerians, not only those in government, but every Nigerian needs discipline. For example, if there is corruption in the Ministry of Defence and that is why we don’t have security. If a personnel of the ministry is corrupt, his immediate people are the first to notice that he is corrupt. I mean his family. His family will know that he is living beyond his salary and capacity. What are they doing? They are celebrating that corruption. The far relatives of such a man will now become close to him demanding that corruption. Even the mosque or the church he is attending will only criticise him when they are not benefiting from that corruption.
Every Nigerian is trying to be part of corruption directly or indirectly. If we can change this, then there will be no more corruption. If somebody loots the Ministry of Health and comes back to his community and the community rejects him even if he is going to build a primary health care clinic for them, they will reject him because he has looted the country and wanted to build will a little part of it. If we understand this, we will fight corruption. And that is where the role of Ulamas and the pastors comes in and ofcourse, the freedom fighters. That is our role; to create awareness in the citizens that they should be good people and citizens.
Apart from the aspect of corruption you talked about, what other things are causes of this insecurity? What do you think the terrorists and bandits really want? What are they fighting for?
You can’t identify what they want because they don’t really know what they are fighting for. Somebody kidnapped people, took them into the bush, he collected money and remaing living in the bush. What did he want to do? All I want to say is those people are products of the society. To correct this menace, you have to first of all start from the family. They are products of families. A child that was brought up on the streets does not know the affection of the family and he cannot have that love for anybody and therefore he can kill anybody. A child that is being prevented from having education with no justification, the envy in his heart will make him dislike any educated person, the system and the country itself.
If we want true result of the fight against terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and others, let’s look at the mode of recruitment they have. First, we are giving them a free recruitment. Those potential terrorists that we are seeing on the streets, children begging, children sleeping on the streets, children without cloths, without education, they are potential criminals. And criminals will get access to them to recruit them and become bandits. We have to work towards fairness and justice in governance so that there will be equity in economic opportunities. That will reduce the tendency of having more bandits.
Your response just now, brings one to the issue of Almajiri specifically in the North. What is really happening with Almajiri system and how should we reform it?
I think recently there is a commission, out-of-school child and Almajiri education commission, something of that nature signed by President Muhammadu Buhari and is fully active now. But the issue is how can it succeed? I was opportune to meet with an EU commissioner and he asked me about Almajiri. I told him that even if you remove all the Almajiris on the streets today, just give it some time, you will find more than that again if you did not remove the root of the problem. And the root of the problem is the family. The problem of family is how marriage is being conducted and kept. Why is it that the North produces Almajiris? Why is the South not producing Almajiris? If Islam is the problem, why is it that the Yoruba Muslims are not producing Almajiris?
When you have irresponsible parents producing many children, you will have Almajiris or worse than Almajiris. Therefore, we have to regulate marriage in Nigeria. The government must come into it, enact laws that will prevent people from just getting married anyhow. That is how to tackle the issue. Secondly, we must make sure that these out-ofschool children and Almajiris commission succeed. Let’s not give it a dimension of Islam and think that this is just for the Muslims. Let the other faith and other geographical locations understand that the issue of Almajiri is a security issue. Insecurity in any part of Nigeria is also a menace to the entire country. It will affect our economy, it affects our social structure; it affects everything. Therefore, let’s put hands together and make sure that, that commission records success.
The President just assented to the bill passed by the National Assembly for the country to revert to the old national anthem that was changed in 1978, about 46 years ago. Is this a right thing to do in this present moment?
I cannot call it the right thing to do now and I cannot call it the wrong thing that was done because it is not our problem. How many Nigerians understood the meaning of the former one. And who can now tell you the difference. The former, I mean the one we are changing from, if you look at it carefully, the words have no problem. If we follow what is written there, we would succeed; our country would be good. The same thing with this new one. It is not the words that are important but the meaning. And it not the meaning that is important but who perceives the meaning. And understanding the meaning is not important than imbibing the meaning. Are we ready to put that anthem into application, especially in the areas of peace, harmony, unity, progress, sacrifice? These are the important words that were in the former and new one. We have to create awareness: what is the importance of the national anthem itself and how can Nigerians apply it in their daily lives. How can they promote their national identity. There is what is called national cohesion. Are Nigerians aware of national cohesion? And that is where the National Orientation Agency (NOA) comes in. You need to have people who are very active in creating national cohesion to put direction in that place and see what change we can see.
Let’s talk about Hajj. We are in Saudi Arabia for the 2024 Hajj. About 65,000 Nigerians will be performing this year’s Hajj some of whom are already here ready for the spiritual exercise. What is your assessment of the airlift operation so far?
Well, I will say there is progress because if you start by the airlift, I could remember the schedule of FCT in particular. Last year NAHCON had to create what they called rescue flight to rescue the airlift of FCT and other places. This year, I don’t think there is anything like that in FCT and elsewhere. Secondly, if you look at the accommodation in Madina, it was commendable, very close to the Haraam (the Prophet’s Mosque) and if you look at how the Ziyarah (visitation) was coordinated, especially in the FCT, it was a vey good one. It was very successful. More importantly, look at the visit to the Rawdah. I have come for Hajj on uncountable times but there wasn’t a time when 95 per cent of pilgrims from FCT have entered Rawdah except this year. About 96 per cent of our pilgrims have entered Rawdah. It is a very commendable act. But this one I think the merit must go to the Saudi’s Ministry of Hajj and Umrah.
The Federal Government subsidized this year’s Hajj to the tune of N90 billion and this has generated some controversies. Nigerians are complaining that Hajj is a personal thing that there was no need for government to subsidise it. What is your reaction to this?
My reaction is that if there is no corruption, that N90 billion is okay for Nigerians to enjoy Hajj at lesser price. But look at what Nigerians are suffering. And the other people saying it is too high for Nigeria to spend this kind of money at this point in time, they are few. They are entitled to their own opinion. But we the Muslims have to first of all look at how to say no to any form of corruption in Hajj operation so that we reduce the burden on the government and prevent other people from talking about what government is spending in our religion. It is very important for Muslims to know that we are the ones to say no to corruption in Hajj in any form.
There has been agitation that government should hands off Hajj operation in Nigeria. Do you support this view?
I support it but it is not time yet. We have to gradually go there until when we have a very respectful tour operation that will do it in a way that will be competing with other parts of the world without corruption and disrespect to the pilgrims.
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