By Steve Nwosu
I put the blame for the current hijab controversy that has gripped Kwara state squarely at the door of the state governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq.
There must be something in the governor’s body language that seems to embolden the belligerents to defiantly hold on to their respective extreme positions on the matter.
It does not matter whether it is Muslims throwing stones at the church to forcefully gain entry into the school, or Christians stubbornly refusing to budge on allowing hijab-wearing students into the school, in spite of a subsisting court judgement.
Whether it’s in Lagos, Osun, Oyo, Kaduna or Kwara or even Abuja, the culprit has always been the same: government. It is either the government and its operatives are pulling the strings on the crisis from the background, or it is so indecisive that it allows manipulative religious bigots to seize the initiative – hiding behind innocent children who really don’t give a hoot if they went to school in shorts, trousers, skirts, party clothes, hijab or habit.
Honestly, I can’t understand why our governments dabble into religion, when it has been proven over and over again that it always leads to crisis.
And the reason is simple: most, if not all, of us throw common sense overboard and begin to reason from the wrong end of our trunk the moment religion is on the discourse. Rather than project our humanity, religion often brings out the beast in all of us.
Instead of remaining a secular government, we convinced ourselves that ‘secular’ means godlessness (which is a big lie), and we foolishly rebranded ourselves a multi religious country. That sowed the seed for this unending battle for supremacy and tolerating all manner of shenanigans. And every new government takes the national religious fanaticism a notch or two higher.
Governments at all levels now “waste” tax payers money building churches and mosques (as the case may be), even inside the seat of government. All these, in a country, state or local government were not all taxpayers (and citizens) subscribe to the favoured religion. That is why the present Jigawa government, which could only give a laughable two goats, as empowerment to its poor, splashed out billions of naira to build a mosque in each of the state’s 27 local government areas. Meanwhile, there’s no pilgrims board for traditional worshippers.
No Krishna adherents are sent on state-sponsored pilgrimages. No one from the Bahai faith is invited to say the opening prayer at state functions. Police arrest persons with charms and amulets, objects of their own traditional worship, and parade them and their charms in much the same way they parade armed robbers and guns.
Yet, Nigeria is supposed to be multi-religious country. We call ourselves multi-religious, yet all we see every day is the tyranny of Islam and Christianity. It is a big joke! The only other thing that comes close to it are the ethnic supremacists.
And now, under President Muhammadu Buhari’s APC presidency, this huge joke has just been taken a notch too far.
Of course, I gave up on this Nigeria’s religious misadventure the day I realized that the beautiful pinafore and blouse our girls wore with pride in my secondary school (a Federal Government College) was suddenly dubbed a Christian (or worse, indecent) dress.
Now, there’s no longer any uniformity in the uniform. Some had leggings and three-quarter pants protruding under their gowns, others had hijab over the uniforms, without the pants, while yet some others stuck to the good old pinafore and white blouse, without the new additions. Now, it is a cacophony of apparels that confronts every visitor to the school.
Ironically, the children who now wear hijab, funny looking trousers and jumpers and all manner of variations of the good old uniform to school are not half as decent as the girls we grew up with – and who wore those ‘indecent’ pinafore and skirt-and-blouse school uniforms.
The most supreme irony of it all was that the respective principals, who ganged up with some bigoted parents and pressure groups to erect imposing mosque and church structures on the school premises, superintended over the worst era in the decay of all other school infrastructure.
For some curious reasons, the generation of students who used the same Common Room as mosque on Fridays (for Muslims), and chapel on Sundays (for Christians) ended up being more tolerant of each other and, I dare say, more God-fearing than the now-generation who worship inside different magnificent structures.
And, it would seem, they have become so awakened to religious consciousness that they are now less receptive of other faiths. In a world that, ironically, is becoming more shrunken by technology.
Yes, we have become shockingly intolerant today, defending faiths we barely understand.
But if truth must be told, in Nigeria, we merely use religion as an instrument of control – to subjugate and oppress others. If this weren’t so, you’d then wonder; why is it so difficult to allow religion remain a private business of the individual, while the state enforces the laws regarding such business.
Of course, enforcing the law is no licence for some fundamentalists in government to gang up and enact laws that, violate fundamental human rights ab initio, foist them on the statutes and then turn round to wave the same faulty enactments at our faces, as enabling laws for subsequent impunity.
Ironically, many of the people – both private individuals and government officials, fanning the embers of this burgeoning hijab mess attended mission schools that did little or nothing to change their respective faiths. Now, they are claiming that giving the said school government grant is reason enough to upturn everything the school stands for.
Every school always had a known school uniform (which we all knew of, before sending our wards there), why can’t we leave the uniform, knowing that the hood does not make the monk, and put all this attention, and funds, on equipping the schools and ensuring that our children study in a conducive environment and pass their WASC and other external exams?
School uniform hardly figures in the very long list of the problems bedeviling our educational system today.
Left to me, this hijab controversy might just be another distraction tactic that public officials, bereft of ideas on how to develop their states, and the nation, covertly encourage in order to keep us busy and divert our attention from asking the relevant questions viz: why are we so poor in the midst of so much wealth?
But, then, if we are this serious about religion (with so many puritans and defenders of the faith, in both public and private spaces), how come our country is still so corrupt? Raped and looted blind by Muslims and Christians alike?
Or is it all about religion and little of God and godliness?
So, let’s forget all the idle talk about hijab and hood and cassock and sutana. Let us stop bursting our veins over Christianity and Islam. For our only national religion in Nigeria is corruption. It is the altar at which we all worship – Christian, Muslim, Animists, Pagans and all. And this hijab mess is another answered prayer, to the supplications we made at the altar of corruption.
