It is itself a surprise to me that we are responding to the issue of the alleged Nigerian suicide bomber/terrorist if it was totally unpredictable. We want to condemn it, we are disappointed by what Umar is alleged to have done and the added shame and disrepute that has brought upon Nigeria, but it would be wrong to suggest that there are no fundamentalist strains in Nigeria. They abound.
The recent Boko Haram incident, and the way muslims in Northern Nigeria reacted to the 2005 Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) by setting churches on fire suggest that we must have been breeding this kind of people, and we are probably more capable of breeding them with possibly little outside influence than we presently imagine.
A series of troubling but interesting events happened in close succession, within the space of two years, when I was a student at Obafemi Awolowo University, (OAU) Ile-Ife. For those who are not very familiar with Nigeria, OAU is arguably the most Yoruba and also possibly the most politically active and intellectually progressive of Nigerian universities.
Obafemi Awolowo Hall (popularly called Awo Hall) is well known as the most politically active, hilarious, fun loving and liberal residential hall within the university. Awo Hall also has a long standing tradition, dating back about twenty years or more, of the free screening of pornography videos in the hall’s TV Room every Friday evening. There is incidentally a make shift mosque just across the lawn from the TV Room in what used to be the kitchen attached to a dinning cafe where students used to eat when the Nigerian government provided free food for university students. The tradition of Friday evening porn predates the existence of the make shift mosque, which according to the university was even an illegal creation in the first place. Suddenly one Friday evening the leaders of the Muslim group in the hall stormed into the TV room and seized the DVD player. The incident eventually degenerated into a free for all fight that resulted in a two-week university closure.
There was another occasion when a girl was beaten up for dressing “inappropriately” while visiting the hall (Awo is a male residential hall). The muslim brothers retreated into the mosque after the onslaught and they wouldn’t allow anyone who wasn’t a muslim to approach for questions and a demand of apopogy. They held sticks and other weapons, prepared to attack the uninvited. It was strange and scary. I had to step in, having been a rather good friend of the Awo Hall mosque as I had been spotted entring the mosque to take part in prayers, and having subsequently attracted a couple of the more senior members of the mosque who tried to convert me to Islam, albeit unsuccessfully. Thankfully, we were able to get them to apologise in the long run, an act that eventually that brought the mattter to rest.
A third one occured when a girl was married off to a fellow student by fellow students within one of Mosques in the university without the knowledge of either party’s parents. The girl subsequently decided to cut off all communication with her family. After several weeks of failed attempts at reaching her, the girl’s parents had to visit the university to confirm what had happened to their daughter. She had been transformed from a regular muslim lady to one that covers her face, she was already pregnant and she wasn’t going to see her parents when they eventually visited.
I once had a “friend,” a Nigerian who told me that he would kill me in the event of a holy war! He wasn’t joking.
Mild as these incidents were, what they show is that for these to happen in the liberal south, at the very bastion of southwestern Nigeria liberalism, you can imagine what possibly goes on in the north where some states already practice the Islamic Sharia legal system.
I don’t think that Umar did what he is alleged to have done simply because he is from a rich, privileged family or from northern Nigeria. He simply had good access to radicalising influences, or is it the other way round? There are thousands of Nigerians, I’m sure, who would go the same way if only they had the same kind of access Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had, and we should not be oblivious of this important fact as we discuss this unfortunate incident.
I’m surprised that such a smart boy from an extremely wealthy pedigree would go this far! It’s scary! Thank God for a wise father.
On a side note, this is the time Nigerian ‘image launderers’ (the information & foreign affairs ministers, the Nigerian Ambassador to the United States & Britain, and their agents) need to get on the American and British news networks and speak up load and clear!
The security breach is not Nigeria’s fault to bear alone. The Dutch and the Americans also failed in their responsibilities, particularly the latter! It must be difficult for a father to step up and report his son the way Umar’s father did; Nigerians administrators need to capitalize this.
I wonder where Umar got radicalized…from the reports so far, I won’t be surprised if it happened in London, and not in Nigeria! Clearly there is more to this than the mere abundance of fundamentalist strains in northern Nigeria.
I’m not really surprised by the attempted bombing. Yes it may be counter-intuitive on my part but the US security agencies have been warning of fundamentalism in the north for several years now. Like you wrote too Seye, the Boko Haram riots are just a few months old. Some might point to the UK and Yemen as the flashing point but the seeds were sown somewhere, most probably in Nigeria. I like the fact though that his family were aware of his extremism and reported to the relevant people.
I totally agree with you. We really shouldn’t dismiss Umar’s actions as that of a one-off act of a spoilt child, but as a bigger national problem of breeding and raising a nation of radicals. Like you’ve rightly pointed out, this extremist behavior has existed in Nigeria for a long time examples, the Miss World fiasco and a governor of a State calling for the death penalty of the woman who wrote about Mohammed, the endless attempts to eliminate Christians from Northern Nigeria, student rioting and even the recent killing of Grace over supposed indecent dressing. Yes, this is a problem in Nigeria, one which can lead to bigger issues like the ones created by Umar.
And now, another group has risen up in Bauchi and innocent people particularly children have been killed. The handwritings on the wall are becoming quite clear.
[…] Detroit terror Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: Why are we surprised? – NigeriansTalk It is itself a surprise to me that we are responding to the issue of the alleged Nigerian suicide […]
The extremist posture of the Northern Nigeria Islamists is not disputable, and should be critically addressed. By who, one may ask? The developed world should intervene discreetly without necessarily branding every Nigerian a terrorist, as US ostensibly did recently. They should properly focus their attention for better result.
Notwithstanding, the ‘whistle blowing’ attribute of the young man’s father is quite commendable and should be recommended to every parent and guardian in the country and beyond. If every parent would have the courage to expose their ‘wayward’ wards to appropriate authorities, those wards would definitely think twice before engaging in vices like terrorism, cultism, armed robbery, drug trafficking, prostitution, etc.
I think the Nigeria image makers or launderers should see this as a veritable opportunity to propagate one good quality or attribute by a Nigerian.
[…] increasing religious extremism in Nigeria, describing recent minor clashes at his university. Seye concluded: Mild as these incidents were, what they show is that for these to happen in the liberal south, at […]
I attended OAU and know how well Islamist extremism is going on in that campus. I remember when Sharia law was introduced in the north in 1999 and how many Muslim groups began to call for the introduction of Sharia on our campus and how it could have degenerated into something bad if the Christian groups had reacted otherwise.
I remember all the Jihad weeks on the campus and how at the car park bordering Angola, Awo Annex and Mozambique mullahs scream into loud speakers denouncing the Jesus’ claim as the son of God.
There was a time in my final year when a religious broil almost broke out among the younger students during the Ramadan when a Christian student complained of the noise making that ensured in the early hours of the morning because it was also exam time.
It’s sad that our university is fast becoming a breeding ground for extremists, Christians and Muslims alike. Fanaticism came to its head when some Christian students sometime ago decided to go into the forest to await the coming of Christ!
When shall this all end?
[…] on Christmas Day, blogger and regular NigeriansTalk Contributor, Seye Abimbola, described several instances of religious fundamentalism he witnessed while schooling. Emeka Okafor, in his blog, Africa Unchained, shares a series of […]