By Abuchi Obiora
Nigerian Christians should wake up to the reality of a planned grand agenda to Islamize Nigeria. This much is the message that was recently sent across to the Nigerian Christian community by Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the immediate past Executive Governor of Kaduna State.
Nasir El-Rufai (16th February, 1960 – ?), a mortal human being made of the four basic elements of nature (Earth, Air, Water and Fire) and quickened by the spirit of God, whose expiration, like that of every human being formed by God signals death on earth, was caught in a viral video clip playing God as he addressed a Muslim audience in Kaduna State, using Hausa Language. That occasion was to reel out to his audience what he regarded as his best achievements as the Executive Governor of Kaduna State for eight years. In his own assessment, his best achievement in a secular state (Christianity and Islam) with Christians constituting more than half of the population of the state, is not to alleviate the sufferings of the people of Kaduna State in several dimensions but to decimate Christianity in the state. He didn’t stop there. He also said that it gladdens his heart that the same process of decimating Christianity in Nigeria (which he helped to achieve) has started with the Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket of the APC which presently sits at the central government in Abuja. The complete information about what he said are already in the public domain and therefore need not to be enumerated here. The summary is that they are all targeted for the annihilation of Christianity in Nigeria.
After listening to Nasir El-Rufai’s viral video clip addressing his Muslim aides shortly before handing over power to the new Government in Kaduna State, I obtained different versions of the English interpretation of what he spoke in Hausa. I found out, after scrupulously reading up different comments from diverse media houses on the man’s statements that most writers who responded to his vituperations and called for peace in inter-religious relationship in Nigeria were rationalizing the man’s statements as if peace in Nigeria must always be gotten at the expense of the lives of Nigerian Christians who he insists must remain second-class citizens in their own country.
This week’s work seeks for a balance between Nigeria’s two major religions. It is also meant to address the anomaly which is becoming the rule in Nigeria that Christianity and Christians should always be at the receiving end of violent speeches and divisive, dangerous games, and soap box passion of castigating Christians which have become the winning aces in elections in northern Nigeria by Muslim politicians.
To be able to correctly posit how weighty the opinion of Nasir El-Rufai is held amongst the Muslim Community in northern Nigeria, vis-a-vis his just revealed opinion about the planned unabridged governance of Nigeria by Muslims, let us take a flash back on his previous views and forecasts about trends in Nigeria, and how such trends eventually turned out.
It is on record that El-Rufai once revealed to Nigerians that the group of people now referred to as the Bandits were originally members of the Fulani ethnic group (the Mboro Fulani) brought from the African countries and the Sahel region to be used either to win the 2015 presidential election or spill the blood of the baboons and the monkeys along the streets of Nigeria. He further informed Nigerians that the mercenaries were not satisfied with their settlement which was done with several billions of Nigerian money, so they preferred to remain in the country, which they see to be a gold mine, to earn more money through the lucrative activities of kidnapping, banditry, or through their other activities which include illegal mining of mineral resources in northern Nigeria.
The truth about the Muslim/Muslim presidency in Nigeria, as has also been revealed by El-Rufai, is that, it is meant to permanently silence Christians and Christianity in Nigeria. Admitted that most Nigerians especially the peace-loving ones may not subscribe to the conquest of Christianity in Nigeria by Islam, (which is why they condemned the careless comments of El-Rufai on Nigerian Christians), the fact remains that it is only a few bold, audacious and outspoken members of any group like El-Rufai who chart the course of their organizations and define both the perceptions of the organizations by the public as well as navigate the future and fortunes of their organizations.
The call by many Nigerians upon the ‘good spirited’ Nigerian Muslims to publicly renounce the statements of El-Rufai as not being the collective position of the Nigeria Muslim community is well intentioned. But the issue is: has the man made any effort to retrace his statement? Even if he does that now, I will take it as an after thought and unnecessary palliative which will not ameliorate the irreparable damages done to the collective psyche of Nigerian Christians and the much needed efforts at religious and cultural syncretism in the country. Would it therefore be wrong to believe that by his suspicious silence, the man has simply revealed to Nigerian Christians what was discussed behind closed doors?
By the way, is there anything which El-Rufai said in Nigeria that did not come true? The man is not a maverick as many Christians wrongly and most naively think. They should, by now, be able to see through the smokescreen that El-Rufai, though he feigns to be a maverick, is simply a very intelligent man, the approved voice of a people united in Islamizing Nigeria. It is most likely that he is a voice acting as the sounding board to preview the opinion of the people they have decided to conquer and from the information gathered, prepares for damage control and crisis management methods. Why is it that no government, either previous or present, has ever cautioned him or even arrested him for hate speech and utterances likely to breach public peace? Is it not possible that El-Rufai is a secret agent of the governments that have always allowed him to go free from so many inciting utterances till date?
In my opinion, El-Rufai was not looking for political patronage from the Asiwaju presidency by making the statements he made because, according to him, he, in concert with other persons working for the same Islamic propagation agenda have accomplished their purposes both in Kaduna State and at the Federal Government level. What he was simply doing was reporting back to his first and primary constituency, the representatives of the Muslim community who he has assiduously worked for during his eight years tenor. For these reasons, I disagree with people who believe that El-Rufai is seeking for relevance in the new dispensation much as I disagree that he is a maverick for reasons also adduced in a previous paragraph of this discourse.
What relevance will El-Rufai be seeking again in Nigerian politics where he has variously served as the FCT Minister, and as an Executive Governor of a State? If he seeks for any further relevance, it is most likely to be in the grand purpose of Islamic propagation agenda, which by the way, may have influenced his going into politics from the beginning. By his utterances, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has just told Nigerian Christians that there is fire on the mountain and Nigerian Christians must decide quickly whether they want to start running or stay and begin to quench the fire.
Nasir El-Rufai describes himself as “The Accidental Public Servant” in an autobiography published with the same title. The accidental public servant, Nasir El-Rufai may also have found his way accidentally and unprepared to Nigerian politics for which reason he did not grasp the primary duty of a politician which is to serve the people he has been elected to serve with equity and fairness, irrespective of tribe or ethnicity, religion or creed, language or dialect.
In his reaction to the revelation by El-Rufai, Primate Elijah Ayodole of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church alleged in his release published in Naijapoint Online on June 8th 2023 that Nasir El-Rufai represents the interests of Taliban in Nigeria and hence a threat to the peace of the nation. For general information, the Talibans are members of an international terror organization known with that name. Not long ago, they infiltrated the government in Afghanistan and after working from inside toppled the government and declared the country, hitherto a secular state, a Muslim nation.
With the utterances of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai since he attained public recognition after demolishing the homes of people in FCT, Abuja, he has made public pronouncements which gives credence to the suspicion that he is the Nigerian agent, and possibly the grand commander of Talibans in Nigeria. To turn the country completely into a Muslim state may therefore be his ultimate ambition in Nigerian politics and not political patronage as wrongly and naively believed by some Nigerian Christians.
Think, and let us call a spade a spade! Do the situations on ground in the politics and administration of Nigeria not confirm the supremacy of the Muslim religion over the Christian religion in Nigeria? And El-Rufai has just told us that it is going to be worse than we see it! Christians should stop deluding themselves. El-Rufai knows what he is saying. He is right and his predictions will all come true if Christians in Nigeria fail do something.
My personal assessment of El-Rufai, no matter what anybody may think about him, is that he is a sincere and honest man. I do not even see him as overly ambitious. He is a man with a single purpose fixated to achieve on earth what he may like to be remembered most by the time he is gone from the earth. I hold this same opinion about a very simple man I so much love because of his sincerity, single-mindedness in what he believes in. The man I am talking about now is the Cleric Abubakar Gumi. My mention of the respected Islamic Cleric here is intentional. Men are real men when they are completely dedicated to what they believe in. Whatever that is worth believing in is worth dying for. Herein is the problem with many Christians. Many Christians believe in Jesus Christ but only a few of them will want to die for Jesus Christ. One of the reasons Christianity is presently being suppressed around the world is that martyrdom which watered the seed of the efforts of the early Christian Saints and germinated the flowering tree of modern Christianity has ceased to appeal to modern day Christians.
Inebriated with the desire to achieve the only thing he believes in and swimming in the primitive feudalist passion and mentality of enslaving unsuspecting hosts and natural neighbors who were humane enough to admit them into co-habitation in their ancestral lands, El-Rufai and his colleagues in their agenda to Islamize Nigeria may have long inaugurated and positioned their foot soldiers for their purpose in disguise as herdsmen, bandits and all the other militant groups from some West African countries and the Sahel region who presently exert militancy influences across Nigeria, especially within the ancestral homes of Northern Nigerian Christians. Unfortunately, these sinister moves have been met with naivety as has recently been shown in the assessment of El-Rufai’s revelation by some key members of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Kaduna State where many of the massacres of Christians are ongoing. These Christian leaders seem to be more interested in opulence and extravagant living that Christianity seems to be gathering the aura of a mercantilist religion.
Nigerian Christians forget in a hurry. The long road to turn Nigeria into a Muslim country did not start today. Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, a Christian and the second-in-command to General Ibrahim Babangida, a Muslim, had to opt out of the government during that military regime because his boss, the Head of State never discussed the idea of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) in the Armed Forces Ruling Council meeting or even privately with him, before enlisting Nigeria into that exclusive club of Islamic nations.
Now with the efforts of people like Nasir El-Rufai, Nigeria is working hard to meet one of the primary conditions for joining that organization, which is to run an exclusively Islamic states with, wait for it, the Sharia System of government completely in place!.
The present day Turkey is the ancestral home of St. Paul, the second most important personality in Christendom after Jesus Christ. The Islamic Republic of Turkey, now almost 100% Muslims, used to be a secular country, with Christians in the majority. While the Christians there dined and made merry swimming in opulence and building large Church auditoria, the Muslims quietly strategized and took over the country. When the take-over eventually happened, it took only one proclamation by the young Islamic ruler there to convert all the big Church auditoria to either Mosques or tourism sites. These monuments of Christian docility in Turkey are there till this day.
Though the peace-loving, just and equity-oriented members of Nigerian Muslim community may not like this if it happens that Nigeria is declared a Muslim state, they will do little or nothing to stop it because the law of personal interest (which I define to mean “Never you fight a cause that benefits all)” demands and will accordingly make this set of Nigerian Muslims to keep quiet and simply say, “Allah Yaisah!”
Before I end this discourse, I must drop a word of advice for Christians in Nigeria. Nigerian Christians must understand that competition is the spice of life. Competition is a phenomenon in the perfection of life. Without competition, life would have been unbearably dull and redundant. Prayers are good but prayers and faith without works is dead. Nigerian Christians should stop complaining, always seeing themselves on the receiving side of competition. William Wordsworth (7th April 1770 – 23rd April 1850), an English Poet who was instrumental in creating the romantic era of British poetry wrote that “Sympathy without the power of relieving leaves the person who feels it more wretched than the object that sues for pity”. This is my state of mind and that of those Christians in Nigeria who feel bad about the way Christians are treated in Nigeria. But we must do something about it now.
Nigerian Christian clergy should pay less attention to ostentatious and extravagant life styles because the God of the clerics of its sister religion, Islam, has not deprived its adherents of wealth. The difference is that the later sets of people do not unwisely flaunt their wealth. Every Nigerian Christian should pause and begin to strategize. I will address this issue of the short-comings in the church deeper in an exclusive Christians audience as Mallam Nasir El-Rufai did to the Muslim audience. But before I do that, let me quickly add that Nigeria Christians need Gideons (many of them!) to save Christianity which is presently threatened in Nigeria.
Finally the Christians and indigenous people of Kaduna state should as a matter of urgency, drag Mallam Nasir El-Rufai to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hagues for crimes against humanity. It is possible that El-Rufai’s opinion about how Kaduna state must be governed may be linked to the on-going genocide against people of southern Kaduna, who are predominantly Christians. He and his cohorts in Islamic Jihad must have surmised that if the people of southern Kaduna are not worthy to govern their state, why keep them alive when they can be annihilated and their vast fertile farm land appropriated. I am surprised that the DSS (Department of State Security) has not invited Mallam Nasir El-Rufai for questioning as a possible accomplice in the massive on-going genocide in southern Kaduna after his utterance which coincidentally serves as an indirect confession to his complicity.
Ashamedly Nasir El-Rufai, knowing that what he was saying was evil, talked to a Muslim audience in Hausa Language. Now, I am openly talking to everybody in English language especially Christians in Nigeria. My message is captured in one of the famous words of Louis Dearborn L’ Amour (22nd March 1908 – 10th June 1988), the renowned American novelist and short story writer which I hereby paraphrase to mean that it will be most unfortunate and bad if all the mechanisms of offence are domiciled on one side. The opposite side, he says, need to equip itself with the mechanism of offence in what sociology calls balance of terror. This signifies that to continuously dwell in the disadvantaged point of defense inhibits the chances of a truce, a ceasefire.
They that prepare for war, experience an enduring peace.
ABUCHI OBIORA.
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