Some journalists are giving a polish to the damage the Kwara State government has done to the unity of our nation. They gloss over the root of the divisiveness, which the government of that state has unwisely planted. This is how one reporter presents the effort being made by the state after it has caused a crisis among our people: “The Kwara State Government has reaffirmed its determination to foster religious tolerance in its schools and to enhance peaceful coexistence among people in the state. The Chairman, Kwara State Teaching Service Commission, Mallam Bello Tauheed Abubakar, made this assertion on Friday when he presided over a meeting held at the commission in Ilorin, the state capital. The meeting was held with the aim of resolving the crisis over Hijab, which erupted recently at Oyun Baptist Grammar School, Ijagbo, Oyun Local Government Area…” (Independent, January 24, 2021). It’s noteworthy the report made no reference to how the Kwara State government initially pursued this policy of wearing garbs that depict religions in schools. That newspaper report amounted to propaganda spread on behalf of the Kwara government; nothing in it showed how the crisis began, who powered it in the first place. Both the reporter and his editor reported a matter of such monumental and national importance but they didn’t give any form of a backdrop to it. They should be questioned regarding their ability to professionally render a balanced news report.
When the matter of enforcement of religious clothing in schools initially led to threats and counter threats in Kwara State, I stated thus at the time: “Now, there’s that commotion regarding the matter of the government insisting girls should wear Hijab in all schools in Kwara State. This pattern of use of religion in the hands of politicians didn’t start there. Some state governors had to be counselled to treat the issue of religion with greater caution.” I equally stated: “Any measure taken with regard to religion, but which sets people in a multi-religious society against one another is misuse of religion. Any effort purportedly made to promote religion, but which leads to contention among otherwise peaceful peoples, is a misuse of religion.
“Any political leader, who should concentrate on making the lives of the generality of the people better, but is using religion to hide their lack of achievement, misuses religion. In a nation where there are so many challenges to confront and the government doesn’t score high on that front rather it dabbles into the issue of religion, it’s a misuse of religion. Certainly, there’s a level of deceit in being in power only to start stoking embers of hatred among our peoples on the basis of religion” (The PUNCH, The manipulators and the hijab, April 2, 2021).
May one ask why the government of Kwara State now comes out to push a new narrative, addressing administrators of schools as though they were the ones who powered this crisis in the first place? I’ve always been surprised at the lack of delicateness many politicians display when they’re in power. One needs to pursue this line of argument because there are state governors who declare themselves unwilling to dabble into religious matters as against the development of the people for which they are elected into office. There’re governors who have stated this publicly. They’re wise governors. They’re as wise as the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), who was aware of the harm some wanted to use the religion to which he belonged to cause in the pre-2015 general elections. He was aware some pushed the narrative that he would impose one religion on Nigeria. He arrived office and said he belonged to everybody, he belonged to nobody. That’s what wise leaders do; they see the ditch and carefully avoid it.
How come we keep getting politicians who exhibit so much recklessness in what they use political power for? How does this happen in a nation where we began at Independence putting in place policies and institutions that were meant to unify our peoples? One of such is the unity school. These schools have prepared young Nigerians for the kind of multiplicity of tribes, religions, cultures and perspectives which a diverse nation such as Nigeria has. Our secondary schools accommodate Nigerians from diverse backgrounds. The tertiary institutions too are configured to achieve the same purpose.
I don’t recall any of the universities that I attended—up and down the Niger river—or any that I’ve visited which do not have places of worship for members of both major religions. Students, who attend either of the two places of worship, reside in the same rooms, eat together and attend classes together. They graduate from our institutions remembering one another as best of friends. The same applies when they partake in the National Youth corps programme. Yet some of these guys later get into positions of authority and the next thing they do, as the cases in Kwara, Osun, and Oyo States (under a certain former governor) have shown, is to use religion as a tool to divide our peoples. It’s a baffling situation, one which indicates that some simply deploy religion for what they can get out of it, rather than the purpose religions are meant to serve in the lives of adherents.
I stated this in my last piece on the matter of what transpired in Kwara State. What the government of Kwara State has done should be considered as an embarrassment to everyone who loves our nation and desires its wellbeing. What the Kwara government has done should be of concern to well-meaning Nigerians. In spite of the latest turnaround, the Kwara State government has hurt Nigeria. It hurts our peoples’ sensitivity and that sense of the need to maintain peaceful, harmonious coexistence among themselves. In addition, the Kwara government has wasted public resources. Here’s a government that has expended time and energy, channelling the time and energy of personnel in its ministry and agencies into enforcing religious symbolism in schools.
The government has expended time, turning the attention of school administrators away from teaching and producing quality students for our nation, into enforcing religious symbolism. Is that the reason our schools are established and funded with public resources? Now that resources, man and money (which should go into developing people and infrastructure), have been deployed and expended in enforcing religious symbolism, Kwara State Government turns around on a divisive policy it instituted. The resources, time and energy unleashed have become a waste. How many government officials made millions out of the effort to enforce religious symbolism in Kwara State? That is one source of the massive leakages we experience in a nation that does not boast of enough funds to take adequate care of its needs.
The other way the Kwara government has hurt our nation is that it has handed over more tools to divisive elements to further divide our people. There are many who for all manner of tribal reasons are ready to cause division among Nigerians. They attribute sinister religious motives to every move members of the tribes they hate make within or outside government. They make members of their tribes live in perpetual fear—real or unreal—sounding it into them that they’ll be forced to accept another religion. This group of people will take the religious tension generated by the government of Kwara State and add it to their arsenal of arguments as to the reason their people must have nothing to do with people of other tribes and religions. That’s the size of the hurt Kwara government has done to the unity and stability of our nation.
On top of all that has happened is the accusation of hypocrisy which the Kwara State government has levelled against school administrators. It asks school principals to “shun hypocrisy and religious bias” but who’s being hypocritical here? Is it the government that initially introduced the policy of enforcement of religious symbolism in schools or the principals who interpreted and implemented the policy depending on the religious leaning of their respective schools? Certainly, the hypocritical party here is the Kwara State Government that sees 2023 elections approaching and decides to make an indecent U-turn. This thing doesn’t reflect fine in terms of quality leadership that we so much need in this nation.
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