Failure of Nigerian State: Re-Drawing The Fault Lines

[_Waziri_]

Failure of Nigerian State:  Re-Drawing The Fault Lines

By

Ibraheem A. Waziri
Iya Abubakar Computer Centre,
ABU, Zaria

My thesis in the article, Nigeria The Unhappy Marriage of a Quadruple,  www.dawodu.com/waziri1.htm, which expounded the possibility of the natural fragmentation of Nigeria and other African countries along ethnic lines and understood it to be better along value-culture-based lines, in our quest for way out of the present socio-political crisis, received series of critiques, mostly from my fellow northern writers and scholars.  Notably among them are;

1. Dr. Paul Mamza, a senior colleague of mine in the university, and a columnist with Gamji website and the weekly newspaper, Leadership, who after series of interactions and discussions would still refer to us as "...other anarchists who will sooner take Nigeria back to the chaos of 18th century";

2. Mallam Tukur Dan-Mua'zu, an erudite scholar and an authority in cultural studies, who, in his article, Nigeria, Africa And The Value Factor: A Response To Ibraheem Waziri's Nigeria: The Unhappy Marriage Of A Quadruple, www.lagosforum.com/comment.php?NR=1238, though agreeing with our conclusions, would still fault our premise that pursuing identity in the mould of ethno-geographical form was the creation of 18-19th century Europe;

3.  And most recently, Dr. Aliyu Tilde, my mentor in Intellectual Karate, and a columnist with Gamji website and Leadership, whose arguments in the article, The Limits Of Ethnicity, www.gamji.com/tilde.htm, faulted both our premise and conclusion. Contrary to our conviction, he believed ethnicity, to be a natural phenomenon in the history of formation of political communities and that pursuing a line of reason that will lead to the liquidation of Nigerian Federation would cause more harm to all than good.  Dr. Tilde expressed his support for the call for Sovereign National Conference with a view of restructuring Nigerian Federation only.

It is here desired, to understand that in generating our premise we only followed the pattern of arguments put forward by political historians. When we say: "The revolutions that happened in Europe and America from the late 18th century to early 19th century could be said to be the most prominent that occupied itself with the issue of right of man and the right of nations to self determination, and decent and race as the major factors in determining who belonged to them and who did not." We certainly do not mean to say that Europeans invented ethnicity in politics. But what we say is they are the ones who first formed states and officially made ethnicity a major factor determining who belonged to them or not. This is akin to what the student of history of constitutional law would mean when he says; " It was Europe of the 1950s that first promulgated laws that allowed free discussions on sex between parents and children".  This does not mean there was nothing like free discussion on sex between parents and children before the 1950's. What is means, however, is it was officially encouraged and made to appear most natural by law, in the eyes of Europeans from those years. What is most unfortunate, which underlines the whole argument, is the fact that the model of forming states in Europe is what has been imported into Africa after the colonial rule. Worst of all is the truth that its trappings were not properly considered but the paradigm has been with us and has influenced our thoughts forming political and administrative criteria both in theory and practice. Since it is embedded implicitly or explicitly, in the many accredited texts on political and administrative theories we read daily in school.

Mallam Tukur, in an attempt to debunk our premise referred to the Egypt of antiquity to make his argument about the official status given to racism, which, I suppose, came from his reading of Cheik Anta Diop's Africa's Origin Of Civilisation: Myth or Reality. But then Anta Diop himself recognised the fact that white men where once given equal rights with the blacks of ancient Egypt, which led to them gaining control of the political structure there. It is also clear from the records of Qur'an that Joseph (AS) who brought his father, Israel (AS) and his remaining eleven sons to Egypt, attained high position in the Egyptians ranks only for his piety and the beauty of the values he held.

In the Islamic empires of the past there were elements of ethnicity which, "pulled down empires that were built on religion", as Dr. Tilde asserted. Yet there was no Muslim empire that made ethnic affiliation a requirement to belonging to it. What they did was only to restrict the requirement of leadership in the empire to a certain lineage, the royal family, in order to protect the values on which the empire was built. This, however, was reasonable. It is also what has been happening in democracies, like USA of today. The elite always insist on those people who will protect the Anglo-Saxon's Western Protestants Values of Europe, to climb the mantle of leadership. Recently, Professor Samuel Hutington, the celebrated author of the world acclaimed book, The Clash Of Civilisations And The Remaking Of World Order, published another work, Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity, where he delineated on the concept of American identity with a view of preserving American "heritage" through the leadership of the Anglo-Saxons. He also criticised American immigration policy, which gives Mexican Hispanics accommodation when, as he claim, "the Hispanics are not seemed to be ready to exchange their Mexican values for American Western values.

It should be noted that Nigeria is not making progress at the expected rate since independence, not, for the reason of its people or their leaders being bad. God is not partial, to have created bad people, non-achievers, in the geography called Nigeria. Students of power know that success in leadership require not qualification only, but a happy confluence of qualification and right circumstance. Hence a dispassionate analysis of our leaders since independence is certain to bring forward a plethora of highly qualified members of international community who failed in Nigerian leadership only for the unfavourable circumstances Nigerian system constantly offered. In Nigeria, the circumstances that make leaders to compromise excellence for mediocrities, in decision-making, are most prevalent. A cursory assessment of Nigerian president's daily schedule will reveal how 16 - 18 hours of the day goes into solving and burying ethnic, religious, political problems vis-?-vis the struggle to survive on the throne of leadership. It is only a remaining scanty 4 hours can enjoy the dedication to implementing his work plan for the betterment of his subjects.

However, some analysts, following this pattern of thought, believe the reason of our failure to record progress to be rooted in the structure of Nigerian Federation. They believe true federalism as practiced before 1966 coup in opposition to unitary system that was adopted after 1966 to be the answer to our problem. Dr. Tilde discussed this in the article; North Is In Support Of Restructuring. To me, it is neither of the two. Because in the beginning it was the problem generated by the true federalism, which produced unending crisis leading to 1962 attempted coup of the Yoruba and later 1966 bloody coup of the Ibo and subsequently the 1967-70 civil war, that made the wise ones opted and adopted the unitary system. Yet as it is seen the solution is still farfetched.  This certainly should make us ponder over the question of incompatibility among the three leading cultures that provide the guiding spirit to the three original regions of the Federation. The statement credited to the first premier of the Northern region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, which referred to Nigeria as the mistake of 1914, carries some weight. Perhaps Chief Awolowo was right in believing Nigeria to be a mere geographical expression, which contained among others, a nation of the Yoruba, with unique goals and aspirations based on the values ordained by Oduduwa.

At any rate, the debate about Nigeria, in the coming National Conference, should be allowed to explore the question of lack of general and dominant cultural identity and defining philosophy. We often site examples with countries like Malaysia, which recorded immense progress in spite of its diversity, but we forget to remember that the leadership of Malaysia comes from one dominant cultural block. Few paragraphs above we sited how notable scholars of the USA give American Nation one single identity and philosophical attribution in the hope of preserving the strength of the nation. This is absent, or impossible with the Nigerian Federation. A typical Nigerian elite sees himself first a Yoruba, an Igbo belonging to the Biafran Nation, a Hausa-Fulani, a Muslim or a Christian. Most unfortunately is the truth that every Nigerian media outlet carries a flock of opinions that see nothing good about Nigeria. One of the cardinal points in the New Year's presidential address on the 1st January 2005 was this observation. The fact of the matter is Nigerians do not identify with the nation called Nigeria, and it is never in the history of the world, a story of a nation containing people who do not trace their first point of identification to it, recording any progress.

This leads us to giving some measure of credibility to the thesis of those internationally acclaimed scholars, who see the future of African continent in the light of anarchy and perpetual civil war "because of, among other things, the looming consciousness and affinity people increasingly have for tribe and geography as sole means   of identifying who is who in the string of political equations". In Nigeria there were 50 ethnic clashes, which engulfed nothing less than 500, 000 innocent human lives from 1999 to date. In Plateau state alone, the figures are put to be 56, 000. The situation is grave and if a state is maintained at this type of "peace", there will be no need for its adherents to know what is war. And what is unfortunate for Nigeria is it's this type of "peace" it has been enjoying since independence. To be convinced the more, what we need is to recall the momentous scenario of the series of riots that greeted first republic, from the Southwest.

There is the need to understand that prospects for peaceful coexistence and prosperity are only in a state where a dominant cultural identity prevails. It is then; a value-based state where people are gauged only on the merit of their values can be formed. Not what is obtained now in the Federation where people earn things only for their ethno-geographic affiliations; the state and the local governments; sharing of political power among regions and geopolitical zones; the indigenisation policy that have not solved the problem of ethnicity since independence.

Some people interpret what we crave for as the creation of ethnic nationalities out of the 400 ethnic groups in Nigeria. They then argue that our forefathers who negotiated for independence were not representatives of ethnic nationalities, which is right. But it can equally be argued that those forefathers of ours were representatives of three distinct cultural identities that were most visible then, and what we are asking now is the formation of viable states, as they have wished, out of the present Nigeria, which will each identify with a single dominant cultural identity as is obtained in any state with developmental potentialities in the world.

Many have asked me as to how we can achieve this. I really do not have the answers to all questions. But certainly, it is not a requirement that nation-states liquidate only through bloodshed. The case of Czechoslovakia is a good example. It is now two countries, Czech Republic and Slovakia, enjoying peaceful neighbourliness and economic prosperity. For Northern Nigeria the prospects are high. For even though we are not of same religion, like Malaysia, records of history have shown us to be of same value system and institutions. We are a population of over 90 million, which forms a very large market for the international community and our natural resource is immense. Our country maybe landlocked but that really could not be much effective giving that the most vibrant economy in Africa is Botswana which is also landlocked. The ethnic clashes that constantly happen in the North are as a result of us being part of Nigeria. Once out of it our single identity and guiding cultural spirit will save us.

I am afraid that if we do not start thinking along this line, things are likely to suffer maximum degeneration. Since its creation, the story of Nigeria has always been a story of retrogression gradually to the state it is now. My generation of Nigerians have grown to see corruption institutionalised to the extent that we do not have a sense of guilt when we cheat in examination halls or take bribe. I wonder what the next generation of Nigerians will come to see of Nigeria. Perhaps a jungle where survival depends on ones' ability to possess and manipulate sophisticated armaments. This is not fantasy, for my cousin was gunned down few months back on his way to Porthacort. Till this minute there is no news of how it happened. There is no trace of those who perpetrated the crime. If this will continue, and which is almost certain to if we insist on Nigeria, the next generation will be forced to pick arms and survive on them.

Mine is only a voice of a northern youth speaking for the lower cadre between the ages of 18-30 years old. I would have preferred a thought pattern that will keep Nigeria a true federal state given its status and the power it is likely to command as the bulwark of the black continent.  But the design of nature accentuated with the vile of some self-serving ethnic champions seems to be putting this dream to frustration. While I do not stand at the apex of the pyramid of wisdom, I do not fail to observe that the people and media houses that always reject these ideas as are being put are mostly northerners. In our belief in one Nigeria, we fail to see that even though Northerners have kept political power for most of the 44 years from independence, Southerners have always moulded Nigeria into their own image. We were operating a true federalism at independence before they put pressure for us to change, to their advantage, to unitary system. While in the unitary system, they exerted pressure and got the idea of resource control working to their advantage. They asked for Sovereign National Conference and now something close to it is being given to them with people like Chief Anthony Enahoro, an ardent Yoruba nationalist as its "hopeful" chairman. As these things are happening, Northerners constantly experience intimidation while their political power continues to wane. This should make us understand that the Nigeria we dearly intend to keep is invariably the Nigeria we cannot have. Especially when our Southern counterparts want it to liquidate through a National Conference, or when a set of the Orkars among them gets power in the recent future. My fellow Northerners must learn to come to terms with the truth that Nigeria is not created through divine inspiration, it cannot be found anywhere in our holy books, and nowhere else on this planet can we find the sacred inscription: Nigeria is indispensable. People have lived where we live today when there was no Nigeria and certainly they will continue to when Nigeria is naught.

[alhaji_aminu]

salam
Mallam Waziri I agree in essence with most of what  you said in the article. I honestly believe we here in the north will do just fine should Nigeria be restructured into a confederate state.

What I do argue is that such a monumental decision ought not to be taken overnight. there should be adequate preparation time for regions to be created so that they can put in place the approriate structures for the new setting to take place. For example, instead of instantly granting all regions autonomy in relations to matters of policing, the regions should be given 3-5 years with which to forecast the need, numbers and type of training for it's police.

The issue of assets and investmenst made by others in regions other than that of their origin could also present a complicated challenge. Lets take a Delta merchant in kano for example. Is he/she to be tax as a foreigner? if yes, doesn't this make him something other than a nigerian? Or, is he to be taxed as a non-foreigner? in which case he could enjoy the progessive tax regime in kano and still enjoy the crude windfall in Delta which  other kano citizens don't enjoy. It is very complicated indeed.

Above all, the issue of oil revenues should be dealt with decisively. It would be unwise to just say, since all regions are autonomous now, all oil proceeds from the Niger Delta is the owned entirely by that region.  If this were to be so, then no state in the north will be able to pay the salaries of 50% of their workforce let alone provide drugs for the hospitals or books for its school.

So what am I saying?
I am saying yes restructuring nigeria sounds like be a good idea but it should not be done in a hurry. The national assembly should have a say.

shalom!

[_Waziri_]

Amin, I doubt much if you really read my article above. I am making a case for liquidation not restructuring. Though I can easily adjust to the idea of restructuring if I am fully convinced of the  viability of the system after  the exercise. But the truth of the matter is Nigerian federation cannot be rid off its crisis even after restructuring or whatever. The simplest and most seemingly feasible option is liquidation as I put forward up there.

Again it is hardly the truth that the North has anything of soft or hard power in the present political equation that can be used effectively to delay the idea of restructuring Nigeria or liquidation to  the next five years or even less. I think we must all start preparing for the occurence of the inevitable just now for it has all the potentialities to happen any minute. Last month ,if you can still remember, Cross River state got 9 billion Naira from the federal government's coffers while the six North Eastern states, combined,  could not get up that amount.

And lastly, I will quote from the above article to make my point more clear:

Mine is only a voice of a northern youth speaking for the lower cadre between the ages of 18-30 years old. I would have preferred a thought pattern that will keep Nigeria a true federal state given its status and the power it is likely to command as the bulwark of the black continent. But the design of nature accentuated with the vile of some self-serving ethnic champions seems to be putting this dream to frustration. While I do not stand at the apex of the pyramid of wisdom, I do not fail to observe that the people and media houses that always reject these ideas as are being put are mostly northerners. In our belief in one Nigeria, we fail to see that even though Northerners have kept political power for most of the 44 years from independence, Southerners have always moulded Nigeria into their own image. We were operating a true federalism at independence before they put pressure for us to change, to their advantage, to unitary system. While in the unitary system, they exerted pressure and got the idea of resource control working to their advantage. They asked for Sovereign National Conference and now something close to it is being given to them with people like Chief Anthony Enahoro, an ardent Yoruba nationalist as its "hopeful" chairman. As these things are happening, Northerners constantly experience intimidation while their political power continues to wane. This should make us understand that the Nigeria we dearly intend to keep is invariably the Nigeria we cannot have. Especially when our Southern counterparts want it to liquidate through a National Conference, or when a set of the Orkars among them gets power in the recent future. My fellow Northerners must learn to come to terms with the truth that Nigeria is not created through divine inspiration, it cannot be found anywhere in our holy books, and nowhere else on this planet can we find the sacred inscription: Nigeria is indispensable. People have lived where we live today when there was no Nigeria and certainly they will continue to when Nigeria is naught.

[/quote]

[alhaji_aminu]

salam
I confess mallam waziri I did not read the article. I honestly thought it to long and you know time is money.  My agreeing with you in essence has to do with the need to address problemsin NIgeria not liquidation. I wish to comment on the little i learnt in your reply.

1) The issue of liquidation is perhaps the one option that must NOT be considered. I say this for many reasons but two are worth mentioning here. One, the chaos that will result from the whole scale movement of people from one part of the nation to the other. and two, what is to become of assets jointly owned by all Nigerians but located in certain regions- like the Abuja Stadium or the Apapa port.  

2) As you said, ".... if you can still remember, Cross River state got 9 billion Naira from the federal government's coffers while the six North Eastern states, combined, could not get up that amount". I am sure you can see what this means. The N-Easterners are not making effort to generate revenue internall. They wait for the FG hand-out and then instead of building schools, they buy limos for Emirs and Chiefs.

This is a very serious issue which many try to wish away with talks of the groundnut pyramids, cotton and leather. If all the arable land in the North were cultivated with cash crops, it would not earn as much as the sum total of what petro-dollars fetch Nigeria today. Let me give you an example. Ghana is the second largest producer of Cocoa today. Last year they had a bumper harvest. The sum total of waht they earned from that is $1 billion. About 1/20 th of what Nigeria earns from crude annually. There is no basis for comaprison. Just thinbk about it.

3) The problem with Nigeria has more to do with mis-management than structure. Imagine what will happen if all the allocations to Kano or Katsina were utilized effectively. Even if Nigeria were liquidated today, who will be the leaders of the emerging system? Answer: the same crop of corrupt politicians we have in Abuja today. They will not hesitate to bleed Sokoto or Maiduguri dry as they have done Nigeria.

I have to go to class now.....................................

[_Waziri_]

Amin,

I think it is better to save yourself and myself sometime by going back to read the whole of the article ,not minding its length. Perchance you may see that some of the basic questions you raised in your reply were properly adressed in the article. By doing so you will save me the trouble of duplicating my ideas on this thread of which I believe were sufficiently articulated in the article.

You know time is money as you observed.

[alhaji_aminu]

salam
yallabai waziri, na yarda. i'll do my best to read what I can....

[Maqari]

Friends

I find it of a necessity to make clear from the onset of my presentation that the views I hereby present although antithetical in nature are not structured or aimed to counter Mr. Waziri?s thesis as a whole. Its rather a deeper look into certain key elements that his argumentation is built on. a task that requires covering some of the material covered by the scolar.

There is no need to repeat ad nauseam that in the history of man and his social structure crisis have occurred  both within and between cultures (about which I shall discuss later) stemming from various factors at diverse times and locations, and while geopolitical strategists and scholars proceed to study and seek solutions alongst the fault lines they seldom confront the contradicting items within their premises which wide?ranges from their own loyalty to a certain doctrinal and ideological consensus such as ?the US democracy? to the treatment of other remarkably relevant factors like socio-economical disparities as if they ware mere nuances (which I suspect has something to do with their belonging to the more privileged social class).

In the summer of 1993 appeared in an article of  Foreign Affairs  a literary work prepared by Samuel Huntington the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Director of Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, a position he often used to passionately defend economical and ideological aspirations of the United States. The article itself was a product of the Olin Institute?s project on? The Changing Security Environment and American National Intrest? in the early 1990?s. there from this hypotheses sprang a clan of scholars that will attempt to have us convinced that: conflict between civilisations will be the latest phase in evolution of conflict in the modern world. Of course there ware earlier formulated works of the same trend in print before Huntington?s perhaps the most significant or at least notable of them being  the works of Robert W Tucker titled ?Oil: The Issue of American Intervention? published in a January 1975?s article of  commentary followed by another article in March under the title ?The United States in Opposition? by Daniel P Moynihan. neither author however (as Waziri observes) achieved the internationally acclaimed success that did the work of Huntington

Huntington pretended to proliferate an image of what the crisis in the modern societies will stem from dividing in the process, the world into ?Occidental? and ?Oriental? both of which only exist in theory. Ascribing entire continents  confected identities, one noteworthy point is that neither Huntington nor those scholars that emulate him afterwards ware to ever concretely define any of the civilizations in a perceptible manner,  they simply categorized them into Villages, regions, ethnic groups nationalities, and religious groups, identified under one monolithic body with  very poor attention to the number of existing crisis within these so called civilizations A Chinese was simply a Confucian,  a Trini an Anglophobe Caribbean, and an Islamic is Arab, Turkic, or Malay and although to his credit Huntington commented on the issue of economic modernization (whatever that implies) and social change  throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local identities?, and that conflicts and violence occur between groups within the same civilisation, such conflicts, however, he added , are likely to be less intense and less likely to expand.that is less than one paragraph buried halfway into the telling of a grander propaganda, Huntington did not omit any facts which might have lead him to a faulty conclusion nor did he blatantly lie about the degrees of fragmentation within his subjects. what he did was apply the oldest trick in intellectual traditions he swiftly mentioned the truth then moves on to other things that better contribute to his premise both lying and omission pose the threat of discovery which might arose the reader to rebel against the writer. Huntington swiftly stated the facts  then buried them in a mass of other information, a jargon of vacuous vocabulary, as if saying to us quiet casually: Yes, there exist many other syncoronies and causes of crisis within the modern society but that should matter very little to you, it should participate only as a mere fact not to be considered or weighed  in your final conclusions. That when formulating our own premise we should restrict our thoughts to the confines of this generic identity he so attributed to  us.

The problem with this trajectory and the frameworks that surround it is that: it engenders more fear and less knowledge about the irreconcilability between certain cultures, it did not provide any substantial accommodation for the vast number of sub-division within the cultures at discourse.it regarded the various groups of multinationals that formed the the versatile societies of both his ?Occident? and the ?Orient? with alarming indifference. And perhaps the most outstanding contradictory item of the hypothesis being its failure to deal with the double binding issues of its subject proficiently. No example is readier a candidate than that of the conflict between the state of Israel and the occupied territories of Palestine because in accordance with Huntington?s definition of civilization they both fell on the other side of his iron wall the ?wrong side? that is. this unwarranted radical assumption I believe was amplified by either the writer?s lack of any substantial knowledge of the diversity of disparities in the modern society or negligence of it to uphold certain values of the geopolitical and economical elites either way he implemented that the public shall submit their will and acquiesce in his redefinition of the world. And as Edward  Said  puts it in his equally acclaimed not so celebrated response:?as if every Muslim and every Westerner ware watertight little containers of civilizational identity, doomed to endless self-replication?,  as if we can readily equate America  West or their goals with a Corporate CEO member of a Hilton Head South Carolina golf club in the same breath as we do an unemployed Housing Project resident of Newark New Jersey. Are we to affirm we will then also equate the East or Islam (with No distinction whatsoever) with every Arab Asian or a farmer from Katsina. Huntington asserts: ? A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species? I argue that the ability to reason formulate and intelligibly communicate logical solutions with a sense of responsibility is what distinguishes us from other species.

In the relentless forward march of history,  Man has conflicted and fought almost about everything
From ethno ideological to geographical from absolute to constitutional monarchs, from princes to nation states, within and between cultures, still certain scholars  try to find yet another reason for for humanity to conflict. Allow me a much needed Caesurae here to observe both the evolution of crisis and cultivation of  alternative ethos within a so called ?culture? our own.

ISLAM
1. 656 AD. A  mere 32 years after the start of  the Islamic calendar marks the out brake of the first Civil War within the religion crisis that ware fueled by  the murder of Uthman Ibn Affan (the 3rd caliph) and over succession which led to the premier fraction of Islam into the Sunni and Shi?ite, thus began the history, a millenia and a half ago, of  crisis within Islam. a series of violent encounters between the two factions became recurrent until the notorious tussles of 661 dramatically changed the course of  events. The Assassination of Ali Ibn Abi Talib yet another caliph , the refusal of Hassan (the oldest of his two sons) to claim his natural role as a successor, plus the simmering theological debates over doctrines played a major role in the coup like transition of power to Muawiyya Ibn Abi Sufyan governor of  Syria and parts of Mesopotamia, relocating the caliphate to Damascus, marking the beginning of the Umayyad rule, ( the first dynasty within Islam )  witnessing a return to leadership role of the social elite of the pre-Islamic Arabia, and rejuvenation of tribal loyalties and alliances (for many generations the  Banu Ummaya constituted the higher stratum Meccan elite) with the death of Mu?awiyya in (680) his successor Yazid encountered a daring Shi?ite insurgency headed by Husain (second son of Ali) which led to the infamous battle of Karbala and eventual martyrdom of Hussain. it was under the Umayyads or namely Abd al -Malik that Islam underwent its first major administrative reform witch included conversion of bureaucratic policies from Greek to Arabic, and minting of the new Arabic currency. With that accomplished the stage was set for new territorial expansion in Asia and Africa under Walid II (705-715) .

2. This expansion however had its price, with new territory comes new societies thus new ?identities? consisting of  substantial classes of non tribal Muslims who ware then referred to as the Mawali ,plural of  Maula which literary translates as: the ?appointed?  this new identity subsequently became the base of recruitment and support for anti-umayyad movements the most notable of which was the Abbasids.

3. (749-750). Under the ingenious leadership of Abu Muslim both by Subversive political and religious agitation, in the first organised revolution within Islam The house of Abd ar-Rahman raised the black banners of the Abbasids in defiance of the ruling Umayyads. After the almost complete extermination of the Umayyads, the surviving few shepherd by Abd ar-Rahman ad-Adakhli made exhiled to Spain and re-establish an Umayyad dynasty in Cordoba (780-1031). Meenwhile in Arabia the capital of Islam was moved from Damascus to Baghdad and years to follow  turned out to be quite untraditional instead of yet another fragmentation as any ardent pragmatist would assume Islam was transformed for the fist time from an Arab faith into a multiethnic, cosmopolitan religion. The early years of the Abbasid ware animated with brilliance and progress, the Islamic capital rose to true splendor under the likes of Harun Rashid and his son Mamun. this lasted less than a century before the abbasid rule started slowly declining. and from assasination, desposition, to increse of turkish army disturbance the Abbasid rule became mainly spiritual breaking the empire into autonomous units, The Caliphate relocated to Samarra and stayed their until( 892).

4.the following year an adjacent Caliphate established itself in  North Africa its none other than the Fatimids who claim to deserve the caliphate on basis of descent from Fatima. Inspired by Said ibn Husayn a follower mobilized the Berbers to Rebel against the Sunni Aghalibs they took Tunisia, NE Algeria, NW Libya, and Sicily,Said Ibn Husayn was later captured by the governor of Tripoli (903) after being freed by Al Shi?i ( whom he later executed) Hussayn takes the name of Al-Mahdi Obaidallah and sets the mark of rivalry with the  Abbasids that was to strech  centuries. Somewhere along the line as casualtis mount the two caliphates broke the long standing policy and started employing foreign mercenary troops, this dirctly leads us to the Mamluks

5. The Mamluks ware first employed by the Abbasids in the 9th century, they ware slave boys trained as cavalry soldiers and converted to Islam, the sooner the Mamluks  ware used within the Islamic armies the faster they spread within its rank and in a clasical ?slave own master? style (as Waziri noted )they took the empire from predominantly Arab control in (1250) when Aybak persuaded  the mother of the last Ayyubid sultan to marry him after she poisoned her son. And since the Mamluks ware free of tribal and ethnic affiliations respect for hereditary principle in the selection of rulers Became scant. The Mamluks consist of  two seprate dynasties, the Bahris (1250-1382), ultimately, Turks and Mongols, and the Burjis (1382-1516 ) mainly Circassians from the garrison of Cairo. They ruled from Egypt until late 15th  century when undermining the ottoman power they got involved in a war and lost.

6. Any student of Islamic history would be tempted when dicussing  the Ottoman empire to at least comment on the great expansion period. marked by the seige on the crusading army under Ladislaus III at Varna (1444) and amplified by the capture of Costantinople in 1453 placing the oldest surviving empire in mainland Europe in the hands of Muslims. however, doing that will force us to discuss crisis that did not take place within Islam. This leaves us with a a boring series of bureaucratic crisis In  progress of decay after Sulayman's death, the clergy ( ulema ) and the Janissaries gained power and engaged profound corruption and perhaps ?the next big thing? was, the birth of Wahabism in Arabia in the 18th  century and the largely successful campaign of the egyptian general Ibrahem Pasha  against them. The years between 1839 and 1876 witnessed both important civil reforms and the rise of the liberal party headed by Mithat Pasha, who later framed a liberal constitution presented at the opening of the turkish parliament in 1877 ( the sultan dismissed it).

7. (1908) in one desperate final attempt at reform a 288-man Ottoman Parliament was elected. By then 25 percent of the population under the Muslim empire ware not of the Islamic faith. oblivious to the authorities in Costantinople a group of young people in Salonika ,( the not so turkish Macedonian por t) ,calling themselves the CUP and more widely referred to as ? the young Turks? , a group of nationalist reformists, led by Mehmet Talat and Enver pasha plotted a Revolution. The sultan sent troops to silent them but the toops joined the rebels, and took controll of the Telegraph Office. This plus the crumpling blows the empire took from the Italian and Balkan Wars 1909-1912 brought the gigantic Islamic empire to its end, And on July 29th 1914 Winston Churchill gave the order that finally sealed its fate.

I have only talked about one ?culture? thus far and am already exausted by the degrees of doctrinal, ethnic, and ideological fragmentation within it. this applies to evey single one of the so called ?major civilization? infact none fought amongst themselves more than the ?West?, Nations of Europe fought one another for centuries, they fought one another in Europe, and fought abroad, same goes for The Americas. to claim that my summery of crisis within Islam is free of selection, simplifications, and emphasis,(all of which are inevitable in intellectual discourse) will be repeating the same error commited by Huntington, cept that my selections came from a technical necessity whereas his are ideological derived from the tendency to standardize and stereotype.

It?s  inargurable that the conciousness of  people about certain aidentity does not in anyway determine or underline their material existance, its then the will of a person to identify, or not, with his/her social surroundings and a personal decision to participate in its customs that determines ones culture Not a fated genetic composition.

To identify with a single dominant cultural identity we need to fist establish or at least define one
If we are to assume that we can take apart the components of culture as an entity we will face a pile of  very abstract and objective elements, ie. history, religion,language,institutions and customs, each in its own variation. these elements individually do not provide any guidance to the source of the conflict between cultures for there is no religious doctorine that sanctified conflict nor are we to ever find in the recorded history of man a passage that identifies language as a conflicting factor,and ?History is the memory of states? as wrote Henry Kissinger in his book, A World Restored, this will subsequently lead us back to the hard fact that culture as an entity can not be defined objectively as conflicts emerge doing so however will involve subjecting it to a perpetual dissectioning for if we are to repeatedly embattle crisis by exclusion of the ?problem? or the apparent aberration we will eventually be left with hardly nothing to divide as problems are to inevitably continue to arise as they have in the past, both  recent and ancient.
 

Peace,One
Al-Maqri III

[_Waziri_]

Tahiyyatiy Al-Islam,

Though I can understand the submission of my brother to be NOT a counter to my thesis as a whole but "rather a deeper look into certain key elements that" my "argumentation is built on". I  here aim at making it clear that my work is never in anyway built on the arguments of Hutington as expounded in his celebrated work, The Clash of Civilisations and Remaking of World order. which the whole submission of my brother appeared to be reviewing.

It can be understood from a simple reading of my article that it only made reference to Hutington's recent work. I only  qualified him further with reference to an earlier work which Br. Maqari reviewed.

The central argument in my work DID not give exclusion to occurence of conflicts in Northern Nigeria be it among partners, Nuclear or extended Family, groups or corporate organisations, when we form our country. NO. But my points underline the need to have these conflicts in a viable polity streamlined and reduced to minimal level possible enough to ensure the survival of a Country as is obtained in every developed country in the world.

In this we can recall that no political entity ever survived, in the history of the world without its people or leadership identifying wholly with some basic symbols, believing in some common values and defining their worldview in some common paradigm.

This has been true with every nation past or present but our dear Nigeria and and handful of other African countries.

[mlbash]

that was an excellent, very exaustive and concise post! well..............let's just pray for the betterment of our great nation, for that even if we split up; to ba girin-girin ba, tai mai!

[_Waziri_]

mlbash thanks for d compliments. and for your observation, I think the issue is not that of ba gringirin ba tai mai. But the issue is what will become of Nigeria if we continue to keep it? Can it make the mai? Or how much mai has it made  so far?

Afterall prayer enough cannot help matters unless some fine structure is there to support the prayer.

[mrguest]

The issue is not the fault line, but way forward.. that why I believe people like IBB and buhari and others who have been in govt in the past should not be allow to run... they are greed men looking for power and money...









listen to nigeria radio and watch television live

http://nigeriaplanet.tk


listen to nigeria radio and watch television live

http://nigeriaplanet.tk

[mrguest]

The issue is not the fault line, but way forward.. that why I believe people like IBB and buhari and others who have been in govt in the past should not be allow to run... they are greed men looking for power and money...









listen to nigeria radio and watch television live

http://nigeriaplanet.tk


listen to nigeria radio and watch television live

http://nigeriaplanet.tk

[_Waziri_]

mrguest,

Your options in this debate are limited. If you insist that some individuals like IBB and Buhari are the Nigeria's only problem you then have to do some logical proving to that effect.

I maintained in the article above that the elites have never been the problem of Nigeria but Nigeria itself.