I had already got the General Abdusalam to agree that after seeing the Governor, we would go into Southern Kaduna and he agreed. So, I followed up with meetings with a cross section of traditional rulers from Southern Kaduna to prepare the ground for the visit by the Committee. They were quite enthusiastic and the State Government gave us the necessary co-operation. Before the meeting, I went to the Emir of Jema’a again and asked him where he felt he would want the meeting to take place. He told me it really did not matter to him but that their meetings as traditional rulers were often held in the palace of the Chief of Kagoro who is their Senior. I asked him if he would be comfortable with the meeting holding there and he said yes. We did hold the meeting and he attended. It was a great meeting.
Next, we went on to Kafanchan same day and met with a cross section of leaders from Civil Society groups, CAN, JNI, etc. Everyone was quite delighted and offered very useful suggestions.
The NPC returned to Abuja, appraised its experiences and submitted a written report to the Governor. After over one year, later, the NPC received no official response from the State Government. It would not have been necessary to make this case but for the fact that there is need to set the records straight and respond to the allegations made by the Governor against religious and traditional leaders to the effect that they were somehow part of the problem. He may be right but the evidence before me leads to a different conclusion.
In his television programme on Channels Television during the crisis, the Governor of Kaduna State leveled two accusations against religious leaders whom he accused of selling a narrative what he called, a policy of exclusion. According to him, in his own words, these religious leaders wanted only people of a particular indigenous or religious group to live in parts of Southern Kaduna. Secondly, he said that some Church leaders had collected money from missionaries abroad to bury their dead and to rebuild thousands of Churches that had been destroyed.
I am not sure which religious leaders he was speaking of, but at least the two most prominent religious leaders in Southern Kaduna would be Bishop Bagobiri and the Emir of Jema’a. It is interesting that when the interviewer pressed the Governor for evidence on the grave and damaging allegations he had made against these leaders, he seemed rattled and simply said the security agencies were gathering the information and that people will soon be prosecuted. Elections are coming and still we have not commenced prosecution.
As I have said, my encounter and experience with both the Emir of Jema’a and Bishop Bagobiri led me to a totally different conclusion. The Emir of Jema’a called me a day after Bishop Bagobiri died. I was struck by the fact that rather than condole with me, he spoke of the loss of our dear brother, a good man, a friend and so on. It was a common loss for us. Southern Kaduna had been tensed and volatile, but I do know that both men had worked closely and were pained by the unnecessary losses of lives, violence and destruction. They deserved commendation not condemnation.
By his own admission, the Governor says that a thousand churches had been destroyed in Southern Kaduna and that people had lost their lives. His one grouse was that these leaders were collecting money from good wishers abroad to bury their people. This was a clear case of self-indictment by the Governor. First, did he expect that the people of Southern Kaduna would wait for him to come and supervise the mass burials of their people after burying the Shiites in mass graves? By casting aspersion on missionary assistance, the Governor betrays a troubling ignorance of the causes of the crises we have faced.
The work of missionaries may be a problem for him today, but for the people of Southern Kaduna, the message of Christ is steeped in their blood. Without the missionaries, they would be no better than slaves, mere beasts of burden. Without the missionaries, the history of northern Nigeria would pathetic and the region would still be in the dark ages. We in Southern Kaduna are proud of our Christian heritage. We will live by it, die for it if need be, but we are going nowhere. We are free citizens and not in bondage to anyone or institution.
We are proud of the freedom they gave us. They gave us a message of liberation, voice and the promise of a new life. The people of Southern Kaduna have embraced this gospel with its promise of a full life. There is neither retreat nor surrender because this is the faith of our fathers. It is given us the tools, the courage and the confidence we require to take our rightful place in our society.
Apart from the Barewa College, which other prominent institution in Kaduna state does not owe its origin to the missionaries? All the so-called Government schools in Kaduna State are products of the criminal and unjust take over of missionary schools by government. Sample the list of these schools: St. John’s College Kaduna, St. Paul’s, Wusasa, St. Enda’s Teachers’ College, Zaria, Mary’s College Fadan Kaje, St. Louis, Zonkwa, Sacred Heart Women Teachers’ College,
Kaduna, St. Anne’s Primary School, Queen of Apostles College, Kaduna, College of Mary Immaculate, Kafanchan, the ECWA Girls School in Kwoi, among many others. That you have repainted a stolen car does not make it your own.
Let me return to the issues of the day and try to end. Our country is in very serious crisis, the type of which we have never seen before. Death, destruction and destitution have become our lot and nowhere is this more expressed than in northern Nigeria. Today, Boko Haram and the herdsmen and farmers clashes are phenomena that are peculiar to the north and Islam. We cannot run away from this. It is sad that the northern Muslim elite has used religion to hold on to power to the detriment of even their own people and the larger society. For despite holding power for all these years, the north is still the poorest part of the country, nearly 15million Muslim children are on the streets with no future in sight, we are, as the Governor of Borno would say, the poster child of poverty.
The world is changing and we have a country to build. Even Usman Dan Fodio said that a society can live with unbelief, but no nation can survive with injustice. Bishop Bagobiri lived at a time when clearly, the foundation of unity and justice in Kaduna in particular and Nigeria in general seemed threatened. At Christmas last year, he appealed to his people to remain firm. He said in a message on December 24th, 2017: Despite the many constraints in the area of security; the growing debilitating poverty; un-precedent corruption and the piles of lies being bombarded on us daily, the word of the lord exhorts to be consoled and remain steadfast for the Lord’s visitation has come. As it is said, luxury and lies have huge maintenance cost, but truth and simplicity are self maintained without any cost. We should be consoled for Christ has visited his people. God in Christ is born to us in Nigeria today. Nigeria would be renewed from its current decay and recapture its lost glory again.
No religious leader worth his salt can stand by in the face of visible injustice. It will be a mortal sin. In 1878, Abraham Lincoln delivered what has come to be known as the house divided speech. America was on the verge of breaking up and he insisted that this must not happen. He said: I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The people of Southern Kaduna have suffered the injustice of deliberate exclusion from all the rungs of local and national politics. They have got to where they are now by the sweat of their brow. We do not ask for pity or sympathy from anyone. We have come so far, not through the state but in spite of the state in northern Nigeria. That is why, as you leave this stadium, whether you are going to Abuja, Jos, or Kaduna, please look left and right and note if you will see one single federal or major State government structure on the high way. All the structures you see as you drive along are the result of the sweat from the brow of our people. The federal and state governments are absent.
Bishop Bagobiri was in the middle of all this. He was a great pastor, a builder of human capital. He took over a very rural Diocese with 19 Parishes drawn from Jos and Kaduna Archdioceses. Today, he has 53 Parishes and about 120 Priests. Today, he has some of the best-trained priests in Nigeria and abroad. It is time for them to step up to make the required sacrifice to sustain his legacy. He made his contribution in the development of Southern Kaduna by trying to close the gap left by the neglect of the state and federal governments. He founded a Female Religious Congregation, a Monastery and a Tertiary institution, the St. Albert Institute. He deserves our appreciation and commendation. In real life, he had difficulties with many people including his colleagues. He was a man of strong convictions. Often, his convictions tended to blind him to other opinions, but he was a honest man at heart.
Thankfully, he had the chance to make peace with most of the constituencies he felt he had wronged. We thank God that it all ended well for him.
