Religious profiling: My close shave with death (I)

In December 2003, when Nigeria hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Abuja, something happened that nearly tragically ended my life.

As head of Daily Trust’s Foreign and Diplomatic desk I was saddled with the responsibility of ensuring sufficient and effective coverage of happenings during the event. So, even though much of my work was office-based I needed accreditation to give me access to places where most of the happenings were taking place.

On the eve of the opening of the event I went to the International Conference Centre, Abuja to be accredited. I was dressed in a white Jalabiya and a white cap to match. I was also bearded.

Although my beard had grown relatively bushy I did not think it would arouse any suspicion, regardless of my dressing.
However, as I walked into the centre towards the temporary offices made specifically for the event a mean-looking mobile policeman (MOPOL) wielding a gun bawled at me to stop. I obeyed without hesitation. But to my bafflement he had a finger on the trigger as he howled questions at me. I told him who I was and why I was there.

But my explanation made no sense to him as he kept moving his finger as if trying to pull the trigger. He did not demand to see my ID card, which was conspicuously on me. Clearly, he had profiled me and concluded that, by my physical appearance, I constituted a serious security risk and getting rid of me was a top priority.

It took the intervention of a plain-clothed officer to calm the irate policeman down to the point of taking his finger off the trigger. Even then he continued to bark at me, referring to my appearance, my religious identity as the trigger for his action. And if the officer that intervened had been as unreasonable I would be dead by now. It was such a close shave.
But that was not the first or last time I was profiled and harassed in Nigeria because of my Islamic identity. I vividly recall several other occasions; one was when I went to an eatery and wanted to know if the beef I had been served was halal. The waiter initially seemed shocked that I even asked the question. He then hissed and walked away without responding to my query. In order not to escalate the situation I paid for the food and left without touching it.
Another occasion was when I visited to during the inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2015. While I was in Abuja, after the inauguration, my good friend and sister Hajiya Rafat Idris invited me to her Radio House office for an interview. The last time I was in Radio House was many years back. So, I flagged down a taxi and requested to be taken there.
On arrival at the Radio House I spotted a notice at the entrance advising visitors to provide a valid proof of identity before being allowed entry. So, I stopped to search my backpack for my ID card. It did not occur to me that my presence had attracted an unbelievable attention. Even policemen at the entrance stared at me as some of the people around the gate hurriedly disappeared. It soon occurred to me I was being profiled, once again, due to my religious identity. But unlike my experience in 2003 I was also aware that there were genuine security concerns the activities of the terrorist Book Haram group had caused.
I could be mistaken for a suicide bomber or something worse. And as a preemptive action I could end up with a bullet in my head.
As this thought flashed through my head I didn’t know whether to approach the officers at the gate and show them my ID or simply turn back and leave. I chose to do the former but made sure I was clearly holding out my ID card, which was what cleared the suspicion and doused the tension and I was allowed into the building the building.
When I recounted my experience to Hajiya Rafat she asked if I was similarly subjected to such procedural and embarrassing profiling in the UK.
In the nearly one decade and a half I have lived in Britain I have not experienced a fraction of the traumatising profiling and mistreatment that I faced while in Nigeria because of my religion, apart from the general media profiling every Muslim suffers as a result of the activities of handful of deviant Muslims.
Each time I walked through security checks at Heathrow Airport my beard drew much less suspicion than it did on every occasion I was at any Nigerian port of entry. The Islamophobia calously directed at many of us, for which the Nigerian media is conspiratorial mute, is, to say the least, irritating. Once a rude security official at Nnamdi Azikiwe cracked an unwarranted, humourless and humiliating joke about my beard.
While in the UK subtle racial and religious profiling may not be uncommon, I remember many occasions when I thought I was treated with much more respect as British Muslim than I could ever hope for back home in Nigeria.
When I worked at City University London after completing my MA I realised that the only way I could attend weekly Friday Prayer was if I swapped my lunch break. So, each Friday I would skip my lunch at 12 noon and wait until 1:30 pm to attend Juma’a prayer. My manager, a non-Muslim, found out at some point and advised me to always have my lunch as well as my Friday prayer, adding on half an hour to my lunch break.
(To be continued)

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