Kano State: The fire next door

I was 11 years old by December 1980 when Kano, the city of my birth, witnessed unprecedented violence, triggered by a religious sect. Living in Nassarawa GRA with my parents, not far away from the state police headquarters, I was a witness to tens of trucks, filled with well-armed policemen passing by our house on Race Course Road, moving to the inner city, to confront the troublemakers.
A certain individual, going by the name Muhammadu Marwa, had become so deeply entrenched in Kano society that his patrons included the high and the mighty in the state and even beyond. He was a powerful marabout possessing a lot of powers. The authorities elected to look the other way, even as the man’s preachings were increasingly veering off course. It was always inciting and full of venom. Before long, the people nicknamed him Maitatsine, roughly meaning the one who curses. The man had no iota of respect for constituted authorities, and was fond of daring the police and the army.
By the time Maitatsine was vanquished, he was responsible for the killing of approximately 5,000 innocent people, though the figure included some of his followers. He also died as a result of injuries inflicted in him by the armed forces. It was the first time Kano witnessed a religious crisis of such a significant proportion.
Incidentally, the man was not even a Nigerian. He was from the Republic of Cameroon, but soon became more powerful than almost everyone in Kano, his adopted state.
Though the authorities succeeded in killing Maitatsine, the years that followed saw Kano becoming rather volatile, erupting in conflagration virtually at the slightest prompting.
It took the coming of Malam Ibrahim Shekarau as Governor in 2003 to return Kano to the peaceful path, with his pet project, A DAIDAITA SAHU that dwelt so much in socially re-orienting the public. The people were made to see non indigenes as their guests, and reminded that even the Holy Prophet of Islam lived in peace with Christians.
Fast-forward to July 2009, when Boko Haram, the small group that metamorphosed to a terrorist group of global standing, took up arms against the Nigerian State. The group was founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002, and just as in the case of Maitatsine in Kano, Mohammed Yusuf had become a powerful marabout. Some powerful Muslim and Christian leaders were said to be his patrons, and politicians were clinging to him because of the huge following he was able to garner through incendiary preachings that were altogether anti-establishment.
After an incident in which deciples of Yusuf were subjected to excessive use of force by the Nigerian police, the group launched attacks on police posts and other government installations. It was preceded by very harsh remarks by Mohammed Yusuf, and I recall wondering where the man drew his audacity, warning the armed forces and threatening fire and brimstone, the same way Maitatsine was doing in Kano years earlier.
A few years later, largely owing to indifference by the civil authorities of that era, Boko Haram grew in leaps and bounds to become a monster that has killed more people than any other single group in Nigeria’s history. What started like a joke grew to in proportions, so much that the group was once rated as the deadliest terror group known to the whole world.
Then the year of the Lord 2021. And you know what? The same Kano State again. Forty one years after Maitatsine had been vanquished, a certain cleric, this time born and bred in the ancient city, is coming up with a strategy that threatens to beat the record set by the Cameroonian born firebrand. On YouTube and other social media channels, videos of the cleric promising fire and brimstone, and even of him asking his followers to slaughter anyone who opposes them, are everywhere.
God so kind, the state government has barred this cleric from preaching, and directed all media houses to give him a blackout, the same type that this column has always insisted we need against Boko Haram. This cleric was clearly enjoying the attention and large followership he was getting. The media was giving him a lot of coverage, and he was digging deeper in his trenches, from a jolly good peaceful fellow to a firebrand whose preachings could set northern Nigeria’s biggest state on serious conflagration.
It is hoped that to avert another Maitatsine or Boko Haram, the authorities will, beyond rhetoric, ensure the man’s growing wings are clipped. Of course there are elements in government who may be interested in the large followership this cleric had already amassed, for political capital. It is therefore up to the Kano elite to ensure the right thing is done, before it is too late.