Saudi Arabia, the quintessential Sunni Wahabbhi country, wants to modernise according to reports credited to Prince Faisal Al-Turki, one of the rising stars of that desert kingdom.
This modernisation has to come with a lot of sneer from outsiders because the Sharia fire that raged across 12 states of Northern Nigeria in the late 1990s and early 2000s had the veiled imprimatur of Saudi Arabia. This country’s banks and charities, and of course Osama bin Laden because it was Mr. bin Laden who kick-started Boko Haram by donating $1.5 million to the madrassa or donated to the country by late Boko Haram founder, Yusuf Mohammed around 2001; in fact, some of these Saudi banks and charities are currently being sued in the US for surreptitiously contributing to the terror acts of September 11, 2001. All over the world, Saudi Arabia pours the equivalent of billions of naira annually into charities and madrassas that promote anti-education and anti-modernisation points-of-view and out of these charities and madrassas have arisen Islamic enforcers like Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Jaeesh-e-Muhammed, Daeesh, etc. Not until President Donald Trump breathed down the neck of the Saudis and publicly denounced their support for some of these charities and madrassas did the Saudis realise that there is a new Sheriff in town, as a matter of speaking; coupled with the falling price of oil, the Saudis are touting modernising. President Donald Trump has indicated a willingness to support the class action lawsuit by the families of the victims of the terror acts of September 11 2001 against the government of Saudi Arabia that invested so much in the US bond market; Saudi Arabia cannot take that money out of the US economy and the country is left with no alternative than to modernise.
Prince Al-Turki’s vision for the Saudi Arabia of the future that would have divested in tourism, weapon manufacturing, maritime affairs, etc., left some of us wondering about the teeming horde of Nigerians who have been convinced to forego Western education and the good life thereof by the implicit support of Saudi Arabia these past 17 to 19 years (Sharianchi) and these past 31 to 33 years (Wahabbhism or Izalanchi). Some of us are still wondering why the Saudis do not send missionaries to live in places like Northern Nigeria that has been under a religious yoke for too long; it is the fallout of this yoke that bothered Amir Lamido Sanusi Lamido who is in a position to make objective comparison because he has travelled to Saudi Arabia and other cities in the Middle East quite often; in the mind of this Amir, how come the religious injunctions that are holding his subjects back over here in Northern Nigeria are not holding the Arabs of Dubai, etc., back? And we observers may ask, what happens to Northern Nigeria if Saudi Arabia modernises according to the terms of Donald Trump and leaves Arewa behind?
Sunday Adole Jonah writes Minna, Niger State