Muslim clerics and Muslim president

The voice of Northern Nigeria, Daily Trust newspaper, reported on Wednesday last week that more than 1,000 Islamic clerics met in Kano and warned Muslims against re-electing President Bola Tinubu next year unless his administration changed its economic policies. They cited hardship, unemployment, killings and kidnappings and blamed everything on the Lion of Bourdillon.

The northern call, the newspaper said, was contained in a communique issued after a national conference on “An Assessment of the State of the Nation under President Tinubu and the 2027 General Elections,” held in Kano on the Sunday before yesterday.

“Are the clerics real, not some anonymous persons?” I asked my friend at Daily Trust.

“Read our story. They are prominent clerics. And dons,” he replied.

I went back and read the story to the end. And there they were. Among those who reportedly presented papers at the conference are Dr Abdulmuddalib Ahmad Gidado, Prof Muhd Muslim Ibrahim, Sheikh Kabir Bashir Abdulhamid, Dr Aminu Isma’il Sagagi, Dr Najibullah Abdallah Nuhu, Sheikh Abdurrazaq Uba Musa, Sheikh Musa Muhd Ɗan Kwano, Brr El-Zubair, Dr Yahuza Getso, Prof Ibrahim Siraj Adhama, Dr Umar Dokaji and Sheikh Muhd Sani Khamis (Abu Haisam).

Check each of the names. I did some digging into them. They carry enough weight to overload the fragile neck of any bumbling government. A thousand wise men is a mouthful anywhere. Who assembled the clerics and how were they counted? Even if I doubted the number on the floor, the roll call at the high table should silence the doubting Thomas in me.

You don’t tell the king that his mother is a witch. But what can Tinubu do to the clerics who have drawn the battle line with his lion? Nothing. He cannot rebuke them as his government tongue-lashed the Catholic bishops who recently spoke of anguish, misery and deprivation. The bishops, we were told, overstepped their bounds. But these Muslim clerics? If they were Yoruba, we would call them aṣèmólù—those who transgress and get away with it.

And they have guts. Nobody down south would dare say what they said the way they said it, at least not in the present climate of conquest. Wisdom is if you are president of Nigeria and you want to test the patience of clerics, go south. If you must go North, do not choose the Muslim North for your experiment. Even a wayward dog should know that fire is no playground.

Wise presidents understand that northern Muslim clerics are no audience for games they do not approve. Even Lugard, after his military conquest of the Muslim north a century and 23 years ago, had to assure the ancestors of today’s clerics that his government would not interfere with their lives run through their religion. “All men are free to worship God as they please, mosques and prayer places will be treated with respect by us,” Lugard declared after the defeat of Sokoto in March 1903. He also promised not to interfere with Shari’a, except on matters such as slavery, which would be gradually abolished. Margery Perham has that in her ‘Lugard: The Years of Authority.’

Historians should help me test that treatment with southern Nigeria experience. The British did make concessions to the South: their 1893 treaty recognised Egba independence, but that was a guarantee they later cast aside. On 8 August, 1914, British troops massacred people at Ijemo, Abeokuta, under Lugard’s administration. Lugard subsequently used the crisis as an excuse to extinguish Egba independence. Complicated contrast. After conquering Sokoto, Lugard considered an explicit assurance of respect for the people’s way of life necessary to consolidate his victory. In Abeokuta he had no kind words for the conquered.

Tinubu’s chief campaigner for 2027, Abdulaziz Yari, told State House correspondents on Friday that the president had performed very well and that his policies were making life better for Nigerians. The people were happy, he said and added that Tinubu enjoyed solid support in more than 10 northern states. The North has 19 states; Yari did not name those he counted as solid for his mentor. Now, between Yari and the dissenting clerics, who is telling the truth? Between the campaigner and the rebellious sheikhs, who controls the streets?

Tinubu has undoubtedly spent the past three years and four months pocketing Nigeria, North and South. But wise conquerors know the limits of their victory. They know where power must stop and restraint must begin. The British recognised that boundary in their dealings with colonial Nigeria’s Muslim North. Read the qualification in the emirs’ oath of allegiance to the British crown: “I swear in the name of Allah, and of Mohamed, His Prophet, to well and truly serve His Majesty King Edward VII and his Representative, the High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria, to obey the laws of the Protectorate and the lawful commands of the High Commissioner and the Resident, provided that they are not contrary to my religion…” This is quoted in Flora S. Lugard’s ‘A Tropical Dependency.’ The emirs’ oath pledged service to King Edward VII and obedience to colonial laws and commands, but ended with a reservation: “provided that they are not contrary to my religion.” The emirs lost the war but retained a shield in their faith.

Both sides kept the promise; their descendants are keeping it. Jonathan Reynolds, in “Good and Bad Muslims: Islam and Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria” (2001), shows how far British anxiety drove colonial accommodation of our Muslim north. He writes: “The British even presented themselves, at the level of propaganda, as ‘surrogate Muslims.’ During the First World War, fearing that the Ottoman government, which had sided with Germany in 1914, might foment rebellion among Muslims in Nigeria, the colonial government published articles in the Nigeria Gazette describing Britain as ‘the greatest Mohammedan Power in the World’ and expressing regret over hostilities with the Ottoman Empire.”

What should that history teach Tinubu and all those who inherited the power wielded by the British in Nigeria?

Every mad dog should know how to keep its distance from fire.

Bola Tinubu’s deft moves got him the North and its votes as a trophy in 2023. But under him, Nigeria is in the throes of mass suffering. And, hardship, like rebuke, hits some people harder than others. The North, long burdened by self-induced poverty, appears more devastated than the South. My northern friends describe their streets as swamps of misery, where every step is a struggle. The politics of the region’s response is, therefore, understandably charged. Perhaps this explains why sheikhs whose gaze should reach beyond this life have stepped out of the veil into undisguised partisanship. They probably thought (and may still think) that a northern president would ease their suffering. Their Buhari had eight years. He gave them no reprieve.

So, less than 24 hours after the Muslim clerics’ anti-Tinubu resolution became public, the Federal Government announced a petrol price discount plus some other ‘positive’ measures that sounded like a direct response to the demands of the northern men of God.

The Federal Government, of course, gave no hint that the clerics had forced its hand. It simply presented the petrol discount as manna from heaven.

Whatever it is, the sudden U-turn (if it was a U-turn) on petrol price invites a reading of power through Machiavelli’s spectacles. Machiavelli said a prince must avoid whatever makes him hated or contemptible. Above all, he must not be rapacious or violate the property and honour of his subjects. I pity Tinubu; I do not pity him. Like France’s Louis XVI, he does not care. Indeed, who cares if Olúgbón meets the dawn in pieces; let Arẹ̀sà’s day break in pain. As long as the president and his clan live in comfort, nothing spoil.

A ruler that will have tomorrow should pay attention when suffering begins to harden into political rejection. People whose livelihoods are secure may tolerate much; those whose means of survival are threatened have reasons to turn against their ruler.

The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, announced at a press briefing in Abuja on Thursday that the government would sell petrol at discounted prices. He said: “We are offering a discount on petrol dispensed by NNPC Limited for the next 30 days in the first instance with priority for public transporters nationwide. So, it’s not a subsidy, government is just saying we sell to you at cost.” Whatever name the government gave the concession, the political question remains: will 30 days of cheaper petrol answer the grievances of people who meet hunger on the road and kidnappers along it? And on the thirty-first day, what happens? Will hunger take its leave and kidnappers retire? Or will the world end before the discount expires?

George Orwell in his 1946 essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’ said “political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” The discount talk did that; and more. Last Friday, the pharmacy of the Federal Government ran out of efficacious drugs; it came back with more explanations on the balm it is offering for petrol hardship. Tinubu’s medicine got a new name: “price modulation.” Minister Oyedele said what the government did was no return to subsidy; he said it was “price modulation.”

Time present is contained in time past. That is my adaptation from what T. S. Eliot wrote in ‘Burnt Norton’. In December 2015, Ibe Kachikwu, Buhari’s minister of state for petroleum resources, told a joint committee of lawmakers: “I have since left the dictionary of subsidy by going to price modulation which is a bit more technical.” Thus began our schooling in “price modulation.” There have been other terms and terminologies. Along the rough road, we encountered “under-recovery” and “value shortfall.” Now we are told that those were accounting descriptions of subsidy costs, while “price modulation” describes a pricing policy. Indeed, time past is time present. The modulated phrase has returned under Tinubu, but they say we must not mistake the babies for identical twins. Same name, same APC parents, different children. Confusion jam confusion.

Words are not the only weapons fashioned by the Tinubu government against the petrol buyer. It also uses maths, arithmetic, seemingly simple figures. The same last Friday on Channels Television’s Politics Today and at a briefing in Abuja, Oyedele argued: “N1,400 a litre today and N1,400 tomorrow is better than N1,500 today and N1,300 tomorrow, because volatility itself adds to uncertainty and cost.”

Did the man listen to himself? For the minister and his boss, I did the maths. Let x be today’s price and y tomorrow’s price. In both cases, x + y = ₦2,800. So, what are we saying? Buy one litre each day and the same ₦2,800 leaves your pocket. Joseph Heller gave us Catch-22. Tinubu and his minister have given us Catch-₦2,800. The price may stand still or dance palongo, the hardship remains.

So, for anyone buying litres of petrol with tears each day, the price arrangements Oyedele compared both drill the same hole in the pocket: the size is N2,800. Certainty and predictability of price may help households plan, but they do not make the product affordable. What the minister explained and celebrated was “stability.” I cannot read “relief” in his grammar? Does “modulation” ease the pain or merely make anguish sound pleasurable? Exactly as Orwell warned, the government has given hardship a singing, sweet-sounding name.

Pan, the Greek god, was half-man, half-goat where he reigned in remote forests and mountains. He played his pipes, took his naps and let out sudden, terrifying cries that sent herds stampeding. From his name descended the English word “panic.” You enter panic mode when fear overruns calm reasoning. Tinubu appears to be there. Last week’s hurried response to the anger of petrol prices suggested a government rattled by public rage over the cost of almost everything, and by its own deepening unpopularity. And the world has noticed.

On October 1, 2026, British magazine, The Economist, published a report with a title that offered little comfort to either the presidency or the baying opposition: “Nigerians dislike their president, but may re-elect him anyway.” The report identified the economic pain of Tinubu’s policies and worsening insecurity as sources of public discontent.

Coincidentally, on the day the British magazine published its report, President Tinubu blew his own trumpet in his Independence Day broadcast: “Our reforms did not create the weaknesses in our economy. They confronted them.” Days later, one of his spokespersons directly attacked the magazine’s assessment, saying it “smells of opposition and is riddled with inconsistencies.”

Who will tell the president that confronting an ailment is no achievement if the encounter leaves the sick sicker? I won’t be the one to tell him that the “weaknesses in our economy” have been further worsened by a government whose head is buried deep in the skies.

So, the northern clerics protesting against hardship and insecurity have every right to speak. I am with them; I feel them as I felt the bishops. A preacher should not look into the faces of hungry worshippers and pretend that all they need is sermons of surrender and servile lines of ‘On Your Mandate’. Nor should he bury victims of violence in mass graves and remain silent about the failure to protect them.

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Muslims, Christians and people of no religion should have no problem in taking a stand on matters of bad governance and its consequences. They should never be seen doing like the “mugwumps,” who perched on the fence with a leg dangling on either side.

More importantly, the president’s family and friends should tell him the truth about what his policies are doing to ordinary Nigerians. He clearly needs help and he should seek real help from real people. Nigerians of all classes are down and out; their sheep has shifted and shifted and has hit the wall. Knee-jerk price discounts, born of panic and dressed as relief, will not soothe that anger. They are already complicating matters.

With the Muslim north, politics does not rain, it pours. I read somewhere last night that some people marched somewhere in Kano on Sunday chanting against the government. Those around the president may tell him not to bother, because the marchers do not matter: he has the police, the army and, they may have even clinked glasses with him over an INEC interlocking fingers with the courts to clear his path to an uncontested victory next year. But, as I warned some weeks ago, some victories defeat the victor.