As usual I stumbled on this picture among others on the Nigerian blogosphere yesterday and bypassed it because I saw it as a publicity stunt for APC and Buhari, just like the ones he took during his electioneering campaigns. Buhari, who campaigned mostly in the southern part of the country where he amassed chieftaincy titles, posed for photos with males and females of the Nigerian electorates and even had hand shakes with them. Those pictures of handshakes, though there is nothing wrong with them, are part of the propaganda and publicity stunt, everyone knows that. They formed part of public relations package for Buhari. His handlers tried using them to polish his image from that held popularly as ethnic and religious bigot to a self-proclaimed new convert to democracy and nationalist.
However, all of a sudden, posts about the same picture started popping up on my news feed, and I was reading a lot of arguments and counter arguments on whether or not Buhari should shake hands with Oshiomhole’s bride. I saw the raging arguments on several threads notably those of us from the Northern part of the country. Honestly, the arguments were between the Muslim fundamentalists who thought it was haram for Buhari to shake hands with a non-related female versus the liberal ones who saw nothing wrong with it.
Though, I was taken aback, I must state that the conversations were interesting since it caught my attention for a while. I tried to read as many opinions of the commenters on many threads as quick as possible. Seriously, I learnt more Koran and Islamic opinions from Muslims than I’d seen since the inception of the Nigerian blogosphere. Even during the Boko Haram’s insurgency, I didn’t see such a degree of Koranic quotations from the North that Boko Haram was a profit of Islam or not. Everyone of them kept mute on that, but used it instead as a tool against the Jonathan’s government.
Those against the handshake seemed to be those who voted Buhari because he’s a Muslim like them, not because they think he can change Nigeria or whatever. Religion was their one central consideration. The same set of fundamentalists are deeply disappointed because they thought Buhari would and should project the Islam of their own interpretations above every other secular considerations of his office.
These individuals are likely to be the source of trouble for Buhari in the days to come for the simple reason that they want to see Nigeria become islamized. One danger of electing a leader who is a cult figure with fanatical following in this time and age is about to unleash itself upon Nigeria in the form of unhappy followers.
Buhari is not yet officially in Aso Rock as the president, he has not even been sworn in yet some religious die-hards are bent on playing a religious card on whom he should and should not shake. It has to take an extraordinary degree of fanaticism and fundamentalism to see something wrong with this handshake.
It is no exaggeration to say that from 2003, the greater majority of Buhari’s followers have been the almajiri and other sectionally indoctrinated followers who were emboldened by his stance on Sharia, Northern Nigeria and other narrow, sectional issues. Imagine their disappointment that their beloved General, in their eyes, isn’t even following Sharia! That disappointment must have caught them from their skin and deeply into their bone marrow.
Who’s to be blamed for this?
The Northern elite are to blamed for this sort of religious charge against a president-elect in a modern, secular and democratic state. Over the decades, out of sheer reason of selfish aggrandizement, they permitted certain extremist ideas to take hold in the grassroots and if the fierce reactions against this mere handshake is anything to go by, they should be held responsible for its adverse outcomes.
When Mohammed Yusuf was going around telling people that Western education is haram, the Western-educated Northern elite did nothing to quell, quench and quash such a dangerous idea at its source. Today that idea has birthed a leviathan for which they turn round to harass and hold President Jonathan responsible for.
chidinmaonyejiuwa.com
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