Citizen Deborah: Victim of Dysfunctional State and Legal Order (1), By Onu John Onwe

On Thursday, May 11, 2022, Deborah Samuel, Nigerian citizen from Niger State and a student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto in Sokoto State was accused of blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed and lynched by burning right inside her school by her fellow students. Citizen Deborah is not the first victim of accusations of blasphemy against Islam and its Prophet and Holy Koran who has been visited with death in Nigeria. The interest this particular case has attracted so far sign-posts, perhaps Nigerians’ change of perception of religious fundamentalism, extremism and bigotry that have been the lot of those Christians and even Muslims that reside within Far-Northern states that tag themselves ‘Islamic’. There are many alleged pernicious acts and practices by individuals and states in the Far-Northern states which are clearly anti-religious freedoms and constitute clear violations of the decrepit constitutional framework that Nigeria has been saddled with by Northern generals who seized political power since 1983 and ruled the country on autocratic laws and practices. Stories of refusal by some state government to grant Christian churches public lands for their worship houses, and where such land are acquired to permit them to perfect such lands’ title documents are commonly told by the victims.

Freedom to preach the gospel has been restricted in some of these states and in some cases violence by way of riots has been visited on Christians restricts the spread of the gospel such as the early 1990s anti-Reinhardt Bonnke riots in Kaduna that claimed several lives and property. There had been reports of forcible abductions of Christian girls and conversions of them preparatory to forcibly marrying off to Muslims against their parents’ will. That this tragic case of Deborah Samuel attracted the kind of widespread attention and condemnation throughout Nigeria and even outside Nigeria is a pointer to the fast changing socio-political and economic conditions of the country which I think flows from recent and extant existing uncertainties of life in Nigeria. The immediate reactions of the Sultan and several Islamic clerics such as Abubakar Gumi condemning the heinous act of killing for religious motives are something to be cheered as these depart from the usual stance in such situations in the past. But the reactions of the Sultan, MURIC and majority of the Islamic clerics’ condemnations of the incident, and even President Buhari should be compared to Governor Tambuwal’s political statement did not outrightly condemn the heinous act but merely declared that an inquiry is to be instituted to investigate the incident and of course closing down the school and appealing for calm. This goes to show that politicians have been at the root of religious intolerance in Nigeria as they manipulate religion and play one group against the other for political gains. Religion and tribal loyalties are two ready weapons Nigerian politicians deploy to divide Nigeria and reap the gains by remaining relevant through winning elections through those artifices. But it seems that Deborah sacrifice will be a stepping stone to defining Nigeria’s constitutional framework and instituting it either as a secular state or an Islamic state. That is the task which Deborah has paid the supreme price to unravel in Nigeria and to realise this object she remains a martyr for freedom and constitutionalism.

Through the dawns of human civilisation, there were actions which at different stages of development of man are recorded as ‘sin’ and/or crime against the law or public or religious morality or belief. These are the sins or ‘crimes’ of ‘heresy’ and ‘blasphemy’. Both are related and relate to both religion and public morality be it political or otherwise. But they are different in fundaments and essence. While heresy is all encompassing and broad in its meaning and effect regarding matters of religion and public morality, the act of blasphemy is narrower in its concept and meaning as it is confined to matters divine where it seeks to protect the gods against the irreverence of man; that is, in the case of the God of the Jews (Yahweh) whose name the orthodox Jews fear to even pronounce or God of the Christians whom the ancient or early Christians after surviving their own lot of accusations and punishments for heresies and blasphemy under Jewish and Roman authorities fell back to punish the heretics and blasphemers of the Christian God, Christian beliefs and doctrines with even worse punishments anybody who dared uttered heretical words or blasphemies against God and his laws or precepts. Islam that came after Judaism thousands of years and hundreds of years after the establishment of Christianity, came to be associated with the twin-notions of heresy and blasphemy, be it against Allah (God) or Mohammed (his prophet) or Koran the holy book of Islam. So, in effect, the world’s two major religions have injunctions and consequent punishments for heresy and blasphemy. Almost all the punishments prescribed for acts of heresy and blasphemy are capital in nature and quite barbaric both in their ancient origins and even more horrendous in their modern significations. Against the backdrop of heresy as a religious injunction, there was the more pernicious aspect of heresy that almost stymied and disrupted the march of civilisation and human progress when it was deployed by the public authorities to preserve the revealed “truth”, the established customary law and ordinances and especially as they relate to public morality, what has been taken to be the immutable truth.

So, before the birth of Christ, much of the problems besetting humanity and its progress was the public authorities’ determination to preserve the world as they understood it on the basis of the ‘universal’ truth. Any contrary opinion was viewed as heretic and a crime against and punished as such for the public took whatever contrary opinion about the world and the universe as treasonous and an act capable of turning the world upside down. This prevailing state of legal order preserving private and public knowledge became antithetical to the production of new knowledge and for centuries the world remained stagnant and became a cesspool of dead beliefs and praxis. But the ineluctable way of history ensured that this state of affair burying truth upon which the progress of humanity is hoisted would not remain closed forever for truth buried will by its nature always surmount all obstacles to resurrect and assert its indestructible existence and blossom. Ancient philosophers had grappled with the arduous task of understanding the world and the universe and worked to unravel the truth but the ancient public authorities encompassing civil and religious spheres had preserved their ‘eternal’ truth as understood by them. So, when Pythagoras, Democritus, Aristotle and Socrates sought to understand the natural law better they were held in check and when Socrates persevered to depart from the accustomed truth, he was forced to drink the poisonous hemlock for corrupting the public sphere and the youths. His scientific thesis and the truth he sought to unravel were held to be dangerous to the world and he was condemned to death. One of the greatest contests between eternal truth and ignorance happened at Palestine, that great juncture or crossroads of human civilisations when a lone Jewish boy, at once a prophet, teacher and cleric emerged at the scorched landscape of Judaic region waving the banner of a God made man otherwise designated as Son of the Most High God who combined the nature of man and God and thus christened the Messiah, the Son of Man from the genealogical line of King David who had been long expected by the Jews since ages. At the tail end of that ancient world when Jesus emerged from relative obscurity to prominence armed with the gospel of theological and evangelical renewal of Judaism, the Jewish state and country then under colonial bondage under Pax Romana, kicked and accused Jesus of heresy and blasphemy. What was Jesus’ message to the Jews and the world? Jesus’ message was simply that the Jewish long-awaited messiah was him, and resided with the Jews bearing the good news of reconciliation between man and God on the basis of universal love and brotherhood which is the essence of God. But the Jews protested and questioned his authority and finally accused him of heretical teachings about the nature of God, sin, Sabbath and finally condemned him to death for equating himself with God. And he was crucified but fortunate enough the truth of Jesus message triumphed over death and resurrected with him to prevail over the world through great tribulations of persecutions of apostles and disciples who were arrested, jailed or killed and finally dispersed throughout the world where they planted firmly the Christian religion against all odds, especially the subjection of the new religion to the laws and strictures of heresy and blasphemy as proclaimed by the Roman Empire’s authorities. The triumph of Truth of Christianity is a historical milestone of humanity as can be seen in the billions of Christians all over the world.

 CITIZEN DEBORAH: VICTIM OF DYSFUNCTIONAL STATE AND LEGAL ORDER (2)

Christianity triumphed over its adversaries and succeeded in sucking up the Roman Empire and its socio-cultural, political and legal order hence the Church and the state fused together to become a monstrous leviathan. At the middle age, when the world was transiting from dark age to age of enlightenment, the church (Roman Catholic) having prevailed over the Roman Empire ironically became an instrument to stall human progress by rigorously reinforcing rules against heresy and blasphemy. These rules and strictures of heresy and blasphemy now instituted by the Church and the Roman Empire were stacked against the development of science and social progress. So Galilee, the Italian scientist’s quest to prove the natural ordering of the universe by teaching and proving that the earth is spherical, hangs on nothing but in the vast space and revolves round the star which is one of the stars of the universe was adjudged heresy contrary to ancient truth that the earth was flat sheet with pillars holding it and was the centre of the universe. The Galileo Truth was a gross heresy and he was blacklisted and condemned.

Blasphemy by its ordinary meaning is the act of insulting or having contempt or no reverence for God. Claiming the attributes of God such as the power claimed by Jesus of forgiving sins which the Jewish authorities held against him as one of the grounds for crucifying him is another kind of blasphemy. Having no reverence for things of God such as the Holy books or objects could also be acts of blasphemy. But blasphemy has narrower scope than heresy and has more to do with the spoken word even though it could be written such as the note posted in the class platform by Citizen Deborah which the Islamic bigots adjudged blasphemous. Blasphemy is an ancient act which ought not have any relevance in the modern world and that is where I think the Igbo cosmetology and ideas of God has more fundamental significance than that of any of the received religions in Nigeria for the Igbo believe that nobody can fight for a God because God is more than able to protect His integrity and fight His enemies. When we fight for God, it means that god is incapable of fighting for Himself and at that point God loses His essence and so ceases to be God, the All knowing, All Powerful and Omniscient. So, it is pure ignorance to fight for God and the earlier the clerics educate their adherents and the Nigerian State utilize its Constitution and the laws to protect its citizens against charges of heresy and blasphemy the better for the country and the people. Galileo, the Italian’s scientific quest to prove the natural ordering of the universe by teaching that the earth is spherical, hangs on nothing in the universe and revolves bound the sum got him a blacklisting and condemnation. The Catholic Church’s inquisition against heretics and blasphemers and even the Jews especially the scattered Jews in Europe leading to anti-Semitism and consequent Zionist movement are world famous historical milestones of the world. After World War II in 1945 when the United Nations Organisation instituted new world legal order encapsulated in the Universal Declaration of Human and Peoples Rights, one would thought that religious freedom would be the greatest right accorded man but that has not been the case as can be seen in the various Islamic fatwas unleashed on alleged heretics and blasphemers. Under President Obasanjo, a Nigerian lady-journalist with Thisday newspaper wrote something considered insulting to Prophet Mohammed and Islamic religious bigots slammed fatwa on her and she had to be smuggled out of Nigeria as not to be killed. When in 1988 the British-Indian writer, Salman Rushdie published his novel, The Satanic Verses, Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic Council of Iran slammed religious death condemnation and a price to execute it, one would have expected the world through the UNO not to look the other way while abandoning these targeted fellows to the trauma of living in fear and in a fettered freedom.

The case of citizen Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a student of Sokoto College of Education brings to the fore the existential questions about Nigeria and its dysfunctional state and legal order. Is Nigeria a secular state with a constitution that acknowledges and asserts the secular state and constitutional framework that recognizes and enforces the rules against religious bigotry as is the case of Citizen Deborah? Is a Nigerian citizen safe and can practice his religion anywhere in Nigeria and has the right to hold opinions including religious ones? All these existential questions have been hanging on the air since 1966-1970 when the soldiers effectively subjugated Nigeria and imposed their will on the country and the inheritors of this monstrous estate have refused all entreaties to negotiate and agree on a people-agreed constitution. The death of Citizen Deborah among several others that have happened before are the aftereffects of the dysfunctional state and its derelict constitutional framework that has failed to secure the safety and happiness of Nigerians. The horrific death of Citizen Deborah is perhaps, one of such human sacrifices usually required by the earth, or the gods or simply humanity to remake the world and restore a wounded and hemorrhaging society by curing and healing it. Did it not require the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to spread the good news of the universal kingdom of God on earth with Christianity breaking free from Judaism to proselytize the world for God on the basis of love and universal brotherhood found on love? Did it not take the ex-communication of Martin Luther and his heresy of Anti-Indulgence to wake up Christendom to evangelism and apostolic missionary work outside Europe? Did it not take the murder of Martin Luther King for his anti-racial activism to force USA to pass the segregation laws and several Federal Acts for freedom to liberate the blacks and other minorities in USA? Did it not take the deaths of Walter Sissulu, Steve Biko and imprisonment of Nelson Mandela for 27 years to destroy apartheid ideology?

Citizen Deborah is not the first person killed by Islamic fundamentalists and bigots in Nigerian. In 1993, a more horrendous act against a Nigeria citizen called Gideon Akaluka had taken place in Kano City. Gideon Akaluka was an Igbo trader resident to Kano. According to the account of his murder, he was alleged to have picked and used a leaflet torn off (not by him) from the Koran to clean his infant baby’s anus after the child defecated in the premises of his shop. His neighbour and trade competitor raised alarm and without subjecting Citizen Gideon Akaluka to the legal process, the Kano Islamic mob set upon him and killed him and in an act of bestiality beheaded him and placed his decapitated head on a pike and paraded the streets of Kano in triumphal parade of religious bigotry and impurity. Nobody was held to account for that heinous crime. Recently, there have been killings of several persons on allegations of blasphemy such as that of Mrs Agbahime in the same Kano City and another woman pastor at Kubwa neighbourhood near Abuja who was killed because of her early morning evangelism contrary to a certain Islamic bigot’s warning to her to desist.

Nigeria is living a lie but the falsity of its existence is catching up with her. Nigerians deserve their freedoms or the dysfunctional state and legal order will definitely crumble in no distant time. How can a country ravaged by Britain for over one hundred years at the end of which a pernicious autocratic and neo-colonial dysfunctional state and legal order foisted on her be preserved by force and expects it to endure? Such artifice cannot survive the crucibles of truth. Barely four years after Independence in 1960, that dysfunctional state crumbled and it took the direct intervention of Britain in 1966/67 to precipitation a civil war which it used its vast diplomatic resources to beat the injured Igbo back into Nigeria because the existence of Biafra State was a threat to British economic and geo-political interests. Since 1970 to date, the Nigerian state and society have suffered violent eruptions and humongous denial of freedoms as a more pernicious feudal and autocratic state has been forcibly foisted on Nigeria against the people’s will and this dysfunctional state and its autocratic constitutional framework is the taproot from which the promotion of religious bigotry of Islamic fundamentalism and insurgency of which Citizens Gideon Akaluka, Mrs. Agbahime and Miss Deborah Samuel are mere statistical victims. Nobody has been held to account of unlawfully killing his fellow citizen on allegation of blasphemy. Let the death of Citizen Deborah be a wake-up call on Nigerians to stand up and fight for their freedoms especially freedom to hold religious views and beliefs. And let their government listen and restructure Nigeria on the parameters of democracy, freedom, universal brotherhood and egalitarianism.