The outbreak of violence in February and March between Muslim and Christian youth in Ilorin over the refusal of some Christian mission schools to accede to Kwara state government compelling them to accept the Muslim hijab as an alternate uniform for Muslim students is most regrettable. It is galling watching videos on social media of students and people who had lived peaceably together throwing stones at each other. With half my relations Muslim (and half Christian), I cannot imagine what would make me take up stones to throw at my Muslim uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews nor is it possible that any of my Muslim cousins and nieces would for any reason take up stones to throw at me or at any other of their Christian relations - certainly not over what religious dress or symbol that any of us chooses to wear.
However, if the Ilorin problem were only about hijab, it seems to me that the Christian schools, their church proprietors, and their supporters stand on rather tenuous legal and moral ground. If an argument that the hijab is part of Ilorin Muslim student identity is plausible in law, I wont be surprised if a majority of the supreme court judges favors the rights of these Muslim students to wear their hijab to school. Also, in terms of basic or technically religious rationale, it should seem rather illogical that the Christian mission schools and their proprietors would reject Muslim students coming to their schools who want to wear the hijab. One would think that, ordinarily, the churches and proprietors of these schools would be happy that Muslim students would thereby encounter Christianity and the message of love and salvation that serve as the pillar the schools were founded on. So if Christians of Ilorin and proprietors of these schools, contrary to their mission to invite non-Christians to Christ, are now opposed to accepting these students because of hijab, I felt something was wrong about it that required further investigations. I took the advice to listen to the other side and to get familiar with their grouse with the government to get at the underlining issues. It then became clear to me that the trouble brewing in Ilorin was more than just about the hijab, though, the hijab has been made into the linchpin of the crisis.
Kwara state government so far has successfully used its call to allow Muslim students to wear their hijab over their school uniform as a powerful public relations strategy to depict the Mission schools as bigots. Many in social media uncritically broadcast this emotive narrative. Unfortunately, reducing the problem to allowing or disallowing hijab in Christian-denominated schools can only divert needed attention away from a deeper much more dangerous crisis that has been in the making for several decades.
Complaints
The problem in Ilorin is more about deep, entrenched, and expanding systemic injustice and discrimination that Christians in that city and to some extent in Kwara state in general feel against themselves and their religion. The complaints of the Christians --and they are many on social media-- deserve to be articulated and brought to centre stage of state and Nigeria's national discourse.
Their complaints include that Kwara state government actions have systematically discriminated against Christians in Ilorin and that this discrimination continues to expand. To them, the insistence by the government that Muslim students should be allowed to wear the hijab in their private Christian mission schools is only the latest bitter pill they are been forced to swallow by a Muslim dominated government that they charge to be openly prejudiced against the Christians and that had vowed to take over their schools.
They complain that over the years they have been marginalized. As a citizen of Kwara who schooled in Kwara and Ilorin, who lived in Ilorin and has his family there, and who also for a couple of years had experience as an employee of Kwara teaching service, I can attest to many of these complaints of discrimination which began long ago. I doubt that any serious educated Ilorin Muslim will dispute that "Ilorin people" are favored over every other people of Kwara, and especially within Ilorin; favored over Christians in all government actions relating to social and economic opportunities. It is so obvious that I don't know that any body who knows Ilorin has or can deny it. Most Ilorin indigenes, if they think about it, simply take it as a default condition that does not need to be questioned or explained. Others might not notice it because of the default normalness the situation has attained over these many years.
Double standards
The Christians complain that the government of Kwara does not apply the same standards to Muslim schools that it is applying to Christian schools. The proprietors of Christian schools solely bear the cost of maintaining, renovating, and expanding their school facilities, but government collect the school fees and uses these to not only pay salaries of all schools in the state under its control but to also provide for renovation and expansion of facilities in Muslim and other schools.
The government uses the excuse that it pays the salaries of the teachers in these Christian schools to hire and post mostly Muslim teachers to the schools, including teachers who teach Islamic Religious Knowledge to serve the need of Muslim students in the Christian mission schools. Hence, in these Christian mission schools, their teaching staff population could be anything between 50-75% Muslim. Information on the C&S College Sabo-Oke, a senior secondary level school, puts total teaching and non-teaching staff at 53, 29 of who are said to be Christians and 24 Muslims. As I was about to publish this post, my attention was drawn to Arinola Rahaman's piece in the Nigerian Punch of March 30 with information to the effect that at "St. John's Primary and Secondary School, Sabo Oke, there are 48 teachers, but only five are Christians" This, of course, speaks to the larger issue of the lopsidedness of employment arrangements in Ilorin which mostly favor Ilorin indigenes who are generally Muslims over other people, especially Christians.
All government ministries in Ilorin, I have been told by Christians based in Ilorin who say they can substantiate their claims, is predominantly dominated by Muslim appointees, a large proportion of who are of Ilorin origin. I have not seen the data, but my familiarity with Ilorin supremacy in the 70s and information on "the Secretariat" and even on the nature of other public appointments in Kwara accords with this position. The structure of government appointments in Kwara that is in the public also affirms their position.
They complain that while the Christian schools allow and teach Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK) to cater to their Muslim students population, no single Islamic school in Ilorin allows the teaching of Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) and Kwara state government does not question this despite Christian students attending these Muslim schools. I was told that there is one Mission school where only one Christian religious teacher is available to teach CRK at all the school levels whereas government hired 6 or 7 teachers of IRK who of course are Muslims for the same school. A strong Muslim orientation in Muslim schools backed by clear government support discourages more and more Christian students from going to Muslim schools because no allowances are made for them, thereby further reinforcing the Muslim exclusive identity of these schools. On the other side, Christian mission schools are neglected, have the threat of take over procedure by the government hanging over them, and are being forced to accept Muslim dress as part of their dress code; in other words, are being gradually but clearly Islamized.
Thus over the years, governments of Kwara have systematically promoted Muslim symbols, spaces, and Ilorin Muslims in the civil service, in the health and other public services, in their major appointments and conversely discriminated against Ilorin based Christian spaces, symbols, and against Christians in appointments and job placements. It is important to state that the governments of Kwara (legislative and executive) have been overwhelmingly Muslim over the past decades. Almost all its civilian governors have been Muslims, though they would generally choose Christian deputies who generally espoused no independent thought or actions of their own. Only on deputy-governor, Shittu a Muslim, ever tried to carve out some independent role for himself and challenged Adamu Atta, the governor, but he was effectively totally sidelined. Majority of the Perm. Secs. and top civil servants, directors of all parastatals, and most appointees to represent Kwara state at the federal level have largely been Muslim and mostly Ilorin indigines and this is not for lack of qualified Christians! Ilorin Christians are clearly no less educated and qualified than Ilorin Muslims.
Christians complain that all government and some of the Christian mission schools have mosques and smaller praying grounds built inside of them as do most fenced-off public or civil service premises in Ilorin but the building of chapels to represent Christians was disallowed for Christian students in these same schools. This reflects what happens in all northern Nigerian states where Muslims are openly favored in this way.
Lately, the Kwara government has been claiming right to full control over the Mission schools contrary to the assertion of the churches that owned these schools who consider their schools to be private schools that are merely "grant-aided" by the government. The struggle over the control of the schools by both sides is the spark that kindled the crisis.
A policy of marginalization
For the Christians in Ilorin, the government's insistence that it has the right to decree that Muslim students could wear hijab to these schools is thus a continuation of the ongoing attempt to consolidate their Islamic takeover of the schools and to de-Christianize them. To the Christians the hijab issue is but one of the continuing series of policy actions by Kwara state government that progressively marginalizes Christians and Christian institutions; that seeks to exclude, dilute, and otherwise occlude the presence of Christianity and Christian symbols from the city and from the schools and to generally eliminate or diminish any Christian imprint from social and political spaces in Ilorin and in Kwara state. On the contrary, it promotes everything Muslim.
At the legal front, the courts may rule that a government that pays the salaries of the teachers of these schools has a right to dictate what uniforms the students should wear or that freedom of religion allows for Muslim students to don their religious symbols over their school uniform to school. Unfortunately, such a judgment would not thereby resolve the volatile problem until the injustice at its root is taken seriously and tackled boldly. It would only postpone the day of reckoning.
The Kwara government dominated by Ilorin indigenes, who happen to be mostly Muslims, and all Ilorin people, should devise and create a more just climate that includes other religions and people from other parts of the state equitably.
A call to just action
The government of Kwara should act to calm down emotions and lower tensions and make bold to create just conditions for dialogue and for peace. They must recognize the unjust conditions and structures that have built up over many years and actively work to amend it. They should include proportionate numbers of representatives of the other religions and other interests and people groups outside of Ilorin in their decision-making to foster inclusiveness and reduce the growth of systemic discrimination. Government employment process should be transparent and all information about number and qualification of applicants and those employed should be readily available for scrutiny. All appointments to public positions should consider diversity as a necessary operating framework.
I would hate that my Muslim brothers and cousins and relations be discriminated against by a hegemonic organization dominated by or that is partial to Christians and to Christianity. But I am equally opposed to any such institution that discriminates against my other brothers and cousins and relatives who are Christian like myself. Also, I can speak for my Muslim uncles and aunts and cousins and nephews that they are all for justice and fair play. Many well-meaning Ilorin Muslims and Muslims from outside of Ilorin if properly informed of the nature of the injustice in play will support policy moves to enshrine equity and fair play. It is a very narrow-minded clear contravention of one of the central tenets of these two religions to play favoritism and to discriminate against the other. Injustice actively undermines unity, undercuts development, and courts crises and all well meaning people should strive against it and move Kwara forward.
Femi J. Kolapo |Professor, Department of History | www.uoguelph.ca/history
College of Arts | University of Guelph | 50 Stone Rd E | Guelph ON | N1G 2W1
Websites: African History Digital Document Portal Project | African Journal of Teacher Education
Review of Higher Education in Africa |Recreation and Society in Africa, Asia and Latin America
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Book: Christian Missionary Engagement in Central Nigeria: The Church Missionary Society's All African Mission on the Upper Niger (Springer International Publishers, 2019).
A thought for the month:
| Compassion is more than passing feelings of sorrow and sympathy. It is costly identification with those who suffer in their suffering and oppression. It goes against the grain of our natural instincts. We do not want to suffer, and the less we are confronted with it the better. But compassion calls us to identify with the suffering of others and experience their brokenness. It requires a total conversion of heart and mind. - Paul G Hiebert, Transforming Worlviews. An anthropological understanding of how people change. Baker Academic 2009. |
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