Deborah Yakubu: Ignorance, the Perils of a Culture of Silence, Bestial Lust and the Hypocrisy of One Nigeria -By Odo Christian Obinna Nigeria has had to grapple with many issues of national proportions and consequences, but last week introduced another disturbing issue, which, while not novel to the country’s rich bank of experience, is a volcano erupting red-hot lava intermittently, one that, at a slow but steady pace, may speed up the course of self immolation the country is dangerously headed for. Somewhere in Sokoto, a young lady, full of life and hope, was gruesomely murdered in a most disturbing style. Life was knocked out of her with a determined rain of stones, then what was left of her once beautiful body was torched to ashes. Her alleged offence was blasphemy, and her executioners were not the typical state officials, but some irate, wrathful, ignorant mobs who set their hands in motion to redeem the “battered” honour of their God. And somewhere in the same Sokoto, once a peaceful state, waves of protest are erupting, not to see life wheeled into law to dish out swift justice to the deserving, but to demand unconditional release—and possibly a state apology—of their murderous comrades.
But this is not the worst of this national worry. It’s the grating silence looming large, this time not in Sokoto state, but over the country at large. Religious and political leaders who have always lent their loudest voices to issues perceived as threats to them and their cycles, whether real or imagined, have suddenly gone mute silent. Those who, in the heat of things, hastily and briskly jumped to condemn the dastard act at the remote outpost of civilization—may be while besotted with alcoholic liquor—hurriedly, in the same quick manner as their condemnations came, deleted, rescinded, and dissociated themselves from their own words. Nonetheless, hidden among the walls of this grating silence, which is easily discernible by any sane-minded person, is a tacit approval of this dastard act.
Deborah’s gruesome murder, nor the ones before her case, nor the ones to come after her in the future, is never the evil rearing its ugly head every now and then, but this grating silence from those who ought to speak out against this evil. Without putting too fine a spin on it, Nigeria was and is the end of Deborah, those before her and those who will come after her. When those who ought to speak out because there are certain people leaning on them for proper direction choose the path of silence, a subtly silent nod of approval, they are inviting blood-thirsty folks to feast and quench their blood lust upon this table deliciously set for them under the cloak of religion. As one fine old proverb says, a child given a nod to steal by his father breaks the door! She was not so much a victim of religious intolerance as she was a victim of weaponized ignorance that was allowed to grow unchecked by a culture of meaningful silence.
Agreeing silence, one may also call it, but speaking louder in action and climaxing into an unnegotiable finality. According to captain Jamil Abubakar, a son-in-law of Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, and son of former Nigeria’s police chief, Mohammed Dikko Abubakar, in a series of social media posts, “The punishment for blasphemy is death! in most religions, including Christianity. Respect people’s religion. It’s simple!” The tones are simple but non-negotiable, and so is the leaning of this agreeing silence by those who need only to utter no more than a syllable to sweep off this ignorance veiled in religious tunics.
But the shocking reality we have is a grating silence stamping life onto ignorance, which is readily used as a weaponized tool for bestially lustful gratification by willing hands. Ignorance has become a tool dissipated into the gratification of bestially carnal lust thanks to this culture of agreeing silence prevailing among the majority of the northern elite. Confirmed cases of this ignorance being weaponized to quench blood lust abound. Ignorance is now weaponized by some folks to mark certain people as societal ills for brutal cleansing. The only string that needs to be pulled by these folks is to play the blasphemy card and watch ignorant mobs swiftly respond to this tug at their “uncompromising red line,” in the words of Adamu Garba, a northern Nigerian youth politician and technocrat.
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Nonetheless, come rain or sunshine, the ritual of agreeing silence must be observed with a devoted passion. It makes no difference that this ignorance is developing a thick head and unyielding flesh, dangerously spiralling out of control—or that these elite who have sworn the oath of silent monks are blind to see this potential future emerging and looming large above their heads. A future may emerge in which this weaponized ignorance not only throws Nigeria into scathing tumults and casts what remains of her laboured unity into an air of unease certainty, but also returns home to roost, to the homes of those who nurtured it into monstrosity with their agreeing silence. The omen is already here, staring at us. We saw it in how the rioting ignorant mobsters were able to breach the perimeters of the palace of the Sultan of Sokoto, who, as a result, had to flee his palace, armed security operatives forming a tight girdle around him. Sultan’s only “blasphemy” was condemning the brutal murder of Deborah Yakubu, an act which was strange to these ignorant mobsters and upset the inviolable “truth” they had acquired over years and nurtured into a towering pyramid-like structure by a culture of agreeing silence. Today it’s Deborah and the Sultan of Sokoto. Tomorrow, it could be any of our “silent monks” who dares as much as to condemn the actions of this raving, out-of-control mob in an attempt to salvage the sliver of the country’s unity that has been stretched to breaking point by the tumult caused by the actions of these ignorant mobs.
I’m not saying that a brazen act of insult to any person’s religion or God should be condoned or responded to with kid gloves. In fact, no person having unhindered access to his or her faculties should be given a friendly pat on the back for going out of his/her way to disparage any religion, whether his/her own or that of another man. The deed, although done, a lot better was to be expected of the dead. Being herself a northerner, she could not have laid claim to ignorance as to the character of her people; northerners though arguably the most accommodating people in Nigeria, they, particularly their Muslim community, are more vulnerable on the point of religion; their religion being their total way of life, any sort of insult to it and their prophet lands with shattering force, borrowing Adamu Garba’s words again, on their “uncompromising red line.”
However, I will not dwell on what was done and what was not done by the dead because, like Florence Chukwu, an English teacher in Bauchi state gruesomely murdered in 2006, like Mrs. Christiana Oluwatoyin, a female teacher in Government Secondary School, Gombe, murdered by a mob in 2007, like Bridget Patience Agbahime murdered by a mob in 2016, like many other cases before them, Yakubu Deborah was a victim of ignorance systematically allowed to grow by a culture of silence. Like the voice belting into the gloomy air that day, “I killed her. I burnt her. You can see the matchbox I used in setting her ablaze here,” with energetic excitement, hunger, lust, and bare bestiality, like the voice in this decades-old silence, they are all a confluence of one point: the late Deborah and her unfortunate sisters and brothers in death met an end deserving their capital offence—blasphemy—and it does not matter how this end was dished out—none of them deserved the benefits of a proper hearing.
All in all, the hypocrisy is on one Nigeria that is brazenly wheeled out of the way at will, as well as the voices behind this agreeing silence. One Nigeria has become a convenience mantra lauded for its rich lyricism and shoved down the dusty docket of neglect depending on which side the scale of convenience tilts. We are talking about the one Nigeria mantra, the highly harped celestial-ordained one, secular Nigeria, where, at this moment, one group can brazenly come out or cower behind talking silence to push for standards that should apply to and be attended to by only the community of people those standards are made for to be mindlessly extended to all people irrespective of their religious leanings, creeds, tribes, and other markers of our diversity, and the next moment is at the forefront of a crusade for one, secular Nigeria! And anyone—anyone at all—caught in this net widely cast about, a brutal, roadside judgment hurriedly fixed with impunity by equally a roadside constituted court should be meted out on.
It goes without saying that we are wheeling life into the soul of a dangerous precedent. Whether we like it or not, whether we tell ourselves the truth or not, this culture of agreeing silence is a dangerous one that should give every right-thinking Nigerian more worry than the brazen display of ignorance ironically witnessed in an enlightened academic environment because it has the potential to crack into endless possibilities of chaos and anarchy in the future. It’s a fertile ground upon which every group in the country can take life from, insist on any sort of standards its wide imagination can conceive, brazenly threaten fire and brimstone if things are not done according to its standards, while all the while, the constitution we gave ourselves on the common understanding to surrender our different sentiments as diverse peoples to a one Nigeria is pushed further back, relegated to the dark corridors.
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It needs no art of divination nor complex analytic exercise to come to terms with the reality of our unity. The string that has laboriously held the much-emphasized unity of Nigeria is not the threat of war, guttural rumbles of military action, persuasive and bare force of law, but the restraints exercised by each of the country’s various groups in the face of stark, naked provocation. But history has taught mankind, in the most harshest of ways, of the perils of stretching one’s luck too far. How long can these groups maintain this position without stirring up the muck? Let the perilous dance towards dangerous waters continue. We may one day come to that breaking point where we will have no other option than to form one orchestra with the late Saraduana of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, to belt out his remark of yesteryear: the mistake of 1914 amalgamation.
About the writer.
Odo Christian Obinna writes from the University of Ibadan where he is pursuing a degree in law. https://www.opinionnigeria.com/deborah-yakubu-ignorance-the-perils-of-a-culture-of-silence-bestial-lust-and-the-hypocrisy-of-one-nigeria-by-odo-christian-obinna/ 
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