THE SUDANISATION OF NORTHERN NIGERIA

THE SUDANISATION OF NORTHERN NIGERIA

THE SUDANISATION OF NORTHERN NIGERIA

THE SUDANISATION OF NORTHERN NIGERIA

BY

Sunday Adole Jonah,

Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria

(A reflection on the Nigerian state @ 50)

Recently, it was reported in the news that five junior high school female students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Kaura Namoda, Zamfara State, Nigeria, were abducted on their way home from school. Presently, their distraught parents haven't much clue as to their whereabouts. Not coincidentally, though, all of the girls were Christian maidens. When I read about this incident in the Vanguard Newspaper, my mind went into active drive doing correlation and pattern searches; orchestrated plan targeting a certain segment of the society on the basis of purely differences in creed. Enlightenement also came to me in the form of recognising that precedence for the incidence at Kaura Namoda was played out in countries like Niger, Chad, and Sudan. Yes, Sudan!

The fate of these abducted girls could easily be made out. What we know from Sudan (about the only country in the world where slavery in still partially or wholly legal) is that the abduction at Kaura Namoda was the handiworks of deeply-religious slave raiders who would most certainly marry these girls off (against their will of course) to some equally religious bigot who most certainly runs a harem. The consciences of the raider and the beneficiary are "clear" because these young "wenches" (in their opinion, of course) would have been "cleansed" by forcibly conversion to the faith of their new masters. The heart-wrenching thing about this all is that the parents of these girls lose contact with their offspring ad infinitum. Ditto for young males; however, the males have to endure a lifetime of abject and dehumanizing labour as slaves. If the communities that get raided do not react against this vice, then the raiders are emboldened to continue in their despicable endeavours. This was the root of the civil crises that engulfed Sudan and pitted the north of the country against the south for some twenty years.

Nigeria has enjoyed a measure of relative peace over the years but certain uncomfortable development in the northern half of the country are threatening to put the country on the brink; Christian girls are at risk of getting violently murdered in Gombe and Bauchi States and young women returning from Christian night vigils have been viciously gang-raped in Zamfara State. Talk about a pattern, talk about Sudan, then you find the gradual Sudanization of northern Nigeria. Pray these five innocent girls are safely returned to their grieving parents. Most of all pray for the realization that we live in the 21st century, not some backwater era in human history.

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