Last week I came across a report in more than one newspaper where the authority of the Kogi state university, Ayingba and its ASUU chapter deny and disown Dr. Muhammed Nazeef, a lecturer at the University who the State Security Service (SSS) alleged is a spiritual leader of Boko haram.
In the report, the University Vice Chancellor, Prof.? Hassan Isah, issued a statement denying any link with the said activities of the lecturer saying it does not know him beyond being a lecturer. The ASUU President, one Dr.? Sylvester Ukwuteno, on his part, categorically repudiates the ASUU’s membership of Dr. Muhammed Nazeef. He claimed that Dr. Nazeef is only a member by virtue of the deduction of his membership due from the source. Dumb! The statements from both the University and ASUU’s chapter are callous, uncalled for, subjective, in bad taste and stupid at their best.
First of all nobody has claimed or suggested that Dr. Muhammed Nazeef was using ASUU’s name or the University to carry out, if any, any nefarious activities. The rush to denial by the University and its ASUU chapter is at its best a careless misstep. To claim you know not your staff beyond his duty as lecturer put a question mark on the competence of your leadership. Did they not make a background check before employing him?
What makes both proclamations more unnecessary is that Dr. Nazeef is not yet convicted of any crime. He is only being alleged to be a member of an outlaw organization by the SSS. Does being paraded by the SSS make you a convict? I believe that ASUU, ostensibly being a society of intelligentsia should know that a person remain a mere suspect until proven otherwise by a competent court in a fair trial. Such kind of statements coming from his institution and ward already adjudged him guilty even before he would be tried in a competent court of jurisdiction.
The unfortunate statements from his University and ASUU portray the hastiness and the poverty of thought in the decision to distance themselves from Dr. Nazeef. I was expecting to see in the statements by both ASUU and the University management a lead that suggests that the accused has antecedent of subversive activities. The release did not contain as well any independent investigation into his past that both ASUU and the University made to know whether he truly belongs to any such outlaw organization. Then, what is the use of being a member of an organization which throws you from a fry pan to fire. The University and ASUU grandstanding is dumb, bias and out of unfounded trepidation.
The crime he was alleged to have committed is being a member of Boko-Haram. Yes, Boko-Haram. Nobody wants to be associated with it, except its misguided members who think they are fighting a divine course. This is why everyone, except Comrade Shehu Sani, keeps mute whenever Boko-haram label is dangled in every scenario. This wholesale disassociation from the dreaded group has led to crime being perpetrated on innocent citizens by the Nigeria security apparatus. Like the US supposed war on terror, the Nigeria’s state war on Boko-haram has been a license to carry out crime against innocent citizens. Because everyone is afraid of being tagged a sympathizer of Boko-haram, glaring injustice are meted out to citizen daily in the guise of fighting the misguided miscreants.
It is this kind of unwholesome fear that gives the JTF the impunity to kill a number of innocent people in Obehira, in Okene Local government in 2012 and tagged them Boko-Haram. One of the victims was pulled from his sleep and shot dead. It is this kind of trepidation that gave a lone soldier the audacity to threaten to kill a brother and his family (the wife was in a head-toe hijab) at the vicinity of Gwagwalada Hajj camp in 2012 and thereafter which he would have labeled him a Boko-haram. It is this kind of silence that gave the police the latitude to murder Alhaji Baa Fugu. His crime? His son in-law, Muhammed Yusuf was the leader of Boko Haram. It is this kind of our nervousness that the security capitalized on to level down Baga town; it is this kind of silence that led to the killing of mai-ruwas and impoverished labourers at an uncompleted building in Abuja in April, 2013.
However, this war is only directed at hapless and the low of the society because in Kogi state and elsewhere, many houses belonging to the poor have been bulldozed down since the Government claimed Boko-haram was using them as operational centers. However, the building at the center of the Apo Legislative massacre is still standing because it belongs to the sister of an ex-President, even after the Chief of Army staff told a senate committee that he was convinced it was a Boko-haram base. Yes, be silent!
I would not want to be caught in this web of silence to allow violation of the human right of innocent citizens. This brings me back to the issue of Dr. Muhammed Nazeef. Any keen analyst of the video would know that the supposed confession was a script written by the SSS that was being acted by those boys. The SSS’s claim that it arrested him three days earlier before the unconstitutional parade has been punctured by Dr. Nazeef’s daughter revelation that he was arrested three weeks earlier. Yet, it is not known in the history of Boko Haram that any of his high ranking members ever denied membership of the group or shed tear in the public as Dr. Nazeef did. Aside not given enough time to speak as did other suspects, the manner in which those boys were being questioned is not known in law. A lawyer will not allow his client to be questioned in such manner by an opposing lawyer. That is what is called a telling question in the law parlance. You are indirectly asking a witness to implicate an alleged suspect.
Also, the fear of being labeled a Boko haram sympathizer has beclouded our ability to connect events. How is supposed leader of a Boko-haram, a phrase meaning Western-styled education is sin, is a lecturer at Western-styled University remains unexplainable to me. How a man who rose to the pinnacle of his academic honour in a western-styled university be a Boko haram leader make no sense to me, and it should be same to any rational analyst. How can a man who only recently in 2013 roundly condemned Boko Haram in his PhD dissertation be a Boko Haram spiritual leader? All these inconsistences provide enough ground to question the SSS’s claim. This why is the Supreme Council for Islamic Affair in Nigeria, Jamatul Nasrul Islam, The Council of Ulamas, National Council of Muslim Youths; all Associations of Muslim Professionals should get to the root of this case. While I acknowledge that the JNI, MURIC and SCSN have already issued statement, yet this issue is beyond mere press release and holding press conferences.
Finally, before you tag me a boko haram sympathizer, I have never met Dr. Nazeef and did not know him until his news of alleged membership of Boko haram broke out. However, my background checks on him since the event came to the fore have not shown any lead that suggests he is involved in any such activity. When I informed a colleague whom I did not even know knows Dr. Nazeefi, he screamed and said no, no, no, it cannot be Dr. Nazeefi Jos. Another brother who graduated from University of Jos who know him in person told me he shed tears after we had discussed Dr. Nazeef’s ordeal and parted because he knows this is a man who is extremely averse to extreme ideology.
A.S.M Jimoh (Anehi2008@gmail.com)
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