Re: Rahama Sadau, Mohammed Sunusi II And The North 

My friend Abubakar Adam Ibrahim's article, "Rahama Sadau, Mohammed Sunusi II and the North," published in Daily Trust of 5th Novermber, 2020, is quite interesting yet it failed to address much but placate extremist intolerant voices. Voices who are in the minority but are louder than that of the majority, voices of blackmailers and internet bullies who hide behind religion and conservatism to force every woman to dress the way they choose.

If you recall when President Buhari became president in 2015, these voices hiding behind Arewa Twitter and some folks on Facebook went berserk when photos of Buhari appeared on social media shaking his female supporters. They all screamed that it was unIslamic forgetting that Buhari is not an Islamic state president but the president of a secular Nigeria with diverse culture. When the first lady, Aisha Buhari shook hands with the Oo4ni of Ife and some other male dignitaries, these same voices went mad. This is not about conservatism, this is about Islamic extremism and it's quite a recent phenomenon.

When the daughter of Governor Ganduje of Kano got married, videos went viral of her dancing on the occasion having a good time with friends and her husband. Sheikh Gumi preaching in Kaduna would later tell his congregation that it is such behaviour, of a woman dancing with her husband at a wedding, such debauchery, that resulted to the destruction of Borno State in form of Boko Haram terrorism. I was awed when I saw that video on Facebook, totally flabbergasted, mouth wide opened.

These same characters went gaga when Aisha Ahmed, Deputy Central Bank Governor, was appointed over her dress. These same jokers are the gang of bullies who saw Rahama Sadau in rapper ClassIQ video, a harmless video, launched a campaign of calumny against her image, including the like of Sheikh Daurawa in Kano, who went on Facebook to write that Rahama Sadau should go and get married. To these dysfunctional types of mindsets, the woman belongs to the Oza Room and nothing more.

These are the same characters who attacked Ms. Kadaria Ahmed, the journalist who led a protest in Abuja over the killings in Zamfara by bandits and called for fatwa (ex-communication) because they said she was one time married to a Christian in London.

These characters are the people who attacked the Buhari administration over Film Village to be built in Kano. They attacked the project as Haram and today the government has simply jettisoned the

idea. The film village would have provided thousands of job for the people, but for them it is Haram.

My fear is how easily we simply wave off these characters as conservatives and some of us even support them in the name of conservative North, making excuses for them.

These characters have now come out loudly to say that because of Rahama Sadau, someone or people have blasphemed against Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) or Islam and we are taking them seriously. They are the characters who defame Islam by dragging Islam into everything.

Most times these characters get away with whatever because they can mobilize large voices to back them up and attack their targets as they can easily use religion to manipulate simplistic mobs to lynch whomever they pick online. This online lynching is what happened to Rahama Sadau to force her to issue statement and cry because her own life is even in danger with real extremists lurking around in a Nigeria that's one of the most dangerous places in the world as regards terrorism.

On former Emir of Kano, Mr. Sunusi Lamido Sunusi, he was not dethrone because of radical reforms he was calling for, he was dethrone because he was caught up in the political warfare between Governor Ganduje and Senator Kwankwaso. To completely own Kano and remove Kwankwaso's influence and power, Governor Ganduje felt it was to remove Kwankwaso's emir who was against him and put his own emir. We should really not simplistically allude it to conservative north against the Emir, it has nothing to do with it.

We in Arewa are really allowing the voices of extremism take over the voices of reason by succumbing to these rogue blackmailers masquerading in false costumes as representing Islam.