Article Citation: Umar Ahmed, Musa Ibrahim, & Sameera M. Wasagu (2021). A Sociolinguistic Analysis of National Consciousness Among Quranic Educators in Northern Nigeria. DEGEL: The Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Islamic Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1. ISSN 0794-9316
A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF
NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG QURANIC EDUCATORS IN NORTHERN NIGERIA
By
Umar Ahmed, Musa Ibrahim, & Sameera M. Wasagu
Abstract
Using sociolinguistic tool of ethnography
of communication, this paper assesses the level of national conciousness among
Quranic teachers in rural northern Nigeria and anlyzes how such awareness and
their real life experiences impact on their commitment or otherwise towards
nation-building. Drawing upon field work conducted in three northern Nigerian
states of Bauchi, Niger and Zamfara, the study finds that while the question of
nationalism is very much intertwined with another question of who serves who? Achieving
a strong sense of national consciousness is not a one-way traffic. Systematic
exclusion in the Nigerian project and subsequent inequitable distribution of
resource has led to the creation of alternate imagine communities among the
networks of Islamic (Quranic) teachers and their students in rural areas, who
are aware of their influence in the success or otherwise of Nigerian government
policies in the region. It is suggested that the integration of
this non-state actor into the ‘‘Nigerian project’’ would be beneficial.
Introduction
Studies
on state-society relations in northern Nigeria (e.g. Jalingo 1982, Ahmed 1996,
and Baba 2011, Barau 2017) have established that many Nigerian government
policies and programmes in the region failed because of the parallel efforts by
the Quranic educators in rural areas whose activities create a counter
community that neither fully recognizes nor understands the government’s
‘language’ of a modern nation-state. A typical example is that, the failure of
Nigerian government to eradicate poliomyelitis, child and maternal death,
gender inequality, ‘illiteracy’ and fundamentalism in northern Nigeria is
connected to the Islamic culture of many communities in the region that resist
such attempts. Such resistance is entrenched in religious discourses limited
within the boundaries of respective Islamic communities. In other words, the
culture is discursively constructed in isolation from the national interest
because the framers of the discourses (i.e. the clerics) either lack national
consciousness or are not co-opted in the national discourse. The cumulated
problem of those isolated communities led by informal religious institutions
is, however, borne by the nation in general and it undermines the collective
national interests because it affects the country’s scoresheet of development
indices of sectors.
Motivation for the study draws from the observation
that there is a big disconnect between traditional (informal) religious
institutions breeding millions of citizens and Nigerian government and its
“Nigerian project.” While Nigeria as a nation has its national objectives and
mechanisms set in place to achieve them, Quranic educators, especially those at
the rural areas are unaware of them and (un)consciously promote activities and
attitudes that undermine them. This paper is set to achieve two main objectives.
The first is to assess the level of national consciousness among Quranic
educators in rural areas, and second, analyses the underlying factors that
promote disconnect between them and people promoting national development plan
as well as explore viable ways of changing the perception of Quranic educators
toward national objectives.
Theoretical
Framework
Theoretically, we adopt three theoretical perspectives
within which we situate the study. These are Ethnography of Communication
(EOC), Imagined Communities and Post-secularism. EOC as both a method and a
theoretical framework, is about analysis of communication within the wider context of the social and cultural
practices and beliefs of members of a particular culture or speech community
(Hymes 1964, 2013). It seeks to uncover, describe and interpret how language is
intertwined with cultural production and how that motivates social choices an
individual or a group makes, as well as the effect of those choices on all
aspects of society, including norms, values, expectations, and context
(Coulmas, 2013).
EOC as a method and an approach will be
used within the socio-cultural context of Muslims in northern Nigeria otherwise
known as ‘Islamic culture’ of northern Nigeria. Islamic culture is a term
primarily used in secular academia to describe the cultural practices common to
historically Islamic people. Islamic culture generally includes all the
practices which have developed around the religion of Islam, including Quranic
ones such as prayer (salat), non-Quranic such as traditional educational system
and a more complex political cultures peculiar to Muslim societies. In this
regard, EOC will allow the researchers to ethnographically enmesh themselves
within the Islamic culture of northern Nigeria while fully aware of their
positionality as researchers among the researched.
The second theory, Imagined Communities was
developed by Benedict Anderson. According to Anderson (2006, 12), ‘‘nationalism
has to be understood by aligning it, not with self-consciously held political
ideologies, but with large cultural systems that preceded it, out of which – as
well as against which – it came to being.” In the context of Nigeria, which is
an assemblage of large cultural systems, absence of nationalism or national
conciousness within the activities of some groups at various parts of the
country including one that encompass Quranic teachers, is not because of lack
of political awareness but a reaction to their alienation in the process of the
creation of Nigeria as a nation-state. In this context, we consider Anderson’s
concept of imagined communities to underscore Nigeria’s situation whereby at
macro levels, groups of people were brought together and ‘imagined’ to belong
to a nation-state based on the formal structures of a nation-state. Yet, at
micro levels, some distinct groups see themselves as belonging to different
communities and based their activities working towards that. This represents
the example of Quranic teachers who are Nigerians. Yet, they feel “alienated”
and deemphatized their sense of belonging to Nigeria by working to create an
imagined communities under which their capabilities would be appreciated and
interest served.
This leads us into our third theory
‘post-secularism’ adopted to address the religious aspect of the project. In
the wake of industrial revolution, scholars (e.g. Karl Marx) predicted the
demise of religion because of the discovery of science and technology. This
assumption influences scholarship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
that proposed secularization theory. The theory of secularization is a product
of the social and cultural milieu from which it emerged. The expectation of
receding religious influence fits well the evolutionary model of modernization.
Critical reexamination reveals secularization to be an orienting concept
grounded in an ideological preference rather than a systematic theory. In other
words, secularisation theory projected the demise of religion completely
(Swatos and Kevin 1999), or at least that religion would retreat to the private
sphere because it is located ‘inside’ and privately belongs to its beholders
who are constantly being exposed to ‘modernity’ (Meyer 2012).
Central to classical notions of
secularization was also the presumption of an inherent “incompatibility between
some features of ‘modernity’ and religious belief” (Taylor 2007, 22). The
validity of this claim has, however, become increasingly questioned in the
light of comparative empirical research in recent decades. Indeed, more recent
debates on the changing face of religion in late modernity have yielded a more
nuanced understanding of secularization as a multidimensional phenomenon that
takes different
forms, depending on the varying trajectories of modernization and social differentiation
across diverse historical, national, social, and cultural contexts (Moberg et
al 2012). In addition, it has become increasingly clear to social scientists
that “secularization needs not only to be
understood as a phenomenon that occurs on various —and not necessarily causally related—societal, organizational, and individual levels, but also as
a phenomenon that often occurs concurrently with counter developments in
post-institutional forms of religion and spirituality” (Moberg et al 2012, 1).
Hadden (1987) argues that the historical
context upon which modernization unfolded permitted the idea of secularization
to go unchallenged for so long. This paradigm influenced many policymakers
across the globe to promote what is popularly known as the principle of
‘separation of church and politics.’ In Nigeria, like in many other African
countries, government tend to distance itself from religious institutions
thereby leaving their affairs in the hands of private individuals and groups.
However, present-day societies defy this
hypothesis and religion remains an essential force in humans’ lives, and its
public visibility has increased and continued to take different shapes and
forms (De-Vries et al 2006) even in the technologically sophisticated
twenty-first century. Since the 1990s, further attempts to understand religious
phenomena turn to “post-secularism.” It is a concept that calls for the
interrogation of the continued relevance of religion in the lives of human in
the ‘post-modern’ world. Koenig et al (2007, 12) put it that “contrary to
conventional theories of secularization, there is an enduring place for
religion within the public spheres of modern democratic polities”. In other
words, the academic debates on religion and society have since shifted towards
a rediscovery of religion in the form of its external features (experiences,
feelings, emotions, rituals, and performances) conditioned by contexts and
practices which have emerged and become prominent as religious expressions in the
modern world. Nigeria is an example of a country where both Islam and Christianity defy
secularization theory as their visibility and impact are increasing in public
spaces. A typical example is the reintroduction of shari’a in some northern
states in Nigeria through (secular) democracy (Ostein 2006) intended to further
secularize the society. Thus, post-secularism is used to theoretically frame
the Nigeria’s persistent influence of religion in society. The influence of
religion is increasing outside the government considering how religious
individuals and organizations are having more influence in controlling people
at community levels (Said 1997).
Quranic Education System in Nigeria
The Quranic education system
was introduced in Nigeria in the 14th century by Arab traders and scholars
(Fafunwa 2018). Abbo, Zain and Njidda (2017) observe that the system was
established on the basis of recitation and memorization of Quran (the Islamic
holy book), learning of Islamic principles, values and jurisprudence. While Quranic system of education has suffered a
century of neglect from colonial and postcolonial governments in Nigeria (Abbo, Zain and Njidda 2017) as well as survived modernity pressure, it continued
to be a preffered system for millions of parents in northern Nigeria. Majority
of the over 13 million “out of school” children in Nigeria are in the northern
region (Barau 2017). However, these children are only out of western education
school system recognized by Nigerian government and are enrolled in traditional
Quranic schools system. Their parents prefer “informal” Quranic education over
the “formal” western school system for the fact that the latter was associated
with Christian missionaries. The Quranic education system, which is left in the
hands of informal religious institutions, controlled by some groups of people,
has continued
to be an important vector of knowledge transmission in the region. Traditional
religious institutions and individual Quranic teachers have strived to not only save the system from
extinction, but use it as a powerful tool of cultural construction that counter
the output of the “formal” education sector through which the Nigerian project[1]
is embedded.
It is within this context, existing literature on
Quranic education in Nigeria has often been discussed either on the basis of
unfair treatment to Islamic education by the government (Reichmuth 1989), or
the threats of the system to national security and development (Hoechner 2014).
In the latter context, many studies (e.g. Hoechner 2014, 2015) show how Nigeria
has suffered several forms of religiously motivated violence mostly in the
northern part of the country. These forms of violence have often been
attributed to unregulated activities of informal Islamic institutions. For
example, the Maitatsine − the violent confrontation which took place between a
sect of Muslim fanatics and the Nigeria Police Force in Kano in Decmber 1980
did not come as a surprise to those who understand the complexity of the
religious situation in northern Nigeria. It had its roots in the deeply
conservative practice of Islam which is dominant in the region and inspired by
the stories of the successful jihad of Usmanu Danfodiyo in the first decade of
the nineteenth century (Raymond 1984). Subsequent uprising that started from
the activities of informal religious institutions include the Takfir wal Hijra group that operated in
Niger State between the late 1990s and late 2000s (Ibrahim 2018), the Nigerian
Talibans in the 1990s in Yobe State, and the current Boko Haram which is one of
the most dreaded terrorist group in the world (Thurston 2016, Ibrahim 2018)
that threatens peace and stability of Nigeria. Kyari, de Montclos, and Thurston (2018) viewed that the trend of violent religious
movements in Nigeria persists because the discourses that motivate such
movement equally persists and little or no attempt have been made by the
relevant stakeholders to counter them.
While the government usually reacts to those violent
groups using commensurate force, some scholars advocate for an intellectual
approach to addressing the causes at the grassroots. Usman (2008) wrote on how
Nigeria's current Universal Basic Education programmeme could be used in
targeting Almajiri (Muslim street boys), who are potential recruits into
various violent movements, for basic literacy acquisition. There is also a body
of literature on the Almajiri system of (modern) education developed by
the Federal Government as a response to the perceived threats posed by the Almajirai to national development
(Yushau et al 2013). However, most of these studies and government policies
have so far made little or no impacts in addressing the issue. This is because,
the Quranic educators who have constructed the views (upon which some of the
Muslims live their lives) have not changed their views.
In this context, this paper assess the level of national conciousness
among the Quranic teachers in rural areas and anlyzes how such awareness and
their real life experiences impact on their commitment or otherwise towards
nation-building. It finds that while the question of nationalism is very much intertwined
with another question of who does the nation matters to, achieving strong sense
of national conciousness is not a one way traffic. Systematic exclusion in the
Nigerian project and subsequent unequitable distribution of resource has led to
the creation of alternate imagine communities among the networks of Quranic
teachers and their students in rural areas, who are aware of ther influnece in
the success or otherwise of Nigerian government policies. The fndings are
presented under three sections.
National consciousness: The
question of exclusion and alternate identity formation among Quranic educators
Beyond
a shared sense of national identity and understanding that a group of people
shares by default (Festenstein 2009), ‘national’ consciousness may also include
attempts to create such sense of sub-national belonging among people of diverse
ethnic, linguistic, and cultural background as the case is in Nigeria. This led
to the invention of various educational and social programmes that could foster
national consciousness and unity. However, Nigeria still struggles on the issue
of national consciousness.
Hayward’s (1976) research on national consciousness
dispels the assumption that “the masses in African rural areas have little
political knowledge and that they are generally ignorant of the political
process, the national leadership, political organizations, the national
territory, and its people” (1976, 433). In agreement, our data reveals that
many Quranic teachers are aware of Nigeria’s configuration as a modern
nation-state. They know the origin of its name, which is from River Niger and
meaning of its national symbols, such as the national flag and coat of arms. Some
of them are aware of government policies that are in line with sustainable
development goals, such as Universal Basic Education (UBE). Some even know
about the huge amounts of money government channelled into some of its
programmes like the UBE, which ensures compulsory (free) education to all
citizens up to junior secondary school as a minimum education level for all
Nigerians. They mentioned examples of how both federal and state governments
are employing permanent and temporary teachers for that purpose.
In the aspect of citizenship and civic
responsibilities, some of them are aware that building a nation is a collective
responsibility. They also know about Nigeria’s diversity, including how such
could be harnessed for its development or misused for its downfall. They
underscored the special roles of political and religious leaders. Many
explained their understanding of national consciousness in a way that many
would agree as fitting into the broader configuration of Nigeria as a modern
nation-state, as captured in this excerpt:
National consciousness and nationalism entail one’s
awareness and actions towards his country’s development [sic], contributing to
resolving its challenges, working towards its economic prosperity, and being
proud of it vis-à-vis other countries in the world (Authors’ interview).
The clarity with which some Quranic teachers in rural
areas described national consciousness dispelled any sense of ignorance of
nationalism and knowledge of modern nation-state’s consciousness among them.
Moreover, they are fully aware of how different power, including their own
positions as religious leaders, could be used to model and remodel societies.
However, as Anderson (2016) pointed out,
nationalism has to be understood beyond “self-consciously held political
ideologies, but with large cultural systems that precede it.” In this context,
the awareness among Quranic teachers on
‘Nigeria,’ ‘Nigerianess,’ and zeal to live such was preceded by their
understanding of the narratives on the pre-Nigeria cultural system against which modern Nigeria came to being. The reason for this as captured in their narratives
of being Nigerians is their disappointment in how, despite their leadership
roles and positions to make things work, they were made irrelevant. They are
politically and culturally aware of how their influence on millions of children
under their care is capable to make or mar Nigerian project. In fact, the
aspects of undermining the modern Nigerian project comes out clearly in their
discourse about their role in national development. This discourse recurrently
featured alongside the question of who benefits from Nigeria as a nation-state.
This skepticism or disappointment expressed by Quranic teachers as stakeholders
in the Nigerian project makes them to raise further questions about nationalism
vis-à-vis duties and responsibility between a nation and its citizens. In our
conversations, they continuously question: “what has Nigeria done to us that
deserve our support?” While ruminating on the same question, they never hide
their nostalgia for what they consider “the golden age of Islamic scholarship”
in pre-colonial Nigeria, even though most of them were born after Nigeria’s
independence. Their understanding of the unfair treatment of Quranic teachers
in Nigeria is a combination of narratives passed on to them by their teachers
about the heydays of Islamic scholarship in the region vis-à-vis their
real-life experiences.
It is these kinds of feelings of exclusion intertwined
with how their authorities and potentialities are formally not recognized
towards achieving a “national” course that made them renegade on most
government policies. Some of them deliberately hinder things that they knew the
government wanted to achieve the most. For example, after a long discussion
about Nigeria and what it means to him, we asked an informant if he considers
himself as a leader, he responded:
Religiously, I see myself as a leader appointed by
Allah. Allah says, “Allah grants wisdom to whomever He wills. And whoever is
granted such wisdom is certainly blessed with a great privilege. But none will
be mindful ˹of this˺ except people of reason”
(Q2, 269). The wisdom here is Qur’anic knowledge. In this regard, being a Quranic
teacher makes me a leader, and I am discharging the responsibility Allah has
entrusted to me. I train my students and guide other people who seek fatwa
(Islamic legal opinion) on many things from me. In the context of Nigeria, I do not see myself as a leader because there are
traditional rulers and politicians who decide how the country is governed. If
government policies are achieved they should have the credit; otherwise, they
should be blamed. (Alaramma Sani[2]
—Authors’ interview 2020)
This excerpt shows how Alaramma Sani is drawing a
boundary between his own authority and that of Nigeria’s policymakers. While
his leadership is divine, he only owes his loyalty to God based on his
understanding of Islamic scriptures and whether or not his understanding is
based on authentic interpretation in the interest of Nigeria or not. Alaramma
Sani, like most of the informants, knows well that the text does not speak for
itself. The Quranic scholars interpret it, and such interpretations are humanly
subjective as another informant mentions:
It is only when there are troubles that they rush to
us, or when people resisted their policies, that they want us to find ways of
selling their ideas to people through our preaching. (Alaramma Salisu[3] – Authors’
interview 2020).
The Quranic teachers know they could instrumentalize
their knowledge of the scriptural texts to construct, promote or destroy ideas
that shape the society. Despite that, those we interviewed have accepted the
reality that the world has changed with communities merged under different
modern nation-states with new sophisticated government systems.
Whereas many informants are disenchanted with the
Nigerian system, they do not see physical violence as appropriate means of
addressing their griviences. They do not support the actions of violent
non-state armed groups like Boko Haram, Islamic State in West Africa Province
(ISWAP), and the so-called bandits. As much as they also consider the Nigerian
state policies and treatments of Quranic teachers and students as unfair they
prefer to chart their own non-violent means of resistance. They use their cultural
capital/knowledge (Bourdieu, 1996) as their weapon of everyday resistance. They
work towards creating a network of community and alternative systems that
presumably work for them by forming a resistance group that undermines power,
which is not easily recognized as public and collective
resistance (such as rebellions or demonstrations). It is typically obscure and
not politically articulated but yields great impact (Vinthagen and Johansson
2002).
Years of neglect have endowed Quranic teachers in
rural areas with experiences about Nigeria. They understand their predicaments
to be caused by systematic exclusion from the Nigerian project. This context
makes Quranic teachers’ conversations
(both sermons and casual talk) with their students and the people under their
influence revolve around an ideal utopian Islamic society where corruption and
injustice would disappear. And illustrations of injustices and corruptions are
based on their experiences as a group subjected to injustices. It is based on
this discourse that they create a community around them who do not trust state
institutions, and they consider people who do not accept their worldview as the
“other” living in a society that they consider immoral. Thus become skeptical
in accepting anything associated with the government.
Recognition Breeds
Nationalism
It is, however, important to point out that lack of
strong affinity to Nigeria in some milieus as established by this research, is
a problem not limited to Quranic teachers in rural areas. Campbell and Page (2018) point out,
by conventional wisdom, if you were
to ask Nigerians who they are […] they would first identify themselves with a
particular family, then they would note their ethnic groups, they might tell
you of what state there were “indigenes”—that is where their families came
from, not where they lived. And only then a Nigerian would conclude that they
were also Nigerians. (2018, 8)
In their survey of neighboring Hausa villages on
different sides of the Niger-Nigeria boundary probing issues of self-identity
and ethnic affinity, Miles and Rochefort (1991) found that “most Hausa
villagers on the frontier did not place their Hausa ethnic identity above their
national one as citizens of Nigeria or Niger and expressed greater affinity for
non-Hausa cocitizens than for foreign Hausas.” (Miles & Rochefort 1991,
393). They, however, pointed out that religion plays a role because people at
the border towns are likely to express strong affinity to someone who is a
Muslim and Nigerian but not a Hausa than a non Muslim and a Hausa from Niger
republic. This still shows that religion is influential in identity-making and
reconstruction.
When narrating how they are neglected in the Nigerian
system, Quranic teachers in rural areas often compare how their counterparts
fare under different modern nation-states. For example, most of our informants
have visited Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage. Some have visited countries like
Sudan, Libya, and Morocco. So, they have a sense of differentiating between
life in Nigeria and elsewhere. Those who have been to Saudi Arabia mentioned
that they obey all the country’s laws and orders and admitted that they care
less about the same laws and orders in Nigeria. This is captured in the
following excerpt:
Whenever I visited Saudi Arabia for hajj
(greater pilgrimage) or umra (lesser pilgrimage), I followed all their
rules and regulations. I do that because they value religious scholars. The
government carries their religious teachers along in policy and decision
makings. It is the religious teachers through preaching that educate people
about the importance of nationalism and being law abiding. The mamluk
(ruling elites) and religious teachers work together for the development of the
country. This is what we lack in our country (Authors’ interview)
Drawing from the above excerpt, referring to Nigeria
as “our country” indicates that the speaker has recognized that he belongs to
Nigeria, not Saudi Arabia. Yet, he cherished Saudi Arabia morethan Nigeria not
because Saudi Arabia is doing anything to him but for treating his counterpart
better. In this regard, such a person has identified with Saudi Arabia and
contributed to its vision of “law and order” while undermining that in his
country Nigeria. This Quranic teacher promotes the same narrative to his hundreds
of Quranic school students, many of whom have graduated and established their
own schools in different rural areas. While this perspective is widespread
among our informants, it suggests that these people are creating alternative
identities that oppose the Nigerian project.
To say it differently, while our
informants believe that Islam encourages national consciousness, their own consciousness and loyalty to a state are different
from the idea of the Nigerian project in which they feel alienated. Based on
their presentiments, they create a discourse derived from their subjective
interpretation of the Quran and Sunna that appears to contest Nigeria’s systems
and policies through which they feel oppressed. While not totally and
explicitly rejecting Nigeria as a nation-state, this discourse has, over time,
mobilizes people from below that are involved in the process of self-fashioning
and creation of alternative cultural citizenship within Nigeria based on faith.
Based on the analysis of our data, it is obvious that
attitudes and behaviors promoted by some Quranic teachers that oppose national
policies and development agendas are a result of a lack of formal recognition
of their potentialities as leaders. They admitted that they are not leaders in
the context of Nigeria’s formal system project and accepted their exclusion as
their realities. Yet, they continued to see themselves as leaders legitimated
by Quran and Sunna, and they are committed to discharging their authority.
The implication of having this sub-national power
legitimized by religious text is having two distinct sets of leadership that
drive the community to rather different directions. Like Alaramma Sani’s case,
he does not only think and act based on what benefits himself and his network
community (Castells 2004), but he often delegitimizes the authority of the
policymakers and politicians through his preaching. In the long run, their
network succeeded in creating a community whose foundation and activities contradict
the collective vision of state governments in northern Nigeria and Nigeria at
large. And even if those clerics realize the danger of what they are doing,
they consciously ignore it because they do not see the larger society as part
of their constituency. The bottom line is that they behave differently because
they have not been carried along or simply that their roles in national
development was downplayed by governments at all levels.This situation is
avoidable through a holistic approach is needed to address it.
Resource sharing, national
belonging, and the commitment to Nigerian project
Quranic teachers' skepticisms on Nigeria are
intertwined with the question of who benefits from Nigeria as an entity. In
other words, identifying with Nigeria beyond bearing its citizenship is
something that often comes out in our data. Thus, Quranic teachers’ yearnings
for a better life make them imagine themselves as either sub-national community
comprising a network of Quranic teachers and students deprived of equal
opportunities or part of an imagined global network of communities comprising
their counterparts elsewhere who are better off.
Our analysis does not suggest that Quranic teachers in
rural areas only see everything through a religious prism. As discussed
earlier, they are au courant of Nigeria as a country and its political
and economic complexities; thus, they also use political and economic
arguments. Their discursive position in the construction of Nigeria as a
country and the extent of their feeling of national belonging, as well as their
commitment to help government achieve its developmental policies or otherwise,
are intertwined with not only their yearning for recognition but also
benefitting from Nigeria’s wealth. Even though they are not educated in the
western system, their training in the Quranic system, teaching experience, and
long-term involvement in religious politics have allowed them to rationally
engage in national discourse and clearly delineate their positions and
aspirations in the context of Nigeria. They strongly see themselves as highly
influential leaders in their own environment that comprise a vast network of
Quranic students they control and clientele that patronize their religious
services. The language they employed in articulating their position in the
context of Nigeria as a nation-state is such that it expresses both a feeling
of rejection and, at the same time, an effort to reclaim their influence. They
express grudges in how the economy of the country is skewed in such a way that
even when they want to participate in Nigeria’s project, they are sometimes
forced to withdraw their support. In some states that reintroduced sharia,
efforts were made to incorporate some Quranic teachers into government as ways
of achieving some developmental goals. Some states' governments started giving
paltry allowance to them. That gesture has tremendously raised hope among these
people and started changing their perspectives and roles in Nigeria’s project.
Small as those monies were, they gave many Quranic teachers a feeling of
national belonging. However, because the programme was more political than a
genuine reform, it did not last. Its failure pushed back the incorporated
Quranic teachers back to their state of lamentation as expressed by this informant:
When [Zamfara] government monthly pay western school
system teachers, they used to give us (Quranic Teachers) an annual allowance,
which was also a peanut that started at the beginning of sharia implementation.
That raised our hope that we are also part of the country. Our hope did not
last long. The last time we were paid was fifteen years ago [2005]. Right now,
we are not benefitting in any way from the government in terms of our
livelihood. (Authors’ interview 2020)
As frustrated as he was, the above informant was fully
aware that Nigeria’s government could not control people under them.
Occasionally, government officials go through them to convince people to accept
some of their policies. In discourse formation, individuals or groups choose
and organize information to create narratives that favor their interests. It is
within this context that a network of Quranic teachers created narratives of
victimhood embedded in the explanations of their predicaments and aspiration
for an Islamic system. In other words, Quranic teachers and their students’
livelihood is intertwined in the religious discourse they represent and
promote. A minimum effort from government could have reduced the tension and
co-opted them into the Nigeria’s project. While the meager amount some state
governments such as Zamfara, Kano, and Bauchi used to pay some Qur’anic
teachers was so little and did not represent what the Quranic teachers deserve
from the national resources as citizens, the gesture has played a significant
role in building bridges and instilling a sense of belonging among the
beneficiary Quranic teachers. Many of them mentioned how they committed
themselves to promote government policies at that time. This is despite knowing
that their counterpart elsewhere are better off.
In Saudi Arabia, Imams and religious teachers live
comfortably from the wages they earn from the government. But if you look at us
in Nigeria, you must pity us because we are not only neglected but looked down
upon by the western-educated elites. (Authors’ interview 2020)
When the meager allowance stopped, and knowing how
their counterparts are treated elsewhere coupled with their awareness of their
roles as critical stakeholders for the success or otherwise of every government
policy at their localities, many Quranic teachers have consciously resolved to
withdraw their support for government policies. To equally frustrate government
policies, many of them consciously and saliently promote religious
interpretations that are anti-government policies. They achieve this through
power dynamics that undermine many policies through their position as ‘Rasikuna
bil ilmi’ and ‘ulul ilm (the embodiment of Islamic knowledge)’ by
deconstructing whatever policies government have as un-Islamic or conspiracy
against Islam. Where there is no direct Quranic or hadith text to discredit
government policies, they use conspiracy theories to promote an alternative
discourse that fit into the imagination of the religious subjects with whom
they suffered from the failure of the ruling elites in providing basic needs.
As non-state actors, the network of Quranic teachers
acknowledges their limit in enforcing what they want. However, as the
embodiments of Islamic knowledge, they are very emphatic on how they are
authoritative controllers of religious subjects and how they use such
opportunity in constructing and controlling communities based on their own
understanding of Islam and how Muslim communities should be. Wa’azi
(traditional Islamic education/enlightenment process) and interpersonal
relations with their students are the major tools they use in promoting
alternate civilization that in many instances is at variance with the
aspiration of Nigeria’s government expressed through its policies. As an aspect of religious discourse,
sermon is a very important and common religious activity in northern Nigeria,
which both ulamā and religious subjects regard as an integral part of their
religious activities. McSpadden (2003, 127) notes that sermon is “the most
far-reaching, numerically-influential form of teaching” in a conventional
religious setting typical of the northern region of Nigeria.
The Quranic teachers believe in the efficacy of their
sermons in changing the attitude of people. Although it is difficult to measure
such efficacy in the context of this research, many informants in the category
of Quranic teachers and preachers believe that for every hundred people that
listen to their sermons, ten will positively respond to it through attitudinal
change. Although it is difficult to prove this claim, they themselves said they
measure it by changes in the behaviors of their subjects with whom they live
and interact on a daily basis. Thus, people reject some government policies
because ulama preach against it and subsequently accept them when they tell
them to do so. This is done by either narrowingly portraying government
policies as contradictory with their interpretations of some religious texts or
even more broadly opposing it in the name of preventing harm to people under
their leadership. While this aspect of power relation may not be known to most
religious followers, the Quranic teachers we interviewed are fully aware of how
and when they deploy these tactics. While doing these, some Quranic teachers
still think that they are more nationalistic than politicians because they care
more for the people at the grassroots than the politicians. Thus, they see
their ‘dissention’ as patriotism and the attitudes/actions of western-educated
politicians of impoverishing them and their followers as ‘lack of patriotism.’
What this entails is that both actors view each other attitudes through their
interests. As much as these interests are viewed as conflicting, formal
recognition of the role of Quranic teacher and rewarding them would be in the
best interest of Nigeria’s project.
Providing basic amenities to Quranic school settlements
would facilitate inculcation of nationalism and commitment to Nigeria’s
project. We visited a Quranic teacher in a rural community in Bauchi state,
which has about 650 students? While trying to capture his understanding of
Nigeria’s government structure and how he thinks it relates to him and his
students, he was quite aware of the government levels from Federal to local
government. However, he insisted that he and his students recognize none of
those government structures because they mean nothing to them. Instead, they
recognize United Nations International Children Education Fund (UNICEF) as
their government. While this may sound strange, he meant what he said and tried
to justify that: “Only UNICEF knows we exist. They care for us because they
built borehole for us and give us money for the renovation of our school.” A
critical look at the above argument shows that he was neither ignorant nor
dogmatic. He was saying his reality. On a contrasting note, a Quranic teacher
in Niger State, who, despite his dissatisfaction with the Nigerian state and
its system because of the poor condition of living they subjected them to,
still sees himself as a community leader that relate to the state. He
illustrated his position as part of the Nigerian project and policy achievement
through a water project in his village. He mentioned that when government
builds a borehole for the community, the village people assigned him the
responsibility of looking after it. Since then, when such borehole breakdown,
he mentioned that “I never sleep until it is repaired.” He collects donations
from individuals, which they use to settle the cost of the repair. In this
regard, this single project instilled a sense of belonging (in this Quranic
teacher cum a community leader) to Nigeria and its policies of providing
portable water as part of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This also
shows how meager resources could bridge a gap and mobilize individuals and
groups towards nation-building.
Conclusion
While the hypothesis that Muslims held more loyalty to
their faith than their country is too generalizing and contextual, some Quranic
teachers in rural areas who are very much aware of their cultural capital and
how that is not recognized by the government used their religious knowledge in
challenging national policies in order to register their grievances. Over the
years, they have developed a complex identity and network of communities that
promote ideas and civilization that contrasts such envisioned by Nigerian
policymakers.
If policymakers could channel
national consciousness and nation-building through religion, one could imagine
how fast things could change. However, this is something that has to be built
on trust. The government must first win back the confidence of the religious
leaders in the rural areas that they are equal stakeholders in the Nigerian
project. Through them, a sense of national belonging could be restored or
utilized for good. The paper found that economic forces and social welfare
programmes play vital roles in creating senses of national belonging.
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