Seven questions Yakubu Dogara must answer on displaced Muslims in Tafawa Balewa

HONOURABLE SPEAKER BARRISTER YAKUBU DOGARA AND THE PLIGHT OF THE TAFAWA BALEWA DISPLACED MUSLIM COMMUNITY
Questions to Answer against the 2019 General Elections

By Professor Salisu Shehu, (Walin Tafawa Balewa), Department of Education, Bayero University, Kano

Your Excellency Sir,

It is with due respect and a sense of responsibility that I write you this open letter. I have an obligation to respect you for a number of reasons. First, as the Honourable Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and thus, the Number Four Citizen in the Country every Nigerian citizen owes you respect as a national leader. Secondly, in the Nigerian project you represent me and my constituency and our collective interests in the National Assembly. While these are a few of the reasons that place on us the obligation to respect you, they are as well, the very reasons that compel you at all times and in all situations to listen to us, tolerate us and be responsive and sensitive to our legitimate interests and rights as bonafide citizens of the constituency that you represent. In a democratic dispensation citizens /subjects are not only required to respect their leaders but are also legitimately given the right and, in certain circumstances, obligations to ask them questions. It is against this background that I felt obliged to ask you some questions regarding the plight of the displaced Muslim community of TAfawa Balewa Town. This has become imperative since you are once again, for the fourth time now since 2007, contesting for the same seat in this 2019 general elections.

I am sure you must have read my write up in 2015 in opposition to your election as the Speaker of the House of Representatives and I stated my reasons which I still hold on to. But as a believer in God when you eventually got elected I accepted it as His Divine inevitable Will and that one must come to terms with. I, therefore, wish to congratulate you as you would obviously finish your tenure as the Speaker of the House of Representatives smoothly. We have seen several instances at which speakers got impeached half-way into their tenures. It is, however, this same lofty position you got by the dint of God’s Providence that made our people to expect that you would legitimately make use of the ample authority, privilege and opportunities you got to address all critical challenges pertaining to matters of security, peaceful coexistence, survival and infrastructure in all their aspects.

Mr.Speaker sir, now that you are once again contesting for the seat of the member of the House of Representatives representing my federal constituency, Dass/Tafawa Balewa/Bogoro, I wish to ask you some questions regarding the plight and the fate of the displaced Muslim Community of Tafawa Balewa town. I specifically intend to pick you up on this issue not because I am not interested in appraising your performance in other aspects/areas of our interest but because they have been over flogged in the debates that have been going on in the public domain. While the issue of the plight of the Tafawa Balewa Displaced Muslims has never been given any serious attention in the ensuing debates on your performance my position and identity as an indigene of the town gives me every mandate and right to take you up on it. Besides the feeling of obligation to speak for the helpless, the sense of posterity is yet another compelling reason for addressing you through this medium.

It is pertinent to first of all make the point in a general sense that when you emerged as a Speaker in 2015 we all expected that you would grow and rise above primordial traits, prejudices, sentiments and religious bigotry and eventually become detribalised and imbibe the spirit and qualities of a real national leader/figure who would be fair, impartial and justly magnificent in all matters affecting all categories of people of your constituency. It is sad to note that, on the particular matter of the displaced Muslim people of Tafawa Balewa you have failed woefully, for as it were, you have been caged or rather prevented, obviously by the prejudices you hold towards them, from doing anything to either address their overall plight or at least render any help to alleviate certain aspects of their suffering. Throughout your years as a representative of our constituency, your disposition towards the displaced Muslim Community of Tafawa Balewa town has been that of unmindfulness, indifference or total neglect. The specific questions I will ask in the proceeding paragraphs would not only illustrate my assertions here but would certainly prove them. Sadly indeed, your demeanour has only vindicated my position in 2015.

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Honourable Speaker sir, you are very much aware that there had been intermittent ethno-religious crises in Tafawa-Balewa town since 1991. In all instances in 1991, 1995, 2001 and 2011 many families of the Muslim community used to be displaced. While a few of them also used to return to their houses after managing to repair them at previous instances, no single family has returned to Tafawa Balewa town since the last crisis in 2011. For the past 8 years therefore, the entire Muslims of the town have remained a diaspora community in Bununu, Dass, Bauchi metropolis and other places as the case may be. You are very much aware of this fact, and it is against it that I wish to ask you the following questions Sir.

1. Mr. Speaker Sir, let me begin with a very general question please. I am aware that you severally agitated and even made efforts to bring back the headquarters of Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area from Bununu to Tafawa Balewa town. Such agitations and efforts began since the time it was shifted to Bununu in 2011 when you were an ordinary floor member of the House of Representatives and up to this moment as a Speaker you have not relented in this regard. Now, the question is have you ever agitated or even made attempts towards resettling the displaced Muslim Community of the town just as you have been desperately making in returning the ‘displaced’ L.G.A. Headquarters? Shouldn’t that which is good for the goose also be good for the gander?
2. After emerging as the Speaker of the House of Representative, you had thus risen to the position of a national leader and a statesman. In that sense it was expected that you would rise above all sorts of petty sentiments and work towards entrenching peaceful coexistence in your constituency and amongst the various religious and tribal groups in the area. We thought you would create or convoke a reconciliatory or mediation platform or assembly or committee of some sorts that would work frantically work towards fostering harmony, tolerance and mutual trust among the two major religious communities as that would pave the way for the resettling of the displaced Muslims of Tafawa Balewa Town. Mr. Speaker Sir, did you ever attempt to do this? If yes, when and where did something like this take place and who were the representatives of the two major religions that were invited?
3. Mr. Speaker Sir, you undertook the building or renovation of mosques within your constituency in 2016. Good enough. What, however, surprised us was that you either did not care about priority in terms of need or you deliberately chose to abandon the central or any other ruined mosque in Tafawa Balewa Town. For your information, before the 2011 crisis there were 3 Jumu’ah Mosques and 45 daily prayer mosques in Tafawa Balewa township . I am sure you may not know those figures, but I have no doubt that you know for sure all of these mosques, except the one at the Police Divisional Office (having been protected by the police), were destroyed and ruined by the people of your faith. The question is, why did you fail to include at least even the central mosque of Tafawa Balewa in the list of the mosques you wanted to renovate when you surely knew that it should have been the First on the list, at least if considerations for priority were made? Is it because you share the stupid sentiment of the people of your faith that the town has purportedly been won by ‘Christ’ and that it has become ‘Jesus Kingdom’?
4. You may argue that because there were no Muslims in the town for whom the mosque should be reconstructed, hence you thought it would be unnecessary or even futile perhaps to do that. Then in that regard, the question would bring back itself as to what effort did you make to resettle the Muslims in the town Mr.Speaker?
5. As the Speaker of the House of Representative Sir, you must have had the ample privilege of visiting all the 36 states of the federation. Indeed, you must have visited communities in which Muslims are a minority, for example in predominantly Christian States as in the South-east or South-south. I am also very sure even in those places you must have beheld mosques in even remote areas. Didn’t that make you think that you should come back home to work towards resettling a community that had had more than three centuries of existence but had been displaced by the aggression and savagery of the people of your faith? Or do you hold the stupid notion that some place in Nigeria could or should remain exclusively for a people of one particular faith? If you do not harbour this stupid notion Mr. Speaker, what is it that actually prevented you from acting as a national leader to engender an enduring peace in your constituency by helping to resettle a community of about more than seventy-thousand (70,000) people?
6. Mr. Speaker Sir, you would not be unaware, even by the simple intuition of common sense that whoever is displaced must be groaning under unwarranted and tremendous sufferings. Here the question is did you ever send any consignment particularly for the displaced people to alleviate their suffering? I do not mean the despicable or rather miserable assistance that you normally give to your supporters among the displaced people. No, what I mean is that did you ever make any special allocation of food, clothing, or even building materials, as the case may be, to the displaced people in Bununu, Dass or Bauchi? Did you for once undertake any special visit to these people in their respective displacement abodes/camps at least to sympathise with them or even have an idea of the conditions in which they are? To the best of my knowledge you never did that. Never!
7. Another very critical question for you Mr. Speaker is, since the appointment of the Presidential Committee on Northeast Initiative (PCNI) you have all the privilege, indeed you have all the authority and official mandate as the Number Four Citizen in the Country who hails from the Northeast to get the PCNI to offer you special consideration on any matter you wished to present to them. Mr. Speaker Sir, did you care to make the best use of that privilege to make any official submission to the PCNI on the plight of the displaced Muslim Community of Tafawa Balewa Town? Did you make any case before the PCNI for the rebuilding of the destroyed mosques in Tafawa Balewa? If you would not do it alone in your capacity as the Speaker, did you care to invite the affected people to advise and guide them on how and when to make submission before the PCNI? Did you care to play the PATRON for them in this respect? Isn’t Tafawa Balewa Town within the area of jurisdiction of the PCNI?

While you are making the last and final round of your re-election campaign tours and visits, I hereby present these seven questions to you Mr. Speaker on behalf of my humble self and my people for whom I have chosen to speak. These are not the only questions. There are still several others. I am presenting these seven (7) to get answers that would convince me and my people to once again vote for you even when you simply and clearly do not care about us. In fact you do not care if we exist. You may wish to respond to these questions, but please be ready to be confronted with several other more.

Thank you.
Long Live Tafawa Balewa Town!
Long Live Tafawa Balewa L.G.A!.
Long Live Tafawa Balewa, Dass, Bogoro!
Long Live Bauchi State! 

Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

Sgnd. Professor Salisu Shehu
(Walin Tafawa Balewa)
Department of Education,
Bayero University, Kano.