Governor Babangida Aliyu, a Muslim, has debunked the teaching which inspires Islamic suicide bombers worldwide. The Governor of Niger state, Nigeria, said there is no special place in the Muslim heaven for suicide bombers.
Militant Muslim clerics quote certain passages in the Koran to support the teaching that Muslims who die “fighting for Allah” will be admitted into al-Jannah (the Muslim heaven) where they will enjoy special sensual pleasures, privileges and fawning attention of “72 wide-eyed virgins.” Governor Aliyu said such teaching, though popular among Muslims, is misconception promoted by misguided Islamic teachers. Vanguard reports that in an interview with Africa Today for its January 2012 edition, Aliyu said:
“At times, if you go to hear the kind of sermon they make, you will be wondering whether it is an Islamic sermon or it’s just a sermon of somebody who is annoyed with the society.”
Aliyu admitted that the promise of sensuous bliss in heaven lures many Muslims into becoming suicide bombers. But he said: “Any good Muslim will tell you that suicide is not part of Islam. In fact, we have it that if you commit suicide you will not go into paradise no matter your reason. So for anybody to say he is a suicide bomber because he is extending Islamic tenets is not true.”
Governor Aliyu, Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum, is noted as an enfant terrible among conservative Northern Muslim leaders because of progressive views which he makes no efforts to hide. He said that the political instability and restiveness of Northern youth was due to failure of Northern Nigerian leaders to develop the region despite having been in control of federal government for decades after independence. He said: “Of the over 50 years independence, in terms of leadership, how many years have northerners provided leadership for this country? So in terms of commensurate reward what should have happened?”
Aliyu argued that there is need for an ideological re-orientation in the Northern Nigeria, and that being conservative does not necessarily conflict with being progressive. He said: “You need to conserve what is conservative and you need to progress where you need to. You can’t continue to be conservative when the people need education, you need infrastructure to be able to take care of the people. Now if you cannot do that, then definitely there is nothing to conserve.”
Aliyu also said that the controversy over removal of fuel subsidy in Nigeria was due to the fact that the government had failed to maintain the nation’s refineries and could therefore not justify its proposal of removal of subsidy. Aliyu explained: “If the refineries are working or there are refineries in the country, the talk of subsidy won’t be there.”
Aliyu alleged that the national refineries were not working because “those who are getting free money would not want it to work.”
Speaking further on the problem of Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, Aliyu noted that there is an international dimension to it. He said: “We must not also run away from the international dimension of this crisis. Borno is a border state to Chad. We know what is happening in Sudan. We know what has happened in Libya. We know when Qaddafi was alive the kind of relationship he was having with some of these neighboring countries.”
Governor Aliyu proposed negotiating with Boko Haram. He said, however, that such negotiation need not be a formal government negotiation but could be informal and discreet. He explained:
“Negotiation with these people does not have to be a formal government negotiation. We have religious leaders in Borno, we have the traditional rulers. They could be empowered to go into negotiation with this people…Nothing happens in the village or community without the knowledge of the traditional rulers. So any movement of foreign people in a village they will detect. But maybe because we are now in a modern age of the SSS (State Security Service) nobody (gives) attention to them.”
Dec162011