Sambo and the politics of Fatiha

Also published in Daily Trust

The widely circulated audio clip in which the vice president, Architect Muhammad Namadi Sambo was heard apparently incorrectly reciting the most famous, the most important, one of the shortest and arguably the simplest chapter in the Holy Qur’an i.e. the Fatiha, at Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential campaign rally in Kano, generated a barrage of satirical comments against him especially on social media.

I listened to the audio clip and, even though the chapter he recited has only seven short verses, I detected at least ten recitation errors that are serious and inexcusable, many of which do not only violate the basic rules of Qur’anic recitation but actually distort the meanings of the verses also.

Unsurprisingly, ever since then, many members of the particularly main opposition party have capitalized on the incident to ridicule the Vice President in order to further weaken his already dwindling political fortunes. However, not many Nigerian Muslims in particular seem to realize the actual extent of the seriousness of the incident and its implications, which are far beyond politics.

The central issue in that incident is primarily religious, because the significance of the Fatiha in particular lies in the fact that its recitation in daily prayers is one of the essential requisites, without which the five daily obligatory prayers, which collectively represent the second most important pillar of the five pillars of Islamic religion, would be considered invalid and not accepted by Allah the Almighty.

Besides, the fact that those five pillars of Islam are indispensably interdependent necessarily implies that, a Muslim’s inexcusable failure to correctly recite the Fatiha automatically invalidates his five daily compulsory prayers hence exposes him to the risk of losing his Islamic faith altogether.

It is noteworthy however that, certain categories of Muslims who are unable to recite it properly e.g. new converts, learners in the learning process, those with disabilities or natural deficiencies and those with other acceptable excuses are excused when they make unintended mistakes in its recitation.

Frankly speaking, I can’t say for sure whether the vice president’s poor recitation of the Fatiha, extreme though it may seem, is excusable or not. In any case, there are so many accomplished and proud Muslim ’yan boko who are always eager to make reference to and/or flaunt their academic prowess, and are also often extremely cautious when they write or speak in the English language lest they make any grammatical mistake, yet they can’t properly read the Book of Allah the Almighty i.e. the Qur’an, let alone understand the meanings of its verses.

Nevertheless, once they join politics and being largely too clueless to play issue-based politics, they adopt the common practice of manipulating the electorate’s ethno-religious or regional emotions to achieve their political ambitions. And even when they seek re-election, and even if they can’t justify their re-election bids with tangible achievements worth the huge public resources at their disposal, they still use the same method to retain their positions or even get higher positions for that matter. 

Anyway, it was obvious that the vice president wanted to appeal to the religious sentiment of his audience at that campaign rally in Kano in order to persuade them for their votes, especially considering the fact that he was never reported to have recited the Fatiha loudly at any of the party’s previous campaign rallies especially in the southern part of the country.

By the way, being the most incompetent leader the country has ever had, his boss, President Jonathan is particularly notorious in playing ethno-religious politics in his frantic efforts to retain the presidency in the forthcoming presidential election. In his desperate push for re-election, he has effectively turned churches into political campaign arenas where he corruptly induces many pastors and other Christian leaders to betray their conscience and manipulate the religious emotions of their followers to vote for him simply because he is a Christian and despite his undisputed failure and blatant incompetence.

The vice president’s action was therefore not surprising in view of the strong challenge that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) faces especially at the presidency level. He does not however seem to realize the fact that, despite the relative ease with which many politicians manipulate the electorate and win their votes by faking religiosity and piety, many people are no longer that gullible to be easily manipulated that way.

And even if any Muslim politician, for instance, wants to fake religiosity in order to influence those remaining Muslim electorate who are still too naive to unravel this political trickery, he has to, at least, demonstrate a much better ability to recite the Holy Qur’an correctly and, of course, display a reasonable mastery of religiosity, even if it is hypocritical.

In any case, millions of Nigerians have learned lessons, albeit the hard way, after repeated disappointments especially since the country’s return to democracy in 1999, as almost all politicians who had exploited religion to achieve political relevance and influence eventually turned out to be corrupt and unrepentant thieves.