The deal behind Zakzaky’s acquittal

(Link on Daily Trust)

Zakzaky 

In the aftermath of the 2015 bloody incident between Zakzaky’s Shiite followers and the Nigerian military in Zaria, Iran launched a worldwide campaign of incitement against the Nigerian government. It deployed its sponsored London-based so-called Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) and other groups for that purpose, while its apologists disguised as analysts vigorously promoted its propaganda against the Nigerian government. 

In the absence of appropriate resources, expertise and influence on the part of the Nigerian government to counter the campaign, Iran succeeded in influencing the international media narrative not only about the incident but also about Zakzaky’s activities in Nigeria. Many otherwise discerning analysts and, of course, many unsuspecting observers fell for that influenced narrative and carried on churning out "analyses" accordingly for various international media organizations. 

Shiite protests were equally organized in many countries to incite public opinion across the world against the Nigerian government. A two-part article of mine titled "Mismanagement of Zakzaky’s detention” (Daily Trust, Friday, August 9, 2019), among other relevant articles in this column, addressed how Iran pursued that campaign. 

Meanwhile, the Nigerian government was increasingly worried over the potentially damaging implications of the campaign on its already poorly managed image. Also, there were worries and warnings left, right, and centre that the aftermath of the incident could trigger another terror insurgency while the government was already struggling with the Boko Haram terror group. 

From a report by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in 2019, it’s obvious that the Nigerian government reached out to Iran in pursuit of some understanding with it on the crisis. Because as the report rightly maintains, Zakzaky’s “IMN is seen as the benefactor and vehicle for the import of Iranian Shia ideology in Nigeria and West African sub-region”. 

According to the report also, there was a series of “secret engagements, discreet contacts and cultivations” between government officials from both countries. It’s also quite clear from the report that the Nigerian government demanded that Iran abandon the violent Zakzaky-led Shiite faction in Nigeria, IMN and instead adopt RAAF, which it (Nigeria government) considers nonviolent. The report equally suggests that the Nigerian government capitalised in its argument on the fact that Zakzaky didn’t actually earn his turban as he isn’t actually a Shiite scholar in the real sense having never learned the creed through appropriate channels; whereas, RAAF’s leader, Nur Dass, is believed to have earned his turban through learning before he became a turbaned Shiite cleric.  

Interestingly, RAAF and indeed other Shiite factions in Nigeria are equally loyal to Iran and enjoy its patronage albeit not as much as Zakzaky’s faction. RAAF’s purported nonviolence is sanctioned by Iran for tactical reasons. As a strategy to ensure the consistent loyalty of its Shiite proxies wherever it operates, Iran keeps as many proxies as possible in one country where they struggle to outdo one another in proving their loyalty to it. 

Anyway, though the report, or rather the part thereof revealed by the NAN, didn’t touch on Iran’s demands, it can be reasonably deduced that it had demanded the release of Zakzaky in return, as implied by the subsequent developments. For instance, while since then Iran has steadily scaled down its campaign against the Nigerian government, the Nigerian authorities, in turn, began to handle Zakzaky’s case in a way clearly intended to culminate in his eventual acquittal through seemingly regular but actually deliberately compromised judicial processes. 

Zakzaky’s acquittal, therefore, wasn’t actually on judicial bases, after all. Besides, regardless of whether or not he was responsible for the 2015 incident, nobody can rightly deny his more than thirty years of blatant defiance of the constituted authorities, subversive activities against the Nigerian state, and harassment of the general public.  

It's also clear that the Nigerian government naively fell for Iran’s commitment to withdrawing its support to Zakzaky as the report suggests. Whereas, Iran would never abandon Zakzaky having invested in his rise for more than three decades in the course of which he has been able to nurture the Shiite population in Nigeria, which is the largest of its kind in Sub Saharan Africa; and which also maintains absolute loyalty to the theocratic regime in Tehran. Iran cherishes the Shiite population in Nigeria as a strategic advantage in its more than four-decade-old agenda to dominate Muslim countries and communities across the world under its Wilayatul-Faqeeh theocratic ideology. 

As things stand, it’s just a matter of time before the Nigerian government realises that it has been utterly naïve if not irresponsible in its handling of Zakzaky’s case that way. 

For now, he would most likely proceed on rehabilitation retreat probably in Iran to come back and resume his subversive activities. At that point, his unsuspecting sympathisers who innocently fell for the propaganda of his purported innocence would definitely end up disappointed, while the hypocrisy of his apologists who have deliberately promoted the propaganda just to spite their real or perceived religious, political, philosophical or sectarian opponents, would be further exposed.

Meanwhile, while it isn’t clear where he will live, Gyallesu residents, its environs and indeed Zaria at large are definitely worried over the looming possibility of the return of the era of constant harassment, bullying and intimidation, which his militia, Hurras, had perpetrated against them for decades on the pretext of guarding him.  

How Kogo phenomenon exposed neo-munafiqs

 (Link on DailyTrust)

AbdulJabbar, the Kogo cleric 

Though the English word “hypocrisy” literally means Nifaq in Arabic, it doesn’t always convey the strictest sense of the term in Islamic terminology, which is feigning being a Muslim while deep down rejecting Islam wholly or partially. Accordingly, “hypocrite” is too light to mean the strictest sense of its Arabic equivalent, “munafiq”. 

Nifaq thrives only in a largely Muslim community where some individuals who deep down reject Islam or some parts thereof feign being Muslims to blend in. It began in the Madinah phase of the Messenger of Allah’s mission when the Muslim community developed into a substantive state in the Arabian Peninsula with the potential to develop further into a global power. Ever since then, there have always been munafiqs among Muslim communities. 

Munafiqs’ motives vary depending on the circumstances of the Muslim community they infiltrate at a given age and area. However, their main objective has always been to manipulate as many unsuspecting Muslims as possible into disbelief, in disguise. The less a Muslim knows about Islam or the more he holds on to any prejudice, the more vulnerable he is to the influence of munafiqs. 

Though munafiqs’ modus operandi differs from one Muslim community to another, they have always focused on questioning the authenticity of the sources of Islamic principles and values, and interpreting the Qur’anic verses and the Sunnatic hadiths out of context using deceptive philosophical instruments to form their “arguments” 

Modern-times munafiqs i.e. the neo-munafiqs are unsurprisingly more “sophisticated” and more “convincing” than their ancient predecessors. In the past, misguidance was relatively easy to detect whereas standards have now been distorted, which makes it increasingly difficult to detect misguidance and the agenda behind it. The standards of identifying good and bad in many aspects of life have been hugely undermined. Consequently, misguidance is now institutionally sanctioned and vigorously promoted as “the right thing”. 

The ensuing confusion has grown so deep-rooted that, unlike in the past when munafiqs themselves realized deep down that they were indeed munafiqs, the neo-munafiqs today are under the illusion that they are still within the Islamic fold as long as they call themselves Muslims and don’t openly renounce it. 

The degree of public and individual commitment to religion in a particular Muslim community determines how the neo-munafiqs operate in it. In Muslim communities where that commitment isn’t a priority due to some cultural, historical or other influences, the neo-munafiqs operate unapologetically, for they risk losing nothing.

However, in Muslim communities with a considerable influence of Islamic values, the neo-munafiqs are mostly subtle in promoting views that undermine commitment to Islam. They already realize that they cannot afford the social stigma associated with being blatant in this regard. They equally realize how a blatant approach may expose them to the risk of losing social status and jeopardize their potential to achieve their worldly pursuits in society. 

They, therefore, pursue their agenda subtly hiding behind, say, liberalism, humanism and other principles, which are basically positive but whose meanings have been deliberately distorted to serve that purpose. A few of them, however, grow too unashamed to remain munafiqs, hence they bare their true faces and become atheists.  

As “liberals” or “humanists”, the neo-munafiqs are particularly obsessed with not only justifying but also promoting moral decadence on the pretexts of tolerance and cosmopolitanism, whose meanings have equally been distorted for the same purpose. One particular feature that often defines their arguments, even in unrelated matters, is their penchant for subtly ridiculing Islam and Muslims, and attributing every instance of worldly backwardness to the failure to adopt western philosophy of life hook, line, and sinker.  

In Muslim northern Nigeria, for instance, where the neo-munafiqs realize the counterproductive impact of making obvious references to non-Islamic sources in their purported arguments, they desperately look for any semblance of a supposed argument in Muslim sources to confuse unsuspecting Muslims and manipulate them into doubting some aspects of it, which anyway means renouncing the whole religion.

Since the emergence of one AbdulJabbar otherwise known as the Kogo cleric who has recently been officially discredited, though he has never been credible in the first place, after all, the neo-munafiqs have been particularly excited having found a purported Muslim cleric determined to confuse unsuspecting Muslims in their Iman. 

The notorious Kogo cleric has been a major source of “inspiration” to the neo-munafiqs for his obsession with discrediting the very generation of Muslims who learned the religion and narrated its details directly from the Messenger of Allah (SAW), and the subsequent generations of Muslim jurists over the centuries. They (neo-munafiqs) rightly realize that he is effectively out to discredit the religion altogether because a religion whose narrators weren’t trustworthy and credible can never be valid. 

Besides, despite the sheer ridiculousness of the Kogo cleric’s “logical” deductions in his heretical and blasphemous interpretations of the Prophetic Sunnah, the neo-munafiqs would always, albeit subtly, seek to justify his disgusting conclusions to equally justify “the need for a logical review of the Prophetic Hadiths.  

Also, though the neo-munafiqs aren’t actually happy with the turn of events following the recently organized “debate” in Kano, which culminated in discrediting the Kogo cleric publicly, they pretend to equally welcome the development. However, they still inadvertently betray their true stands about the cleric’s claims that he unrepentantly maintains in his recent video following his earlier ambiguous explanations, which some people had wrongly regarded as repentance. 

Dikko, Kanu: A tale of two covert operations

(Link on Daily Trust)

Nnamdi Kanu, Alhaji Umaru Dikko

Since the repatriation of Nnamdi Kanu, there have been conflicting accounts and speculations on how and from which country he was repatriated. However, the sketchy and largely ambiguous official account suggests his repatriation was through a covert operation. 

A similar supposedly clandestine operation in 1984 to kidnap and repatriate Umaru Dikko from London failed due to the gross and inexcusable naivety of the Nigerian authorities then. Dikko was accused of unprecedented misappropriation of public funds when he was Minister of Transport under the preceding overthrown civilian administration. He had, however, fled to London to avoid arrest. 

The then Nigerian military government engaged the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, for six million dollars to kidnap and repatriate him. The Nigerian authorities were apparently impressed by Mossad’s exceptional competence in transnational kidnapping and repatriation or assassination of its targets, which earned it its particular notoriety in this regard. 

Interestingly, both the foiled operation to repatriate Dikko and the successful repatriation of Nnamdi Kanu were conducted during the Buhari administrations; the former was under the then General Buhari-led military regime while the latter was under the current Buhari administration. 

Anyway, Israel was, however, mindful of the potentially serious repercussions of the operation on its close and strategic relationship with Britain, which it (Israel) couldn’t, and still cannot afford to jeopardize. At the same time, it (Israel) was courting the restoration of diplomatic relations with Nigeria, which the latter had severed in the wake of the 1973 Arab–Israeli War apparently in solidarity with Arab countries and Egypt in particular whose air force hugely assisted the federal troops during the Nigerian civil war in the 60s. It was therefore an opportunity for Israel to oblige Nigeria in the hope of winning it back. 

By the way, even though the state of Israel is recognized by the United Nations, the circumstances of its creation explain the never-ending controversy over its legitimacy. Therefore, it has always been particularly interested in establishing diplomatic relations with as many countries as possible regardless of whether or not a country is of any particular significance to it. 

Israel came up with a purported kidnapping and repatriation plan where Mossad undercover agents would grab Umaru Dikko in a supposedly quiet London neighbourhood, load him into a van and crate him along with an anaesthetist with two other Mossad secret agents in a separate crate making up a two-crate “diplomatic cargo” to be loaded into a waiting Lagos-bound Nigeria Airways plane at the London Stansted Airport.  

However, there were many easily noticeable red flags all through the course of the operation. From, say, the dramatic grabbing and loading of Dikko into a van at a public place on the assumption that nobody would notice; the lack of appropriate clearance documentation for the “diplomatic cargo”; the refusal of the anxious Nigerian diplomat accompanying the crates to list them on cargo manifest; the unusual presence of a waiting Nigerian Airways plane at that particular airport, which had rarely if ever handled diplomatic consignments before as suggested by one Charles David Morrow, the Customs officer on duty who maintained that "no-one on duty at Stansted had dealt with a diplomatic bag before”, it was quite obvious that something fishy was playing out.  

Besides, though according to the official account the operation was foiled thanks to a timely distress call by Dikko’s secretary who luckily happened to be at a place in his residence from where she witnessed his kidnapping from a window, the whole operation bore the hallmarks of a Mossad stage-managed incident. 

The Mossad had probably wanted to kill two birds with one stone; to feign willingness to oblige hence impress Nigeria, on the one hand, and expose the operation to unavoidably imminent failure, on the other, to preserve the intactness of Britain’s goodwill towards it.  

Also, though the incident triggered an unprecedented diplomatic face-off between Nigeria and Britain that escalated to the breakdown of diplomatic ties between the two countries and subsequent jailing of a Nigerian intelligence officer, Britain totally ignored Israel’s role in the incident. 

Equally, while Umaru Dikko stepped up his criticism against the Nigerian government since the incident, he was advised by his British lawyers to never speak up about Israel’s role if he wanted to keep the support of the then British Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, a fanatic Zionist apologist. Dikko was thus blackmailed into ignoring Israel’s role while carrying on his campaign against the Nigerian government. 

It was quite obvious that the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was part of the whole game either all along or from some point, which explained the hypocrisy of the British government in that regard. Its eventual sentencing of the three Mossad secret agents to various jail terms was understandable in the context of the typical modus operandi of intelligence agencies. 

By the way, intelligence agencies keep some disposable secret agents who can easily be discarded or even sacrificed in due course, depending on the interests of their respective employers, after they must have been used to the maximum. The three poor Israelis involved in the so-called Dikko affair were probably some of Mossad’s disposable agents.  

Now, though the Nigerian intelligence service is still below average efficiency-wise considering its performance in counterterrorism, Kanu’s repatriation suggests its evolvement over the decades. 

Nigeria’s costly absence from Libya

(Link on Daily Trust)

Though active fighting among armed groups in Libya struggling for power and resource control has considerably subsided while an interim government is somehow managing things, for now, efforts to restore sustainable peace and stability in the country continue. 

However, arms trafficking across the country’s porous borders persists with Nigeria being one of the major final destinations of such arms, which fuel terrorism, banditry, insurgency and other organized crimes in the country.   

The recently concluded Second Berlin Conference on Libya in Germany was convened to supposedly address “the underlying causes of conflict, consolidate Libyan sovereignty, build on the progress made, and restore peace and prosperity for all Libyans”. I use “supposedly” to suggest that those officially stated objectives aren’t necessarily the real, or at least aren’t the only, objectives behind convening the conference. After all, the key participants are the very foreign governments that had manipulated the armed groups against one another in pursuit of their (foreign governments’) respective economic, political and other strategic interests in the country. 

Though the post-Gaddafi Libya was supposed to be an exclusive Euro-American sphere of influence especially for France and the United States, which manipulated the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to overthrow Gaddafi, the ensuing chaos in the country attracted other countries in the region and beyond with each country seeking to justify its involvement with different pretexts and excuses.  

Also, after years of devastating chaos with no decisive victor among the armed groups, the same foreign governments behind them have now come together to create a political destiny for the country where foreign influence would be appropriately apportioned among them. The recent Berlin conference and other related events are part of the process towards that end. 

While countries from the Euro-American axis want a largely pro-western political establishment in Libya to secure their collective and individual interests regardless of who or which party is in power, Russia is determined to consolidate its military presence on the Libyan Mediterranean Sea coast as part of its tactical strategies to close in on the traditional US European allies on the opposite coast. 

Equally, China has been involved in the tussle for an appropriate share of influence in Libya’s political future; however, unlike the rest, its approach isn’t politically partisan at least on the surface; and its ambition is largely if not purely economic. It simply wants to establish itself as Libya’s leading economic partner to enable its corporations and businesses to secure the lion share in the construction of strategic infrastructure, manufacturing sector, and exports into the Libyan market. 

Likewise, the energy-hungry Turkey was primarily attracted by Libya’s massive oil and gas resources in which it (Turkey) wants to become the biggest foreign stakeholder. However, it pursues that in the context of its political expansionist agenda, which Erdoğan has pursued by manipulating the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and North Africa, (MENA). 

Egypt has also been deeply involved in Libya, which enabled it to successfully stop the inflow of arms from Libya and consequently managed to practically eliminate terrorist groups on its Sinai Peninsula who had relied on Libyan arms to perpetrate their terror activities in Egypt. 

However, Turkey and Egypt’s respective interests in Libya are particularly irreconcilable, which explains the tensions between them. Because while Turkey is determinedly pushing for the emergence of an Erdoğan-backed Muslim Brotherhood government in Libya, Egypt is resolutely working to prevent that. 

Since the military overthrow of the Mohammad Mursi-led Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt in 2013 and the escalation of tensions between the Brotherhood elite and the government, Egypt has considered the emergence of a Muslim Brotherhood government in the region, more so in neighbouring Libya, a serious threat to its stability. It’s actively backed in this regard by the United Arab Emirates. 

Now, though Nigeria is one of the countries worst affected by the conflict in Libya being arguably the biggest source of the arms used by the Boko Haram terror group and bandits, yet it remains conspicuously and inexcusably absent from the Libyan scene.

Restoration of stability in Libya should be of particular interest to Nigeria. However, while countries from as far as the Far East, the Euro-American axis and, of course, the Middle East jostle with one another in pursuit of their respective legitimate and illegitimate interests in the country, Nigeria remains pathetically lamenting from afar and literally begging for help to stop the inflow of arms from there.   

Yet, not only that the help isn’t forthcoming, for there's no such thing as a free lunch after all, more so in politics, Nigeria isn’t even considered important enough to be specifically invited to participate in the negotiations to restore stability in Libya. While countries like Turkey, Egypt, France, China, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States among others are duly represented in the negotiations, Nigeria is hardly considered relevant enough hence its inclusion under the African Union (AU) slot.

Besides, other more influential international, continental and regional organizations i.e. the United Nations (UN), the European Union, (EU) and the League of Arab States are participating in the negotiations, which overshadows the AU and further eclipses Nigeria’s relevance if any.