By Kenneth Okonkwo
Chief Ozioko Francis Okonkwo was born into the lineage of great men. Unfortunately for him, his own father died at a tender age and he was sentenced to a life of servitude at a very tender age. He served from one household to the other until he attained the age of maturity, at which, he came back to his native land Nsukka to learn vulcanizing. Wherever he went to serve, the household never allowed him to leave because of his sincerity and integrity.
After his mentorship as a Vulcanizer, his mentor was recalled by his own people to relocate back to his own home town. Okonkwo wished to follow his mentor back to his mentor’s hometown but was restricted by his mentor who insisted he must remain in Nsukka as their ambassador seeing his lifestyle of sincerity. Okonkwo remained in Nsukka as the only professional Vulcanizer.
Shortly after that, the University of Nigeria was located at Nsukka by the great Nnamdi Azikiwe. Being the only Vulcanizer, he was in charge of repairing all the tires of all the vehicles that came into the town as a result of the siting of the University in the town. Whatever price he set for his labour was paid to him, and because he had cultivated a good work ethics, he was patronised by everyone.
He instantly became very rich and was the first
native that built the first house with corrugated iron sheet roof. He ventured
into real estate business and was prominent in buying and selling of lands to
the strangers who flocked the town as a result of the new university that was
located in the town. He quickly married at a young age, being the only son of
his father and ultimately gave birth to twelve children including nine boys and
three girls.
After his initial success as a Vulcanizer, the Nigerian civil war broke out, and he took his family and sought refuge in neighbouring towns and villages as the war dictated. It was while sojourning in one of the neighbouring towns that one of his sons, Kenneth Okonkwo, was born in a refugee camp. On coming back from the war, practically, every material thing he laboured for was destroyed. Two events happened that aided, not only his speedy recovery from the war, but an escalation into his greatness. There was a man who bought a land before the war but who could neither trace his land, nor had any document of ownership of the land. The man was scared about losing the land.
He was advised to locate the most reliable man in the town that was known
for integrity and honesty. He came to meet Francis Okonkwo. With trepidation in
him, he narrated his ordeal to Francis and was shocked with the answer he got.
Francis admitted he still remembered his land and refused to take any gift from
him. He simply led him to the land and assisted in creating new documents for
him. It turned out that the man was a bank manager and believed that the only
thing he could do to appreciate the young, honest, Francis, was to arrange a
loan for him to grow his business. Francis accepted the loan and immediately
ventured into national transportation business.
In furtherance to the expansion of his business, he was introduced to one Alhaji in Benue State. A pious Muslim who was renowned for his simplicity, honesty, humility and humaneness. Both of them instantly took to each other because they had many things in common. The Alhaji supplied him with Mercedes 911 lorries on hire-purchase, with which my father expanded his transportation business around the country. He inscribed the phrase “Oyi Umuaka” (Friend of Children) in all his lorries, buses and cars to demonstrate his love for children and the less privileged. He will come back home to tell us about how wonderful and nice this Muslim was to him.
How this Muslim with all his wealth was so simple that he sat on the floor. How kind this Muslim was that even when he didn’t meet up with his periodic payment of his hire-purchase, this Muslim will reschedule his loan to enable him meet up rather than foreclosing his option and reclaiming his lorry. My Father rose to become the richest man of his generation and took the highest title in the land thereby achieving the greatness with which his lineage was known for and Musicians, including the great Oliver De Coque sang with his name
He didn’t forget that in his process and journey to his greatness, both Christians and Muslims contributed their quota in his advancement. He employed substantial number of Muslims to drive those lorries. In fairness to the Muslims that were driving his lorries, they brought home higher returns. They achieved this because of their versatility and fluency in spoken Hausa language and their being adherents to the Islamic faith. When they travelled to Northern Nigeria, they found common allies in their business who patronised them to flourish.
They came back home to deliver honest report of their business dealings and my father simply was in love with them. They taught us about Islam and how the adherents, no matter how wealthy or powerful, were buried with nothing, to teach the living that they came with nothing and must depart with nothing. The Muslims among our drivers were not Hausas or Fulanis from Northern Nigeria, but were from our own Enugu State, thereby destroying the impression most people from the South-East had that Islam was an Hausa man’s religion.
I was so personally thrilled about the lifestyle of these men
around me, portraying Islam as a religion of peace, sincerity, simplicity and
accommodation, that I became a convert of Islam without attending a Mosque,
while still being an ardent catholic who was a mass servant. I adopted the
Islamic name Abdulsalam as my own name. I was attracted to the name because it
meant a servant of the God of peace.
The adherents of both religions can actually live together in mutual
accommodation and respect for each other. Among the four reasons of writing the
Quran is the promulgation of the worship of God and essentials of justice. Any
Muslim, who is living in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society who is
preaching about the domination of one religion over another can outrightly be
described as not a true Muslim.
Although this article has the name of El-Rufai in its title, it’s not meant to give the name El-Rufai much relevance. In his recent message to his followers and people, El-Rufai was seen telling them that they deceived the Christians by making them to think that Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket, which his party APC foisted on Nigeria, was because of competence, that it was actually a deliberate plan by them to ensure the Islamization of Nigeria.
He
boasted that he started this trend in Kaduna State where he ensured that he
foisted on them Muslim-Muslim ticket and he has succeeded in re-enacting same
in Nigeria and this will continue for the next twenty years. Laughable, but
this has confirmed the genuineness of the quest of people like us urging
parties to ensure the balancing of their presidential ticket to ensure the
accommodation of both Christians and Muslims to deny opportunists like El-Rufai
the pleasure of using the same-faith ticket to advance their selfishness.
We must note that El-Rufai was simply lying and doesn’t even believe in what he was saying. Most Nigerians like me heard about the name Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, first time, when he was appointed as the DG Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) by a President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, from the South of Nigeria and who is of the Christian faith. El-Rufai was to be elevated to the position of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) by the same President in 2003. As at that time, El-Rufai kneels down to greet this President.
It is important to note that El-Rufai was recommended to be so
appointed by Atiku Abubakar, a fellow Fulani and a Muslim who was the
Vice-President to Obasanjo then. When Atiku fell out with Obasanjo later in
their administration because of Obasanjo’s preference for another candidate for
President and because of the fallout of the third term agenda, El-Rufai pitched
his tent with the Christian Yoruba, Obasanjo against his Muslim Fulani brother
because the balance of power tilted in favour of Obasanjo. Atiku was defeated
and deflated and never recovered politically till date.
In 2003, the Christian Obasanjo contested against the Muslim Buhari, and yet again, El-Rufai fiercely supported the Christian Obasanjo against his Muslim Fulani brother in which he said unprintable and unsavoury things against Buhari then. Obasanjo won. It was not until 2007, when El-Rufai lost out in the political equation in the Yar’Adua/Jonathan regime that he started shopping for re-alignment politically to return to power.
He started
rapprochement with Buhari, who still had a cult following within the North and
started playing the ethnic and religious card to get the heart of the
Northerners and Muslims. In 2015, he succeeded on the strength of zoning back
the Presidency to the North, after eight years of Yar’Adua/Jonathan regime. He
was granted the ticket to contest the governorship of Kaduna State. He picked a
Southern Christian from Kaduna South to deputise him on the ticket and his
party came out successful both at the Federal and State levels.
Having succeeded on both fronts, El-Rufai felt he could come out fully to reveal who he is. He claimed that the Muslim-Muslim ticket was successful, which he knew was false. Firstly, he lost Kaduna State to the PDP in the Presidency that had Christian and Muslim politicians on the ticket. He also didn’t win the governorship easily for his party as the margin of lead between his governorship candidate and the candidate of PDP was about 10,000 voters, which was less than the number of votes that were cancelled after the voting.
INEC declared his candidate the winner and the petition is in court. His presidential candidate performed worse than any other president in history, before being declared the winner, having not won more states than other politicians and having lost his own State and not being able to make 25% of votes in the FCT. Indeed, politicians of every breed in Nigeria have already confessed that same-faith ticket was a bad idea and are discouraging it.
The
insistence by the present regime that a Christian must emerge President of the
Senate to compensate for the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the presidency is a
testimony of this. Religious bigots, like El-Rufai, have already started
failing in pushing for the domination of one religion over the other in a
multi-religious society like Nigeria. Truth be told, no religion has the
commensurate powers, numbers or clout to dominate the others in Nigeria and anyone
that falls for the antics of the El-Rufais of Nigeria has entered a one-chance
bus of deceit. If El-Rufai wants to propagate Islam, he can be more successful
if he lives a life of peace, sincerity, simplicity, compassion and
accommodation for which Islam is known for. People will naturally be attracted
to the religion if he lives by example.
We can actually live together in peace and oneness in Nigeria by being our brothers keepers, by accommodating each other irrespective of our ethnic or religious inclination. We have enough laws to deal with this but we have to consciously exclude politicians like El-Rufai from our collective political life until he publicly purges himself from such divisive tendencies and embrace nationalism. If El-Rufai must advise his presidential candidate to dominate and exclude all Christians so he can achieve Muslim domination of Nigeria, let El-Rufai first of all advise Tinubu to divorce his wife, who is a Christian clergy and probably marry El-Rufai’s sister as replacement.
*Dr. Okonkwo is a commentator on public issues
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