The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar, has seized the well-intended Jodidi Annual Lecture series of the Weatherhead Centre of Harvard University in the American city of Boston to canvas the embrace of the “five cardinal objectives” of the man who Arabized Nigeria before the coming of the British, Shehu Othman Dan Fodio, as panacea for ending the Boko Haram terror campaign in Nigeria.
Alhaji Abubakar’s position was contained in a paper titled “Islam and Peace Building in Africa”. Spokesman of the Sultan’s entourage, Danladi Bako, a former Christian convert to Islam and sports journalist whose family was one of the first Christian converts of his native Lokoja, said that the “Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria is due to poor leadership”.
Nigeria’s Thisday newspaper reports that the sultan used the opportunity of the Jodidi Annual lecture series to trace the history and growth of the Sokoto Caliphate by Sheik Othman Dan Fodio of the 19th century.
Abubakar, who is the spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslim population, espoused the direct and strategic reasons for the successes of the Caliphate’s socio-political and administrative structures in the enthronement of social justice as well as enhanced quality of life.
He addressed the hierarchical structure and religious scholarship established by the Islamic scholar Danfodio and further entrenched by his brother, Abdullahi, and his son, Muhammadu Bello, before the arrival of the British colonialists.
He listed five categories of values which, when properly understood and applied, he said, would greatly aid African polities in evolving a dynamic and responsive governance framework and provide a veritable yardstick by which political behaviour and action could be assessed.
Speaking further, he listed the values as knowledge, primacy of justice, fight against corruption, dignity of labour and uplifting the status of women.
These core values, he said, remained the bedrock of good governance as had always been since the advent of Islam and other religions.
The lecture had in attendance Governor of Niger State, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu; Emir of Suleja, Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim; Nigeria’s Ambassador to the US, Prof. Ade Adefuye, as well as former Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Abdurrahman Danbazau.
Earlier, a seminar on Nigeria’s traditional institutions and a symposium on Nana Asmau, daughter of Usman Dan Fodio, had taken place.