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The last time I had cause to disagree with Prof. Isaq Akintola, the Executive Director of the Muslim Right Concern (MURIC), on this page, it was with relation to his agenda-setting narrative in relation to the decision of the Sokoto State Government to harmonise and streamline local chieftaincy matters in the state. Akintola shouted from his rooftop that the Sokoto state administrative action was targeted at deposing the Sultan of Sokoto and as such, was a move to destroy Islam. The government of Sokoto state ignored his rants and ensured the dutiful implementation of its responsibility to the people. In the end, the Sultan’s office is preserved and the Sultan is still on his stool while the state governor and the Sultanate Council have moved on very well enjoying a very harmonious relationship that has enhanced peace and development in the state.
What Akintola sought to do then, was to create division, confusion and crisis between the Sultanate Council and the Sokoto State government. However, to his chagrin, the state has become stronger and better. His plots failed. He was humiliated. But, he hasn’t learnt any lesson. If he did, he would know that his recent outburst about the situation in Plateau state, will, as usual, collapse like a pack of badly arranged cards because almost everyone now knows him as engaging in a rabble-rousing enterprise. This reality is predicated upon his previous controversial and inciting hoaxes, clothed as concern for the right of Muslims. And, there are plenty of them.
However, the disturbing, and real concern, is that Akintola has had a free run on public consciousness with his fake alarms. People of other faiths, who make as much fake alarms as the MURIC leader, are regularly made guests of state security organisations. But he runs free in a manner suggesting that he is bidding the call of some forces actively engaged in plots to destabilise, or, balkanize Nigeria along religious lines. For instance, during the COVID pandemic, this same Professor Akintola publicly claimed that Covid-related deaths in Kano was a plan to reduce the population of Muslims in that state. He would also take a swipe at governors and leaders of the southwest region for working out a regional security outfit called Amotekun. Again, he publicly claimed that Amotekun was anti-Islam on the argument that Amotekun, which is Yoruba name for the Leopard, has a biblical mention in the book of Jeremiah 5:6 wherein it was written that “a leopard shall guard over the city.” Again, he was ignored.
Akintola is a professor of Islamic Eschatology. This indicates that he is deeply schooled. However, Mark Twain admonished ‘don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” It would seem that by constantly making inciting and controversial statement on Nigeria’s public life as they affect the relationship between Muslims and Christians this Professor did not imbibe that Twainian admonition. For the fact of his education, Prof Akintola ought to understand the talking paradox as explained by Epictetus –we have two ears and one mouth so that we listen twice as much as we talk. If he does, he will know that being continually ignored because of your public comments and utterances on sensitive national security issues, could be an indication that your audience feels that there is a disconnect between the brain and the mouth.
For emphasis, the security situation in Plateau State is one that calls for very deep and thoughtful caution in public commentaries especially from persons like Prof Akintola, who for the fact of being MURIC leader, is openly partisan. The leadership of Plateau state is within its rights and operational best to take whatever action it considers necessary to stem the tide of killings, annihilation and obliteration of villages, which had been linked to both religious and ethnic biases. Daily report about the state of security in the state, and threats thereof, are made available to the state government, not to Akintola and not to his MURIC. This, therefore, suggests that Prof Akintola was expressing ignorance of the threats to security in the state when he took a position against a security advice to the government.
His position leans heavily on suspicion and confrontation. Accusing the Plateau government of deceit without proposing actionable alternatives is disingenuous and falls within his ignoble history of polarising statements, which suggests a pattern of advocacy that prioritises sensationalism over pragmatism. The approach not only weakens his credibility but also risks deepening the very divisions he claims to address. It could also hinder efforts toward lasting peace in Plateau State.
No doubt, sustaining military presence may have some gains. However, Akintola overlooks the potential benefits of police involvement, such as their familiarity with local dynamics and their role in community-based policing, which has been severally advocated as part of solutions in the search for peace in the Plateau and other similarly challenged states. Therefore, a more constructive critique would have focused on advocating for a hybrid security model, combining military oversight with reformed, well-trained police units to address both immediate threats and long-term peace building. Rather, he claims that the state government’s preference for mobile policemen stems from a strategic dominance of Plateau and North Central indigenes in the mobile police force, implying a plot to leverage this for biased security operations.
He erred here because he failed to back the claim with empirical evidence neither did he provide any data to support his assertion that mobile police recruitment is disproportionately skewed toward certain regions. He also failed to substantiate how this claim, real or fake, would translate into compromised security. This is part of reasons many people suggest that his mission in making such accusations, without verifiable backing, was to exacerbate mistrust and ethnic tensions, particularly in a region that is already plagued by complex communal conflicts.
He also framed women in Plateau state as complicit in violence claiming that they “hide murderous hearts behind enticing feminine smiles.” This comment is not only derogatory and inflammatory but also dangerously reductive. This is in essence, a generalization that dismisses the multifaceted nature of the insecurity in Plateau state, which involves historical land disputes, economic pressures, and cycles of retaliatory violence among various groups. He ought now to know that by polarising the situation in the Plateau through such framing, he essentially undermines the potential for balanced, solution-oriented discourse and alienates communities that could be part of the peace process. It may be time for him to think through his interventions and see where he hurts both himself and his group.
