Not even imams are insulated from the vagaries of the prevailing political cyclone in Nigeria. Sheik Muhammad Nura Khalid, erstwhile Chief Imam of the National Assembly Quarters Mosque, Apo, Abuja, has just found this out. The gods brook no nonsense.
The times are difficult, suffocatingly so. Surviving in Nigeria has steadily moved from an art to a matter of willpower to the present state of total surrender and submission to fate. Only grace saves now. This is a season of frustration, indeed, a fearful time, but who do you turn to? When it comes to security, for instance, running to the military, once the ultimate bulwark in the face of physical danger, may no longer guarantee you protection. The jackboots themselves seem betwixt and between.
Instructively, there is no class distinction in the existential challenge confronting the Nigerian society. While there may still be pretensions to power and affluence in some quarters, the reality is that every single individual, “from top to bottom”, is running scared. The terrorists or bandits have almost completely obliterated any line of distinction between the affluent and the poor. As a matter of fact, the higher on the socio-economic rung a citizen is, the better the bargaining prospect when kidnapped. Even men of God are worried now.
Through the ages, across societies and faiths, prophets and clerics have always enjoyed substantial latitude and immunity in speaking their mind on critical issues. Some cry out from the wilderness, other dwell in the city, rebuking all rebukeable and confronting principalities. The times we live in seem a perfect setting for prophets and clerics to hit the roads and the neighbourhoods. If God is not telling them something at a time like this, many will doubt that they truly hear from the omnipotent one.
In performing their divine assignment of saying what needs to be said, especially to power, delivering weighty messages from the gods, the type that mere mortals often dare not convey to earthly potentates, prophets and clerics are not always exempt from occupational hazard. Indeed, some pay the ultimate price in answering the divine call to minister to society. True prophets and clerics rarely care, though.
Sheik Khalid, until recently, leader of the Islamic faithful at the Apo legislators’ quarters in Abuja, seems, from recent events, to be the type who does not care. As the powerful imam at the mosque at the legislators’ quarters in Apo, Sheik Khalid, has wielded influence and enjoyed reasonable immunity from governmental perturbation over time. He had spoken without trepidation to power in the past. He had castigated past governments and President. He had spoken in the interest of society as he believed he was inspired to do. Obviously, however, Imam Khalid failed to read the seasons. He seems to have failed completely to note that times have changed. Government has changed. Temperament has changed. Definitions have changed. Even human beings around him have changed.
Had Imam Khalid, an educated and impressively fluent man, cared to study a little bit of political science and social psychology, he would have taken useful note of the thin lines of distinction between freedom fighters and dissents, pro-democracy patriots and wailers, fiery clerics and rabble rousers, freedom of speech and dissemination of fake news. An attention to social psychology would have further educated him on the fickle character of man, as well as the transmogrifying influence of power on human beings. The brothers he used to preach to at the mosque are not exempt from such influence. Time and dispensation alter everything.
The imam did not take due notice of the change in time and temperament, so he lost his job to preach at that highbrow mosque. Imam Khalid’s indignation that what he said that got him the sack in April 2022 was not different from what he said about a different President in 2014 reinforces the fact that he does not get it yet. That was then. That which he said made his audience happy almost a decade ago is what the distinguished committee that superintends over the mosque now defines as threat to democracy. It is all about time and dispensation. It is surprising that the imam does not get it.
To imagine, somewhat unfortunately, that all these embarrassment and persecution of the imam could have been avoided if there was a little inter-faith exchange between the iman and some pastors of the Pentecostal Christian denomination. Such an interaction did not have to entail doctrinal transfusion between the two entrenched religions. It merely would have afforded the iman the benefit of borrowing a simple ingenious phrase developed by Pentecostals, which carries a loaded meaning that at once says a lot more than it portrays on the face value.
The concept of “it is well” seems tailored for a time and a dispensation like this. The phrase is anchored in faith, but it is at the same time wrapped in denial. It is a useful construct that, though deceptive to some, is a useful tool in stoically carrying problems and passing rough patches in life.
This is how the application of the phrase goes: a man is in a terrible situation, say, financially. He gets to the office of his friend to seek assistance and he is asked, how is everything? His answer is simple, ‘it is well’. He knows, of course, that it is not well. His answer is an expression of hope. Surely, he will still get around to acknowledging his woes along the line, but he first had to coat his pains in hope. “It is well” is a phrase anchored on a belief that what God does not know does not happen! (Another popular phrase in the Pentecostal realm). These are phrases embedded in nuggets of hope. They help to sustain people in difficulties such as Nigerians presently are in. To some extent, however, the phrase smacks of denial of reality. If it is not well, it is not well.
It does seem, from certain indications, that those in government, especially in a situation where everything is spiralling out of control, will prefer that the citizens adopt the loaded phrase, “It is well.” That may be an expression of some level of hope, but it does not set a kidnapped citizen free from bandits. That is the problem.
But think of Imam Khalid at that contentious service that led to his sack.
What if he had said something like this: “There is pervasive insecurity in the land. We are all endangered and no one seems to be in control, terrorists and bandits are encircling the country and there is every cause for the citizens to worry. On top of this monumental security situation, electricity supply has virtually collapsed, petroleum supply is now epileptic and the naira has also collapsed. All this while our universities remain under lock and key as a result of industrial dispute between the government and university teachers. Nigeria has never had it this bad in its history and the future is bleak, but it is well!”
Just think about that delivery.
Chances are that with such ending to his sermon on that fateful day, the imam would have retained his job at the Apo Legislators’ Quarters Mosque. Of course, it is not well in the country. Everybody knows it, but then hope reigns eternal. It does not seem, however, that the iman is a man who coats problems in diplomatic garbs. For him, as he has since reiterated, what he has said he has said. He says he has nothing to lose. In any case, he has moved on to another mosque, with a huge disappointment in the realisation that what was the truth yesterday before his friends is no longer the truth today. Such is life.