Sultan’s bravery meets reality

We start by dismantling the social and political structures that have facilitated their prerogative to decide who lives or dies, a belief system that now facilitates all kinds of violence. We need to reach for democratic ideologies to shatter the illusion that religion or culture gives anyone the privilege to determine other people’s right to life. You have to take away the sense of entitlement that predisposes these people to petition the Inspector-General of Police about someone’s social media commentary, and rather than the law protect their target, such a person would be at their mercy! You have to start dealing with the ingrained bad habit that has allowed them to routinely break beer bottles, and flagrantly destroy people’s business investments without any punishment. You have to forcefully stop the impunity that makes their little courts hand out death sentences for the “crime” of blasphemy, while blatantly disregarding the constitution. You have to censure those who have been emboldened enough to sentence a 13-year-old to prison for 10 years for blaspheming. In Kano, they have even graduated to the point of writing an official letter to censor language while also threatening to mount surveillance against private organisations who do not succumb to their whims.

You cannot have a society where some people constitute themselves into law and order, and not eventually descend into maniacal orgies of violence where they kill at will. The people who butchered folks at Zabarmari are not acting out of sync. What they manifested is the lower end of the spectrum of a socio-political culture that has always pampered people who believe they have a right to define other people’s humanity. If the Nigerian leadership cannot develop the backbone to confront the structures that support this sense of privilege, northern Nigeria will continue its unrelenting march towards becoming a proper dystopia.