What Has ReligionGot To Do With It 2

Religion and The Sanctity of Space of Social Interaction: A Personal Narrative On The Situation In South West Nigeria
By Jahman Anikulapo
NARRATIVE: Social (Childhood) Orientation:
The years of childhood were, of course, spent ignorant of the demarcation between the various belief systems. Every religious festival was a feast and we as children partook of all. In December we visited the homes of the Christians in the neighborhood and feasted on the famous Christmas rice that always appeared specially prepared and had a flavour that was distinct from the usual that we were used to at home. And after the month of Ramadhan, the Odun Kekere (Eid-Fitri), was our time to visit Muslim homes for the rice and ram and occasional amala and ewedu soup.
Soon it would be Odun Ileya, Id-el-Kabir or the big Muslim festival and again, the children would be there to savour the offerings. At this time, we were children of the entire community, and so we had to be fed by whoever’s turn it was to celebrate a religious festival. Only few parents would try to dissuade their children from participating in the feasting.
It was a feeling of camaraderie, which the entire community shared; the closely-knit bonds which the sociologist of renown, Emile Durkhiem, spoke about. There is a subtle social sanction for the parent or guardian who attempted to stop his children or wards from being part of the feast — and this had to do with winning the scorn of the other members of the community. In any case, it was difficult to even claim to be the child of one’s parents alone. Not with the aphorisms among the Yoruba that Oju Kan ni’ nbimo, igba oju ni nwo (You are born of only your parents, but weaned by 200 (the entire community)". This translates to the child being a property of the entire community or the neighborhood.
Of course, it was the responsibility of all the adults in the community to effect discipline on any erring child. And such an adult had no need to explain why he had to discipline the child. This was a measure of social control. With this kind of setting, it was possible for one, just as many other children, who grew up in similar circumstances, to have imbibed a liberal attitude to matters of religious differences.
The fact was we never knew the difference. The children of Muslim parents and those of Christians lived, ate and played together. The social interaction space was ruled by collective will for survival of the people rather than by primordial sentiments of race, faith or ethnic background. My father lived and worked in the northern part of the country, specifically in the very heart of Islamic community of Zaria. He worked as a building contractor, constructing residences for many of the rich people in that part of the University City. He had been there since 1958, some five years before I was born in 1963. My childhood memory recorded faintly this bearded fellow who always showed up in our family house in Agege, in the suburb of Lagos, about twice or thrice a year, and showered us, the children with many gifts particularly of Donkunu and Kuli kuli — two popular Hausa snacks.
I also recall that he had a funny (at least then to my little mind) accent that was indeed very strange. He spoke as if he was rolling some consonants on his tongue or sometimes over-stretching his vowels. But then I noticed that he always slept in my mother’s room and that the bigger room in the foremost part of the house, which usually remained close for most part of the year, was always opened anytime he visited. It was very much later that I came to realise that he was my father.
Much later, I was to be told that some of the little ones in the household were not his children but those of other people who had been in the house. I recall that on one occasion, when the bearded man was visiting, he came with about eight strange people dressed in long robes who spoke a very, very strange tongue. They were given a little feast at which a ram was slaughtered and that certain other bearded fellows came to the house, sat on a mat, and proceeded to give us names that one later understood to be Muslim names. We were told that the man with the beard had become a Muslim.
Perhaps pressured by the exigencies of the needs of his new friends, the strange talking ones he brought from his adventures in the north, the bearded fellow had gone ahead to convert the piece of land by our house to an open-air praying ground, where he and his friends prayed. The manner of prayer, which appeared as a game, soon drew the curiosity of the young ones in the neighborhood as we joined them to pray.
The praying ground gradually soon had a covering with corrugated sheets and an Arabic School started. We were enrolled. Thus in the morning we went to the Catholic School and we came back in the early afternoon to attend the Arabic school only to return to the school compound in the evening, to the St. Peter’s seminary, to partake of the bible study. These activities in our young minds were fused… one continuous experience of studying. We had no cause to interrogate the content or context of the two contra-distinctive experiences.
Thus we read the Holy Bible with as much fervour as we studied the Holy Qur'an. We could recite the Suras just as much as we could do the psalms and passages from the bible. And the status of every child was possibly judged by his adeptness at the recitation of excerpts from the two books. In fact, the elderly youths at night would hold tablets of Goody Goody sweet in the evenings at playtime and summoned the kids to recite from the two books. The ones who won in the competitions got a prize of the sweet. In all this, there was no knowledge of who was the child of whom in the neighborhood. Particularly the young ones were not supposed to know. Or so it seemed.
To one’s young mind then, every child who lived in the house was a child of the bearded fellow whom we had been told was the Bale-Ile (head of the household). I recall in particular distinctly my horror the day I was told that my favorite playmate, the oval-faced boy Eyinayan, whose name I could hardly pronounced well, whom I had always taken to be from my mother’s womb, was the child of another woman who had come from a distant land. This time I was already in Primary five in 1973.
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EDUCATIONAL ORIENTATION
Papa Eyinayan, I was later told, was only a tenant in my father’s house. Yet this was the first patriarchal figure in my childhood mind. He was the figure that stood as my father as far as I was concerned and he played the role well.
Papa Eyinayya was a Catholic by faith. And at the time we were ready to be enrolled in school in 1969, he was the one who took me and other children of my age in the house and perhaps, the entire neighborhood, to the nearest school to us — St. Peter’s Primary School to be registered for the beginning of our educational journey. At the Catholic school, we went through all the rituals of baptism, of church attendance, Holy Communion and the rest. And the full account of all these activities we related to our mother whenever we returned home.
Eventually, I was one of the few people chosen by the only white priest at St Peter’s to live in his house and serve as ‘special server’ at the church. Of course, by the grace of this circumstance, one could remember having started life as a Catholic, as we attended mass every Sunday and none of our parents ever raised an eyebrow.
Later our neighborhood became expanded, especially with the movement into our house of a set of twins, who were Christians no doubt. They were always dressed in white shirts over a black pair of trousers and in one's memory they seemed to be permanently attired in this dress. On Sundays and most evenings, they could be seen carrying a bulging bag. We were later told that they were members of a Kingdom Society and that what they carried in their bags were tracts and pamphlets that contained excerpts from the Holy Bible. Even at that, one could notice that they were not really so much interested in discussing the contents of the bible with one. They did not seem to share of the content of our religious learning in the Catholic school either. They seemed to have a different view of so many of the teachings in the bible. But what did it matter to such impressionable minds as ours. We loved them both as th ey were always neatly dressed and had handsome faces. Our generous father was soon so enamoured by the depth of the twins' knowledge of the way of the world, that he hired them as home teachers for us.
Thus after the Arabic classes that usually ended shortly before the sun finally set, we would converge in the passage of the Boys' Quarters for home lessons. While we learnt the secret of Mathematics and Additional Maths, we also learnt more of the doctrines of the Kingdom Society (KS) and got to know the fundamental difference between the KS, the Jehovah Witnesses and the Foursquare Church. The surprise was that these three appeared fundamentally the same, save a few variations in the beliefs.
However, when the population of the children in the twins class increased, the passage became grossly inadequate; and so another piece of land on the left side of the household was given to the twins by our father for the purpose of the evening classes. Thus began the emergence of a church on the street. Our household inevitably became sandwiched between a church and a mosque. Yet, we as kids had no problems traversing the two worlds. At most times, even the adults joined us in the classes.
Eventually, it was one of the twins who registered us in an Anglican School, United City College, when it was time to attend Secondary School. He was a teacher in the school and he had, one afternoon, brought the forms of the school home and asked us to register. The surprise was that we were registered at the school with the consent of our father who had only less than two years before, caused us to adopt Muslim names in cognizance of his new found faith. Though also a Christian school, United City College had a different orientation from the Catholic school. The ritual was less intense and the atmosphere was less regimented. There was much more songs and games and drama in the school and social life was freer. We were in the boarding school, and every Friday, we were allowed to go home at least for two hours. Sometimes, we took excursion to other schools and on some occasions we were allowed to stay the night during which we shared social activities. Of course, we were now older than when we attended St. Peter's. We were mature and so trusted with more freedom.
A shock find. In the curriculum of the Anglican United City College, there was the Islamic Religious Knowledge, IRK, which was made compulsory for all Form One Students just like the CRK -- Christian Religious Knowledge. The residual knowledge from the Arabic school was of great advantage here as our unformed tongues relished the singsongs of the surahs. Most of the teachers in the schools were Christians, but there were about three that were indeed Muslims; and every Friday afternoon there were special Jumat services, which the students were made to attend. It became fashionable for almost all the students to attend them as the service was always followed by the special meal of Tuwo and Gbegiri (millet meal and bean soup). On Sunday, it was the tasty rice and chicken stew. The foodstuffs came always from the large farm at the back of the school where every student had a little portion of land and was allowed to plant variety of crops. At the end of every school term, harvest from each student's farm, which had been recorded at end of every week, were adjudged and awarded marks for the Agricultural Sciences class.
However, the romantic feel of United City College was short-lived at the end of our first term in Class two when then General Olusegun Obasanjo's Government abolished private ownership of schools. The students of the school were relocated to some other schools that had earlier been taken over from the missionaries by the military government.
We were relocated to Progress College, which though had a Christian background, was not so pronounced in the profession of allegiance to any Christian denomination. However, we would not even attend classes for a day at Progress as yet another circumstantial occurrence would intervene. A stocky elderly fellow, who was later to be identified by me as Baba Friday, had taken it upon himself to intervene. He would not allow his son Friday to attend Progress College, a school already labeled as peopled by miscreant-like youths who were known to play pranks around town when their mates were in school. Being perhaps the most educated in the neighborhood -- he was a supervisor in one of the factories owned by the Asians on the other side of town and only came around at weekends -- Baba Friday's opinion was highly respected in matter of schooling. He had decreed that none of the young ones relocated to Progress College would attend the school.
Next morning he herded the young ones into a file and marched us to a school some five kilometers from the neighborhood. This was Saka Tinubu Commercial School in Orile Agege. The school had an Islamic background, being the commercial arm of the famous Ahmaddiyah College (later Anwar-ul-Islam College) that had been founded in the early 1940s by some radical Muslim missionaries. Saka Tinubu, like most schools in the South West, accommodated diverse human experiences. The student population was something akin to a rainbow coalition. Students from various schools had been relocated to the school and so there were indigenes of various ethnic groups in Nigeria. Also, people of different beliefs and persuasions could be found in the school.
The principal of the school, Olukunle, was a Christian of Baptist persuasion, while his deputy, a woman from eastern Nigeria was a Catholic. But the head teacher, a Yoruba like Olukunle, was a Muslim and the Mathematics teacher, otherwise called Mastilo, as well as his Fine Arts counterpart, were never known to be identified with any particular religion. In fact, every Wednesday, during the time for religious activities, they were known to be engaged in the game of scrabble or Ayo, while the French teacher would twang away on his guitar with a sizeable number of students forming his audience. I recall that he later joined the famous juju music band of King Sunny Ade and toured many parts of the world with the international musician. Notably also we had Mr. Kodjo, a Ghanaian as English Teacher and he was probably a Protestant as he was always to be found in scriptural debate with the headmaster during the Physical Education period later in the afternoon.
The school, as a matter of fact, harboured a mosque next door to the junior staff quarters on the southern part of the vast compound. Few metres away, where the long block of classrooms for the junior class land marked by the famous footpath to the football pitch, was the little prayer house which served as the church. It was in the same room that the music lesson took place because of the organ that had been mounted in it. It would not be a surprise that much of the content of the music class was based on liturgical hymns and themes. But almost, or so it seemed, the entire student population participated in the activities in the room. This was evident by the fact that the Muslim-dominated student populace had to be organized into groups so the activities of the little rooms could accommodate them.
Besides, the students met in other extra-curricular activities that defined the social life of the school. The drama society was as strong as the literary and debating society. There were the Man O' War, Girl's Guide, Boys Scout, Junior Scientists, Farmer's Club, Home Science club, the Red Cross, the First Aid team as well as the various sporting clubs led by the Winsome Football Club for which I was the ruthless Number 6.
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There were few elite schools in Lagos of the late 70s and they were mostly to be found on the Island, which harboured the Central Business District as well as the residences vacated by the former colonial administrators and currently occupied by the Nigerian elite most who had been educated abroad but had come home to relieve the expatriates of the posts they were leaving in the aftermath of Independence. The children of these elites attended those schools spread around Lagos and Victoria Island, Ikoyi and its suburbs. However, located in the far-flung Agege outskirts of Lagos was the Ahmadiyyah College. Outside of its location, the school, which later became known as Anwar-ul- Islam, shared every attribute that the St. Gregory College, Ikoyi; King's College, Lagos; Methodist Boy's Missionary School and the very few others in their category had. It had a huge reputation in academic and a good profile in sports. It was the breeding ground of young stars and future leaders in various human endeavours. And Nigeria's current political, economic, cultural and scientific professions are filled with products of the school. It was the dream of many parents that their children or wards attended the school. Of course, our parents were no less ambitious. But there was the scare. Ahmadiyyah was known for its strict admission policy, especially with the claim that there usually existed only very few spaces after they had reserved a third of such admission spaces for candidates from other African countries, the West and Mid-East who usually come on exchange programmes.
To secure admission to the Ahmadiyyah College for the Higher School Certificate (HSC) studies, the lot once again fell on Baba Friday, the educated hero in our neighbourhood. He insisted that all the Secondary School graduands in our area obtain application for the school. He also undertook to pay for the special coaching of all the applicants towards the entrance examination which, indeed, was a nightmare of many aspiring applicants to the school. The exams came and at least four of the six that applied were successful -- two for the sciences and two for the arts.
Ahmadiyyah, though a well-rooted Muslim school, was even more adept at stressing ‘meritocracy’. There was no marked programme to stress the differences in religion, ethnicity, class or even the more mundane state of origin as primordially indented in the Nigerian polity. In fact, it was at Ahmadiyyah that one had a full opportunity to study Christian Religious Knowledge, not as part of programme for the HSC but as one of the three optional classes that an HSC student could take from the School Certificate Classes. We had fellowship just as much we had the MSS -- Muslim Students Society programmes. As boarders, we observed every Friday for Jumat services and Sundays for Church activities. Above all, sports and cultural programmes coordinated by the Drama and Literary Society were the greatest weapon of unification in the school.