Nigeria: Boko Haram - Islamic Leaders to Vet Clerics

Europe wants to do the same! European nations have found it necessary try to vet as well as train Islamic preachers. It is at the point where we just make sure they don't commit violent acts - but the abhorrent preaching goes on.


In a bid to prevent a reoccurrence of the Boko Haram saga in which close to 800 people lost their lives, religious leaders in the North will henceforth vet Islamic clerics more closely.

Borno State Governor Ali Modu Sheriff told a meeting of religious and traditional leaders yesterday that lax monitoring had allowed Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf, to build a following.

Yusuf and his sect members had held most parts of the North to ransom last week.
In Bauchi, Bauchi State where the religious riots first began Sunday last week, the militant sect members, which believed that western education is sinful, attacked security agents, leaving many people dead in the process.

The violence later spread to Borno, Yobe and Kano States. In Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, it took a heavy military bombardment of the sect’s base from last Tuesday to Thursday before the uprising was quelled.

Yusuf, his deputy and some members of Boko Haram were captured and eventually killed.
Reuters quoted Sheriff to have told a meeting in Maiduguri that "a preaching board is to be reconstituted to ascertain that only qualified and reliable clerics would be allowed to preach in mosques and in other places.

"It is to be regretted that the law which had been in place was not enforced. That laxity was what enabled Mohammed Yusuf to conduct his type of sermon and foment trouble without being cautioned."

And as the dust gradually settles on the sectarian crisis, some of the women who lost their loved ones in the crisis are now counting their losses and have appealed to government for assistance.

"Nobody supports what has happened," Borno State's acting Chief Imam, Zannah Laisu Imam, told Reuters, adding that Islamic leaders and scholars would sit on the preaching board.

"Anybody that wants to preach, they will interview him to know his knowledge, to know how or what he will say during preaching," he said.

Some people had put the uprising down to the failure of the authorities to act on intelligence.

Residents of the state Low Cost neighbourhood, Maiduguri, where the security forces used tanks and bulldozers to destroy Yusuf's compound, questioned why the police had not acted sooner on intelligence built up over the years about the sect.

Although initially relieved by the killing of Yusuf, who was shot while in police detention last Thursday, and of other Boko Haram figures, the residents questioned whether his death had deprived the authorities of an opportunity to find out more about the sect.

"I thought what they would have done is to capture them and interrogate them. You need to keep them alive to interrogate them," state Low Cost resident Sanctus Onyenze Ogualili said. "I feel threatened. If this sort of thing can happen and security personnel do not see it coming, it is worrying."

Some of the women who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) yesterday in Maiduguri expressed disgust over the death of some of their loved ones.

”My only son, Ismail, who was a member of the sect, died in the crisis.

”I feel terrified by the situation, because he was the only bread winner in my family, having lost their father many years ago,'' 42-year-old Mrs. Saddiya Umar said.

Umar, who resides in Abba-Ganaram, a few metres to the sect’s enclave, said her late son joined the group about two years ago in the course of seeking Islamic knowledge.

She said: “He started visiting Yusuf two years ago after he enrolled in his Islamic school. But his behaviour began to change lately. He even refused to come home for some time. When I went to enquire at the Railway Terminus base of the sect, they politely turned me back.''

Umar said when she kept visiting the place, some members of the sect asked her to divorce her husband and join them.

“They told me to abandon my husband and join them, insisting that they had many suitors in the enclave who could marry me,'' she added.

Umar said she eventually gave up after her late son refused to come back home.

“It is sad that we have lost him. We have searched everywhere for him to no avail. I believe he must have been killed, because he was in the enclave during the crisis.

“Some neighbours said he was seen around the place shortly before the crisis,'' she said.

Mrs. Umma Salihu, a 25-year-old housewife who lost her husband, insisted that the sect members did not deserve to be killed.

“The wicked people killed my husband. I saw his body when we were first brought to the police headquarters.

“My husband was innocent. He couldn't even hurt a fly, but the security agents shot him while raiding the enclave,'' Salihu, who was among the additional 140 women and children rescued by the police on Sunday, said.

Salihu, who was brought to the state from Jigawa by her late husband, said the sect was only out to spread the teachings of Islam through peaceful means and blamed government for the violence.

“I blame government for the crisis, because the sect had been preaching Islam through peaceful means for years. The government started interfering in their activities, bringing bad blood between the two parties,'' she added.

Salihu said the crisis would have been averted, if government had steered clear of the sect.

Malama Zainab Ali, a middle-aged woman, appealed to government to assist them in starting life again, saying that she lost her husband, Ali, in the crisis.

“He had asked me to accompany him last month to Maiduguri to seek Islamic knowledge. That was how we came to the state,'' she said.

Ali said she planned to reunite with her parents in Kano to enable her to begin a new life.

Some 400 women and children have so far been rescued by the police from the sect's captivity.

Most of them had been kept in uncompleted buildings and houses belonging to the sect members.

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