Satans and Shaitans

by Obinna Udenwe

  ‘Alhamdulillah!’

  ‘You know what to do with the weapons?’

  The Sheikh nodded. He was a man of few words. Asking him such a question was like testing his capabilities. Looking at the men gathered around the room, he smiled to himself. He could see endless opportunities – wealth, fame and power were within his grasp after his training in Yemen, Pakistan and the United States of America.

  The men sat in silence. Most of them were glancing nervously at the many documents before them, rereading them because they were not permitted to leave the meeting with any papers, except the Sheikh, who had been writing on a small pad the names and phone numbers of the contacts he was to make after the meeting.

  During a break for some members of the group to make calls and others to use the restroom, Chief Amechi asked the Northerners to talk to Alhaji Umar Hassan. They took him out to the passage that led to the restroom.

  ‘Alhaji, haba, Alhaji. Why?’ asked Alhaji Damba Tambuwal.

  ‘Hmmn. Alhaji Tambuwal, when the endowment was set up for the madrasa, this was not the plan—’

  ‘But this is a good plan.’

  ‘It is not. This is not Islam. This is not the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Listen, the Southerners want to use us. If Jama’atul al-Mujahideen Jihad succeeds, there will be a great crisis in the North, in Katsina. People will be massacred, in Yobe, Maiduguri, everywhere. Look, I suspect deceit.’

  ‘What deceit?’ Alhaji Musa Donga asked. He was a Governor in one of the states Umar Hassan had mentioned. ‘My state is becoming filled with Christians. With infidels and mushriks! With this new force, we will outwit them, and win the next election.’

  ‘Yes. That is it.’ Alhaji Umar was becoming more nervous. ‘That is it. We may win the Northern states. But what of the Presidency? The President is a Northerner. If the war starts in the North, the whole country and the world will blame Islam, they will call us bad names. They will say we are evil. Then a Southerner will win the election, even if he is a weakling. He is bound to win. And if the terrorism continues, the more people are killed, the more hatred there will be for the North. I bet you, no Northerner will ever rule Nigeria again. Who will vote for him?’

  One of the men laughed at Alhaji Umar’s words.

  ‘You talk like a kid, Umar. Yes. You fail to realize that if this starts as planned it will grow to be an international force, recognized by more established terrorist organizations in the Middle East. No one can stand in our way. We will rule Nigeria forever, shekena!’

  Alhaji Umar Hassan stared at the ceiling. ‘No. I cannot be part of this. What you say is haram‘aleik, a sin upon you, my friend.’ With that he walked away and out of the clubhouse. Chief Donald Amechi was talking with the Evangelist and a few others. They watched as Alhaji Umar Hassan left the building, slamming the door behind him.

  Chief Amechi allowed a smile to cross his lips. But it was the kind of smile that a man would give you if he caught you on top of his wife yet said nothing. If someone gave you that kind of smile, it meant that he was not finished with you yet. It meant that he would not take action against you right now. But you would be afraid. You would have to watch your back always.

  EIGHT

  Monday, 8th February 2010

  Alhaji Umar Hassan had not been himself since the last meeting where preparations were concluded for the terrorist attacks. There was nothing he could do to dissuade his friends from the task they had chosen. His brothers and friends from the North were all in support of the operation, and heavy arms were arriving in Nigeria from Chad and Mali. There was only one man who had the power to talk to the Sacred Lord and maybe change his mind. Alhaji Umar Hassan took a flight to Abuja.

  Dr Bode Clark was sitting in his palatial sitting room with his family when Alhaji Hassan entered. They shook hands as was the tradition of the Sacred Order. Dr Clark dismissed his wife and two children, after the visitor had exchanged long greetings with the woman of the house.

  On the wall hung a framed photograph of the Tais – the Committee of Supreme Lords ruling in all the countries where the Sacred Order operated. They took decisions for the Sacred Order as it concerned each of their members and in other matters. It was the duty of the Sacred Lord in each country to pass on these decisions and messages to other members under him. There were other pictures of Dr Clark in academic gowns, standing with academics from universities in Nigeria and the West, receiving honorary doctorates. Alhaji Umar Hassan drank from the glass of mango juice he had been offered, while Dr Clark sipped from his glass of Hennessy.

  Alhaji Umar put his glass down on the table and sat next to Dr Clark on the sofa. He cleared his throat so that the spirits of his ancestors would listen, as he conversed with the only man who had the power to convince Chief Donald Amechi to cancel his plans.

  ‘I bring bad news, brother.’

  Dr Clark looked at him and moved closer. He said, ‘I know why you have come.’ The Alhaji was not surprised; he knew that the Chief must have briefed his host. ‘I am sorry I was not present during the last meeting. My firm is building a fertilizer plant in Zimbabwe. I was away.’

  ‘Sir, you are the only one who can stop this—’

  ‘And tell me, Alhaji, why must I do that?’

  Alhaji Umar Hassan shifted anxiously. Inside his socks, his feet sweated. ‘Islam does not support terrorism, Dr Clark. What is being planned will consolidate the Sacred Order’s powers in Nigeria. We will gain greater control over the Government. But we will destroy the holy religion of Islam in Nigeria. Forever.’

  Dr Clark frowned and did not answer for some time. Eventually he replied, ‘Why come to me? I am not the Sacred Lord.’

  ‘But you are the richest man in Africa, with a global business empire. We are lucky you belong to this organization. And Chief Amechi is your friend. He listens to you.’

  ‘You go against the decision of the Brotherhood, my friend. Our actions have been approved by the Tais.’

  ‘I want to save my religion, Sir.’

  ‘Does the holy war not happen in the United States, the most liberal country in the world? Are there not attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine? In Africa, are you blind to what is happening in Somalia, Mali? Even in Kenya? Do you not know that these events are all a creation of people’s ideas? People who seek power. People like us.’ He came closer to the Alhaji. ‘The young men who are to benefit from this, do they not have a reward in paradise? If they die in this war, do they not have seventy-two virgins awaiting them in paradise? You cannot take the decision for these men, my brother.’

  Alhaji Umar Hassan looked at him with pity. ‘Sir, Islam does not support terrorism or suicide bombings. My Lord says: “And do not kill yourselves. Indeed, Allah is to you ever merciful. And whoever does that in aggression and injustice then we will drive him into a fire. And that for Allah is easy.” There is no mention of seventy-two virgins for a killer in the Holy Qur’an. That is Western Islamophobia. The Qur’an condemns the killing of innocent souls whether Muslim or Christian. Islam rebukes forceful conversion. I know you may not understand the Holy Book, but I tell you, Sir, nowhere does it encourage terrorism and the murder of innocent people.’

  There was hope in his eyes that his superior may be agreeing with him.

  ‘I… I don’t know what to say, Alhaji.’

  ‘Dr Clark, if we continue with this plan we will benefit as individuals, but our people will suffer. Think about Yorubas, Itsekiris, Ijaws, Igbos. Think about all the hundreds of different ethnic men and women and children residing in the North. When this starts, they will suffer. But my people will suffer more. If I bring war to my house, my enemy will suffer, but I suffer more because I will lose my belongings and my people too. That is what will happen.’

  There was a long silence. The muffled sound of a football match could be heard from a television in one of the inner rooms. Dr Clark stood and moved to another chair. He finished his drink and sat back against the cushion.


  ‘What you ask for, my friend, is difficult. Very difficult.’

  NINE

  Thursday, 11th February 2010

  In Katsina State, close to the Jibya border separating Nigeria and the Republic of Niger, Kafurzan, a town of approximately three thousand inhabitants, stood proudly like a fat woman on a stool. It had produced several Northern leaders and Islamic scholars. Along its borders with Jibya, a small river ran on its way to other towns. It was the only river in the area and during the intense harmattan people would troop to it with carts and donkeys to fetch water and do their laundry. The river never dried up; in the extreme heat it shrank, but there was always enough water to serve the inhabitants.

  It was in this town that the Centre for Islamic Knowledge had been built. The Centre served the educational needs of the town alongside the elementary and secondary schools. The walls were high and inside the compound was a long mosque with modern aluminium windows. There were also hostels with hundreds of rooms. The tutors lived in some of the rooms but most of the rooms were empty. The hostels had been built for a special purpose, which was now approaching.

  The expanse of land where the Centre was built had only a few trees, and brown sand covered the ground. During hot weather, it scorched the feet of the students and worshippers who walked barefoot into the compound to attend the mosque. There were two blocks that served as classrooms, with mats on which the kids sat to recite from prayer books and the works of great Islamic poets. There were several long halls that were locked up, but no one wondered why they were locked.

  Sheikh Mohammed Seko had established the Centre originally as a madrasa, a traditional elementary school which taught reading, writing and the Holy Qur’an. People wondered why the elementary school should be bigger than most of the secondary schools in the state and how this man, whose intelligence matched his impressive physical stature, had got the funds to build such an institution. In no time the madrasa had expanded and become the Centre for Islamic Knowledge.

  When Mohammed Seko was a child, his father had sent him to an Islamic school in Kano, where he lived with his uncle, who was the Ustaz. His uncle was a cleric who had studied in Al-Azhar University in Cairo and in King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia before returning to work in the civil service as an Islamic scholar. In the afternoons, after their recitations in the school, Mohammed and over thirty other children would be handed a plastic plate each and they would move from street to street begging for alms. This practice, called Almajiri, ‘the servant of God’, was to instil humility in these young scholars. Mohammed abhorred this practice as he grew up under his uncle’s instruction, but it was a custom that stretched back through uncountable years, passed on through generations. When his uncle died, and after Mohammed had studied religion and Islamic history at the University of Zaria, he returned to Kano to train as a cleric and took over the running of the school.

  He rose quickly through the ranks. Soon after he became a Sheikh, Christians and Muslims clashed in Kano and many Igbo traders were massacred. The school was burnt down. An organization which he had never heard of before instituted an endowment and sent him to Afghanistan and Syria for special training on warfare, and gave him support to build his own school. His mystery benefactor was the radical Sheikh Kabiru Ibrahim, who had watched him silently for months as he called on hundreds of jobless youths who were Almajiri to take arms against the Christians – Mohammed Seko had preached that it was an individual responsibility of every Muslim in Kano to cleanse the town of infidels. He was already a very ambitious man who sought to set himself up as an indispensable authority in the Islamic world in Nigeria, by any means possible.

  That day, Sheikh Mohammed Seko sat in the mosque saying his morning prayers. He lifted his head to see a young man approach. He was as tall as himself and his beard was very long. A dagger was sheathed at his waist. The Sheikh could see a bulge inside the young man’s shirt where his pistol was hidden.

  ‘As-salamu ‘alaykum!’ the young man called in cheerful greeting.

  ‘Ah! ‘Alaykum salam!’ Sheikh Seko responded. ‘Please sit. You have returned. Alhamdulillah! Yayade?’ One would expect that they would hug each other, after five years of separation, but their hearts were jubilant.

  ‘Lafia! Lafia! Lafia! I am very fine. I arrived about twenty minutes ago and I’ve been walking round the whole place. The classrooms, the halls, the quarters. This place is great. All praises go to Allah!’

  ‘Masha’Allah, brother.’ Sheikh Seko spread out his hands, his prayer beads dangling. ‘Look what Allah has brought. Praised be His name!’

  The young man sat down next to the Sheikh. ‘When I received your letter, explaining all this, I could not believe what I was reading.’

  ‘Have you ever had cause to doubt me, since our days in Kano and Zaria? We are the fortunate ones. We have education. Now, we are about to have power in our hands, Abouzeid.’

  ‘Now, what I do for others in Mali and Chad, I can do here, for my people. I am blessed to see this day. You were in Afghanistan and Syria?’

  ‘Yes. And other countries too.’

  The Sheikh looked up to the aluminium roof and clasped his hands together in prayer. ‘May Allah be praised. Now, you see why I insisted you obey the words of Sheikh Kabiru Ibrahim. He is the Ustaz. May the all-knowing Allah guide his path.’

  Abouzeid opened his palms and raised them to his face.

  A hot wind came through the open windows and ruffled the men’s quftans. It carried dust too. The Sheikh rubbed his eyes. Beams of sunlight filtered into the mosque through the windows and the door.

  ‘How is Mali? How is the camp?’

  ‘Hmmn. Brother, it has been difficult. But we do the work of the Creator. Who are we to complain? We are making progress. Significant progress. That is why I am glad that this is here now. The camp and recruitment into the Jama’atul. Tell me, now that I am here, what is the plan?’

  The Sheikh recrossed his legs and straightened out his quftan before answering. ‘Soon after you left for Mali at Sheikh Ibrahim’s command, he took me to the South, a town close to Abakaliki. There I met the most influential men in this country and learnt that whoever becomes the President or State Governor or any position of power is not made by God. Oh no, rather it is certain men who dictate what happens. Yorubas, Igbos, even some of our brothers here in the North. Very wealthy men. They belong to a society, but they have interests in our affairs.’

  Abouzeid was uncomfortable. He was trained not to trust the infidels. ‘This, all we have here, your journey to meet our brothers in Afghanistan and Syria, and mine to Mali, you mean to tell me this was not from one of us. The endowment was not from friends of Sheikh Ibrahim?’

  ‘They came from his friends. But his friends who are infidels—’

  ‘Then by Allah, I am not happy about this. Infidels do not know the ways of the Prophet, peace be upon him. Do they know the ways of Islam?’ His voice was raised, and some men sitting at the far side of the mosque looked in his direction but said nothing. Sheikh Seko noticed three young men carrying Kalashnikovs as they walked past the open door. He knew they had come with Abouzeid.

  ‘Listen, brother, the Centre, where is it? Is it not on our land? Can the infidels come here to take it away or demolish it? No, brother. Put your mind at rest, I pray you. I have met them once. Their plan is to equip us to start an intifada. Hmmn? Then we cause trouble and their men will gain control of the Northern states. That is their goal.’ The Sheikh’s face became more serious. ‘Brother, what do we gain? We need to flush Northern Nigeria free of infidels. So we will start what we did in Kano, which failed that time. But now, we use the arms they will supply to wage war against them. Against their own people.’

  The wind outside raised dustwhirls and hurled them into the sky.

  Abouzeid sat in silence for a long time, contemplating the words of his friend. ‘Where will the arms come from?’ he finally asked.

  Sheikh Seko looked him hard in the eyes. ‘That is why
you have been summoned. You must journey to Kano tomorrow to meet Sheikh Kabiru Ibrahim.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Our friends have purchased weapons worth millions of dollars and soon they will be transported to Mali. You are to ensure that when they get there you take charge until one of their group comes to transport the arms to Nigeria.’

  ‘How will that be possible? Interpol are everywhere. The Nigerian Government is strengthening security.’

  ‘Abouzeid, you still do not realize that the men behind us are strong not just in this country but all over the world. Have you heard of Evangelist Chris Chuba?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I hate him—’

  ‘Do not. Bury your hatred. He will be the one that will contact you in Mali. He will transport the arms with you to Nigeria.’

  Abouzeid’s mouth fell open in shock. ‘How are we going to be able to carry out wide reaching attacks in Nigeria? Nigeria is more organized than Mali and Chad and Somalia.’

  ‘Be calm, brother. One step at a time. Do your part, I will do mine and they will surely do theirs. Soon, we will begin.’ The Sheikh stood up and his long quftan swept the floor. ‘Abouzeid, I have a goal. We get the money, the arms and start the war against the Government and the Christians. Then, if we are efficient, bigger organizations abroad will seek us out and we will say goodbye to the infidels and their aims. I know their plans, but they do not know mine. I made friends in the countries I visited. Let your heart be at rest, eh.’

  It was then that the ingenuity of his long time friend dawned on Abouzeid. He smiled and said, ‘I met an Ijaw man in Mali. He is a Muslim and one of us. He once told me, “It is easy to give a monkey some water to drink, but difficult to collect back your cup.” It is true.’

  TEN

  Sunday, 14th February

  ‘If my parents were around, you know I wouldn’t be going to church with you.’