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MAITATSINE, NIGERIA'S RELIGIOUS TERROR OF THE 1980s

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MAITATSINE, Nigeria’s Religious Terror of the 1980s
HUMBLED BEFORE THE CAMERAS: Mallam Muhammadu Marwa aka Maitatsine, Allah Ta Tsine (middle stripped to shorts) is being exhibited here by Nigerian security forces during an earlier arrest. PHOTO CREDITS: Shamsudeen Lukman El-Shams/Nigerian Nostalgia Project
HUMBLED BEFORE THE CAMERAS: Mallam Muhammadu Marwa aka Maitatsine, Allah Ta Tsine (middle stripped to shorts) is being exhibited here by Nigerian security forces during a previous arrest. PHOTO CREDITS: Shamsudeen Lukman El-Shams/Nigerian Nostalgia Project
DEDICATION
This piece is written in honour of and dedicated to the memory of hardworking, innocent and defenceless Nigerian citizens who lost their lives in the spate of senseless religious killings in the country. It is my prayer and hope that their deaths will never be in vain and that one day, we will all come back to our senses, work together for peace and realize that after everything, we end up buried in the same soil of the same earth and consumed by the same worms that know no religion.  
It was 33 years ago, the 18th of December, 1980 to be precise. A Fulani teacher named Shehu Shagari was the first civilian executive Nigerian President but the nation he was leading was in flames, set alight by an energetic man who spoke high-pitched Fulani. The security forces were helpless and even the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces seemed confused blaming external forces that he said were ‘jealous of Nigeria’s growing international influence’. The violence, the horror and the terror that ensued from the wild ideas of one old man who was not even a Nigerian was about to consume the nation. Sheer madness was mixed with agonizing destruction as major cities burned. Untamed hordes of insurgents brandishing all sorts of primitive weapons like catapults, stones, swords, clubs, bows and arrows, dane guns, leopard skins to serve as bulletproof vests and powdered charms went from house to house in Kano State looting, maiming, burning, raping and killing as they wished. But despite the low sophistication of their weapons, their pattern of destruction was so brutal and complete that in a matter of just days, over 4,100 Nigerians lay dead, most of them, Maitatsine’s followers.
Identifying many of the corpses was however not easy. Their eyes, noses, ears and tongues had already been removed. They were deliberately mutilated by their angry attackers.
Considering the fact that Boko Haram’s activities have claimed the lives of over 12,000 Nigerians since 2009, you will appreciate the scope and degree of violence of this red-faced sect that killed so many Nigerians in just 12 days. Maitatsine had become a terror and a fast-growing one, with 6,000 followers ready to march to the death on the vehement orders of their much-revered spiritual leader. For the first time in the history of Nigeria, religious differences would lead to the loss of thousands of lives.

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