Gimba Kakanda (Muslim)'s View Of The Ban On Alcohol In Kano State

Sometimes we design our doom without exactly knowing its backlash. Having been a fan and stalker of Kwankwaso, I can understand the expectations of the locals on religion. His predecessor left behind a legacy of shariah he either enforces or be labelled “liberal” – which is a politically correct word for an apostate. He is a politician, a likable one with impressive cult following, and has to play this “religion” card to his advantage.

But the destructions of hundreds of bottles of alcohol in a bid to entrench shariah is an obvious violation of a people’s fundamental human rights – the non-Muslims based in Kano are never to be affected by any injunction that is inherently Islamic. If you condemned the reported ban of Islam in Angola, which is not even true, and yet applaud Kwankwaso’s militant anti-alcohol campaign which violates the rights of non-Muslims, may God redeem your hypocrisy!

If you don’t know the backlash, here is an analogy: one day, a state in eastern Nigeria may consider, say, the calls for prayer from mosques there pollutions, noise pollutions, and for their convenience, they may pass a legislation outlawing that aspect of Muslims’ rites. And when we react, they will offer a predictable excuse that we’re just a negligible minority and that if we can’t obey that, the road across the Niger is open. We abuse each other’s rights mindlessly, polarising the country, yet nobody finds the wisdom to sue perpetrators over violations of rights – because it’s God’s business?

I don’t know how long it’ll take the black race to evolve into rational humans. This is why the toughest thing in life is being a Blackman. Being born black naturally qualifies you for an activist. You see too many aberrations wherever you turn to: aside from racism, we deal with self-denigrating, intra-racial carnage over hitherto alien ideas and beliefs. Well, we weren’t given options to select skin colours of our choice!