17 September 2001

Former Nigerian Governor in Muslim North Coped with Terrorism

By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Speaking in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in New York City and nearby Arlington, Virginia, that may have left as many as 5,000 dead, Abubakar Rimi, former governor of Kano state in the mainly Muslim northern part of Nigeria, says the only way to deal with fanatics who resort to such violence is with force.

Rimi, a British-educated businessman and politician whose father was a traditional Muslim chief in his Kano village of Rimi, speaks from experience. After becoming governor of Kano state in 1979, Rimi said he was faced with violence incited by religious fanatics that resulted in thousands of deaths and ended only after he asked the federal army to intervene.

Referring to similarities to the attacks on America, Rimi told the Washington File September 17 that "people organize this type violence for personal power and political motives, and they must be identified and dealt with." He said what happened in New York and the Washington area "has happened in Kano, Kaduna, and other places like Bosnia and can never be justified by religion."

"I've seen the danger religious fanaticism and the violence it engenders can pose and the only answer is to bring those responsible to justice. If government does this I think we will see the end to so-called religious conflicts," Rimi declared.

The former federal minister of communications and senior member of the ruling PDP party is chairman of the Nigerian Securities, Printing and Minting Company. He was in New York City to attend a board meeting just five days before two hijacked airliners slammed into the two World Trade Center towers in Manhattan, causing their collapse and thousands of deaths.

At about the same time another hijacked aircraft struck the Pentagon, the U.S. military headquarters complex located just outside Washington in Arlington, Virginia, killing an estimated 200 people and setting a fire that blazed for more than a day. Another airliner crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside on its way to Washington after what was believed to be a battle between the hijackers and passengers. After the attacks, all passenger flights in the country were cancelled and Rimi was unable to return to Nigeria until September 18.

According to U.S. authorities, the chief suspect in the attacks is the Saudi Usama bin Laden, a reclusive millionaire and fundamentalist Muslim who declared a religious war against the United States and was later implicated in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said it is becoming clearer each day that "all roads lead to Bin Laden," currently believed to be living in Afghanistan. President Bush has declared the United States wants to capture Bin Laden "dead or alive."

Rimi stressed that "attacks like these cannot be justified under any circumstances, and I don't believe it has anything to do with religion." He was quick to add: "America should not make the mistake of equating Islam with terror. After all, many Muslims live in the United States, and a number of Muslim countries are U.S. allies or close friends or economic and trading partners."

Relating his own bout with terrorism in Kano in 1980, Rimi said: "I inherited a very serious religious problem. A group of religious fanatics -- orthodox Muslims -- led by a Cameroonian national named M. Marwa -- built up a cult of followers who preached violence and hatred against others. Basically, they interpreted the Koran upside down."

The problem had been festering in Kano since the early 1960s, Rimi explained, but flared up soon after he became governor. "In my time he [Marwa] organized skirmishes against the police and even burned their vehicles. I told him to desist or be deported from Kano. He then began to kidnap and murder ordinary citizens and we organized security against him and attacked his headquarters in Kano city. After three or four days he and his followers overpowered the police and I asked the federal president to send in the military."

Only then, said Rimi, was Marwa's movement finally overpowered. "His fanatical followers were arrested and he [Marwa] was hunted down to the outskirts of the city and killed." Such was the fanatical leader's power over people's minds that, Rimi said, "I ordered his body be exhumed and displayed at police headquarters" to show he was dead and had not ascended into heaven as some followers claimed.

"This kind of violence did not happen again in Kano," Rimi said, in part because "we acted decisively, which is what Americans must do. After all, government has a responsibility to safeguard the rights and liberties of its citizens. If someone decides to disrupt the peace, they deny other people those freedoms and government has to take action."