A retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, Sheriff Abubakar Rabiu, yesterday lit a fire under Northern Nigeria’s religious establishment with a blistering open letter that has gone viral across WhatsApp groups, mosque forums, and police veterans’ chats.
In language too raw for most serving officers to dare utter, the no-nonsense former crime-fighter accused a section of Northern Islamic clerics of “poisoning the minds of our youth with vituperative, inciting and dangerously divisive sermons” that have turned pulpits into platforms for open warfare against Christians.
“Nobody has the key to Jannatul Firdausi except Allah,” Sheriff thundered. “Yet any Tom, Dick and Harry with myopic knowledge of Islam wakes up, grabs a microphone and starts calling our Christian brothers ‘Arna’, ‘Kafurai’, ‘infidels destined for hell’. This is not Islam. This is madness. And this madness gave birth to Boko Haram.”
The retired ACP, who once served as Chief Security Officer to former Adamawa Governor Murtala Nyako, pulled no punches on the two-headed monster he believes is dragging Nigeria toward American military crosshairs: hate preaching and the Almajiri system.
“An idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” he wrote. “Those street children you see begging today are tomorrow’s recruits, dummies and foot soldiers for every new terrorist franchise that promises them paradise for killing ‘infidels’.”
Sheriff’s most explosive paragraph came when he turned the mirror on his own community instead of joining the chorus blaming Donald Trump for placing Nigeria on a watch-list.
“Instead of shouting ‘Trump is Islamophobic’, let us go back to our drawing board. Why did America put us on that list? Because some of our preachers behave like they are above the law. Try that kind of sermon in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, even Cameroon – you will be arrested and executed the same day. But here in secular Nigeria they insult Christians from Friday to Friday and nobody touches them.”
He issued a direct challenge to President Bola Tinubu: order the National Assembly, all 19 Northern governors and 774 local government chairmen to enact iron-clad laws that criminalise:
– Calling any Nigerian an “arne” or “kafir” from the pulpit
– Street begging by children (Almajiri)
– Hate speech disguised as religious preaching
“Do this sincerely,” Sheriff warned, “and America will see we are serious. Fail, and we invite the same digital war machinery that turned Afghanistan and Iraq into graveyards.”
The statement ends with a nostalgic plea that has struck a chord with thousands: “If we implement these measures, Nigeria will return to the peace we enjoyed in the early 1970s when Muslims and Christians drank from the same cup, married each other’s sisters and buried each other’s dead.”
By dusk yesterday, the letter had been shared in over 40 Northern WhatsApp groups with membership ranging from 256 to 5,000. In Kano’s Hotoro suburb, a youth leader who asked not to be named told our correspondent: “This is the first time a big Muslim officer has spoken truth to our face without fear. If our governors ignore him, they are the real enemies of Islam.”
Attempts to reach the Kano Hisbah Board for comment were unsuccessful, but a senior commander who spoke off-record admitted: “Mallam Sheriff has said what many of us whisper in private. The question is – who will bell the cat?”
As Northern Nigeria wakes up to what may become the most consequential religious debate in a generation, one thing is clear: a retired cop just drew a red line in the sand, and the radicals know their free ride might finally be over.
God bless all our secular religious faiths.
GOD BLESS NIGERIA.
