The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) said that it has rejected the plan by the Bauchi State governor, Senator Bala Mohammed to site the headquarters of the proposed Sayawa Chiefdom in Tafawa Balewa town.
“The Council unequivocally rejects the plan of the governor to site the headquarters of the Sayawa Chiefdom in Tafawa-Balewa because it is a recipe for ethno-religious conflicts”, its secretary-general, Professor Is-haq Oloyede said in a press release issued in Bauchi yesterday.
The NSCIA said that it has under the leadership of His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto been following matters and issues concerning Tafawa- Balewa since 1991 when the first ethno-religious disturbance occurred.
“Since then, there had been intermittent clashes and conflicts in the town and its environs.
Previous and incumbent governors in the State have made efforts at restoring peace and ensuring harmonious co-existence”, the statement recalled.
“These efforts have been responsible for the relative peace that has been enjoyed in the area, though it is in a way, peace of the grave yard since Muslims have been completely displaced from the town for about 14 years now”.
Professor Oloyede noted that the intractable issue that remained in the decades-old Tafawa Balewa crisis is the Sayawa chiefdom creation, and specifically the citing of the chiefdom headquarters.
He said, however, that Bauchi Emirate Council and the Muslims community of Tafawa Balewa have both conceded to the creation of the chiefdoms in the interest of peace, but both have also unequivocally rejected the siting of its headquarters in Tafawa-Balewa.
The council further recalled that all the committees appointed by successive regimes in the state consistently recommended the siting of the Chiefdom in Bogoro, as Yuguda administration even went to the extent of sending a bill to the state House of Assembly in 2014 on the Chiefdom, clearly stating Bogoro as the headquarters of the Chiefdom.
“The matter could have been concluded but for the objection of the Sayawa people who would not accept the Chiefdom as long as Tafawa-Balewa is not its headquarters, saying however that even the committee appointed by the present administration under the chairmanship of Ambassador Chinade did not recommend the siting of the Chiefdom in Tafawa-Balewa.
“It is instructive to state here that, there are several reasons that prevented all the committees from recommending the siting of the headquarters of the Chiefdom at Tafawa-Balewa. These include historical, moral, political and demographic reasons,” the statement reads.
The Nigerian Islamic Council stated that historically, the town was founded and named by the Fulanis and had existed for more than four centuries before the first Sayawa man settled in the town in the 1960s.
“Morally, after perpetrating a series of aggression against Muslims and killing hundreds of them in the town, nobody in his right conscience would think of offering it to the Sayawas as the headquarters of their Chiefdom”, the council concluded.
