Martyr Shehu Yar Adua Commemoration Day – Nigeria
March 8, 2003
Mr. President,
Mr. Vice President,
Members of the Foundation
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am privileged to join the 5th National Programme honouring late Shehu Yar’Adua—a great patriot, nationalist and democrat.
Shehu meant different things to different people.
To the President, he was a trusted friend, a tested colleague.
To his people, a Martyr, sacrificing his life for principles.
For Pakistan, a graduate of its prestigious officer cadre trained at Quetta Staff College.
It was at the Quetta Staff College that Martyr Shehu’s path indirectly crossed mine through my father. Mr. Shehu met Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, whom he held in admiration, at the Staff College in Quetta.
I was the Prime Minister of Pakistan when President Abacha threatened Shehu’s life. I wrote asking for clemency, hoping to save the life of a man who was his peoples hope. I knew that the execution of a political leader breeds political turmoil.
Mr. President and Distinguished Guests,
The clemency appeals fell on deaf ears. The rest is a gory chapter in Nigeria’s history.
As I took pen in hand to write against the execution of Nigeria’s great son, my thoughts turned to Turkey. As Pakistan’s Foreign Minister my father had urged Turkey’s military rulers to spare President Adnan Mendre’s life to save Turkey from a blood stained history. But the General went ahead– condemning himself forever in the eyes of unborn generations.
So, too, in Pakistan when military dictator General Ziaul Haq executed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Pakistani society has still to recover from an assassination that divided a nation and plunged it into turmoil.
Humanity condemns killers. Thus victims join the celestial skies like stars burning bright inspiring coming generations to the heights of heroism.
Shehu Yar’Adua was in Pakistan during the tragic days following its disintegration in 1971.
His stay in Pakistan gave him an insight into its history and its politics.
He realized the price paid for a politicized military that undermined the human and political rights of its own downtrodden people.
Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah warned against tribalism, ethnicity, parochialism, sectarianism, religious bigotry and corruption. These are the ills that haunt non democratic countries since the battle against colonialism was won.
Mr Jinnah separated interpretation of religion from the business of the state. His dream was of a modern, democratic Pakistan built on the edifice of a Federalist structure on the pattern of the United States of America. This echoed Nigerian’s dream of becoming Africa’s “Showcase for Democracy”.
Distinguished Guests,
Pakistan’s Founder died before his dream became reality. Military interventions followed his death opening the floodgates of religious bigotry, sectarianism, ethnicity, tribalism and corruption. Pakistan appeared on a never-ending roller coaster ride between democracy and military dictatorship.
Political leaders were targeted for character assassination. Murder, treason, crime were the lot of popular leaders targeted for elimination.
The aim was to discredit political leaders and the political process so that dictatorship could replace democracy.
My father Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto took politics out of the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful into the huts of the poor. His Pakistan People’s Party empowered the masses, ushering in socio-economic changes with far-reaching consequences.
Reflecting reforms in Africa, Asia and Latin America, he opposed the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of cartels, tribal leaders, the mandarins of bureaucracy and self styled religious leaders who exploited the people.
Distinguished Guests:
I learnt from my father that democracy and development go together, that human dignity and social emancipation go hand in hand.
The great Nigerian intellectual Chinua Achebe in his book “The Trouble With Nigeria” wrote: “On the morning after Murtala Muhammad seized power in July 1975 public servants were found “on seat” at seven-thirty in the morning. Even the “go-slow” traffic that had… defied every regime vanished overnight from the streets!”
Then he added:
“…alas, that transformation was short-lived… in order to effect lasting change it must be followed up with a … consistent agenda of reform…”
Distinguished Guests,
British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, amongst other great leaders, believed that democracy—with all its faults —is the best system for human management.
Tellingly, the advanced and powerful Nations of today are democracies.
Excellencies and Distinguished Guests,
Pakistan is an example of the tragic consequences of dictatorship. The use of the religious card by military rulers produced sectarian strife. The divide between different schools in Islam created fissures.
Doctrinal differences took on a dangerous character during the military era of the eighties.
Arms flooded into the country following Pakistan’s emergence as a ‘frontline’ state during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Small arms and heroin proliferated in Pakistani society.
Secondly, a number of religious schools were established to recruit and train young man from the Muslim world to fight the Soviet super-power in Afghanistan. No one dreamt then that one day some of them would take on the other super-power. By 1997 there were 2,500 religious schools in the province of Punjab alone (compared to 137 at independence).
A number of the religious schools taught intolerance between sects and between religions. Products of these schools were without skills relevant to the job market.
Trained to fight wars and reject politics and elections, they looked for a messiah to give meaning to their lives.
Osama Bin Laden, preaching war against the Infidels, appealed to them.
They pegged their militant skills to outstanding political disputes in the Muslim community creating a network of militias that changed the world since the bombing of the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001.
Distinguished Guests,
In this the twenty-first century, and the third millennium, pluralism and tolerance are threatened by culture of violence that alters the way we live.
Fear replaces safety and conflict replaces peace as the terrorist assault unfolds the contours of a post bi-polar world.
Discord and violence have become the order of the day.
In this grim scenario, the future looks bleak, unless federalism and freedom are restored. These are the twin pillars that can built a culture of tolerance, accommodation and co-existence. Education with economic and political empowerment is the vital way forward as we witness the rise of religious margins in the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu civilizations.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War bringing new dreams, hopes and aspirations of a world peaceful and prosperous.
With a heavy heart I say to you that
- The era of peace for which we prayed, became a time of war.
- Tolerance was replaced by terrorism.
- Dictatorship replaced democracy in too many countries.
- Violent fanaticism replaced religious moderation.
- As the war against terrorism enters a new phase, I urge Non-Muslims to know those who use violence and terror in the name of Islam.
- Their actions contradict the teachings of Islam.
- Islam is committed to tolerance and equality, and it is committed to the principles of democracy.
- The image of Muslim people is hurting because too many Muslims are living in dictatorships. Muslims are hurting because in many Muslim countries, contrary to Islam, women are discriminated against in every aspect of life.
- We spend so much on armies and weapons. We spend too little on our children who lack education.
- We run economies on cronyism, nepotism, abuse of power and corruption killing the spirit of entrepreneurship in our countries. Our businessmen and women find it hard to freely compete.
- In many Muslim countries, contrary to Islam, justice is dead. We live in societies where judges are bribed or terrorised.
- Our human rights activists are ignored.
- Our political parties are targets of state sponsored terrorism.
- Popular political leaders are persecuted living as prisoners or exiles.
- The voice of our people is silenced through rigged elections.
The authoritarian powers of the state are destroying the Muslim people and Muslim society.
Unless we break force of these authoritarian powers, our future is in the chains of ignorance, intolerance and dictatorship.
The religious parties call for religious dictatorship to replace existing authoritarian governments . They ignore the key concepts in Islam which develop democracy. These include the principles of consultation or shura, consensus known or ijma and independent judgment or ijtihaad.
Ironically Islam brought democracy to the world long before any western country. Yet today democracy is the progative of the West.
Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University predicted a clash of civilization between the West and the Islamic world.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
This clash threatens to eclipse our future unless we avert it.
Islam is part of the Judeo-Christian heritage. We are all ahle Kitaab or People of the Book. The Prophet Abraham is our father. Moses and Jesus are our prophets. We are united in a consensus of monotheism.
The word “Muslim” actually includes the followers of the Prophets Moses, Jesus and Mohammad (Peace be Upon Him).
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Suddenly Muslim countries are caught in the eye of the storm. It seems the world has tumbled out of a time when Communism was the threat, the fear, and the bloc that was to be contained. Now Islam and the Muslim Nations could replace Communism as the new threat, the new fear and the new world that is to be contained.
Much was written of how the World Trade Centre impacted on the West. Little stock was taken of how it shook the Muslim world.
Ordinary Muslims live in fear of another terrorist attack on the West and the repurcussions it could bring for Muslim people and Muslim countries.
After the victims of the World Trade Center and their families, Muslims are the most victimized community. This is why many Muslims find it hard to believe that any Muslim could be so myopic as to cause grievious harm to the Muslim community through the senseless attack on the World Trade Centers.
Muslim political problems are for the time being shelved. The ongoing violence in the Middle East, the killing in Kashmir, the civil war in Chechnya are ignored by a world unable to distinguish between Terrorism and Occupation.
In the face of the awesome military and political power of the West, and the helplessness most Muslims feel as bombs threaten to kill fellow Muslims, Osama and his men could re-emerge to haunt the world community.
Defeated and disgraced after the fall of Kabul, Al-Qaeda is now trying to peg their claim to fame on the slogan that Islam and the Muslims face a new crusade. If their call is heeded to, we could witness the dawn of a new asymmetrical battle that stains the world stage with blood, violence, death and destruction.
The course of sanity, the cause of world peaces lies in Democracy and Human Rights. It lies in Justice and the Rule of Law. It lies in the emancipation of the people of the Third World from poverty, exploitation and hunger.
Under the PPP government Pakistan integrated into the global economy bringing prosperity to its people.
We became one of the ten emerging capital markets of the world, attracting billions of dollars in foreign investment, particularly in power generation.
We eradicated polio in our country. We reduced infant mortality. We increased literacy by one-third building tens of thousands of primary and secondary schools.
We established a Women’s Bank, run by women for women giving credit to women.
We brought down the population growth rate even as we tripled the economic productivity rate.
We outlawed domestic violence by establishing special women’s police even as we doubled national revenues.
It was a remarkable transformation of a society. It was a transformation that our underprivileged wanted.
It was a transformation that demonstrated the strength of a Muslim society based on Democracy and Human Dignity.
It was a transformation that was bringing Pakistan into the modern era as a model to one billion Muslims of what moderate, enlightened Islam could achieve for its people.
And thus to the terrorists and their sympathizers, we became the enemy that was to be destroyed. We threatened the rise of the Taliban state in Afghanistan without which Al Qaeda could not operate. And so democracy in Pakistan was killed.
To kill democracy in Pakistan, the Prime Minister’s brother was shot outside their childhood home.
With the eclipse of the democratic government, the Taliban seized Kabul and invited in Al- Qaeda. Without the check of good advice from neighbourly Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden declared war on America in 1998.
Three years later, the mighty towers of the World Trade Center collapsed as suicide bombers flew Boeing jets into them. The world changed dramatically after what can only be described as a second Pearl Harbour. A Pearl Harbour that bombed the inter cultural, inter religious harmony so essential to prevent the Clash of Civilizations.
Without modernization and moderation, it is challenging for Non-Muslims to distinguish between religion and terrorism which Muslims understand by faith and instinct.
An historical mistake was made following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989. As a world community, we failed to plan for a post-war Afghanistan built on democratic principles of coalition, consensus and human rights.
Once the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan , tribalism, ethnicity and sectarianism came to the fore. As tribalism, ethnicity and sectarianism rose, the hopes of a democratic order built on a broad based government of consensus collapsed.
Now, in the shadow of Kabul, Islamabad’s military rulers are making the same mistake as the Afghans did. Last October’s elections were a mockery of justice and fair play. The leaders of Pakistan’s major political parties were banned from contesting and campaigning. After the polling closed, the results were stopped for hours and days. Turnout, estimated at 20%, doubled, tripled and in some cases exceeded 100%.
Rigged elections can give the label of democracy but they are unable to give the strength of democracy, a strength that comes from a consensus forged by public opinion.
Now the religious parties control the states bordering Afghanistan. Next they might control more of Pakistan. Islam’s second largest Muslim country, Pakistan, is today threatened with a religious uprising in the absence of democracy.
Dictatorship doesn’t modernize Nations. Dictatorship creates extremists. A democratic political structure in Afghanistan could have marginalized the Taliban and Al-Qaeda before they declared war on the West. It is democracy and democracy alone that can create modern, moderate and tolerant Muslim societies that can co-exist in peace and stability.
The greatest protection of freedom from terrorists and conflicts is replacing dictatorships with governments responsible to the people, governments based on the values of tolerance and accommodation.
Shehu Yar Adua gave his life so Nigerians could live in freedom. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave his life so Pakistanis could live in freedom.
Legendary leaders gave their lives, braving prison cells and death by hanging to keep alive for their people, their continents and civilizations the dream of Freedom.
Shehu Yar Adua was one such leader.
He lives in our hearts and minds. His name glows in the golden pages of history as a leader who beckoned his people to a brighter future than the darkness of Tyranny.
With his Martyrdom, the torch has passed to the coming generation.
It is my hope and prayer that we may live up to the glorious traditions of the men who died so that we could live in dignity, democracy and opportunity.
Thank you, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen.