Maitatsine

Background

He was originally from Marwa^{[disambiguation needed]} in north eastern Nigeria at one time part of Cameroon.^{[citation needed]} After his education he moved to Kano, Nigeria in about 1945, where he became known for his controversial preachings on the Qur'an. Maitatsine claimed to be a prophet,^[2] and saw himself as a mujaddid in the image of Sheikh Usman dan Fodio.^[1] Although a Koranic scholar, he seemingly rejected the hadith and the sunnah and regarded the reading of any other book but the Koran as paganism. Maitatsine spoke against the use of radios, watches, bicycles, cars and the possession of more money than necessary.^[3][4] In 1979, he even rejected the prophethood of Mohammed and portrayed himself as an annạbi (Hausa for "prophet").^[4]
The British colonial authorities sent him into exile, but he returned to Kano shortly after independence. By 1972 he had a notable and increasingly militaristic following of Yan Tatsine.^[4] In 1975 he was again arrested by Nigerian police for slander and public abuse of political authorities.^{[citation needed]} But in that period he began to receive acceptance from religious authorities, especially after making hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.^{[citation needed]} As his following increased in the 1970s, so did the number of confrontations between his adherents and the police. His preaching attracted largely a following of youths, unemployed migrants, and those who felt that mainstream Muslim teachers were not doing enough for their communities.^{[citation needed]} By December 1980, continued Yan Tatsine attacks on other religious figures and police forced the Nigerian army to become involved. Subsequent armed clashes led to the deaths of around 5,000 people, including Maitatsine himself.^[4] Maitatsine died shortly after sustaining injuries in the clashes either from the wounds or from heart attack.^[5]
According to a 2010 article published by the Sunday Trust magazine the military cremated Maitatsine's remains, which now rest in a bottle kept at a police laboratory in Kano.^[6]

Legacy

Despite Marwa's death, Yan Tatsine riots continued into the early 1980s. In October 1982 riots erupted in Bulumkuttu, near Maidaguri, and in Kaduna, to where many Yan Tatsine adherents had moved after 1980. Over 3,000 people died. Some survivors of these altercations moved to Yola, and in early 1984 more violent uprisings occurred in that city. In this round of rioting, Musa Makaniki, a close disciple of Maitatsine, emerged as a leader and Marwa's successor.^[4][5] Ultimately more than 1,000 people died in Yola and roughly half of the city's 60,000 inhabitants was left homeless. Makaniki fled to his hometown of Gombe, where more Yan Tatsine riots occurred in April 1985. After the deaths of several hundred people Makaniki retreated to Cameroon, where he remained until 2004 when he was arrested in Nigeria.^[\\

Religious unrest is not new to Bauchi State. The Kala-Kato mayhem is the third of such incidents in Bauchi in 2009. During the Boko Haram mayhem in Borno and Yobe States, last July, Bauchi was one of the theatres of conflict, with attendant casualties.

Nigerians expect that some lessons should have been learnt from that incident, and intelligence gathering employed to prevent a recurrence, but this was not the case.

The frequent attacks on law enforcement officers and innocent members of the public during conflicts involving religious fundamentalists call for a more serious approach to the problem of religious unrest in the country. The Kala-Kato sect, which is responsible for the latest conflict, claims to be an offshoot of the original Maitatsine sect of the 1980s. With the violent antecedents of Maitatsine in Nigeria, members of the sect ought to have been closely monitored by security agencies to ensure that they do not become a threat to the public.

Below, is another article on boko haram:

Boko Haram
. . .
Background
Main article: Islam in Nigeria

Since the fall of the Sokoto Caliphate to the British in 1903, the area's Muslims have tended to resist Western education.[8] Some analysts view the group's emergence as an extension of the Maitatsine riots of the 1980s and subsequent ethnic and religious tensions in the 1990s.[14]

Origin
Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf formed Boko Haram in 2002 in Maiduguri.[14] He established a religious complex that included a mosque and a school. Many poor families from across Nigeria and from neighboring countries enrolled their children in the school, which also served as a recruiting center for jihadis to fight the Nigerian state.[8] In 2004 it moved to Kanamma, Yobe State, where it set up a base called "Afghanistan", used to attack nearby police outposts, killing police officers.[15] Yusuf is hostile to democracy and the secular education system, vowing that "this war that is yet to start would continue for long" if the political and educational system was not changed.[16]

In Bauchi the group was reported as refusing to mix with the local people. The group includes members who come from neighbouring Chad and speak only in Arabic.[17][18]