Fewer people are aware of the Yan Tatsine organization, which terrorized Kano from the early 1970s until the late 1980sbut many of us are aware of Boko Haram’s history of terrorizing northern Nigeria. Maitatsine, who led the terrorist group Yan Tatsine in 1972, was accountable for several violent occurrences in Kano that caused around 16,000 deaths among people in northern Nigeria. Mohammed Marwa, aka Maitatsine, is notoriously known as the most wanted criminal in Nigerian history.The individual who doesn’t run away from his own terrorism lived as a terrorist in the city rather than in a secret cave or jungle. The man attempting to establish his own metropolis, which is more akin to a Northern Pablo Escobar.
Mohammed Marwa, a notorious Muslim preacher in Nigeria, was better known by his moniker, Maitatsine. He is referred to as “the one who damns” in Hausa, “Maitatsine,” because of his public statements full of curses directed at the Nigerian government. The Yan Tatsine were his hardline supporters. His birthplace was Marwa, in the northern region of Cameroon. Following his schooling, he relocated to Kano, Nigeria, circa 1945, and quickly gained notoriety for his contentious sermons on the Qur’an.
Maitatsine advocated against the use of watches, bicycles, vehicles, radios, and having more money than one needs. He was exiled by the British colonial rulers, but he soon returned to Kano upon independence. He had a significant and growingly radical fan base by 1972 under the name Yan Tatsine.He was detained by Nigerian police once more in 1975 on charges of slander and public abuse of political authority. However, during that time, he started to win approval from religious authorities, particularly after performing the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. In the 1970s, the number of altercations between his supporters and the police rose along with his following.
Young people, unemployed immigrants, and people who believed that mainstream Muslim educators were not doing enough for their communities were the major audiences for his sermons.
The Nigerian army was brought in by Yan Tatsine’s ongoing attacks on police and other religious leaders by December 1980. Approximately 5,000 individuals were killed in further armed conflicts, notably Maitatsine. Shortly after being hurt during the fights, Maitatsine passed away from either a heart attack or his wounds. The Sunday Trust magazine said in 2010 that Maitatsine’s remains were burned by the Nigerian military and are currently housed in a bottle in a Kano police laboratory.
December 18, 1980, to be exact, the first civilian executive president of Nigeria was Shehu Shagari, a Fulani teacher, but the country he was heading was in flames, ignited by a vivacious guy who spoke in high-pitched Fulani. The security forces were rendered useless, and even the head of the Nigerian armed forces, General Iboko, appeared perplexed as he placed the blame on outside parties who were, in his words, “jealous of Nigeria’s growing international influence.” The country was going to be overtaken by the violence, horror, and fear that resulted from one old man’s crazy ideas—who wasn’t even from Nigeria.
That wasn’t all, though. Maitatsine’s teachings had an additional aspect that scared millions of people in northern Nigeria: he vehemently opposed the traditional interpretation of Islam. He arrived preaching a strict version of Islam that decried all other forms of religion. The audacity of Maitatsine surprised Muhammadu Sanusi, the Emir of Kano, who was also the grandfather of Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the previous manager of the Central Bank.
The majority of the city’s clergy were equally horrified and incensed by Maitatsine’s teachings and the threat he posed to established authority in the political and religious domains. However, the Cameroonian guy did not even send one of them, not even the all-powerful Emir, who felt he was the Jagaban of the north. He persisted in delivering ferocious and frightening lectures to his chuckling audience, who plainly ate up and took pleasure in what he said. The lessons taught by Maitatsine were really quite fascinating.
In actuality, Boko Haram is not the first fundamentalist religious sect in Nigerian history to challenge the state with its audacious teachings and unleash maximum destruction in an attempt to establish their own version of how a society should function, despite the fact that many may view it as a recent creation or novel development. Speaking with rage, Maitatsine persuaded his listeners that Islam has been perverted by westernization and that any kind of influence from the West is sinful. He was a powerful and persuasive orator. Money usage is not significant, and excess accumulation was grave offence.
They should give up all contemporary conveniences, including watches, radios, TVs, vehicles, bicycles, cigarettes, and buttons. They should also claim that the Qur’an makes no reference of any of these items. Given that a large number of his adherents were already impoverished and unable to purchase such indulgences, the guidance was quite simple to comprehend and implement. Even his supporters who owned these things cheerfully destroyed their black-and-white Philips television sets. Subsequently, he had his own personalized copies of the Holy Qur’an, denounced the Prophet Muhammad, and proclaimed that he was on a mission to save the world.
Anybody who reads a book other than the Holy Qur’an is an irreversibly lost heathen who will burn in Hell. Maitatsine’s jubilant supporters and delirious followers nodded in agreement with all he said as he yelled with significant rage from his pulpit. He was just an angel, the earthly embodiment of God, as far as they were concerned. Many made serious promises that they would sacrifice their lives for him. Mohammed Marwa was the talk of the elite when he was at the pinnacle of his influence and authority. Prominent individuals visited him at his Kano stronghold, requesting his services as a marabout. Principal clergy paid visits to his expansive rooms as well. It is a regrettable recurrent theme in Nigerian history that the ruling class and the religious establishment have collaborated to instill fear in the public for their own self-interest. Even worse, though, are the frantic attempts of certain Nigerians—who already suffer the most from the ignorance of the ruling class—to either defend the acts or even assign blame.
There was a time when Marwa was strong enough to run his own independent stronghold. His disciples lived in a remote area of the city and shunned the general public because they believed that other Muslims were heretics, in that Reverend Jim Jones kind of way, you know. The Maitatsine chose to live in their own hermit kingdom, forming a miniature North Korea in the center of Kano, much like the Hamaliyya sect of the Tijanniya order. It’s interesting to note that cutting someone off from friends and family and subjecting them to a steady diet of sugarcoated propaganda is one of the quickest and most effective ways to brainwash someone. Yan Awaki was the neighborhood where Maitatsine and his adherents resided in Kano. He was the unquestionable monarch and ruler of this enclave, one that none dared challenge. Clearly, he was a power unto himself.
He launched vicious verbal attacks against the city’s imperial ruler, Emir Sanusi, who served as the traditional head of all Muslims in the city, from the luxury of his Yan Awaki home. Maitatsine thought he had it all, with thousands of eager adolescents at his disposal, encircling him on all sides and willing to follow even his most flimsy orders to the very end. As the sun rose and fell, he grew bold, more confrontational, and even more daring.
However, the Emir, the authorities, and the security personnel did not find his meteoric ascent to fame amusing in the slightest. The state government implicitly supported the royal institution’s decision to move quickly to contain the volcano before it erupted and destroyed their heads covered in turbans. Thus, in 1962, the Emir issued a royal edict accusing Marwa of a number of offenses. In Fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, he was charged with both illegal preaching and abusive speech, or shatimati.
Then, a qadi (Muslim judge) was called upon to hear the case of a stubborn Maitatsine and render a fair verdict. It was anything but hilarious. He was given a 90-day jail term by the qadi, and after completing that time, He was sent to Cameroon without delay. Although many believed that to be the end, the fight had only just begun. Maitatsine would return, enraged, hateful, and full of newfound vigor. The latest form of terror in town would abruptly wake up the people of Nigeria. In the latter part of the 1960s, Maitatsine was able to return to Nigeria.
In addition, he returned to Kano and established himself in his Yan Awaki territory there. However, the authorities would also make his life miserable, and from 1972 to 1979, he was incarcerated and released several times under military governments that were unable to keep up with the absurdities. For instance, in 1973, he was imprisoned in Makurdi Prison till 1975 after being caught for preaching without a license. However, tensions were reduced, conditions improved, and Maitatsine made the most of his newfound independence when Shehu Shagari was elected in 1979.
