Nigerian Muslim students abandoned after disintegration of religious community initiatives

When Aisha Mustapha got admitted into the university, she had high hopes of connecting with female students who shared her faith from the campus’ Muslim community.

Instead, she battled toxicity when admitted into the membership of Muslim student society, and now, she admonishes Muslim students not to join the body.

In 2021, she tweeted about the issue and she got a lot of diverse reactions, some really criticising her for “over-generalising” the issue.

But there are many students like Aisha who are repressed under student faith bodies where they had hoped to find succour.

"Competition for followers and influence among student religious associations on some university campuses mirrors competition and tensions in Nigeria’s broader society"

“Well, what inspired my tweet was other tweets I saw by some Muslim ladies on the issue, then my own observations from school. And after the tweet, some ladies sent me DMs on their experiences with MSS,” Aisha told The New Arab.

“I don’t know how to put this, but what do you think about Islam being weaponised to perpetrate acts of misogyny against Muslim women? So, some chapters of the organisation legitimise that against female Muslim members.

“Imagine a lady that joins the university, only to get married without her parent's consent to a male, brainwashed to think the Western education she is there to obtain is antithetical to being a righteous Muslim woman? [Basically] stops attending classes, essentially giving up her prospects for economic and financial education,” Aisha lamented.

Aisha is one of the many students affected by the failing structures of these faith-based student bodies, established to create close-knitted communities for Muslims on Nigerian campuses.

This year, the founding editor of The Muslim Women Times, Wardah Abass, wrote about how joining her college's Muslim student group almost led her to “poverty and needless suffering,” due to its ideologies eschewing the craving for material wealth. She had to exist outside the community, she wrote, before achieving her dreams as a blooming lawyer and writer.

Managing interests in Muslim students’ communities

Muslim faith-based student bodies have always been blighted by crises and interests, ranging from leadership divisions, sectarian concerns, religious differences, control by alumna and divided interests, problems bringing these organisations to their knees.

For instance, in 2016, the authorities of the Obafemi Awolowo University and the staff-controlled Muslim Community expressed concerns that some Muslim students are exhibiting extremist tendencies, evidenced by the existence of splinter communities in the Muslim student bodies, which the Sultanate of Sokoto and the Muslim Ummah of South West Nigeria (MUSWEN) had to wade in to resolve. 

In 2017, the management of the University of Lagos had to compel the chapter body of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria to draft a constitution towards resolving its conflict.

At the University of Ilorin, reports showed that in 2019, “female Muslim students are lured into marriage in their earlier stage in the university learning and then made to withdraw from schools saying education reading to a high level by Muslim woman is not desirable in Islam.”

In spite of these challenges, Muslim students’ bodies had also served as an incubator for faith and career upliftment for many students in tertiary institutions.

There have been testaments as to how Nigeria's foremost Muslim student body, the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN), had served as a springboard for the development of Nigeria's religious and governance leaders.

However, this narrative often overshadows some of the strains faced by students repressed under the structures of these organisations.

Research shows that “competition for followers and influence among student religious associations on some university campuses mirrors competition and tensions in Nigeria’s broader society.

This competition impacts religious dynamics on campus and interactions among students, in some cases aggravating grievances and contestations within Muslim associations and between Muslim and Christian associations,” signifying an interlock of religious politics and student associations in Nigeria.

This is shown in the domination of MSSN on Nigerian campuses, which has led to complaints of restrictions on freedom of association and religion by rival sects like the Tijaniyyah Muslim Students Association of Nigeria (TIMSAN).

There are even allegations of assaults against the leadership of minority of student groups by organisations dominated by majorities of Muslim students, signifying a trend of shrinking spaces of participation for diverse religious ideologies, thereby affecting students adhering to conflicting ideologies.

Conflicting interests 'a credible threat' 

Sobur Adedokun, the leader of the University of Ilorin’s Muslim Students’ Society, stated that diverse interests may deviate Muslim bodies from their objectives, and it is necessary that these bodies do not forget the essence of their existence.

“There are actually a lot of threats facing the bodies and my personal thoughts about these threats is that the parties involved in enabling them actually seem to forget why the bodies exist in the first place. These bodies exist to create an avenue for Muslim students to ‘be Muslim students and their welfare is catered for. If these intentions are focused on, there would be fewer of these problems," he explains.

Fuad Sheikh, the President of the Tijaniyyah Muslim Students’ Association (TIMSAN), University of Ilorin chapter told The New Arab: “There are a lot of ideologies assumed to be Islamic doctrines. In tertiary institutions, the MSSN is trying to be the general body for Muslims on campus, whereas the organisation does not regard some of its members as Muslims. How is it expected that this batch of persons adheres to your doctrines? The organisation rejects adherents of doctrines different from its own.

"As the leader of TIMSAN in my institution, I do not believe in the MSSN being the general body of Muslim students, because they are the greatest threat to our ideologies. So, these problems are largely fueled by ideologies.”

"When sisters seek knowledge and understand Islam, they will know that their schoolmates have no power to force them on matters of religion"

Sobur Adedokun believes that Muslim student bodies are expected to nurture their membership into betterment in their faiths, but when actualising this, some part of its members take offence because of its techniques in effecting same. On repression of the female folk with ideologies, he notes that it is important for Muslim bodies to distance themselves from being ascribed to propagating “truly extreme ideologies.”

“For ideologies that are truly extreme, these bodies need to be vigilant and publicly decry these ideologies to announce that those who subscribe to the ideologies do not have affiliations with the bodies, to try to sanitise the internal workings of these bodies," he says.

"There should be sensitisations to ensure that the falsehoods in these ideologies are exposed. However, sometimes, some things that are not really extreme are considered extreme. There may be teachings of the Quran, the sunnah of the Prophet or scholars of the Ummah that a lot of people who may be ignorant or new to these things would consider being extreme. In this case, as long as these teachings are in accordance with these, they have to be protected and taught, even if a minority consider these views to be extreme,” Adedokun noted.

“You can force a horse to the stream but you can't compel it to drink water”

“The leadership crisis of the MSSN [and other societies], and other challenges facing the Society are more than what can be stretched at the surface,” University administrator and Vice Chancellor of the Ahman Patigi University, Professor Mahfouz Adedimeji stated.

“What we are witnessing is a reflection of the society where there are extremities from the North to the South. People who say they want to solve real and perceived problems have become problems themselves.”

Muslim students joining these bodies need to be equipped with knowledge about the religions they practice to prevent ideologies from being imposed on them, Professor Adedimeji noted.

“That there is no compulsion in religion is canonical. Those who force others to act against their will on campus are cultists. How are the females forced? Under what guise are their fellow students denying them their rights to be themselves? How can students force students to embrace ideologies? Ideologies are of the mind and as the Yoruba say, you can force a horse to the stream but you can't compel it to drink water,” he added. 

“What I think everyone needs is knowledge. It is easy to manipulate those who are ignorant and those who do not read by themselves but often rely on others to spoon-feed them. Knowledge liberates and ignorance enslaves. When sisters seek knowledge and understand Islam, they will know that their schoolmates have no power to force them on matters of religion,” Professor Adedimeji told The New Arab.

“The implications of these challenges are that it leads to disunity amongst students and breaks the ties of brotherhood. In institutions where this happens, the brotherhood is very fragile and people tend to segregate themselves on the basis of ideology,” Haleemah Oladamade Ahmad, senior associate researcher at the Da'wah Institute, noted.

“What makes it more concerning is that often, the issues causing these are not on the fundamentals of the Deen, and should not ordinarily lead to disunity and unfortunately, they do. These lead to extremism in some cases, leading some Muslims to believe that people of other faiths are better to deal with. It also leads to disillusionment and confusion, especially amongst those without solid foundations with regard to Islamic knowledge and sciences.

“Some, in their confusion, align to one of these groups and could become extreme themselves that they start condemning other Muslims in other factions that do not have the same understanding. In other cases, some students stay aloof from the activities of these bodies because of these challenges, thereby missing out on the potential benefits of being in membership of the associations. I hope that we somehow find a way to circumvent these challenges,” she stated.

Adedimeji Quayyim Abdul-Hafeez is a freelance journalist as well as a creative and legal enthusiast. He studies Common and Islamic Laws at the University of Ilorin and is passionate about community development, creative upliftment and grassroots advocacy.

Follow him on Twitter: @quayyimbakr