In recent times, I have had telephone conversations with a quite number of Kaduna State residents through contacts gotten from online phone number banks, and I have equally followed them on social media to understand their pain and suffering over the demolition of a market that has existed for over four decades.
The market is Kasuwan Bacci! It is situated in Tudun Wada area of Kaduna State, the former colonial capital of Northern Nigeria.
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Though the market exists only in the shadow of its former self; it has been reduced to rubble, as if not to mention, the place where the market once existed and blossomed now looks like an abandoned construction site.
Kasuwan Bacci has been described by many traders and patrons as the Eldorado of used foreign clothes which are referred to as gwanjo in local parlance.
It has been argued that the markets that can compete with Kasuwan Bacci in Nigeria when it comes to gwanjo are to be found in Lagos.
However, it was not only used materials that were sold at Kasuwan Bacci; it was a place that abhored indolence but promoted entrepreneurship, commerce and industry among the teaming population of youths in the state.
It was a place where majority of youths, most of whom are breadwinners of their families, earned their livelihood.
Most of these youths who hail from the Muslim North have been dispossessed of their possessions as a result of the decision of Governor Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai to demolish the market without compensating the traders or relocating them to a new place.
Kasuwan Bacci was not only a place where commodities were sold and bought; it was also a place where faith was equally sold and proselytised.
The Wahabbi Islamic fundamentalist followers were not uncommon among the traders in the market. In other words, the market was an arena where faith, culture and politics intersected.
It was a boiling pot of pedestrian religious and political discussions that were devoid of insights and facts. In such kind of scene, scholars noted that ignorance and confusion most often triumph.
To be sure, religious and political perceptions of social change among traders of Northern extraction in Kasuwan Bacci was and is still very shallow.
We find it necessary to put the record strait that the Faustian pact these traders entered into with President Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai completely and totally collapsed like a badly arranged pack of cards when it became ominous that Kasuwan Bacci was going to be demolished and it was indeed demolished by Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai they unanimously elected in 2019.
Majority of these traders today are frustrated, confused and disconcerted over what befell them.
As it is, from affluence, they now live from hand to mouth. We must therefore be very careful and vigilant as the drums and gongs of 2023 begin to echo.
These traders who deserved to be pitied and more worthy of pathos than wrath must not allow pseudo Islamic scholars to re-manipulate them.
If they are to be given another chance, I have no doubt that they would still vote for the people who tormented them.
This position of mine is drawn from the Qur’anic narrative that even if it becomes manifest to the wrongdoers on the day of judgment what they concealed, and they were returned to this material world and given the second chance to repent, they would certainly return to what they were forbidden not to do (Qur’an 6:28). For a dog that is destined to get lost would never heed the whistle of the hunter.
Muhammad Muhsin [email protected]
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