The so-called tolerance in Yoruba Land

By KAROUNWI ADINNI

For decades, millions of Muslim students were subjected to indignities that would today be described plainly as religious persecution. Many were forced to change their names or feign conversion to Christianity to gain admission into schools. Others endured corporal punishment for refusing to participate in Christian religious practices—being beaten for not owning Bibles or attending Sunday School, even when teachers were fully aware that these students were Muslims.

The popular narrative of religious tolerance in Yoruba land deserves a more honest examination. Beneath the surface of this oft-celebrated ideal lies a long and painful history of discrimination against Muslims—especially within the education system—where access to opportunity was frequently conditioned on compromise, concealment, or outright abandonment of Islamic identity.

For decades, millions of Muslim students were subjected to indignities that would today be described plainly as religious persecution. Many were forced to change their names or feign conversion to Christianity to gain admission into schools. Others endured corporal punishment for refusing to participate in Christian religious practices—being beaten for not owning Bibles or attending Sunday School, even when teachers were fully aware that these students were Muslims.

This pressure to conform produced a generation of prominent Nigerians whose public identities were reshaped to fit missionary expectations. Nigeria’s former Minister of State for Finance from Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Jubril Kuye, added “Martins” to his name and became Jubril Martins-Kuye. Former Attorney-General of the Federation, Rashidi Akinjide, became Richard Akinjide. Former Oyo State Governor, Lamidi Adesina, shortened his name to Lam Adesina. Prince Bola Ajibola, also a former Attorney-General from Owu, Abeokuta, reportedly had to drop his Muslim name “AbdulJabbar” to stand a chance of schooling.

In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, former Attorney-General Kehinde Sofola recalled how he and his twin brother were beaten at Ikenne Methodist School for not attending Sunday School, despite being known Muslims—an incident that provoked protests from their father, Chief Sanni Sofola.

Chief M.K.O. Abiola’s near-forced conversion at Baptist Boys’ High School (BBHS), Abeokuta, is well documented. It was only the firm resistance of his father, Salawu Abiola, that prevented it. In a 2017 interview with The Sun, the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo, revealed that Abiola was denied a prefectship at BBHS simply because he was Muslim, as only Christians were considered eligible by policy.

This pattern of exclusion was not accidental, nor was it new. As far back as the 1890s, Muslim marginalization in education had become so pronounced that Lagos Governor Gilbert Carter intervened. He enlisted the American-Liberian Pan-Africanist Edward Wilmot Blyden as Agent of Native Education, tasking him, among other things, with advancing Muslim education. Blyden worked alongside figures such as Inspector of Education Henry Rawlinson Carr, Sierra Leonean scholar Harun Rachid, and Henry Abdullah Quilliam, the Ottoman representative present at the commissioning of the Shitta-Bey Mosque in 1894. Their collective appeal urged Muslims to embrace Western education without fear of religious conversion.

In 1896, this effort bore fruit with the establishment of the first Government Muslim School, led by Imam Idris Animashaun. Blyden pioneered a model that combined the “three Rs”—Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic—alongside Geography, History, and Islamic studies. Only two additional Government Muslim Schools were later established, in Epe and Badagry, despite widespread demand across the hinterlands.

The initiative was abruptly terminated in 1926 when the colonial government shut down the Muslim schools and directed students back to missionary institutions. In response, graduates of the Government Muslim Schools organized themselves into the Young Ansar-Ud-Deen Society. Among them were Boonyamin Gbajabiamila, A.A. Cole, Buraimoh Davies, Raji Onitiri, Kadara Savage, A.L. Carew, Buhari Aka, and Tiamiyu Sanni King. Through collective fundraising, they established the Ansar-Ud-Deen schools, modeled after the original Government Muslim Schools.

From Lagos, the movement spread rapidly to Ekiti, Ondo, Ibadan, and Ife, where Muslim educators built schools and enlightened communities in the hinterland about the value of education free from coercion. Similar initiatives followed, including the Ijebu-Ode Muslim Friendly Society in 1927 and the Abeokuta-based Nawair-Ud-Deen in 1939.

These organizations, alongside groups such as the Muslim Juvenile Society and the Muslim Literacy Society led by figures like Jubril Martins, L.B. Agusto, and Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa, mentored a new generation of Muslim students who continued to face discrimination. This generation—including A.R.A. Sahid, Tajudeen Aromashodu, Saidah Anike Anibaba (later Professor Mabadeje), Nurudeen Alao, and Sunmola Akin Laguda—went on to form the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN).

The MSSN held its first conference in 1955, declared open by the Oba of Lagos, Oba Musendiku Adeniji-Adele, and soon attracted prominent patrons such as Sir Ahmadu Bello, Alhaji A.R.A. Smith of Ilesa, Dr. Saburi Biobaku, Alhaji Inuwa Wada, Mrs. H.M. Shodeinde, and Alhaja Humuani Alaga. Within two years, the MSSN had spread across the Southwest and into all government schools in Northern Nigeria.

Their advocacy paid off in 1959 when, for the first time in over fifty years, Muslim students in Southern Nigeria were granted holidays for Eid under the national government led by Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa.

The struggle, however, did not end there. Dr. Lateef Adegbite—later Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and Attorney-General of the Western Region—intervened in the case of Liad Tella at Baptist High School, Iwo, where the student faced expulsion over MSSN activities. Adegbite’s intervention resulted in a formal warning from the Ministry of Education that no student should be compelled to adopt a religion other than that of their parents.

Even in recent times, the pattern persists. Muslim groups in Southwest Nigeria fought a ten-year legal battle, culminating in a 2022 Supreme Court judgment affirming the hijab as a fundamental right in public schools. This followed incidents such as the flogging of a Muslim student with 43 strokes in 2012 for wearing a hijab at Kadara High School, Lagos.

In 2017, the nation watched as Firdausa Amasa was barred from the Call to Bar ceremony for refusing to remove her hijab. She was eventually called to the Bar in 2018. In interviews, Amasa noted that her own mother had faced similar discrimination decades earlier at a School of Nursing—evidence of how deeply entrenched the problem remains.

Against this backdrop, nostalgic claims about “the good old days” of Yoruba tolerance ring hollow. Too often, what is celebrated as tolerance has meant Muslims enduring systemic injustice in silence, under the guise of “mutual coexistence.” Those who resisted were routinely branded alákatakítí—extremists.

One must ask: how would the same society react if all Yoruba children were compelled to recite the Qa’idat Baghdadiy or the Qur’an as a condition for schooling or employment? The outrage would be immediate and deafening.

That thought experiment alone exposes the hollowness of the so-called Yoruba tolerance. True tolerance is not the expectation that one group should perpetually endure inequity; it is the guarantee that no one is forced to surrender their faith to access education, dignity, or opportunity.

Note that all  opinions expressed in this article are entirely the opinion of the author and not of The DEFENDER Newspaper.