Banner Online News

By Citizen Bolaji O. Akinyemi

Introduction
The Islamic sacred phrase “Allah Akbar” — meaning “God is Great” — stands at the heart of Islamic worship, evoking humility, submission, and reverence for God. It summons believers to remembrance, to reflection, to peace. Yet, around the world and particularly in Nigeria today, that very phrase is being cynically misappropriated by Fulani jihadist Islamists adherents and actors as a war chant and the cry of killing human beings, nay citizens of Nigeria. When survivors of such victimhood report hearing “Allah Akbar” as their lives were threatened and those of victims taken, when the invocation of God’s name becomes the echo in killing chambers, the moral and religious crisis of Islamic faith is profound.
Can true Islamic leaders and adherents in Nigeria afford to ignore what is happening with the misappropriation of their sacred phrase of “Allah Akbar”? Can the Nigerian society continue to deny or minimise the genocide-component of human killings by chants of their sacred phrase of “Allah Akbar” when the evidence, testimonies and patterns indicate something far deeper than mere “insurgency,” “banditry,” “clashes” etc? If “Islam is a religion of peace”, let us ask: what do the leaders of Muslim community in Nigeria, especially the Sultan of Sokoto, including the NSCIA and Islamic adherents need to do to show that “Islam” means “peace”?
Section 1: Invocation and Violence
The invocation of “Allah Akbar” is joyous in the mosque, home and mind of adherents. But when that invocation becomes a trigger for violence — when it is shouted before a killing execution, or after a massacre, or during the cold ritual of slaughter — the phrase is perverted. The killers seize the phrase, claim the name of God, and broadcast a message: we are doing this in the name of “One True God”.
The claims of killers in such chanting broadcast of “Allah Akbar” is not only a theological barbarity — it is a civic and national depravity of the essence of Islamic faith. The chant becomes propaganda; the victimisation becomes evil; the faith becomes implicated. If the phrase can be weaponised, and if the body of Islamic faith adherents remains silent, the faith in effect loses its moral authority and spiritual fervour. The faith becomes powerless to be distinguished from the violence that claims to act in its name.

Section 2: The Evidence of Blood
Let us consider the facts. The massacre at St Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Owo, in Owo town, Ondo State on Pentecost Sunday of 5th June 2022 stands out as a watershed moment. Fulani jihadist Islamists disguised as congregants detonated explosives outside the church, entered, fired indiscriminately into worshippers, leaving at least 40 dead and dozens injured. The nature of the attack — in southwestern Nigeria, outside the usual northeast insurgency zone — signals the expanding reach of terror in Nigeria.
Investigations by Nigerian authorities named the “ISLAMIC” State West Africa Province (ISWAP) as the prime suspect. While no credible group publicly claimed responsibility, the pattern of religious targeting and massacre during worship by Fulani jihadist Islamists ideologues is clear.
Another harrowing piece of evidence: a video, released in May 2022, showed the killing execution of twenty (20) Nigerian men believed to be Christians, claimed by ISWAP via its Amaq News outlet. While the exact time and location remain unconfirmed, the style corresponds to earlier Fulani jihadist Islamists productions in Nigeria.
Further, the wider documentation puts into stark relief what Christian Agency organisations call a “Silent Slaughter” — for example one report states that since 2000 over 62,000 Christians in Nigeria have been murdered by Fulani jihadist and Islamist militant groups. These are not isolated incidents of communal violence; they form part of a pattern of Fulani jihadist Islamists religious targeting, ideological violence and systematic marginalisation.

For victims and survivors, the invocation of Allah Akbar is not incidental. It is testimony. To quote a survivor of the Owo massacre: “…they entered and started firing everywhere … so many people.” When worshippers hear those words at the threshold of death, the die is cast: Islamic faith is weaponised, community is terrorised, innocence is violated.

Section 3: The Indictment of Silence
If the issue were purely security/policing-based, we could demand better operations, better intelligence, better prosecution. But the issue is clearly theological and moral. The Muslim leadership and adherents in Nigeria — especially the NSCIA and the Sultan of Sokoto — have repeatedly affirmed that Islam is a religion of peace. Yet each time “Allah Akbar” resounds before a massacre, the leadership remains mute or vague. Silence in this context is interpreted by many as consent to kill or indifference to such killings due to ethnoreligious identity of the victims. The attackers seize the religious vocabulary; the faith neutralises the vocabulary. The state is faced with a crisis of narrative: if Islam cannot distinguish itself from the pervasive killing acts, the act will continue to define Islam in Nigeria and to the world at large beyond redemption.

Moreover, the failure to publicly demarcate the Islamic faith from the pervasive killing act leaves millions of peace-loving Muslims vulnerable: they may be viewed by Christians and by the secular public as complicit and derisory. That is unjust to the vast majority of peaceful Muslims — but the lack of leadership response allows such suspicion to fester.
If the Sultan of Sokoto remains silent or non-specific, the Fulani jihadist Islamists groups become de facto religious spokespersons for Islam in Nigeria: they deliver the thunderous killing promises, the chilling videos, the chants of Allah Akbar. The mainstream Islamic faith voice is reduced to whispering condemnation after the fact. That is not enough.

Section 4: The Burden of Proof – What Must Be Done
If “Islam is a religion of peace” is more than a slogan, the Muslim community leadership must immediately mount a credible public campaign to reclaim both the phrase “Allah Akbar” and its moral ground. Here is what must be done:
(i) Formal Fatwa/doctrinal repudiation
The Sultan of Sokoto, as leader of Nigeria’s Muslim community, should issue a landmark fatwa (religious-legal ruling) declaring that shouting “Allah Akbar” in the act of killing human beings is a nullification of faith — that it constitutes blasphemy in the sense of mis-using God’s name for murder. This fatwa should be widely publicised in local and international languages and distributed to all mosques, imams, Islamic schools and communities. It should carry the weight of theological authority and remove any ambiguity.
(ii) National awareness and education campaign
In cooperation with the NSCIA, all-Friday sermons across Nigeria should declare the same message: the sanctity of life, the prohibition of murder, the invalidity of killing in God’s name. Islamic mass media outlets, community meetings, mosque boards must emphasise: “If you kill in the name of Allah, you kill the faith — you do not honour it.” Homilies, booklets, flyers, tracts, social-media posts in various languages must drive the message home.
(iii) Inter-faith solidarity gestures
Muslim leadership should actively reach out to survivors of victims of Fulani jihadist Islamists violence — especially Christian communities — not as diplomatic niceties but as public acts of repentance, empathy and solidarity. A delegation of Muslim scholars led by the Sultan and NSCIA should attend memorials, meet survivors, and declare: “Their blood is our responsibility.” Such gestures publicly divorce the jihadist from the Islamic faith community.
(iv) Institutional cooperation with security agencies
NSCIA, SCSN and Islamic clerics should sign a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the defense and security agencies to identify, monitor, and sanction Islamic leaders, clerics, schools, hawalas or mosques that endorse or propagate jihadist rhetoric. Reporting mechanisms should be strengthened; whistle-blower protections offered. Muslim community leaders must see counter-terrorism as part of their religious duty (“jihad fi sabil Allah”) — the struggle to protect the sanctity of human life and defend the integrity of Islamic faith.
(v) Transparent follow-through and accountability
When arrests are made — such as those in relation to Owo Church attack suspects — Muslim leadership must publicly comment, affirm the legitimacy of prosecution, call for justice, and refuse any communal cover-up. For instance, the arrests of suspects in the Owo Church massacre were acknowledged by federal authorities. The Muslim community should not only endorse these processes but actively monitor them, and expose attempts at special pleading or impunity.
Without this multipronged strategy, the phrase “Islam is a religion of peace” will continue to ring hollow — not because Muslims are inherently jihadist and violent, but because their leadership has not done the necessary work to prove otherwise.
Section 5: A National Imperative
The stakes are national and supranational; Nigeria’s pluralism — its fragile weave of Muslim, Christian, traditional faith communities — is under assault. Every time a Church is targeted, every time a mosque is bombed, the social contract of ‘be the keeper of your neighbour’ frays further. Fulani Jihadist Islamists exploit that fracture, or rather, they create it.
Government must codify the ideological dimension of the killings and despicable atrocities. Acts of killing that occur with the invocation of a religious slogan, that target a faith community, should trigger hate-crime plus terrorism status. The National Assembly should consider amending the Terrorism Prevention Act to include “religious-slogan invocation” as an aggravating factor. The media must stop using euphemisms like “bandits,” “unknown gunmen,” etc but explicitly name the culprits when the pattern, method and words used hail from militant jihadism.
Meanwhile, the Muslim community’s role is crucial. It cannot leave security policy exclusively to the state. The Islamic faith community must step into the arena of doctrine, narrative and moral leadership. The Sultan of Sokoto and NSCIA have a once-in-a-generation moment to define whether the phrase “Allah Akbar” stands for mercy or massacre; for humility or horror.
Conclusion
The greatness of God cannot be proclaimed through the smallness of man’s cruelty. When the name of Allah becomes the banner of slaughter of human life, those who truly know God must stand and say: Not in the name of our faith.
If Muslim religious leadership remains silent, the Fulani jihadist Islamists will continue to write Islam’s obituary in Nigerian blood. If Islamic leaders act decisively — issuing doctrinal rulings, public education campaigns, solidarity with victim-survivors, and institutional cooperation — then they reclaim the phrase “Allah Akbar”, reaffirm the sanctity of human life and let Islam speak the peace it has always meant to.
The time for diplomatic caution has passed. The time for decisive Islamic religion-led moral clarity has come. For if “Islam is a religion of peace”, then those words must live in action — not just affirmation.

• Dr. Bolaji O. Akinyemi is an Apostle and Nation Builder. He’s also President Voice of His Word Ministries and Convener Apostolic Round Table. BoT Chairman, Project Victory Call Initiative, AKA PVC Naija. He is a strategic Communicator and the C.E.O, Masterbuilder Communications.

Email:bolajiakinyemi66@gmail.com
Facebook:Bolaji Akinyemi.
X:Bolaji O Akinyemi
Instagram:bolajioakinyemi
Phone:+2348033041236