By Nasir Dambatta
On Monday, October 5th, inside the Government House Banquet Hall in Kaduna, Kaduna did the unthinkable. Islamic Scholars including Sheik Gumi, a Reverend, a Professor, Defence Minister General Chris Gwabin Musa, and the Zazzau Emirate Monarch — Ambassador Nuhu Bamalli — climbed the same stage, grabbed the same microphone, and confessed one truth: Kaduna is at peace, and inclusion policy is the main reason it has not exploded in the last three-and-a-half years.
In a state where religion has been used as a weapon and ethnicity as a trigger, that moment was quite historic. When the pulpit and the minaret agree, it is no longer politics. It is a verdict.
The state called it a Special Interfaith Dialogue. Theme: “An Overview of the Impactful Three Years of Peaceful Co-Existence and Inclusivity in Kaduna State; Unveiling the Secret.” But there was no secret file. What was unveiled was pure truth from men who have buried victims of Kaduna’s past.
Governor Uba Sani did not sugarcoat what he met on ground: “When we came into office, we inherited a state that was highly toxic and divided.”
Then he dropped the line about his peace model that indicted every complicated theory before him: “Our model is very simple. It does not need any study. It is about justice. It is about bringing everyone to the table.” He reminded them — hand on the Glorious Qur’an on May 29, 2023, he swore to govern without tribe, without religion, without bias. And this explains the three and a half years of zero ethno-religious crisis.
The Christian leadership did not stop at clapping. They brought evidence. Rev. Caleb Ma’aji, CAN Chairman, Kaduna State, came with a checklist, not pleasantries. Three roads he demanded at the 2024 Christmas Carol — Nasarawa-UNTL-First Bank, PAN Drive-Television Garage-Sabon Tasha, Romi-Karatudu. Two have now been delivered and one is almost done. Christian pilgrimage to Jordan and Jerusalem which was dead for years was ended by the governor, with 50 Christians flown last year. And the political earthquake: Jerry Adams, a Christian, picked as running mate for 2027 In Kaduna, thereby knocking out the dangerous culture of identity politics.
The Muslim leadership hit back with the same bluntness. Sheikh Gumi and Prof. Khalid Aliyu, Secretary-General of JNI, did not call him a politician. They called him a peacemaker. They said his style is what separates this government from the past.
Then Sheikh Haliru Maraya brought the graveyard numbers — the figures that made the hall go silent. Yesterday: 4,876 lives slaughtered. 7,694 kidnapped. 1,660 terror incidents. 534 schools locked. 500 hectares of farmland deserted. Today: 534 schools reopened. 500 hectares reclaimed. Farmers back. Children back to school; communities breathing again. These are lives returned.
Even the doubters cracked. Bishop David Bakare, National Secretary of PFN, walked to the microphone and detonated his own past: “I didn’t vote for Sani in 2023… I didn’t know you… I didn’t believe in anything that you were going to do.” But Governor Uba Sani’s performance, according to the Bishop, compelled him to have a change of opinion.
That is why October 5th was not a celebration. It was a mirror. An unforgiving mirror held up to every government that fed Kaduna with division and called it strategy. The secret they unveiled was not a secret at all: you cannot bomb a state into peace, you include it into peace.
The lesson is brutal and simple: peace survives only when a citizen does not need a baptismal certificate or a tribal mark to get a road, a school, a farm, or a fair hearing.
For everyone in that hall — Sheikhs, Reverends, Monarchs, and the top military brass in the person of Defence Minister General Chris Gwabin Musa — one message was clear: Uba Sani has made identity politics look expired, outdated, and jobless.
History will decide if this becomes a permanent blueprint. But on October 5th, Kaduna’s most divided voices spoke with one powerful, unified voice: the peace is real, inclusion is non-negotiable, and anyone plotting to drag Kaduna back to its bloody past is not fighting a party — he is fighting the state itself.
For a state that was once Nigeria’s open wound, that is not just a win. It is a reckoning.
*Dambatta is Senior Special Assistant on Print Media to the Governor of Kaduna State
Never miss a moment! Get the stories shaping Nigeria, delivered straight to your phone. Follow Peoplesdaily Newspaper on WhatsApp for breaking news, exclusive reports, and the headlines everyone will be talking about, before anyone else.
