THE 19TH CENTURY ULAMA’ IN ILORIN: EXPLORING QUR’ANIC INSTITUTION AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SOCIAL INTEGRATION

Abstract

Social interactions amongst people of diverse ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds could lead to integration or disintegration (conflict). Therefore, national integration has been one of the major problems in Africa, particularly in Nigeria. Some writers view this problem as an “inevitability of instability” arising from the diversity of the ethnic groups that form the nations and various social challenges as an obstacle that leads to intergroup conflict which prevents integration of Nigeria into a country of peaceful coexistence since Africans are ethnically diverse and lives in an artificially created modern nations, conflict are inevitable. Therefore, this position has been strengthened by the history of incessant violent, killings and intergroup conflicts in Nigeria and many parts of the world. However, this notion has been put to contest using the justification of the people of Ilorin emirate who have been a people of a multi-ethnic diversity living together for more than a century without major internal conflicts and became an example of non-violence intergroup relations in Africa, which this work attempt to study. The method adopted in achieving this goal is the use of primary and secondary data, through the texture analyses and study of the available literature on Ilorin emirate. Using all these available resources, this study concluded that it would not have been achieved if not for the leadership traits of the 19th century Ulama’ in Ilorin, using Qur’anic teachings and institutions as an instrument of socio-cultural integration and stability