8th March, 2021
PRESS RELEASE:
MURIC TO KWARA GOVT : POSSESS
YOUR POSSESSION
The Christian Association of Nigeria
(CAN) Kwara Chapter, has insisted that it would not allow female Muslim
children to wear hijab in its schools. But in its latest reaction to the hijab
controversy, the Nigerian Islamic human rights organization, the Muslim Rights
Concern (MURIC), has told the state government to be assertive and to ‘possess your
possession’.
This declaration was made in MURIC’s
press statement which was issued on Monday 8th March, 2021 by its
director, Professor Ishaq Akintola.
MURIC said, “The
situation in Kwara State calls for sober reflection. Here is a religious group,
the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), that is determined to use its
schools to strip innocent Muslim girls naked in public, deprive them of their
right to education and change their identity and their destiny forever. It is
most unaccommodating and uncharitable. It is child abuse. It is unacceptable.
CAN Kwara chapter is not ready to be his brother’s keeper.
“We call on the Kwara State Government (KWSG) to
protect these young girls. They are in their impressionable age when anything
inculcated in them sinks into their medulla oblongata, never to be forgotten or
abandoned. They will never get used to using hijab again if they are stopped
from using hijab either at junior or senior secondary school level. It will be hard
for them to go back to it when they get to universities and polytechnics
because they are already used to exposing their heads.
“This is the
game CAN is playing. ‘Catch them young’ is a well-known gimmick of
indoctrination in any society. But it becomes selfish and immoral when it is
aimed at the children of other groups. CAN should shift its attention to
Christian children and leave Muslim children alone. CAN is free to instruct
Christian children to use backless, topless, tight-fitting, body-gripping body
hugs and ‘dress-to-kill’ school uniforms capable of preparing girls for beauty
pageants in future.
“KWSG must not
allow a situation where one religion disallows another from fully practising and
‘manifesting’. We are constrained to expose the motive of CAN for establishing
schools, namely, to lure Muslim children into spiritual slavery. This explains
why Muslims who sought admission into mission schools in the past were either forced
to convert to Christianity or rejected.
“The wind has blown and we have seen the ruff of
the hen. Now that it has become glaring that Christians establish schools for
the purpose of entrapping Muslim children, KWSG and other state governments in
the South West must be ready to build new schools to create more space for
Muslims who may opt out of the so-called missionary schools. That is the
solution. Christian leaders have taught us a bitter lesson. Never again shall
we kowtow to CAN’s pooh-pooh.
“KWSG and other
states in the South West must stop abdicating their responsibilities. Education
is the right of every child and the state governments must show special interest
in the girl child. More schools (where there will be freedom of religion) must
be built by the government in order to accommodate Muslim girls.
“Kwara state
which was established in 1967 has been identified by the National Bureau of
Statistics as one of the poorest states in Nigeria (the rest are Jigawa, Kebbi,
Kogi, Bauchi and Yobe). While education has been identified by experts as the panacea
to poverty and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) recommended 26% of state revenue for education, we find successive
administrations in Kwara State voting a paltry 10% of the total revenue to
secondary education while 13% goes to the tertiary sector (file:///C:/Users/PROF%20ISHAQ%20AKINTOLA/Downloads/240%20file%20Kwara%20Annual%20Education%20Sector%20Performance%20Report%202010.pdf;file:///C:/Users/PROF%20ISHAQ%20AKINTOLA/Downloads/15%20file%201247817692%20kwara_education.pdf).
“It therefore behoves KWSG in particular, and all
states in the South West in general to up their games in the area of education.
In reality, the solution to the hijab controversy is for state governments to
build more schools that no religious organisation can lay any claim to, either rightly
or wrongly, legitimately or illegally.
“Give us more schools. KWSG should build more
schools. Muslim girls need more space to breathe. CAN is strangulating us. We
can’t breathe. KWSG must not wait until our daughters go the way of Eric Garner
(the black man who was killed extra-judicially by US police in 2014). Muslims
are tax payers and we are the majority in Kwara State. Use our tax money to
build more schools for us.
“This also brings up the question: ‘Who owns Kwara
schools?’ We do not need to search for answers to this question. Schools in
Kwara State were handed over to the state government 45 years ago. Meanwhile CAN
lost the legal battle in its attempt to reclaim the schools at the Ilorin High
Court in 2016 and at the Court of Appeal in 2019. To that extent,
therefore, the idea of missionary schools belonging to Christians or Muslims is
highly misleading. It doesn’t exist anymore. It is sheer sham, a mirage, a
phantom.
“Even the land
on which the Christian missionaries build the schools were given pro bono
by Muslim parents without taking a dime from them, simply because they claimed
the Schools would be for all. It is a betrayal of trust for the same
missionaries to start using the schools to persecute Muslim children.
“To the government of Kwara State, we say the time
is ripe for you to be assertive and proactive particularly in the education
sector. All schools belong to the state government by virtue of declarations of
courts of competent jurisdiction. Therefore possess your possession.
“The education
of the people is one of the primary responsibilities of government. A minority
section of the people cannot be allowed to enslave the majority. Such a situation
can only bring anarchy. The Kwara State Government must assert its right to
control the education sector. Besides, who pays the teachers’ salaries? Who
funds the schools? How can the state government pay the piper but it is not
allowed to dictate the tune? Government must not operate on a weak pedestal. CAN
is grandstanding. Possess your possession.
“Our message to
CAN is this: Your schools are slave camps. They are traps set up by you to
enslave Muslim children. They have become archaic and unwanted burdens. Your
motive for establishing schools is not to educate or to free the people from
ignorance and disease but to put them in chains of false, demagogic, gymnastic
and articulated religiousity. Your motive is to change the identity of the Muslim
child. You are nothing but slave drivers. But the wind of emancipation is
blowing. Freedom train is here in Kwara State. Allow Muslim children to embark
on it. Let the Muslims go!”
Professor Ishaq Akintola,
Director,
Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC)
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