At the time of this report, a new controversy has arisen regarding the establishment of Sharia courts in the Southwestern region of Nigeria.
The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, attributes this development to intolerance.
In a statement on Wednesday titled, “Live and Let Live!” signed by its Deputy National Legal Adviser, Haroun Muhammed, the NSCIA decried what it described as the “high spate of intolerance and disregard for the rights of Muslims, especially in the Southern part of the country.”
The NSCIA described as “unnecessary and unwarranted” the resistance to the establishment of Sharia panel in the South-West, noting that the Sharia Arbitration Panel is a voluntary platform designed solely for the resolution of civil and marital disputes among consenting Muslims.
Muhammed said, “The NSCIA strongly supports the establishment of Independent Shariah Arbitration Panel in Ekiti and Oyo States for the purpose so intended, especially where the Muslims in the states have been denied their constitutional right to a Shariah Court of Appeal in all the states of southwestern Nigeria.”
However, in 2016, the NSCIA strongly opposed a Bill for Ecclesiastical (Christian) Courts in Nigeria. This reaction came after the bill, presented by Honorable Gyang Dung from Plateau State, passed its second reading. Dung had stated that the court would address issues related to Christian tenets. In an interview with PUNCH Newspaper, the Secretary-General of NSCIA and Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, communicated the Council’s position.
Commenting, Oloyede warned against the move, saying, “I believe that Muslims will also have Wednesday as a work-free day. To me, the demand for Christian courts is not in the interest of the nation.
“I believe that if because somebody has something, then another person must have it, then Muslims can also ask for Wednesday and not Sunday as a public holiday. If you hate Muslims because they have Shariah courts, then they can also hate you because you have Sunday and there will be no end to it.”
He warned that if Christians say “whatever Muslims want, they will be antagonistic to it,” Muslims can stand up and say they don’t want Saturday and Sunday, they want Wednesday as work-free day.
“I think it is an act of intolerance, what has brought this country together is that our forefathers have been very considerate and sensitive. But we now have some hit-headed people who think that others are fools. But I think those people should be cautioned, not to create a situation that will lead to anarchy.”
“If you say because they have Shariah court, you also want Christian courts, Muslims also have the right to say they don’t want Saturday and Sunday, they want Wednesday as Sabbath Day. So when you concede one thing to one group, the group will concede another,” he added.
Oloyede argued that any informed Christian will not demand for establishment of Christian courts.
“If you start this intolerance, at the end of the day, every group will discover that it does not pay and is not in their own interest to create such a situation. I am a Muslim and I have no apology for being a Muslim.
“But I believe that any informed Christian will not go that way. But if they go that way, Muslims also have the right to demand for all the things which they also believe that are Christian vestiges. If you go to any government hospital, the cross is a sign of the hospital in Nigeria and we are not complaining.
“Even in Sokoto (the seat of the caliphate), the cross is the sign of the hospital and Muslims are not complaining because it is not ‘give and take’. But by the time we start to exhibit such intolerance, other people will have the right to make their own demands and that will take the country to nowhere,” he told PUNCH Newspapers.
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