By; Sani Aliyu, Zaria.
The Sultan of Sokoto His Eminence Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III has warned those using negative comments on Muslim’s and asserting that they want to islamatize Nigeria to stop and it will not be acceptable.
Sultan Sa’ad was speaking at the 22 annual Ummah Convention 2016 organised by the National Islamic Centre, Zaria held at NITT conference hall on Saturday.
He said no Islamic group has ever mention issues of islamitizing Nigeria and urged the convention to bring out issues that would salvage Islam and Muslims.
“In Nigeria every negative thing were attributed to Muslim by the so called elder statesmen, such comment is unacceptable”.
Sultan Sa’ad urged Muslims to support President Muhammadu Buhari with prayers to have a successful government.
“It is our right to practice our religion without any interference by anybody”.
In his welcome address, the Chairman Majlis Al- Shura Ummatul Islam (National Islamic Centre) Ahmadu Bello University drew the attention of the Kaduna State Government on its recent “quixotic attempt to amend the state regulation of religious preaching edict, 1984.”
He said government would probably have done a better and more successful legislation on noise pollution control that would have taken care of several indiscriminate, intimidatory, or provocative preaching activities on streets, and markets beyond the hearing of interested audience gathered for that purpose.
The chairman advise that sporadic and uncoordinated attempt by the governments of the predominantly Muslims states of northern Nigeria to regulate preaching, if they must do, would not work, rather using akin to the self regulation of professional bodies might be the way out of this menace.
“I would much rather that governments address the pervasive social, economic and political problems of almajirai and girl child street hawking by enacting appropriate legislation that would make formal education free and compulsory for every child up to secondary level and criminalise any parent who shirks his biological and religious parental responsibilities”.
The theme of the conference is “Degeneration of Morals: Lessons from the insurgency”, one of the speaker’s, Prof. Baffa Aliyu Umar said most Nigerian are poorer today than they were at independence in 1960, victims of the resource curse and rampant, entrenched corruption.
He pointed out that government must take responsibility and address the critical issues affecting the lives of the citizens.
“Politicians must not frivolously toy with security issues for selfish interests, communities and families must hold on to their hard earned and age-long moral values”.
