ational Confab: Sultan, Muslim leaders protest alleged marginalisation By Augustine Ehikioya, Abuja. On Mar 26th, 2014 at 17:42 Filed under: News Update The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar III Wednesday led some Muslim leaders to President Goodluck Jonathan at the Presidential Villa to protest the composition of the ongoing National Conference. Even though the Sultan declined to speak to journalists at the end of the closed door meeting with the President, the Secretary General of Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede said that the President has assured them that there is no deliberate move to marginalize Muslims in Nigeria. Speaking with State House correspondents, Oloyede said: “We came to consult with Mr. President. We are happy we consulted with him, and he has given us reasons to re- assure us that Muslims in Nigeria are not deliberately marginalised and he has asked us to convey the feelings of the government, the genuineness of the government, the fairness of the government to the entire populace.” “That if there are issues that are not as they ought to be, they were not deliberate and we want to believe that Mr. President told us his mind but we also want to believe that while it is proper to protest, it is also proper to assume that a leader will always be just even if there are mistakes thereafter.” “We just felt that we must convey the feelings of the Muslims in Nigeria to Mr. President and he has given us his words to re-assure the Muslims community that he is a genuine and committed Christian who will not be unjust to others even,” he added Among the delegation are; Shehu of Borno, Abubakar Ibn Garbai, former Head of Service of the Federation, Yayale Ahmed, former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammad Uwais. The Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) had last week opposed the composition of the national conference claiming that Muslims in the country are being marginalised as the number of Christians at the conference is more than the number of Muslims. Stressing that the selection of delegates to the National Conference was not handled in a free and fair manner, Secretary General of JNI, Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu had said at press conference in Kaduna that Muslims were cheated in the process in spite of having the largest population. He said: “Although democracy is a game of numbers, this has not been respected. For instance, While Muslims constitute the majority in the country, Christians, who by all acceptable records are not more than 40 per cent of the country’s population, ironically constitutes 62 per cent of the total delegates.” “We find it as disrespect to the conscience of the Muslims that of the 20 delegates of the federal government, only six are Muslims. No Muslim is deemed fit to make the list of delegates from the Nigerian Economic summit. In fact in the representation of the security agencies Muslims have been so unimaginably short- changed with only one Muslim out of the six retired military and security personnel, one out of six retired security and NIA officers, and two out of delegates of the Association of Retired Police Officers. This means, of the 18 security experts belonging to these three groups, only 4 (22.2 per cent) are Muslims. The question is, why is this serious short-changing of Muslims in these very sensitiv
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 23:03:01 +0000