Preamble
Today’s article is starting with apology to the readers of ‘The Message’ for the inability of their beloved column to float on this page last Friday. It was due to a fortuitous failure of technology which yours sincerely was unable to prevent.
About Ramadan
Ordinarily, if ‘The Message’ had been out in this column last Friday, it would have been about the divine month that seasonally comes into the world to serve as the month of all months and the global guest of all seasons.
Regrettably however, today’s article is still not about Ramadan and that is due to a development, last week, that called for and deserves an urgent attention in this column today. A whole month is ahead of us, commencing from next week, in which we can address Ramadan from all conceivable angles. We pray the Almighty Allah to spare our lives.
‘Opium of the People’
In spite of the quoted maxim (by an American poet) at the opening of this article, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight for religious acrimony and malice in the Southwest of Nigeria.
The battle for peoples’ souls in the name of God continues to rage unabatedly between the Christians and the Muslims in the region albeit on a disguised platter of materialism. It is difficult to pinpoint with certainty, a dominant colour in a rainbow. The eyes that saw clearly in the dark yesterday may become dim in sighting an object through a bright light today. Thus, in a world where religion has virtually become Karl Marx’ “opium of the people”, it may be difficult to prove that the rampant, deafening noises over religion in contemporary Nigeria is more about obedience to God than loyalty to material wealth. Otherwise, why is a choice of the path to Paradise or to Hell not left to the liberty of every individual without any interference? If genuinely embraced, religion should be a matter of conscience which no mortal being should endeavour to Judge upon. But the contrary is the case in Nigeria. And the real problem area is the Southwest region where no business thrives better than religion. It is quite evident that the foremost industry in the Southwest of Nigeria today is a religious solo with different choruses.
Strange ‘Muslim’ Group
Last week, the attention of ‘The Message’ column was drawn to a media altercation between a famous Non-Governmental Organization called Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) and a fake group named ‘Oodua Muslim Coalition’ (OMC).
The Director of MURIC is Ishaq Lakin Akintola a Professor of Islamic Eschatology at the Lagos State University (LASU), whose versatility in the propagation of Islam through human rights advocacy is well known nationally and inyernationally.
Oodua Muslim Coaliition’
The so-called Oodua Muslim Coalition (OMC), on the other hand, is so obscure and so fraudulent that no Muslim of note will want to associate with it because of its vague antecedent. Its name alone is
questionable.
To which Oodua is the amorphous group claiming to be related or affiliated? Is it Oodua, the acclaimed primogenitor of the entire Yoruba tribe who was never related to Islam in any way or Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), which lays no claim to any religion?
The Mission of OPC
To the best knowledge of all Yoruba sons and daughters all over the world, OPC is a trbal youth pressure group in Yoruba land, just like Egbesu of Ijaw tribe, or Massop or IPOB in Igbo land or ACF in the north. And, like those of others, OPC has no religious inclination in its agenda. It is rather a conglomeration of all comers in Yoruba land irrespective of religious convictions or dialects. If religion has truly crept into OPC, then Christian counterpart of OMC would have emerged. And that would have signaled an albatross for Yoruba as a
distinct tribal entity.
The fact that some people choose to be Christians while others choose to be Muslims does not confer superiority on some people as an instrument of oppression over others.
The faceless elements behind the so-called OMC must have lost any memory of the possible consequences of their fraudulent plot to use Islam as an instrument of balkanization of the Yoruba land along religious lines. Such is often the case with shallow-minded people whose only focus is the momentary crump they would pick under the dining tables of their masters.
The Press Conspiracy
Using the Southwest media to baptize the arrival of its clandestine but nefarious plot under the cover of Islamic religion, this amorphous group recently issued a hateful press statement in which it attacked and blackmailed the entire Southwest Muslims calling them names and labeling them ‘Agents of Hausa Fulani of the North’.
Unfortunately the same Southwest media has never seen the association of the Southwest people with those of the Southeast and South-south in their joint campaign for secession from the commonwealth of Nigeria in the same vein. OMC’s press statement which was aimed at attack Professor Lakin Akintola of MURIC was foolishly turned into a general tool with which to throw away Islam’s baby with the bathwater in the Southwest.
Even the duo of one Mallam Lateef Adeyera and an Alhaji Ambali Olubodun Noibi who sheepishly but mischievously signed the obnoxious statement as Chairman and Secretary General respectively could not delineate between the sensible and the insensible if only for firming up their flanks of tribal pedigree.
Clarification
For clarification, the Muslim Ummah of the Southwest which is the umbrella body for all the State Muslim Councils/Communities as well as Organizations in the six State of the Southwest reagion. And, if as the Southern counterpart of Jamatu Nasril Islam (JNI) in the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), which has the record of all legitimate Muslim Organizations in the Southwest, does not know the so-called ‘Oodua Muslim Coalition’ what is the antecedent of that fraudulent group?
It is therefore necessary here to warn all genuine Muslim Councils, Communities and Organizations as well as indiduals in the region to beware of certain evil elements who are now parading themselves as Muslim groups or Associations with the intent of constituting a spiritual virus in the region, Their objective is to break the ranks of the Ummah in order to subject the Muslims to the manacle of Satan..
Press Statement
In the press statement that the so-called OMC issued recently, the faceless but highly diabolical group adopted the well known tactic and vulgar language characteristic of certain self-acclaimed Yoruba
leaders.
These elements and their cohorts are notorious for creating amorphous proxies and using them for their anti-Islamic agenda and other evil machinations. Thus, whenever such proxies raise their heads and attempt to dance like a dragon on the surface of a brook, we should automatically know where the drummers are hiding.
Evil Agents
The contents and language of the said press statement by the so-called OMC could not have come as a surprise to any genuine Muslim Organization because it has become a recurrent decimal in from their
masters.
As a divisive gimmick, in the said press statement, the amorvous group, like those of its senior brothers in their clandestine game, told the Southwest Muslims generally, to stop cooperating with the northern Muslims whom it described as enemies of the Yoruba people. It also went ahead to ask them to drop their Islamic identity for a new toga of Yoruba irredentism of the primitive era.
Unity as Headache
Apparently disturbed by the progressive unity between the Northern and Southwestern Muslims, under the banner of NSCIA, the YSF proxy calling itself OMC ignorantly insinuated that accepting the leadership of the President General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad
Abubakar, CFR, mni, could not profit the Southwest Muslims. It will be recalled that a similar press statement was issued in November 2015 in which one obvious renegade by the name Yinka Odumakin singled out the venerable personality of the Executive Secretary of MUSWEN, Professor D. O. S. Noibi, OBE, DSc. FISN for a venomous attack just because the latter signed a MUSWEN press release that objected to Afenifere’s threat of secession bid at that time.
Putting the Record Straight
Ordinarily, MUSWEN, as a responsible Islamic body with millions of Muslim members, would not have reacted to such frivolities, but when some bread and butter parasites in the society attempt to distort plain facts and replace truth with falsehood, ‘The Message’ as an Islamic column will be left with no choice than to put the records straight.
It is immoral for those who in their actions, utterances and body languages, swallow the Christian doctrine hook, line and sinker to hide under unbridled tribal irredentism to want to prevent the Muslims of the Southwest Nigeria from associating with their brothers and sisters in other parts of the country.
Not a Secular Country
Nigeria is a multi-religious and nor a secular country as often claimed by mischievous elements to suit their evil desire. In a country where all citizens are at liberty to choose and practice their religions, no religious bigots have any right to want to prevent other religious groups from practicing their faith.
Euphoria of the past
Those who are still basking in the now forgotten euphoria of the colonial era should wake up from their slumber and face the reality of the moment. Nigeria is not the the lad of anybody’s father and nobody can claim ownership of it.
Language of Communication
English language is no longer anybody’s monopoly and it can no longer be used to bamboozle any group into a new slavery or colonialism as in the past. We are all Nigerians. The meaning of the opening poem in this article should suffice for people who can correctly reason. Islam is not for sale in the Southwest Nigeria. Ramadan Karim in advance!
