Information
All roads will lead to Osogbo, the capital of Osun State this Sunday.
The big event is a national prayer for Nigeria’s security and development. It is organized by Osun State Muslim Community in honour of His Excellency, Alhaji (Dr. S. O. Babalola recently, the President of the Muslim Ummah of South West Nigeria who also became the Deputy
President General (South) of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA).
His Eminence Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, the Sultan of Sokoto and President General, of NSCIA will be present at the Occasion as the Special Guest of Honour while a former Inspector General of Nigeria Police, Alhaji Musliu Smith will be the Chairman of the occasion. The Governor of the State, His Excellency, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola will be the Chief Host.
Other prominent personalities expected at the occasion are Judge
(Prince) Abdul Jabbar Bola Ajibola, the Proprietor of Crescent
University and Chairman, Board of Trustees of MUSWEN. Also to be present are traditional rulers from all parts of Yorba Land, including His Royal Majesty, the Ooni of Ife.
The League of Imams and Alfas of Yoruba Land will be led by its President General, Sheikh Jamiu Kewulere Bello, who will accompanied by a retinue of Muslim scholars.
The grand prayer which will be held at the secretariat of the Muslim Community of Osun State at Ring Road, West ern Bypass will commence at 10.am prompt.
Background of the faceoff
About two years ago, Al-Jazeera Television Cable Network throbbed with breaking news, saying that a United States military aircraft strayed into the airspace of Iran and the latter promptly responded by shooting it down. Iran announced another of the like a few days after.
This disturbing development further aggravated the tension between both countries which started in 1979 with the Iranian revolution that uprooted the country’s imperial despotism that had caged the citizens of that country for decades.
In reaction, the US authorities explained that the destination of the shot aircraft was Afghanistan but its pilots lost control and strayed into Iranian territory.
Shortly before that incident, Some Iranian students had besieged the British Embassy in Tehran protesting the meddling of David Cameron’s government in the internal affairs of Iran. And in retaliation, Britain quickly evacuated her diplomats in Iran and sent the latter’s diplomats in London packing despite Iran’s regret over those students’ action.
The grand design
That grand design was first expressed in 1902 by a British Prime
Minister, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman when he observed as follows: “There are people who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate them from one another….If, per chance, these people were to be unified into one state it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never- ending wars. It could also serve as a spring board for the West to gain its coveted objects”.
The Iranian Revolution
No one believed in 1979 that a mass protest which started like a small political billow, engineered by the country’s unarmed Mullahs could eventually grow into such a great magnitude of political ‘earthquake’.
By the time the foggy dust finally settled, a new Iran had emerged from the debris of the old. Against the wish and expectation of the capitalist West, the secular, monarchy of Iran became an Islamic republic. The drama was quite electric.
Characteristic of the West, all hands were on deck, at that time, to ensure that an Islamic republic did not succeed the tyrannical monarchy headed by the Shah Pahlavi and heavily backed up by the oppressive West. America was most active in that ambitious but vainglorious effort. She would not easily allow the massive benefit she had been enjoying for decades in that oil-rich country, under the Shah regime, to slip out of her hands just like that. Thus, under the pretext of wanting to rescue her citizens from the siege laid by Iranian students on that country’s embassy, in Tehran, the US attempted an invasion of the country. The espionage activities by the American diplomats, inside that embassy, against the new Islamic government in Iran had warranted the siege.
The strategy
While a number of US F15 bomber jets deployed by President Jimmy Carter were approaching Iran, the American President engaged his country’s entire press in a chart without giving any hint of the impending military operation in Iran. The tactics was to divert the attention of the press and that of the country from the illegal
Pentagon’s military expedition. But no sane person can ever fault the contents of the Qur’an. More than 1400 years before that incident, a verse of the Qur’an had been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “They (the unbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed. Allah is the supreme schemer”. Q. 3:54.
Jimmy Carter’s thought was that by the time he would be rounding off his press chart, the news would have reached him that America had successfully invaded Iran. He had therefore intended to announce the news of his ‘great’ successful scheme to the press as the epilogue of
his address. And that would have served as his impetus for wining that year’s election for a second term in office. But, as Allah would have
it, instead of the expected news, what he got was the shock of his life.
The failure of the Strategy
Two of the F15 fighters deployed for the operation miraculously collided in the air just at the point of entering Iran. The two planes crashed with their contents, and consumed the lives of 16 top air force officers aboard, while the other jet fighters had to turn back having run into confusion. When this devastating news reached Carter, it was too much to hide and it quickly became a public knowledge.
Thus, the mighty America failed woefully, with her technology, in circumstances she has never been able to analyze and explain convincingly. With that scheme, it became obvious that Jimmy Carter of the Democrat Party had dug his own political grave. Of course, he lost the election to the cowboy turned Politician, (Ronald Reagan) of the Republican Party. For about 444 days (well over a year), the 52 American hostages remained under the siege of the Iranian students. It took high-level diplomacy, through third party countries, to get them released.
Yet, America was not done. She went ahead to freeze Iran’s foreign reserve of $80 billion in addition to imposition of economic sanctions
with the intention of running that country’s economy aground. The only Iran’s offence in this case was to chart a politically independent
course that could liberate her citizens from the manacles of the Western imperialism. Ever since, the relationship between America and Iran has remained icy.
That relationship however, further deteriorated recently when Iran started a nuclear project with which to prop up her economy. America responded with a threat saying the United States would not tolerate any nuclear project in Iran because she could not trust that Islamic nation. And of course, America’s voice was re-echoed by the United Nations, through the mouth of the latter’s Secretary General, Ban Ki-moo.
The vicious sanction
Now, with the threat of invasion of Iran by Israel on the one hand and economic and political sanctions against her by the NATO allies on the other, will history repeat itself? One fact has become clear about the US political trend ever since that country withdrew from her self-isolationism in 1945. Her internal politics has been regularly dictated by her foreign policy. Thus, many American Presidents have won or lost elections at home due to the foreign policy of the concerned President. Will this also repeat itself? The days ahead will answer this fundamental question as events continue to unfold with President Donald Trump’s fingers are set on the reprisal buttons of American arsenal.
