The Federal Government has no plan to Islamize the country, the Secretary to Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha has said.
The SGF said this in Jos, Plateau State, yesterday at a two-day Peace Summit organized by the northern chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
He said: “There was a dummy sold to Christians that there is a plan to Islamize Nigeria, I often asked the church whenever I have the opportunity, and said if there is an Islamic agenda why we don’t have Christian Agenda?”
Mustapha said those peddling the rumour always cited examples of Nigeria being a member of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC).
“How did we get into OIC? We first had an observer status in 1969, that’s how we first got there, by then our father and one of the most respected figure in this country, General Yakubu Gowon was at the helm of the affairs,
“In 1986 under IBB was when we graduated from an observer status to active full membership, by that we became full members with voting rights and with right to be voted into office,” he said.
The SGF said the issue of the Islamic banking system was initiated in 2005 during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
He said: “Obasanjo took the decision because of the benefits that would be accrued to the country in his best of judgment as the leader. And Ngozi Okonjo-Iwela, former Minister of Finance, became the executive director of the bank and since then, every Finance Minister including the present one is an Executive Director of that bank.”
He clarified that even Shari’a that used to create the siege mentality over Christians was in the 1979 constitution.
He added: “The third is the issue was insurgency that we had in this country, the first pronounced one was in 1983 that’s during Mai Tatsine, which erupted in Kano, Maiduguri and later Yola, and I am confident to say that when it erupted it spread but the current president was the one that decisively dealt with it.”
