Ahead of next month’s general elections, Vice President Namadi Sambo has called on Muslim scholars and clerics to avoid hate speeches and hate preaching. He made the appeal at a sensitization and Town Hall meeting organised for Muslim preachers, Imams and Islamiyya teachers from across the North-west geopolitical zone by the office of the Senior Special Assistant on Islamic Affairs to President Goodluck Jonathan, Alhaji Tahir Umar Tahir, in collaboration with a coalition of Islamic organisations in Kaduna.
Coming from the nation’s No 2 citizen and the highest ranking Muslim in the Jonathan administration, the call is timely and most welcome. The significance of the call cannot be lost on Nigerians at a time like this when the nation is preparing for general elections and fighting the Boko Haram insurgency in the North. The forthcoming elections will probably go down as the most fiercely contested in the history of the country, and there is no denying the fact that danger signals are glaring all over the country.
The violence that followed the declaration of the results of the 2011 presidential election signposts the need for the kind of peace advisory that Sambo has issued to Muslim clerics, teachers and scholars in the country. Some 943 persons were reported to have been killed at the time, with 827 of them in Kaduna State alone, as recently confirmed by Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, who was a member of the presidential committee that investigated the 2011 post-election violence. The Anglican Bishop, who reeled out the sobering figures at a community peace club event organised by Arewa Citizens Action for Change (ACAC) also said property worth N40.6 billion was also lost to the violence.
At a recent event, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, disclosed that about 58 people died from politics-related violence in incidents tracked for only 50 days between December 3, 2014 and January 22, this year. More incidents that challenge our resolve to live and practice democracy peacefully continue to occur every day. Some states, such as Rivers, Lagos and Kaduna, have been listed as flashpoints, and the list is still growing.
This should worry all Nigerians, especially when we recall that most of violence recorded in the aftermath of the 2011 general elections is traceable to hate preaching and incendiary messages from pulpits and religious platforms. Gullible followers often take such preaching as encouragement, if not a licence, to unleash their bottled-up frustrations with the system on whoever they think is responsible for the situation. The loss of so many lives, including youth corps members, to electoral violence in 2011, was so painful. We must not allow the ugly experience to repeat itself. But, are we listening to wise counsel and learning from our mistakes? The answer is no, going by the drumbeats of war in different parts of the country. It is in this regard that we appreciate Sambo’s peace advisory and enjoin all clerics in the country, whether Muslim or Christian, to adhere to it. The Vice President and all the other political stalwarts in the country should continue to preach peace to religious leaders and their followers. Pastors, Imams and, indeed, all men of goodwill must prevail on Nigerians to eschew violence before, during and after the 2015 elections.
We urge politicians to desist from exploiting the country’s fault lines to “divide and rule” the people, instead of concentrating on the more important job of saying how they intend to improve the fortunes of Nigerians.
Nigerians must, therefore, be on the alert to preempt politicians and religious leaders who would want to rouse the people to violence. We thank Sambo for this peace advisory and commend his good example to all politicians in the country.
“We appreciate Sambo’s peace advisory and enjoin all clerics in the country, whether Muslim or Christian, to adhere to it. The Vice President and all the other political stalwarts in the country should continue to preach peace to religious leaders and their followers. Pastors, Imams and, indeed, all men of goodwill must prevail on Nigerians to eschew violence before, during and after the 2015 elections”
