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Is Nigeria's Membership in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) the Cause of Religious Intolerance in Nigeria? A Reply to Reverend Alfred Adewale Martins BY Ibrahim Ahmed A
momentous event such as last week’s federal government proclamation of
emergency rule in Plateau state is bound to trigger a wide range of
reactions. While most reactions have followed the predictable pattern of
either support for or denunciation of government’s action, few
reactions have come across as thoroughly strange. Most Reverend Alfred
Adewale Martins’ reaction belongs to the latter category. He was
reported to have suggested in the online edition of the Daily
Independent on Monday, May 24 2004, that Nigeria’s membership in
the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the cause of
worsening religious intolerance in Nigeria. The Reverend’s assertion
is strange because he did explain how. Yet it is not out of place to
conclude that if indeed he is right, those who are opposed to
Nigeria’s membership in the OIC are probably to blame for the
worsening state of affairs between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria.
This is the position I explain in what follows. Nigeria
joined the OIC in 1986 to the consternation of the Christian elites, who
thought that Nigeria’s admission into the OIC was going to turn the
country into an Islamic republic. The Christian Association of Nigeria
(CAN) was formed as a direct consequence of that event to rally Nigerian
Christians in protest against what they called the Islamization of
Nigeria. Because of the motive behind the founding of CAN, it makes
sense to ask what methods were adopted by that Association to achieve
its objective of protesting Nigeria’s entry into the OIC. The blatant
misrepresentation of the OIC and what it stands for, as evident in Dr
Okogie’s assertion which appeared in the Guardian of February
23, 2000, demonstrates how deliberate misinformation or perhaps
ignorance has fanned the ember of discord among Nigerian Christians and
Muslims. Dr Olubunmi Okogie was the first president of CAN and he
was the one who told the Guardian that OIC stands for Organisation of
Islamic Countries and that introduction of Sharia in the North was part
of the conditions for joining the OIC. Dr Okogie was speaking in
February of 2000; fourteen years after Nigeria had joined the OIC. Before
1986, Nigerian Christian elites had opposed the inclusion of Sharia
provision in the 1979 constitution in their relentless attitude of
blackmailing their Muslim counterparts. It is their opposition to
everything Islamic and the lies, provocations and deception they employ
in achieving their objectives that has brought Muslim-Christian
relations in Nigeria where it is today and not the OIC. The federal
government under chief Obasanjo is not helping matters either. Federal
appointments are too much in favour of Christians. Look at the finance
ministry, where the top two political appointees are Christians; look at
the Central Bank of Nigeria, where after Dr Joseph Sanusi’s
retirement, the top two people there would be Christians. Professor
Soludo who moves to the Central Bank is not replaced by a Muslim.
Consider the pattern of replacing retiring Muslims with Christians but
only Christians with Christians; look at the scores of born again
Christians hired by Obasanjo as advisers and aides. Obasanjo seems to be
saying that there are no competent Muslims to ensure a fair distribution
of federal government jobs. How many Muslims from the Southwest zone are
in his cabinet? The President could find a female Christian minister of
state for finance from the North, but could not find more than 1 male
Muslim junior minister from the southwest. I
cannot understand whether this is what Reverend Martins considers a
level playing field. Where is that level playing field in federal
government institutions such as the NTA? Since the days of Jerry Gana as
the minister of information, the NTA has been turned into a Christian
propaganda machine. For
the umpteenth time, the OIC is a platform founded to promote the
legitimate interests of Muslims everywhere in the world. This objective
is not concomitant with injuring the interests of non-Muslims. The
Charter of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference is very clear
about this. In fact it is one platform the Nigerian government has
failed to explore in its search for solutions to some of the
socio-economic problems plaguing Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria’s
economic difficulties, all we need to do as a member of the OIC is to
express interest of membership in the Islamic Development Bank, an
international financial institution founded by the OIC to promote
economic development in member countries. Nigeria is the only country
that is a member of the OIC but not a member of the IDB. Professor
Jerry Gana, the political adviser to president Obasanjo, who himself
came into the limelight on the CAN platform is one of those bent on
making sure that Nigeria does not reap the full benefits of our
membership in the OIC. Only yesterday, 24/5/2004, on the NTA Network
news, he was addressing a group of Christians, urging them to pray for
Christians in government that they may work according to the Gospel!
Jerry Gana knows that the IDB has been contributing to economic
development in its member countries, among which are Cameroon, Cote d’
Ivore, Benin, Mozambique, Uganda, to mention a few. All these countries
have substantial Christian populations, albeit peace-loving and tolerant
Christians. While their Christian populations appreciate the wisdom of
their governments for joining institutions like the IDB that grant
interest-free loans, their countries have neither introduced the Sharia
nor have they become Islamic republics. It
is not only the Muslim population of those African member countries of
the IDB that reap the benefits of their countries’ membership in that
organisation. The university hostels financed by the IDB in Ghana are
not meant for Muslims students alone. Contributions made by Muslims in
the field of sciences in the tenth century were the foundation upon
which the European scientific revolution is based. The telephone,
computers, internet invented in the West in the last century are used by
Muslims all over the world today. This is the fact of life. The point
here is that Christian and Muslims have to tolerate themselves in
Nigeria to take that country out of the woods and that contributions
made by either party lose their paternity the moment they start to yield
benefits. The
gains accruable to Nigeria from our membership in the OIC and IDB are
enormous and I believe we should explore those avenues. When President
Olusegun Obasanjo and his Foreign Minister, Ambassador Olu Adeniji,
visited the Islamic Republic of Iran, in February of this year, they
came back with the positive impression of how Nigeria and Iran have a
lot of things in common. President Obasanjo mentioned the Islamic
culture. His Foreign Minister was amazed at how far Iran had gone in
terms of development and how a stronger cooperation with Iran could be
beneficial to Nigeria. The President was in Iran to attend the meeting
of the D-8, Eight Developing Countries. All of those countries,
including Nigeria, are members of the OIC. As a result of that visit an
Iranian trade delegation headed by Dr Kamal Kharazi, the Iranian foreign
minister, visited Nigeria to start discussions on investments. Of course
such investments, like all other investments, do not carry the religious
labels. This
is not to say that Iran does not have diplomatic representations in
Nigeria. Students of international relations will confirm that
multilateral relations among countries sometimes produce better results
than bilateral relations. That is why ECOWAS is not a substitute for our
bilateral relations with the remaining 15 West African countries in that
sub-regional group. What we can achieve working together with 56 OIC
Member States, cannot be achieved working with each of them bilaterally.
The same is true of the African Union and all regional and international
organisations where we are members. In
conclusion, I implore Reverend Martins and other Christian to consider
this submission deeply and to look inwards for the causes of heightened
religious intolerance in Nigeria. Let him know that it was the visit of
the now wanted Chief Anthony Ani to Saudi Arabia in 1994 as General
Abacha’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs that gave birth to
Christian Pilgrims Boards in Nigeria. Muslims did not begrudge our
Christian brothers and sisters for wanting to rival the Muslim pilgrims
Boards and for improvising pilgrimages to Jerusalem. In any event, it is
the Organisation of the Islamic Conference which champions the cause of
Palestine so that the inhuman treatments meted out to Nigerian Christian
pilgrims to Jerusalem are discontinued. As human beings, Muslim and
Christians, this is what we should be doing and Nigeria can do it better
in the OIC. |