This article derives from the realisation that many universities in Nigeria violate the country’s constitutional provisions on religion, thereby promoting Boko Haram. Why should a public university (federal or state) include church and mosque service in the programme of whatever it wants to celebrate? It is because Christians and Muslims politicise religion and they are mortgaging the religious conscience of Nigerians; they have perverted the present, and they want to ensure that future generations remain Christo-Islamic adherents.
When fire issues from a flowing river, how can you use water to quench it? When public universities lend themselves to religious bigotry, what do you expect from the political elite who graduate therefrom? Yet, Nigeria’s constitution was fashioned by the crafters to forestall religious bigotry and upheaval in public establishments.
Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution prohibits recognition of any religion as official in Nigeria. Is that not violated when a public university includes church and mosque services in its ceremonies? Are Christianity and Islam the only religions in Nigeria?
Satan, like in the Book of Job (1: 6-13) is also recognised as a son of God in African Traditional Religion. Hence, traditional Africans don’t regard him simply as an enemy. You learn to appease him, so that if God should ask him what to do with you, he will tell God to bless you. That’s why the Yoruba would say: A tabo Èsù dànù — we have settled Satan, through sacrifice. Like Job, anybody can fall into the trap of Satan, but not if you’ve offered him appeasement sacrifice.
It is maliciously claimed that traditional Africans have no religion. Their purveyors would say in Yoruba language: Àwon tíò lésìn — those who have no religion, — and many universities key into that garbage by recognising only Christianity and Islam, in violation of section 10 of Nigeria’s constitution!
Section 38 of the constitution also guarantees “Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion”. Imagine the feeling of non-Christians and non-Muslims when a university recognises only church and mosque? Sadly in Nigeria, what your neighbour feels does not matter; what matters is that you wield the sceptre and that you are the majority.
Section 35 of Nigeria’s constitution stipulates, “Right to personal liberty.” Was that personal liberty accorded the peaceful Boko Haram sect of Mohammed Yusuf? That man has been joined in the hereafter by some of those who killed him together with many of his followers. Many Nigerians who didn’t sow in that seed of sorrow have reaped from its fruits.
I don’t know about any church oath or covenant I hear people talking about; neither have I ever read about it. If it exists, it violates Section 35 of Nigeria’s constitution that guarantees my personal liberty and prohibits my being put under bondage, nationally and internationally. And I remain convinced that anything short of appeasement of Boko Haram may not work. No justice, no peace. President Muhammadu Buhari should stop fooling Nigerians!
Pius Oyeniran Abioje, PhD
University of Ilorin.
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