Our Reporter, New York
The secretary of the elders council of the Nigeria Supreme Council for Ecclesiastical Affairs (NSCEA), Professor Funmilayo Adesanya-Davies, has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to restore the integrity of the nation’s constitution by withdrawing Nigeria’s membership of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), and almost twenty other international Islamic bodies. Prof. Davies called during an exclusive interview with Rudolf Okonkwo on 90MinutesAfrica.
“President Tinubu will need to do things that are decisive; he will need to look at his age and tell himself, I have nothing to lose after I am gone. He is not 21 or 35 years old,” the professor of applied linguistics said.
“So he needs to fix Nigeria, not be tackling the problems on the surface, but he should go deep to the root causes by taking Nigeria out of the Islamic bodies. Buhari did a similar thing when he removed Nigeria from about a hundred international bodies when he said Nigeria couldn’t afford to meet its financial obligations as a member. So now, how are they still servicing the country’s membership of the 20 international Islamic bodies that it belongs to?”
The university teacher argued that Nigeria, as a secular nation, as stipulated by the constitution, cannot belong to an Islamic or any other religious organisation. She said that most of the international Islamic bodies allow individual Muslim groups to become members and that the NSCEA does not have any issue with any group within the country becoming members. They, however, insist that the laws that stipulate Nigeria as a secular nation must be respected.
“Nigeria is a secular nation,” she said.
“So when we say that we don’t want Sharia or when we say we don’t want Nigeria in the OIC and about twenty other international Islamic organisations, then the point we’re making is not just that of the Nigeria Supreme Council of Ecclesiastical Affairs (NSCEA) but a constitutional point.”
She also frowned at the move to introduce Sharia courts in the country’s South-West region. She said this is a further attempt to undermine the country as a secular state.
