COLLAPSE OF CEASEFIRE: MEND issues two-week ultimatum

SUNDAY VANGUARD, JULY 10, 2016 --- PAGE 37
OSUN HIJAB CRISIS: Aregbesola should build Muslim
schools---Bishop Odeleke
AS far as tele-evangelism is concerned in Nigeria, the founder of Christ Message Ministries, Bishop Bolanle Odeleke has had her footprints engraved
in the sands of time. Being the first female bishop in Africa, Odeleke has lent her voice to various issues in Christianity as well as national. Recently, she
celebrated her 66th birthday which coincided with the maiden edition of the church founder’s day. In this interview with OLAYINKA LATONA, Odeleke
recalls how God has helped her in her ministerial journey and used the opportunity to speak on the controversy surrounding the wearing of hijab among
female Muslim students in all public schools in Osun State and called on Gov. Aregbesola to establish Muslim schools for Muslim students rather than causing
chaos and rivalry among the two religions. Excerpts...
Christendom.
establish Muslim schools because
What is the secret of youthful look
most of the schools were established
even at 66?
by Christian missionaries and if they
The secret is God and I feel good
cannot establish their own, they
and happy because the Lord has
should not disturb us. That is why
been helping me despite various
the Christians resorted to wearing
challenges. God even told us that
choir uniforms to schools. If the
we will encounter tribulations in this
government wants the Muslim
world but we should cheer up
students to wear hijab, they should
because He has gone ahead of us to
establish Muslim schools for them.
conquer all life's battles for His
Why introducing hijab in Christian
children. That is why God helped
schools? They want to cause
me to overcome the challenges that
confusion. We will not agree.
reared their heads at that time and
for me to know and experience the
awesomeness of God.
Advice to upcoming ministers of
God
The number one thing is that they
should hold on to God and focus on
to their calling. I used to advise
people not to come to the ministry if
God did not call them because
ministry is not an easy task. What
we are doing today is just a
glamorous part of it. If one is not
called and deep rooted in the Word
of God, when troubles come, such a
person will be swept away.
Upcoming ministers of God should
be rooted in Christ who will uphold
them in times of trial. They must be
passionate about ministerial work
and the people so that they will be
able to overcome ministerial
challenges.
On corruption in the nation and
among Christians
I can tell you that the Church of God
in Nigeria is trying its best to arrest
the menace of corruption in the
society. In my church, I speak against
it and advise members to be good
ambassadors of Christ wherever
they find themselves and I know
other ministers of God who preach
against corruption in their churches.
If one is a follower of Christ in the
real sense, such a person will not be
involved in corrupt acts because he
or she is guided by the Spirit of God.
The Church is doing a lot to curb
series of challenges that have been
confronting us as a nation.
Corruption would have even be
bigger than what we have now.
There would have been war in
Nigeria, if not for the Church. But
we did not stay on the roof top to
proclaim it, because we are not
commercial prophets. When God
says something concerning the
nation, we gather ourselves as a
Church and we prayed. We teach our
congregation to be a good
ambassadors of Nigeria and it has
been like that. There are lots of our
members in the secular world doing
wellnote who are not involved in
corrupt practices. This is so because
most church leaders preach Christ
and discipline to our members.
Low prophetical words in the
Church of God
There are still prophetic words but
the problem is that publicity is being
given to those who profess themselves
as servants of God and they
are not. In the 80's we had great
prophets of God like late Archbishop
Benson Idahosa, late Baba
Obadare, Prophet Abiara including
me. We used to preach in the television
stations and send out messages
to those in authorities. The
challenge now is that we have flocks
of people that profess themselves as
prophets whereas they are not. We
still have genuine prophets in
Wither Osun State! We are watching
*Bishop Bola Odeleke
How will you rate
women in ministry?
I give God the glory that
we now have lots of women
in ministry unlike
years back. It got to a
stage that I started praying
for God to raise more
females in the work of
ministry. I wondered why
I should be the only female
among other ministers
of God then. I started
grooming women for the
work of the kingdom and
they are doing well in
their various ministries.
I want to advise men to
allow and support their
wives whom God called
into ministry. Men should
support these women’s
vision and help them to
bring out the potentials
that God embedded in
them. Any man that
allows his wife in ministry
will also grow and record successful
stories.
What is your take on the wearing
of hijab by female Muslim students
in public schools in Osun State?
I am not in support of wearing of
hijab in Osun State public schools.
I outrightly kicked against it when
it was introduced. I told them that
the state government should go and
Nigerian lawmakers accused of
sexual misconduct in United States
of America
When I heard about the report from
US ambassador to Nigeria, I was
not happy. Though the three accused
lawmakers are currently under
investigation but it is not a good
omen for us as a nation. I will use
this opportunity to appeal to
Nigerians to stop voting for politicians
because of money instead of
integrity, good character and fear
of God.
Dialogue with Avengers
Before you talk of dialogue, does the
government know these people? I
think dialogue might not work
because the real Avengers will not
come out because they will be afraid
of being arrested. Instead of
dialogue, government should invest
more in security, train experts who
can go into their midst, identify the
real avengers, and then government
will know what to do next.
By ANTHONY OKOGIE
IN Nigeria today, Religion is
always used for wrong reasons.
We witnessed the OIC palaver
of 1986 which nearly split our
country in two, the religious riots in
the old Kaduna State during which
a number of churches were set
ablaze and innocent lives were lost,
the Sharia controversy in some
states in the North in 2000 which
also led to loss of human lives and
harassment of the Christian minority
in those states, the subjection of
Nigerians to noise pollution issuing
from churches and mosques, the
exploitation of religious differences
by politicians who would do or say
anything to get votes, the use of
religion to justify the obviously
politically motivated Boko Haram
insurgency, to mention but these.
Religion is once again in the news,
this time in Osun State on the
wearing of HIJAB.
The Hijab
The much publicized hijab controversy
in Osun State and the
ensuing altercation between
Muslims and Christians in the state
should make peace-loving Nigerians
apprehensive. Osun State is in
the South West, a part of Nigeria
that is noted and envied for its interreligious
harmony. It is a part of
Nigeria where one could find siblings
who practice different religions
without acrimony. Let it not
be that the hijab controversy in Osun
State is the beginning of the end of
inter-religious harmony in southwestern
Nigeria.
Osun State Governor (Ogbeni) Rauf
Aregbesola has, in some quarters,
been accused of instigating the crisis.
The governor, for his part, has protested
his innocence. He has asked
his accusers to provide evidence to
prove the accusation. His accusers,
for their part, believe rightly or
wrongly, that his protestations make
him look like the man who, according
to a Yoruba allegory, having shot
an arrow, now uses a mortar as his
helmet. They believe, again rightly
or wrongly, that the government he
heads comes across as a government
of questionable neutrality in
this matter.
The Real Problem
But let us identify the real problem
in Osun State. It is neither the
wearing of hijab nor the wearing of
choir robes. The problem of Osun
State is the problem of many of the
states in the fissiparous federalism
Nigeria has been operating. Osun
State, like an overwhelming majority
of states in Nigeria, has failed to
demonstrate that it is economically
viable, and there are sufficient
indices to back the assertion.
The state government has not been
able to pay salaries of workers for
months. From the uncompleted
intersection at Gbongan on the
Ibadan-Ife Road, through the entire
state, it is clearly evident that roads
in Osun State are among the worst
in Nigeria. It is hardly possible to
drive one kilometer without a
pothole, sometimes a crater. In
2015, Osun State was ranked 29th
of the 36 states in performance in
the senior secondary school certificate
examination.
Quality of life in Osun State ranks
among the worst in Nigeria. It
would therefore amount to a
distraction to make wearing a religious
garb—whether it is hijab or
choir robes—the issue in Osun State.
It betrays a depressing lack of focus.
This is the time for the governor and
the people to live up to their beautiful
name, to think and act like omoluabi,
since they call the state Ipinle
Omoluabi.
The problem of Osun State I dare
say is not religion but the scandalous
under-development of the state. Why
is it that a portion of Nigeria that is
so richly endowed is inhabited by
impoverished people? The potentials
for agriculture, tourism, sports,
education in Osun State and the
poor living condition of the people
of the state raises a big question
about quality of governance, past
and present, in Ipinle Omoluabi.
Instead of quarreling over religion,
the people of Osun State would do
well to call all its governors, past
and present, to explain why, since
the creation of the state in 1991, that
state has simply failed to take off.
What type of politics has left Osun
State in abject poverty?
But religion is in the horizon, and
we cannot refuse to
look at what is in the
horizon. That is why
we must still inquire:
is wearing the hijab
an absolute
obligation in Islam?
In other words,
would a Muslim
woman be less
Islamic if she were
not to wear the hijab?
There are scholars of
the religion of Islam
like Leila Ahmed and
Raza Aslam who
would answer the
question in the
negative.
As such scholars
would point out,
while wearing the
hijab was required of
the wives of the holy
prophet of Islam, it
was not required of all Muslim
women always and every-where. It
is because wearing of the hijab is
neither a fundamental hu-man right
nor a religious obliga-tion of
universal extension that we have
countries like Turkey, Tunisia,
Tajikistan, to mention but these,
where Muslims are in an overwhelming
majority but Muslim
women are not obliged to wear the
hijab. Wearing the hijab was in fact
banned in Iran between 1936 and
1979.
In the same vein, the choir robes
being worn to school by some in
Osun State are meant to be worn
during worship. Wearing them to
school would amount to a desecration
of those robes. Scholars of
Christian religion, particularly
scholars of the history of Christian
liturgy, who know the meaning and
history of those robes would point
*Okogie
out that wearing them to school is
not a fundamental human right.
Osun State is therefore reminding
us that we are in this mess because
Nigeria is a country where religious
scholarship is treated with levity.
Many of our preachers in Christianity
and in Islam fail to see that religion
is a human act, and, as a human
act, must not be taken out of the
sphere of intelligence. We have
become a nation of religious fanatics
where faith is separated from
reason, and where there is absence
of differentiation between piety and
public nuisance. Religion is being
used to cover up our incivility and
intellectual laziness, and both sides
in the Osun story are guilty of the
same offence.
The Osun State story challenges us
to distinguish between the right to
wear the hijab or choir robes and
the right to wear them to school. The
right to wear a religious garb, any
religious garb, is not to be disputed.
But to mistake it for a fundamental
human right, and to claim that
wearing them to school is a fundamental
human right is to fail to
grasp an important distinction.
We must be careful not to allow the
enmity and acrimony of the past to
pass into the future, into the hearts
of our children and children’s
children. The children of Osun State,
in the innocence of their young and
impressionable minds, have always
related well with each other. Opportunistic
political and religious
leaders in Osun State should refrain
from actions that might lead to war
among their children and children’s
children. That is why this fashion
parade of religious garb in Osun
State calls for sober reflection.
*Anthony Cardinal Okogie,
immediate past Archbishop of
Lagos, wrote in from Lagos.
C
M
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