Leadnaija
The Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), Prof Is-haq Oloyede, has urged leaders in the South-West to support the establishment of Sharia panels in the region....TAP HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY..>>
According to him, Sharia panels will foster peace and also help to settle marriage and inheritance disputes.
Oloyede made the appeal when he appeared on Inside Sources on Channels Television, monitored by our correspondent on Sunday.
Oloyede said, “I believe that Nigeria is great and Nigeria will continue to be great but it requires a lot of rethinking. Recently, people are talking about Sharia Panels in South-West and I was just smiling; I was smiling that I had never seen that level of ignorance being displayed. Sharia Panel in Oyo State, somebody did a PhD thesis on it in 2007 which means it had been there before 2007. The person who wrote on that appraisal is a professor today in Ibadan. He is Prof Makinde, and the governor coincidentally is Makinde. I don’t know whether they are related.”
Oloyede, who is also the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), cautioned against unnecessary tensions, saying Christians, Muslims and traditionalists leave peaceful in the South-West.
Oloyede said, “When you have such a situation (of religious tolerance) and you do not continue to monitor what you are doing, you will be living in the past. I’m a Muslim from the South-West. The Muslims from the South-West pay psychologically for the peace and harmony that we are talking about.
“The churches are licensed by the government to conduct marriages that are statutory and if you have any dispute within your marriage, you go to government-funded high courts for dispute resolution.
“If there is a dispute in my marriage, where do I go? I don’t have the opportunity because I married according to Islamic rites, I will have to go to customary court where the customary judge knows next to nothing about my faith, about the laws on the basis on which we got married. He would now use customary law to determine Islamic marriage and the Constitution of Nigeria allows it to say where the state of assembly allows it, there should be Sharia Courts of Appeal.
“There have been Sharia Court of Appeal in different parts of the country, particularly in the northern part of Nigeria. When we say there is harmony, it means somebody is suffering in silence but when the person speaks, they say: ‘Why are you making noise?’”
While criticizing those who faulted the stance of the Sultan of Sokoto on the issue, Oloyede said, “I think we should be able to tolerate one another.”
Meanwhile, the Chief Imam of Yorubaland, Sheik Abdulraheem Aduanigba has said the practice of Sharia can never work in the South West zone of the country.
He said, “Sharia cannot work in the South West. Sharia is an agenda by the North.
“What they want to do is to first use Sharia to settle marital crisis, they are deceiving us. Thereafter, they will say whoever wants to share their inheritance in the Muslim way should do so. If they apply that, in Yorubaland, a father may have children who are both Christians, Muslims and traditional religion worshippers. “
“So, if a father who is a Muslim dies and some of his children have converted to Christians, in Yorubaland, all of them will have access to the inheritance. But, if they apply Sharia, the Sharia Court will say, since the child has left Islam, he is not entitled to the inheritance of his father who died as a Muslim. Therefore, Sharia cannot work in Yorubaland if we don’t want to ignite war”, he concluded..Read Full Details
