The Ansar-ud-deen Society of Nigeria, Muslim Organisation, on Thursday urged the Federal and State Governments to enhance religious tolerance and understanding between Muslims and Christians through massive investment in education.
National President of the society, Dr Lateef Okunnu, gave the advice at a news conference in Abuja, on the 9th Triennial National Conference of the organisation scheduled to hold on Friday in Abuja.
The theme of the conference is “Justice, Equity and Peaceful Coexistence: Ideas and Reality in a Multi-Religious Nation.“
Okunnu said the Federal and State Governments should promote the peaceful co-existence of people of different faiths, especially Christians and Muslim in the country.
“Unfortunately, the peace which we used to enjoy together as Christians, Muslims has been damaged.
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“We have some people emphasising irrelevances in exposit of their religious beliefs and creating division within the society.
“Government at all levels are not doing enough about making education available to the citizens.
“I personally have strong belief that government in all the states should positively intervene in education by establishing standard Primary and Secondary schools.
“And to me personally most of the government in Nigeria have failed to educate the Muslims and Christian child.
“States that have standard schools should establish more to educate while those that don’t have should do so urgently,“ Okunnu said.
He also advised government to address the incidence of injustice in the country, saying “today Nigeria is short of justice, short of equity and we are far from being citizens of good country.
“Justice is very slow, to obtain justice is expensive and some people buy justice and some people don’t get justice.
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“ Again, Nigeria is short of equity because people are not being treated equitably as belonging to one country Nigeria.
“Nigeria is not at peace with itself, we are not. The problem in the oil producing part of the country has subsided but it has not gone. And we have Boko Haram in the North East which is anti-Islam.“
According to him, a typical Nigerian prefers to be identified with his or her ethnic group than Nigeria.
He said Indians who are about 1.3 billion population would never mention his tribe but insist that he was an Indian.
“Likewise a Chinese man will not tell you about which ethnic nationality he belongs to apart from being a Chinese man. It is very few Nigerians that are proud to say that we are Nigerians. So we have division all over.” (NAN)
