L
LequteMan
Guest
Presidential Aide, Shehu Garba, in an interview recently spoke about the reactions trailing FG's decision to add Nigeria to the coalition of islamic countries against terrorism.
Addressing complaints that people viewed the coalition as a prelude to Nigeria assuming full membership of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, he said:
"Nigeria is already a member of the OIC but the membership has not altered Nigeriaâs diversity in terms of religion and so on. In fact, the OIC, which is much distrusted by people who donât have the larger view of things, is a positive force in terms of moderation when it comes to the sharing, creation of knowledge and awareness or the practice of Islam.
"I believe that if Nigerians are fair as we have always been, with more accommodation towards the OIC, there would be a lot of benefits that we can even gain. For example, the OIC can help us to modernize Islam; our Koranic school system would move towards integration with the modern school system so that this artificial division, people who have only learnt the Koran and are not integrated, would go away. Alienation leads to predisposition to recruitment to extremism, which in a major way would be removed from the country. So the OIC is thinking of giving this country a blueprint towards that integration.
Addressing complaints that people viewed the coalition as a prelude to Nigeria assuming full membership of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, he said:
"Nigeria is already a member of the OIC but the membership has not altered Nigeriaâs diversity in terms of religion and so on. In fact, the OIC, which is much distrusted by people who donât have the larger view of things, is a positive force in terms of moderation when it comes to the sharing, creation of knowledge and awareness or the practice of Islam.
"I believe that if Nigerians are fair as we have always been, with more accommodation towards the OIC, there would be a lot of benefits that we can even gain. For example, the OIC can help us to modernize Islam; our Koranic school system would move towards integration with the modern school system so that this artificial division, people who have only learnt the Koran and are not integrated, would go away. Alienation leads to predisposition to recruitment to extremism, which in a major way would be removed from the country. So the OIC is thinking of giving this country a blueprint towards that integration.
