Religious groups and CSOs rail against Senate’s bill pushed by Muslims to subjugate Christianity
A coalition of religious groups and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) has decried the imminent passage of a bill to regulate and set standards for the practice of Christian religion in Nigeria that has scaled second reading in the 9th Senate presided over by Ahmad Lawan, a Muslim.
The activists raised the alarm in Lagos at the weekend.
The bill seeking to create a National Centre for Christian Education (NCCE), sponsored by Senator Binos Yaroe (PDP, Adamawa South), scaled second reading on May 14.
If the bill eventually gets passed by a Committee of the Whole Senate and scales third reading it will be sent to the House of Representatives for passage.
If the bill is passed by the House of Representatives, whose Speaker, Tajudeen Abbas, is a Muslim, it will be transmitted to President Bola Tinubu for assent into law. Tinubu is a Muslim, likewise Vice President Kashim Shettima.
There is no such bill on Islam, whose practitioners will rise up in arms if an attempt were made to regulate their religion.
The Bible is the only authority that regulates Christian conduct, just as Muslims rely on the Quoran and nothing else.
The bill to regulate Christianity mainly by Muslims is another throwback to the yearnings of Ahmadu Bello in the era of yore for Islam to rule Nigeria from the Sahara to the Atlantic, a crusade picked up by Muhammadu Buhari who Islamised the federal government to a great degree during his tenure as President for eight years.
Former Kaduna Governor, a die-hard Islamist jihadist, recently boasted on tape – which circulated online two weeks ago – that the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the Tinubu/Shettima presidency was plotted by Northerners to advance the cause of Islamising Nigeria.
Many Northern states already banned the teaching of Christian Religious Knowledge in primary and secondary schools, as confirmed earlier this month by former House of Representatives member, Kwewum Rimamnde (Donga/Ussa/Takum/Special Area Federal Constituency in Taraba).