FASHOLA ENUNCIATES PATHWAYS FOR INTERFAITH HARMONY, RESPONSIBLE POLITICS IN NIGERIA ...Says moderation, cooperation and tolerance have become compelling attributes that everyone must imbibe Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola, SAN on Tuesday advocated the moderation of utterances, actions and thoughts by people as necessary pathway for engendering interfaith understanding and co-operation for responsible politics among people in the country. Fashola who spoke at the second day of an Interfaith Conference with the theme, Inter faith Understanding and Cooperation for Responsible Politics, held at the NICON LUXURY Hotel, Abuja, added that co-operation and tolerance have become compelling attributes that everyone must imbibe. The Governor added that political competition should not find any accommodation for religion in the country but on the contrary, it must be based on the competence of the candidates, their understanding of the nation’s problems, and their track record of being tolerant, just, fair and compassionate. He stressed that only the pretentious or deceitful will argue that all is well with Nigeria because it is obvious that her innocence has been lost, and her fault lines are once again open, saying, “Our diversity, which should be our strength, has now become our most potent source of vulnerability”. He stated that religion is not the nation’s problem but the people who use religion for selfish purposes, expressing the belief that once a problem is created by people, it will also require people to solve it. Emphasising the importance of the interfaith religious meeting as an opportunity to identify the problems and develop solutions to them, Fashola declared, “The other fact that we must bear in mind is that those who claim to fight for a faith or for ‘God’ are not competent to fight for God. If they truly believe in God, then it seems to me contradictory, to fight to protect an authority that we owe our existence to or on behalf of one who is greater than the sum total of us”. “Yet another fact to remember is that if those Champions of God truly believe that HE exists, who are they to question why He allows two religions to exist, or for some of us to be tall, others short, some fat, some thin, of different colours, different hair types, different languages, some without eyes, some who cannot hear and some who cannot walk”, he asked. He explained that the Almighty God has united everyone with a common humanity of blood, food and water and these should constitute what binds the people and should be focussed on, maintaining that God is neither a Christian nor a Muslim. Backing up his assertions with copious reference from a book titled: “GOD IS NOT A CHRISTIAN” written by the Nobel Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Governor Fashola said the central thesis of the book was to caution Christians that they cannot claim an exclusive right to God. In his words: “And I will expand the caution to Muslims and other faiths that they cannot claim an exclusive right to God, because before the advent of Christianity (after the death of our Lord Jesus Christ) there had been other people like Abraham, David, Solomon, Moses and many more who were not Christians, but for whom God was the same God”. Still quoting from “GOD IS NOT A CHRISTIAN”, Fashola said it seems overwhelmingly simple that the accidents of birth and geography determine to a very large extent to what faith each person belongs because the chances are very great that if one was born in Pakistan he is a Muslim, or a Hindu if he happened to be born in India, or a Shintoist if it is Japan, and Christian if he was born in Italy. “I don’t know what significant fact can be drawn from this – perhaps that we should not succumb too easily to the temptation to exclusiveness and dogmatic claims to a monopoly of the truth of our particular faith. You could so easily have been an adherent of the faith that you are now denigrating, but for the fact that you were born here rather than there”, he stressed. Governor Fashola also underscored the fact that people should not insult the adherents of other faiths by suggesting, as sometimes has happened, that for instance when one is a Christian the adherents of other faiths are really Christians without knowing it. “We must acknowledge them for who they are in all their integrity, with their conscientiously held beliefs; we must welcome them and respect them as who they are and walk reverently on what is their holy ground, taking off our shoes, metaphorically and literally”. “We must hold to our particular and peculiar beliefs tenaciously, not pretending that all religions are the same, for they are patently not the same. We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God”. “We do scant justice and honour to our God if we want, for instance, to deny that Mahatma Gandhi was a truly great soul, a holy man who walked closely with God. Our God would be too small if he was not also the God of Gandhi: if God is one, as we believe, then he is the only God of all his people, whether they acknowledge him as such or not. God does not need us to protect him”, he stressed. Governor Fashola opined that while prayers will always help, on their own they will not solve the nation’s problems but that the people must work, and then pray so that the work of their hands will be blessed, adding that part of the work that must be done is to heighten education and advocacy to the people to disown and depart from political office seekers who escalate discussion of religion and ethnicity, instead of economic and developmental issues. “Another part of that work is to re-plan and rebuild our basic education, so that our children can read and understand the scriptures on their own so that they can make independent informed choices when people try to mislead them“, the Governor said adding, We must honestly ask ourselves what role we want religion to play in our public life, business places and social events, “Is religion not a private matter or should it not be so? Should it not be in our hearts? Must we wear our faith on our sleeves?” Fashola affirmed that If the questions are answered honestly, it would be seen that a lot of tension could be reduced in the public places if the people desire religion in public life. Giving a historical introspection into his life and the environment that produced him and moulded his character, Governor Fashola declared, “I was born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother of Anglican denomination. My maternal grandparents were Anglicans, while my paternal grandparents were Muslims, although my late grandfather had more than one wife and I know that two of them were Christians”. “The only thing I wish to add at this stage is that I became Governor by providence not by any plan, and this is simply to emphasise the political part of this conference’s theme about politics, that - All power belongs to God”, he reiterated. He commended the organisers of the Interfaith session for convoking this interfaith initiative for peace stating they have shown leadership in troubled times, because these indeed are very challenging times for the country and its people. Prominent among those who were present the event were the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammed Sa’ad Abubakar, Archbishop of Abuja, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, Deputy Governor of Edo State, Rt Hon Pius Odubu.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 10:10:42 +0000
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