FEBRUARY 2013: President Goodluck Jonathan arrived the Cairo International Airport, Egypt with his wife to attend the 12th session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. He led the Nigerian delegation to the event. Jonathan did not have to attend that event actually because many leaders did not, they simply sent delegates or ambassadors to represent them. I wonder what he was doing there. The OIC issue is a very controversial one in Nigeria with so many lies flying around but the fact is that it was General Yakubu Gowon who started the whole crisis when he sent a Nigerian delegation to the OICs first meeting in 1969 in Morocco. Then, Nigeria had the observer status. Gowon is a Christian from Plateau State and he faced intense opposition from those in his government over sending delegation to Morocco since Nigeria was not an Islamic state. When General Gowon was overthrown in 1975, Generals Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo REFUSED to sign Nigerias full membership into the OIC arguing that Nigeria is a secular nation. This was despite intense lobbying by the Saudi Arabian government. When Shagari came into office, he also refused. Same with the Buhari/Idiagbon government. They all refused to make Nigeria a member of the OIC. It was General Ibrahim Babangida with his big head that signed Nigeria deliberately as a full member despite very serious opposition. His deputy, a navy commodore who goes by the name Ebitu Ukiwe (an Igbo Christian) kicked against this move but IBB got him removed from office. After IBB, subsequent governments did not make any attempts to revisit the issue or change the status quo. Abacha left it as it is. Same with Abdulsalami Abubakar and when Obasanjo came, he attended the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation (a group of Islamic states) in Egypt in 2001. Yaradua renewed the membership in 2012 and in 2013, Jonathan led the Nigerian delegation to the OIC meeting in Cairo as you can see in the photo. In my own opinion, Nigeria SHOULD NOT be a member of any religious organization if we truly claim to be secular but oversabi and hypocrisy dey worry us. What has been the gain of Nigerian masses from joining OIC or other religions organizations? I cannot remember any. Instead, it is just chaos upon chaos. I hope to interview General Gowon one day on this issue. As for IBB, I do not wish to interview him because he is just like Maku, manufacturing lies since 3500BC. Culled frm Abiyamo
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 05:00:55 +0000
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