- CAN holds joint prayer session, Babatope kicks against religious crisis
From Clement Adeyi, Osogbo and Charles Adegbite, Lagos
TWENTY four hours after students attended class in different religious garbs, there was tight security at Baptist Girls High School, Osogbo, Osun State, yesterday.
Daily Sun also gathered that security would be beefed up in other public schools as from today, pending when the logjam is resolved
Against this backdrop, the state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) held a prayer session and called on God to intervene in the ongoing religious crisis.
In recent times, female Muslim students and their Christian classmates attended school adorning hijab and church garments.
Yesterday, armed security personnel mounted surveillance at the gate and premises of the CAN secretariat located within the school during the prayer session.
The programme was organised by the CAN Chairman, Rev. Elisha Ogundiya and presided over by the Vice Chairman, Pastor Moses Ogundeji.
The prayer was directed at rejecting the court ruling on hijab and other alleged Islamisation plots in the state.
Pastor Ogundeji told newsmen that the prayer, which was held at the Dominion Hall of Osun Baptist Conference, Gbodofon, Osogbo, was also meant to ask God for peace and to nullify what he described as “anti-kingdom laws and dealings with satanic forces tormenting the state for the past few weeks.”
He added that the prayer was meant to deliver Osun from the power of satanic forces and oppressors, adding that God would destroy all powers set to destroy the state.
Ogundeji said CAN will not rescind its directive to pupils to adorn choir robes and church garments to schools, if the court judgment was implemented. The cleric, who also called for the return of mission schools to the original owners, said: “We don’t want crisis in Osun because of hijab issue.
“Already, demonic spirit and evils are oppressing the state as well as the country at large.
“In as much as we are trying to resolve the crisis with prayers, if government should expel any Christian pupil or student, it means all the students in public schools would be sent packing.”
Ogundeji insisted that CAN will appeal the hijab ruling.
This was after Governor Rauf Aregbesola warned, on Tuesday that any student found wearing unauthorised clothes to school would be sanctioned.
Aregbesola reietrated that any student flouting school rules will be expelled.
He gave the new warning, yesterday, when he commissioned the ultra-modern St Michael’s RCM Government Middle School, Ibokun.
The governor also cautioned parents and guardians not to capitalise on the current crisis.
Aregbesola said parents should complement government in shaping the minds of the pupils to be receptive to knowledge and godly character instead of encouraging them to fan the embers of discord.
He, however, distanced his administration from the court judgment which allowed female Muslim students to wear hijab to public schools.
The governor said decisions of the judiciary, as an independent arm of government, are not subject to any influence by other arms of government. “It is funny for some people to insinuate that government has a hand in the judgment.
“Government is a democracy, not a theocracy. Any student found disobeying school rules and regulations risks expulsion from our schools,” he said.
The governor insisted that it was not the business of any government, through the schools, to lead a child in a particular religious direction and added that it was the duty of parents and religious institutions to do so until the child grows up enough to make a decision on religion.
Meanwhile, former minister of transport and aviation, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, has warned Aregbesola not to plunge the state and the South- West into unnecessary war.
Babatope told Daily Sun that bringing religion into politics has done too much havoc in Nigeria.
“Let the governor not bring religion into politics because the South-West has always been co-existing as Christians and Muslims and we don’t need any governor to come and be promoting one religion over another. “Let him have very good dialogue with the Christian community and face the governance he was elected for, because promotion of Islam over Christianity was not part of his campaign promises.
“Let him concentrate on how to pay his workers salaries and work on how he will never owe salary again instead of this distraction he is occupying himself with,” he said.