The Sultan of Sokoto and President, Jamatu Nasril Islam, JNI, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, has said that Muslims gave President Goodluck Jonathan an agenda for implementation during the 2011 presidential election campaign.
He, however, did not reveal the content of the agenda.
This revelation came at a time the dust raised over the one-term agreement President Jonathan allegedly reached with governors in the build-up to the 2011 presidential election was yet to settle.
The Sultan stated this at the national conference and pre-Ramadan meeting of JNI in Kaduna yesterday.
He said that Nigeria would remain backward if people failed to correct a leader, adding that many things had gone wrong in the country.
Abubakar advised the Federal Government amnesty committee to look into happenings in other parts of the country.
He said: “During the election campaign, I remembered in this very hall, President Jonathan requested to see the Muslim leaders under the Jamatu Nasril Islam, JNI.
“It was in this very hall we listened to what he wanted to see us for, and we gave him our agenda; the Muslim agenda, what we wanted from him. “Whether he has done what we wanted from him or not, it is a different thing all together because we have not really sat down to articulate the issue because so many things are happening that have taken the attention of this forum.
“What is happening in the northern part of the country is an unfortunate incident which has been forced on us, maybe for so many reasons, maybe the Almighty God wants to correct our ways.
“I want to state here that our main problems has been lack of unity, lack of consensus in whatever we do..
“We are very aware just like any other people across the world of the challenges facing us as Muslims, not only in Nigeria; we believe somebody somewhere is pulling the strings.
“We are begging Allah for constant prayers from all of you; you are all distinguished Ulamas, we need constant prayers from the downtrodden to any other person, we shall overcome all these challenges and move to greater heights by the special grace of God.
“We cannot move forward when we tell a leader he is always right, no leader is ever right in this circumstance. So many things have gone wrong in this country, and they are still going wrong. So many things are not working because the leaders refused to allow them to work.
“As Muslim leaders, we know what the Holy Koran said about leadership; we know how our noble leader lived his life which we are all striving to copy in the minutest way, and I believe totally that if we imbibe the virtues of the Holy Koran and the virtues of our noble leader, nobody will go wrong.
“I believe it is high time we put aside so much difference in understanding of Islam, put aside so-called promise of bigmanism, put aside hatred that permeated people’s hearts, and put aside personal interest. Put Islam above all, and if you do so, we will find the end of all the problems facing us that we will enable all of us to observe our religious obligations and duties in a peaceful manner.
“We will not allow anybody to stop us from being Muslims because that is what God brought to us and that is what we chose to be, we will not allow anybody to turn our lives upside down, and whatever anybody does that affects Islam and Muslims.
“We refuse to accept time without number whenever any violence take place anywhere in the world, if committed by a Muslim, you will hear Islamic terrorist or Muslim terrorists or Islamic fundamentalist. But when worst violence is perpetrated by somebody who is not a Muslim, we don’t hear the same coinage or the same factionalisation of the same criminal activity linking it to that particular religion.
“And we believe so many criminal activities have taken place in the name of so many other religions, but Islam has been singled out and it is a challenge for us to wake up, stand together, stretching our hands of unity and face such problem squarely. We can only do that if we put aside our personal differences.”
Source: National Mirror
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