MURIC Urges National Assembly, Muslims To Unravel $9.3 Million Arms Deal

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Wednesday, September 17th, 2014

Niyi Adeyi

A Non Political Organization (NGO), the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), has expressed shock over the Federal Government’s response – admitting knowledge of a challenger Jet seized and being investigated by the South African authorities, for being loaded with the sum of $9.3 Million as well as having on board two Nigerians and an Israelis.

The suspects who are being held in South Africa since last weekend confirmed the money was meant to purchase arms.

MURIC in a statement issued Wednesday by its Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, stressed the group rejected the latest explanations and accused the Federal Government of being economical with the truth.

The organization said it suspected a grand conspiracy against the Nigerian Muslims in the latest revelation, therefore called on the national assembly to save the country from total disintegration, insisting the “jet and cash story is a scandal of monumental proportion and it must not be swept under the carpet”. It maintained the Federal lawmakers “must intervene in order to calm nerves”.

Akintola who contended that President Goodluck Jonathan was directly connected with the arms deal which involved a jet owned by the the National President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, alleged “unholy union” between Mr. President and the CAN leader. He stressed “there is more to this than meets the eye. We are no longer safe”.

MURIC therefore demanded the termination of all the security deals with the Israelis in Aso Rock, as it affirmed It was too dangerous to involve “an anti-Muslim country in the security matters of a country like Nigeria, deeply polarized by religious sentiments”.

“Only a government with an anti-Muslim agenda will do such a thing. It is time for the Israelis to be kept at bay regarding key security issues in Nigeria”, MURIC advocated.

The group lamented that Nigerian Muslims were not safe any longer in “the hands of Israeli military advisers breathing down the neck of the Nigerian government and encouraging it to arm the Christians to the teeth.”

While insisting MURIC has totally lost confidence in in Federal government and its security agencies, the group expressed worry over alleged disappearance of the Islamic scholars in the country, citing examples of alleged deliberate attack on many Muslims communities in the North Eastern part, “under the guise of ‘Boko Haram” as well as killing recently, by soldiers 34 followers of Shaykh Ibrahim Alzakzaky in Zaria. He said up till now, nothing has been heard of the massacre.

In view of the unfolding situation, the organization advised President Jonathan to change his tactics, by integrating Muslims into his government, stop the political marginalization of Muslims, review the Christian-loaded recruitment into the security agencies, “probe the disappearance of Islamic scholars and the killing of Muslims in Zaria and balance the sharing of the dividends of democracy between Christians and Muslims”.

It also warned against the lopsided recruitment into the country’s security agencies, particularly the “Nigerian Army in the past three years”, stating this smacked of a more sinister plot to “systematically wipe out Nigerian Muslims through extra-judicial killings.”

Akintola who is a Senior Lecturer at the Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo called on the international community to act of pro-Christian favoritism and anti-Muslim practices of President Jonathan.

MURIC which restated that it sought peaceful co-existence between Christians and

Muslims urged those fanning the embers of war and amassing weapons to remember the plight of Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leon, Bosnia Herzegovina, and be conscious that the effects of ravaging war and subsequent sufferings of millions of innocent young and old were better imagined than experienced.

Professor Akintola while calling on the Muslims to remain calm and law abiding, appealed to the faithful to prevail on the the National Assembly to wade into the matter.