The Speaker of Adamawa Assembly, Rt. Hon. Aminu Iya-Abbas, said the House is ready to pass law regulating religious pilgrimage and preaching if the people of the state are interested in such law.
Iya-Abbas made this known Thursday in Yola while addressing a workshop for religious leaders and other stakeholders on freedom of religion organized by Institute of Church and Society, Ibadan, in collaboration with Christian Council of Nigeria.
Iya-Abbas said Adamawa is a state where religion is always an issue affecting election and government actions making some administration to take advantage of that to embarked on actions in the name of religion that were detrimental to the development of the state.
Iya-Abba said the government despite its meagre resources spend over N1 billon in 2018 to sponsor pilgrims, adding that such expenditure was uncalled for.
He said that the must unfortunate thing about the development was that religion was that 60 per cent of the money was not used for the purpose intended.
“60 per cent of the money did not go for the programme. If you use just N500 million in rehabilitating schools you would have seen the impact.”
The speaker said government has no business wasting such huge amount sponsoring pilgrims when all she ought to do was just to sponsor few people as official guides.
He urged the people of Adamawa, particularly Christian and Muslims leaders to look into the way and manner religion is being use to undermine the state by some selfish people to possibly sponsor a law to regulate such abuse.
The speaker narrated his experience as pioneer official of EFCC said Nigeria has good laws and constitution but always find problem in implementation due to corruption by many of those involved in implementation.
He narrated the challenges he had to face for refusing bribe as an EFCC official, and urged Nigerians to be patriotic and make sacrifice to make the nation great.
The speaker lauded the institute for bringing Christian and Muslims leaders together to discuss issues that would promote religious tolerance, peace and development of the state.
Speaking at workshop, the Director of the institute, Rev. Kolade Fadahunsi, said the essence of the workshop was to promote religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
“We want to make the people realize that religion is human right and every Nigerian has the right to practice his religion without coercion, forceful conversion and hate speech,” Fadahunsi said.
