By Emeka Nze
Abuja
Members of the Committee on Religion at the ongoing national conference, yesterday unanimously adopted a position to establish Equity Commission to address issues arising from religion in the country.
According to the committee members, the commission will be composed of equal representation from all the religious faiths to ensure that no one religion gets undue advantage over the other.
The committee also agreed that government at both state and federal levels remain neutral in religious privileges such as sponsorship of pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia and to Jerusalem.
Before the group adopted the position, Prof Munzalli Jubril who first spoke on the issue stated that government’s involvement in matters of religion should be criminalised and those governors who contravene the law should be prosecuted.
He stated that sponsoring religious privileges have become so corrupted that those who rush to benefit from the privileges now abuse it.
Describing it as the plunder of the commonwealth, Jubril told his committee members it amounted to favouring adherents of one religion against the numerous others in the society.
According to him, pilgrimages should be from peoples legitimate earning in order to understand the real essence of such holy pilgrimages.
Another member said there should be a strong statement to delete religious pilgrimages as a responsibility of government, and where such is done, it should be done across board for all religions including the traditional Sango and Amadioha.
A member of the committee, Hajiya Amina Omoti stated that an average Muslim pays his fare except in the exchange rate where government gives concessions of a lower rate to those embarking on pilgrimages.
Contributing, another committee member Prof Is-haq Oloyede, stated that government should not just do away with the sponsorship of holy pilgrimages, but should desist from sponsoring all have forms of religious privileges in all coloration whether of Christianity of Islam does not confer the kind of holiness it ought as the system have been corrupted.
Oloyede warned the committee of selective cleansing saying that the committee can go whole hug of wiping out the entire privileges which government gives to religion and not pilgrimages alone as government rather than improve has corrupted it the more.
