The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has condemned the turning back of hijab-wearing candidates at the various centres of the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
According to the group, Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) invigilators and supervisors were said to have denied hijab-wearing candidates, including the daughter of a former ace broadcaster, Sulaiman Aledeh, entry at Lagos CBT centres.
MURIC made this known in a statement signed and issued at the weekend by its Founder and Director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola.
“We are aware of the refusal of some JAMB invigilators and supervisors to allow female Muslim candidates who wore hijab to the centres to sit for the examinations. This action is despicable, repugnant and barbaric. It is also illegal, unlawful, illegitimate and unconstitutional. When will Muslim-haters grow up? When will they become democracy-compliant? When will they respect the rule of law?
“The law says hijab is constitutional (Section 38 (i) and (ii)) but they will rather follow their whims and caprices. The Muslims of the South West are being taken for granted. Our love for peaceful coexistence and our reluctance to take the law into our hands is being mistaken for cowardice. But we will like to warn that there is a limit to patience.
“This profiling of Muslims, particularly through the denial of hijab rights has been on for a long time. The Muslim victims cry out daily. Many cases of hijab denial are in the courts. Yet the various states governments pretend as if nothing is happening. Worse still, the Federal Government has ‘decided not to interfere’. The message is very clear. The authorities are telling us that the fate of Muslims is in the hands of Muslims. ”
The group therefore called on Muslims in the South West to prepare for a long, intellectual and nonviolent struggle.
“Female Muslim students are hereby instructed to carry recording gadgets on their persons. We want all provocations, victimisations and acts of stigmatisation to be secretly recorded wherever they occur because it will be impossible to get a conviction if there is no concrete evidence.”
The group charged Islamic organisations to re-engineer their mobilisation strategies towards deflating the rising persecution ego among Muslim-haters in the sub-region.
