Enforce Policy On Hijab Now – Kwara Muslim Insist

• Govt shuts Oyun Baptist High School

BY SEGUN ADEBAYO – Kwara State Muslim stakeholders have urged the state government to immediately enforce its policy on wearing hijab by willing female Muslim students in all government grant-aided schools in the state.

Also, the group is demanding the government completely takes over all the grant-aided schools in the state as a permanent solution to the reoccurring crisis over hijab-wearing by Muslim school girls.

This is as the Kwara State Government shut down Oyun Baptist High School (OBHS), Ijagbo in Oyun Local Government Area of the state following a clash over the protracted hijab crisis in the school.

Reports said some armed men had unleashed terror on the students during a peaceful protest outside the school gate at about 8 am on Thursday with a student feared dead while some others were injured during the clash between Christians and Muslim parents.

And reacting to the violence that erupted at the School and reportedly saw one of the parents of the Muslim students, Habeeb Idris, killed and 11 parents injured, Chairman of the Forum, Alhaji Isiaq Abdulkareem, lamented the failure of the state government to enforce its policy on the wearing of hijab by willing female Muslim students.

Alhaji Abdulkareem, flanked by the Forum’s Legal Adviser, Barrister Ibrahim Agbaje and other members, said enforcing the hijab policy in all government grant-aided schools would ensure that peace to reign in the State.

The Forum Chairman also called for immediate closure of the school and relocation of the students to other schools pending when the crisis is resolved, even as he tasked the State government on the need to have a Commission of inquiry unravel the brains behind the killings and maiming of innocent Muslim parents in Ijagbo.

The group also called on the Police to investigate the circumstances surrounding the crisis with a view to bringing the perpetrators to book.

In his intervention, the Legal Adviser, Barrister Ibrahim Agbaje, said the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) lost the two cases instituted at both the lower and Appellate courts on the issue of hijab-wearing by Muslim school girls.

He said as of now, CAN has not instituted any at the Supreme Court to challenge the earlier judgment delivered by a Kwara state High Court and the Court of Appeal.