Sultan commends Buhari on war against corruption

*As Forum wants more Oloyedes around President

The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari on his anti-corruption fight aimed at promoting the nation’s economy and restoring the good image of the country.

He made the remark over the weekend in Kaduna while presiding-over the meeting of the Sultan Forum comprising of Muslim professionals and activists.

According to him, corruption is one of the greatest problems confronting the nation adding that winning the war required the collaborative efforts of all Nigerians including those in Diaspora.

The Sultan therefore charged participants at the meeting to join  hands with the Federal Government in the battle by sensitising the people on their responsibility of constantly exposing perpetrators of corruption so that the arms of the law could catch-up with them.

In his remarks, Mal. Ibrahim Buba – an outstanding Media Professional and Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of NTA emphasised the critical roles the Media should play in restoring the good image of the Country especially, on fighting against corruption, improved economy and progision of social infrastructure as well as well-being of the Nigerian  populace at large. He commended the Sultan on his leadership roles in Nigeria  which has gone a long way to douse tension, promote stability and peaceful co-existence.

In his speech, the National Co-ordinator of Muslim Media Watch Group of Nigeria, Mallam Ibrahim Abdullahi, condemned the use of media space to promote religious intolerance and discrimination.

He also called for balancing of religious news and coverage of religious programmes by governments-owned media organizations.

Abdullahi challenged the Chief Executives of the Media Organizations to fund their media outfits all over the federation, so as to reduce their dependence on sponsored religious programmes to run their stations, adding that such dependence make the electronic media houses to violate the NBC code which pegged religious contents of programmes at 10 percent.

In its resolution at the end of the meeting, the Sultan Forum commended the Sokoto State Governor, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal for his people-oriented programmes, including prompt payment of salaries and pensions, scholarship for Sokoto students to pursue education to any level, health-care delivery services and strengthening of Zakat institution to provide succour for the less-priveledged in the society and many more, which the Forum noted had gone a long way to relieve the masses in Sokoto State of various burdens.

It also called for speedy determination of all corruption cases by the executive and the judiciary as well as probing  the dilapidated Kaduna – Abuja Road rehabilitated few months ago, (just before the Abuja  International Airport shut-down for runway repairs, only to go bad again with pot-holes riddling the Federal highway.

On education, the Forum commended Professor Is-haq Oloyede, the Registrar and Chief Executive of Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for generating a sum of N8 billion just in one JAMB examination and  returning N5 bllion to Federal Government’s coffers as IGR.

This, the Sultan Forum declared as unprecedented in the history of the institution describing it as having further testified to high integrity of the JAMB Registrar, who is also the Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic  Affairs (NSCIA).

The Forum called on President Buhari to fish-out more people of high integrity like Professor Oloyede irrespective of political, religious or ethnic affinity and place them in positions of authority to complement his untiring efforts for the over-all success of his administration.

Still on education, the Sultan Forum called on all governments in the federation to give more serious attention to education at all levels, pointing out that education is in shambles in almost all the states in the federation and at all levels.

It urged elites in the society to shun elitist schools for children while advising those in government among the elites to raise the education standard in terms of facility, personnel and structure in their schools to promote quality education.

On a final note, the meeting called on the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, to commission a body, which would scrutinise the contents of all books being recommended for study in Nigerian secondary schools by National Examination Council Board (NECO) and West African Examination Council (WAEC) with a view to removing books containing immoral and indecent contents and banning the use of those books in Nigerian schools.

The Authors of those locally produced and the banned books, it said, should also be called and orientated on good writings instead of immorally inclined books.

The one-day meeting was attended by many eminent personalities of different professional backgrounds from various parts of the country, including outstanding journalists and mass Communicators, lawyers, medical doctors, HR practitioners, Islamic scholars, engineers, architects, pharmacists and many others.