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Friday Sermon: The Pilgrims Progress

Published

7 years ago

August 9, 2019

Eric

By Babatunde Jose

Tomorrow, Saturday, the 9^th day of the last month of the Islamic calendar Dhul Hijjah, over 2 million pilgrims will converge on Mount Arafat for the annual Hajj festival. Mount Arafat is an important place in Islam because pilgrims spend the afternoon there praying and supplicating to Allah to wash away their sins and make them whole again: Failure to be present in the plain of Arafat on the required day invalidates the pilgrimage. The Day of Arafat is an essential part of Hajj, and Aishah (RA) reported that The Messenger of Allah (SAWS) said, “There is no day on which Allah sets free more slaves from Hell than He does on the Day of Arafat (Muslim). It was on this special day in the afternoon of the Day of Arafat during his first and only Hajj that the Prophet (SAWS) made his famous farewell speech to a crowd of over 120,000 Companions. It was his last major speech, and that is why this Hajj is called the ‘Farewell Pilgrimage’.

Hajj is mentioned in several ayats in the Quran: “And proclaim that the people shall observe Hajj pilgrimage. They will come to you walking or riding on various exhausted (means of transportation). They will come from the farthest locations.”(Quran 22:27) See also (Quran 2:125) (Quran 2:158)(Quran 2:189)(2:196-203)(Quran 3:96-97)

Hajj attracts a very diverse multitude from all over the world, but it is important to clarify the largeness of the gathering as there has been a misconception on the part of many Muslims. Hajj is the second largest annual religious gathering.

Arba’een Pilgrimage is the world’s largest annual religious gathering that is held every year in Karbala, Iraq at the end of the 40-day mourning period following Ashura, the religious ritual for the commemoration of martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Mohammad and the third Shia Imam, Husayn ibn Ali. The number of participants in the annual pilgrimage reached 20 million or more in 2016.

The Arba’een pilgrimage is non-obligatory compared to Hajj which is obligatory for those who can afford it.

There is however a Nigerian connection to this Shia event. Pilgrims in West Africa who are unable to go to Karbala due to the distance involved instead head toward Zaria in Nigeria to be addressed by the Shia cleric Ibrahim Zakzaky. These include pilgrims from Nigeria as well as Ghana, Chad, Cameroon, Benin and Togo. On 5 October 2017, this annual Arba’een trek was attacked by Kano police, resulting in the death of a religious leader and injury to dozens of participants. It was organised by the Islamic Movement of Nigeria. The Shiite problem has since developed into a political conundrum with its leadership under detention and Zakzaky’s Islamic Movement of Nigeria proscribed and declared a terrorist organization.

However, the largest religious gathering of all time is the Kumbh Mela festival of the Hindus in India. This year alone, 120 million people attended the Hindu religious festival which is held on the banks of the Gages River every 4 years. The government of India coughed out the sum of $600 million for the festival. A temporary city was constructed and 120,000 toilets provided for the pilgrims; 30,000 policemen were drafted to the place and medical facilities provided, all at the expense of the state. For centuries the faithful have come here to wash away their sins at the spot where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers converge with the invisible and mythic tributary known as the Sarasvati.

There is also another contentious matter relating to government sponsorship or involvement in pilgrimage; its organization and logistics. This has been an issue in our religiously charged political firmament. It however need not be so as there are historical and contemporary facts to suggest that governments all over the world have always been involved in the affairs of their citizens who embark on pilgrimage in their tens of thousands.

In Britain, for instance, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2000 helped fund the British Hajj Delegation to provide consular support and medical services for its citizens on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Despite being officially secular, the French government posts a consul in Jeddah to help French nationals making the hajj. Russia—which has 14 million Muslim citizens, the largest population of any European country—has perhaps done the most to support its citizen-hajj pilgrims. Since the early 2000s, under the Putin government, Russia’s Muslims have enjoyed discounted flights to Jeddah during hajj season on Aeroflot, the state airline. A state-created hajj liaison office arranges visas and transportation. And in another twist, after annexing Crimea from Ukraine, Russia offered Crimean Tatars generous hajj subsidies ($1000 per person, about a third of the cost of an economy package tour).

Having inherited a hajj tradition with their colonial conquests, Europe’s imperial powers had to decide what to do with it. In the mid-nineteenth century, as hajj traffic between European colonies and Mecca began to grow, colonial officials nursed anxiety and fears of the hajj as a spreader of cholera and other infectious diseases; some even suggested banning the hajj. This was especially true after 1865, the year a massive cholera outbreak in Mecca became a global epidemic, spread far and wide by dispersing crowds of hajj pilgrims. After this epidemic—which killed more than 200,000 people worldwide in cities as far away as New York City—the European powers convened the first in a series of conferences that identified the hajj as a sanitary and security threat to empire. But attempts to ban the hajj proved impossible: as a pillar of Islam, and a duty for Muslims, the hajj could not be easily banned or stopped.

By the end of the nineteenth century, and for various reasons all of the European powers began to sponsor the hajj. They subsidized travel between their colonies and Arabia during hajj season, opened foreign consulates along routes to Mecca, and passed new laws to protect pilgrims from physical harm and financial scams.

In Jeddah, the Dutch had set up a multi-service “Hajj Bureau.” The British ran a medical dispensary out of their consulate, run by the vice-consul, a Muslim doctor and British subject from India. And European doctors and nurses staffed the two main quarantine facilities set up to screen hajj pilgrims in El Tor (at the bottom of the Sinai peninsula) and on Kamaran Island (in the Red Sea). By sponsoring the hajj, European colonial powers were simply trying to control or contain the problems it created as a mass, annual movement of people. It is however very clear to all non-mischievous observers that the Nigerian State does not underwrite the pilgrimage of Moslems to Mecca. If in offering Consular service, medical aid and welfare to pilgrims and being involved in the logistics of moving over 100,000 of its citizens to a foreign land for pilgrimage is termed as funding of religious activities, so be it. The Government of Nigeria has not been doing anything strange or unknown to international best practice. Wet therefore wish our pilgrims Hajj Mabrur.

Barka Juma’at, Barka de Salah and Happy weekend.

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Akpabio Lashes Out at Tinubu’s Critics, Says Nigeria Safe Despite Insecurity

Published

3 days ago

June 10, 2026

Eric

The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, has urged Nigerians to be careful of those trying to kidnap for ransom.

Akpabio argued on Tuesday that those behind kidnapping are perpetuating the activity to create an impression that Nigeria is not safe.

Speaking in Abuja during the commissioning of road projects to mark President Bola Tinubu’s third year anniversary, Akpabio said some of the president’s critics have resorted to paying youths to cause mayhem.

Akpabio accused Tinubu’s critics of focusing on insecurity instead of policy and infrastructure.

“Minister you said that people claimed that nothing is happening in Nigeria under the administration of President Tinubu. If they did not say that, how will they go for election? he asked rhetorically.

“If you realize what is happening recently, when they realized that they can’t talk about projects, performance, good laws, transformation in the Petroleum industry, subsidy removal that have been promised Nigerians for decades, they can no longer talk about the high-rise buildings in Abuja such as the NRS building, they resorted to paying young people and recruiting them to cause mayhem in the country.

“Be very vigilant and be careful about people trying to kidnap for ransom. They are kidnapping in order to give the impression that Nigeria is not safe.

“Our men and women in uniform have done tremendously well but many people will not know and that is why I keep saying that the devil you see today, you will soon see them no more.

“Elections will come and go; elections will never be our end; we will see the end of elections; it will never see our end,” he said.

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The Search for Justice: ADC vs Tsoho

Published

5 days ago

June 8, 2026

Eric

By Eric Elezuo

From the first day the African Democratic Congress (ADC) took a new shape in July, 2025, in readiness to wrest power from the government of the day, crises, allegedly engineered by the President Bola Tinubu-led All Progressives Congress (APC), have remained its lot.

From the struggle for leadership positions to the fight to save itself from deregistration, the hitherto coalition and main opposition party, has remained in a battle for its life and existence. And has not relented in the search for lasting justice. This time, it has taken the law itself to court to ensure that justice is not only done, but seen to have been done.

It would be recalled that shortly after the the party ratified the election of Senator David Mark and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola as Chairman and Secretary of the party respectively, skirmishes were noticed among the rank and file of the party as a supposedly former deputy national chairman of the party, Nafiu Bala Gombe, claimed chairmanship of party, saying that since the founding chairman had resigned, it is constitutionally incumbent upon him to automatically assume the chairmanship role.

Gombe’s claims came on the heels of his ‘resignation’ from office, which paved the way for a new national executive of the party to be constituted. But his claims did not deter the party from carrying on with the formation and running of the party, including holding a keenly contested presidential primary election, which produced His Excellency, the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. So Gombe went to court. Yet, Mark and Aregbesola carried on the running of the party.

As a result, Gombe had approached a court for an order restraining Mark leadership from parading themselves as leaders of the ADC pending the hearing and determination of his suit challenging their leadership.

He had also asked the court to issue another order against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), restraining it from recognizing the Mark leadership.

But in his ruling in the interlocutory application, Justice Emeka Nwite ordered Gombe to put the defendants on notice so that they appear before the court to show cause, why the application should not be granted.

Rather than appearing before the trial court to show cause, the defendant appealed to the Abuja division of the Court of Appeal, challenging the jurisdiction of the trial court to dabble into the matter they described as internal matters of the ADC.

The appellate court in dismissing the appeal for lacking in merit, ordered accelerated hearing in the suit and further ordered all parties to maintain status quo ante bellum.

Dissatisfied, Mark had approached the appellate court but, his appeal was dismissed and the matter returned to the trial court.

With the to and from nature of the cases involving the ADC leadership crisis, the party has accused judges of bias in favoring party detractors and disobedience to court rules among other malice, the party has taken a new route to obtain the much eluded justice, and that involves charging the custodians of the law to court.

Consequently, the ADC has filed a lawsuit before a High Court in Abuja involving the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho, over concerns arising from the ongoing leadership dispute within the party.

Also joined in the suit is the National Judicial Council (NJC), which the party said had not addressed issues it raised regarding the handling of a case challenging the leadership of former Senate President, Senator David Mark, within the ADC.

The lawsuit, dated June 4, 2026, was filed by the National Welfare Secretary of the ADC, Nkemakolam Ukandu, who is seeking to be joined in Suit No: FHC/ABJ/CS/1819/2025 instituted by Nafiu Bala Gombe against the Mark-led leadership of the party.

According to the suit, Ukandu expressed concerns about the handling of the matter and alleged that the actions of both Justice Tsoho and Justice Peter Lifu, the judge assigned to hear the case, could affect confidence in the proceedings.

The lawsuit further stated that the assignment of the case to Justice Lifu stirred concerns among some members of the party, who believe the process may not guarantee a fair hearing.

The legal action marks a fresh twist in the leadership dispute within the ADC, which has attracted significant political attention ahead of the 2027 general elections.

Aside Justice John Tsoho, other defendants are the National Judicial Council (NJC), and Justice Peter Lifu, a judge newly assigned to hear the suit challenging the Senator David Mark-led leadership of ADC.

The plaintiff, who was seeking to be joined in the Suit No: FHC/ABJ/CS/1819/2025, brought by Nafiu Bala Gombe against the Mark-led leadership, accused the chief judge and Lifu of manifest bias, and willingness to do the biddings of persons against the interest of the party.

Ukandu, in the suit he personally filed at the Federal High Court, Abuja, faulted the chief judge for reassigning the suit to Lifu, in alleged disregard of the orders of the Supreme Court as well as Justice Emeka Nwite of the Abuja division of the Federal High Court, who initially heard the suit brought by Gombe against the party.

The plaintiff, in the suit marked FHC/ ABJ/ CS/ 1165/2026, recalled that an appeal from an interlocutory decision of Nwite rose to the Supreme Court, wherein the apex court on April 30, 2026, “made an order of remittance of Suit No: FHC/ABJ/CS/1819/2025: Nafiu Bala Gombe VS. ADC & 4 ORS back to Justice Emeka Nwite for continuation of hearing of pending applications challenging the jurisdiction of the trial court.”

He stated that upon resumption of hearing before Nwite, the plaintiff wrote to the chief judge praying for a reassignment of the matter to another judge of the Honourable Court.

Ukandu stated, “All the defendants’ counsel, including counsel to the applicants seeking to be joined in this matter, opposed the said application by the plaintiff’s counsel and Hon. Justice Emeka Nwite thereafter adjourned the matter sine die pending the service of the said letter by the plaintiff’s on all the parties in the matter, outcome of the letter by the 2nd defendant and the furnishing of the CTC of the judgement of the Supreme Court to the court.

“Without complying with the orders of the Supreme Court and Hon. Justice Emeka Nwite, the 2nd Defendant in abuse of his judicial powers reassigned this matter,” to Lifu.

He added that the third defendant, on his part, pretending not to see the order of Nwite, went ahead and fixed the matter for hearing for June 3, 2026.

Ukandu further recalled that ADC had on May 7 informed the public through a press release that the chief judge had planned to reassign the case to another judge favourable to the plaintiff.

He said the party had “warned against such unethical practice but the 2nd Defendant despite the public outcry reassigned the suit to the 3rd Defendant who have been nick-named as ‘Wike Judges’.”

He stated that the third defendant had started presiding over the matter, despite taking judicial notice of the orders of the Supreme Court and Nwite, and that the matter came up for hearing before the third defendant.

Though neither the Federal High Court nor the National Judicial Council had publicly responded to the issues raised so far, it is imperative to to state that the ADC appears to have lost interest in both the judiciary, which it believe is kowtowing to the dictates of Gombe, and by extension the body language of the Federal Government.

The ADC appears to have managed to draw the sympathy of the public as a group known as the Grassroots Mobilization Network (GMN), has lent their voice to the supposed injustice leveled against the Mark-led ADC, raising concerns about the handling of the matter, and calling for transparency in the judicial process.

The group alleged that the judiciary was being used to target opposition parties.

The group expressed concern over what it described as growing public distrust in the judiciary and called on relevant authorities to ensure fairness and transparency in the handling of politically sensitive cases.

While Nigerians await the outcome of the litigation, and other resolution of other sundry issues arising from the ADC and the judiciary, the party is going ahead making last minute transparent efforts to nominate a suitable running mate to bear the presidential flag with the presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

Among the party’s shortlists are the first runner-up in the presidential primary, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Akinwumi Adesina, Emeka Ihedioha, Emeka Nwajiuba and Chief Dele Momodu.

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Gunmen Abduct Ex-Power Minister Adelabu’s Sister, Her Two Sons in Ibadan

Published

1 week ago

June 3, 2026

Eric

Suspected gunmen have abducted the sister of a former Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

The family of former minister and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) confirmed the abduction, disclosing that Mrs. Olaide John-Paul and her 12-year-old twin sons were kidnapped by the gunmen on Wednesday, June 3, 2026.

According to a statement issued by Adelabu’s media aide, Femi Awogboro, the victims were kidnapped at about 7:30am while Mrs. John-Paul was taking her children to school.

Mrs. John-Paul, the youngest of five children of Mrs. Olufunmilayo Aduke Adegoke Adelabu, reportedly retired voluntarily from her career at First Bank Pension Custodian in 2025 before relocating to Ibadan with her children.

She was said to be making arrangements to join her husband, who had earlier relocated to the US.

The family expressed deep concern over the development but stated that security agencies had already commenced efforts to rescue the victims and apprehend those responsible.

“We are pleased to confirm that security operatives have swung into action and preliminary investigations have commenced in earnest,” the statement partly read.

While appealing for calm, the family urged members of the public to refrain from spreading unverified information that could undermine ongoing rescue operations.

“We are deeply distressed by this unfortunate incident, but remain hopeful that the victims will be rescued safely. We appeal to the public to remain calm, avoid speculation and support ongoing efforts with prayers,” the statement added.

The family also called on anyone with useful information that could aid the rescue operation to promptly share such intelligence with security agencies through the appropriate channels.

It assured that it would continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities and provide updates as investigations and rescue efforts progress.