The Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), Prof Is-haq Oloyede, said he had never seen the kind of ignorance displayed in the recent opposition to the establishment of Sharia in the south West.

Oloyede has however urged leaders in the region to support the establishment of Sharia panels in the six states of the zone for sustainable peace.

According to him, the establishment of Sharia panels, which are essentially committees of Islamic scholars set up to settle marriage and inheritance disputes, will foster peace in the geo political zone.

Oloyede, who is also the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), was a guest on the Sunday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.

He said Nigerian “leaders should have a rethink. For sustainable peace, there is nothing bad in Muslims having” Sharia courts in the South-West.

“I believe that Nigeria is great and Nigeria will continue to be great but it requires a lot of rethinking.

“Recently, people are talking about Sharia Panels in South-West and I was just smiling; I was smiling that I had never seen that level of ignorance being displayed.

“Sharia Panel in Oyo State, somebody did a PhD thesis on it in 2007 which means it had been there before 2007. The person who wrote on that appraisal is a professor today in Ibadan. He is Prof Makinde, and the governor coincidentally is Makinde. I don’t know whether they are related.”

The former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin said the matter is something so trivial, and warned against building unnecessary tension around it, especially in the South-West where Muslims, Christians and traditional institutions have co-existed peacefully for ages.

He, however, said the Muslims in the South-West are paying psychologically for the harmony enjoyed in the zone.

“When you have such a situation (of religious tolerance) and you do not continue to monitor what you are doing, you will be living in the past. I’m a Muslim from the South-West. The Muslims from the South-West pay psychologically for the peace and harmony that we are talking about.

“The churches are licensed by the government to conduct marriages that are statutory and if you have any dispute within your marriage, you go to government-funded high courts for dispute resolution.

“If there is a dispute in my marriage, where do I go? I don’t have the opportunity because I married according to Islamic rites, I will have to go to customary court where the customary judge knows next to nothing about my faith, about the laws on the basis on which we got married.

“He would now use customary law to determine Islamic marriage and the Constitution of Nigeria allows it to say where the state of assembly allows it, there should be Sharia Courts of Appeal.

“There have been Sharia Court of Appeal in different parts of the country, particularly in the northern part of Nigeria. When we say there is harmony, it means somebody is suffering in silence but when the person speaks, they say: ‘Why are you making noise?”

He faulted those criticizing the Sultan of Sokoto for speaking up, saying that Muslims in Nigeria practice the same Islam. “I think we should be able to tolerate one another,” he said.

Recently, proposed establishment of Sharia panels in Oyo township triggered disquiet in the zone with traditional institutions and the Christian community rejecting the move while state governments in Ogun and Oyo have also ruled out the idea.

Despite the pushbacks, the Muslim community in Nigeria and the NSCIA led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, have stressed the importance of the panels as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism for Muslims.

To allay the fears of the non muslims, it has been established that Shari panels have been sitting in different parts of Oyo, Ogun and Lagos States for more than 20 years without any controversy.