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| Ezekwesili |
The approval of a concessional exchange rate for intending pilgrims by President Muhammadu Buhari has drawn the ire of key Nigeria's social media influencers who, on Tuesday, demanded the reversal of the decision.
The bloggers took their annoyance online, calling on the government to hand-off issues relating to pilgrimages to concentrate on finding solutions to socio-economic challenges that face the country.
The President had on Monday approved N160 to a dollar exchange rate for intending Christian pilgrims, a gesture that some of the critics see as ‘pilgrimmage subsidy’.
Critics of the decision, which included key supporters of Buhari during last presidential poll, said the forex discount extended to pilgrims, plus the age-long sponsorship of religious tourism, undermined the developmental needs of the country.
A former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, who responded to the intense Twitter campaign, said Nigerians must “collectively agree that using public fund for religious pilgrimage by a few is an opportunity cost” millions of poor masses could not afford.
She warned the Central Bank of Nigeria and other relevant agencies against going ahead with the decision, saying such was not a “sweet deal.”
Tweeting on the subject also, Japheth Omojuwa, a leading blogger, noted that the subsidy suggested that the government placed priority on religious fulfilment of the citizens above their capacity building. Otherwise, he asked, why has the government not extended a similar gesture to Nigerian students who were schooling abroad?
According to him, the country would do better if the enormous resources Nigeria frittered away through pilgrimage budgets yearly were spent building schools to reduce the number of its out-of-school children which run into several millions.
“If we drew up a scale of preference for Nigeria, would the sponsorship of pilgrims be ahead of putting 11 million kids in school?” he questioned.
Those intending to visit holy lands, he suggested, should be encouraged to spend personal resources instead of transferring their costs to the already-overburdened public purse.
He said the federal and state governments could take a cue from Kaduna State which has successfully terminated sponsorship of foreign religious trips.
Omojuwa, a leading voice on Nigerian social issues on social media, asked, “Why is Nigeria about the only country that sponsors pilgrims to Israel? Is it because of God or because of corruption? How many times have we heard of the government sponsoring poor people on a pilgrimage? It is the elite, the privileged class that benefit from it.
“Loads of people travel in the guise of pilgrimage only to escape and not return home or use the opportunity to transact their private businesses.”
The blogger described the practice as an “unprogressive end” an administration that claimed to be progressive cannot afford. He urged the government to take care of the earthly needs of Nigerians while leaving religious institutions to fret over where the souls of the citizens would go when after death.
Also blogging on the issue, Kayode Ogundamisi, an influential member of the online community, said the government had no business spending the country’s dwindling resources on religious matters.
In his post, Ikenna Gabriel also pointed out the contradiction in Nigeria’s claim to secularism and the special status it has given to Christianity and Islam over the years. Gabriel observed that the country had, at the expense of other religious groups, treated the two religions with kid gloves.
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