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Religious crisis looms in Ibadan varsity community over wearing of hijab

By Muyiwa Adeyemi and Sunday Agboluaje, (Ibadan)
13 November 2018   |   4:58 am
Unless some drastic actions are taken to stop some religious fanatics, the University of Ibadan (UI) community is in for serious crisis. A Muslim group was reportedly distributing hijab to female students of International School Ibadan (ISI) yesterday by 7am and asked them to wear it to the assembly ground. Consequently, the management of the…

University of Ibadan

Unless some drastic actions are taken to stop some religious fanatics, the University of Ibadan (UI) community is in for serious crisis.

A Muslim group was reportedly distributing hijab to female students of International School Ibadan (ISI) yesterday by 7am and asked them to wear it to the assembly ground.

Consequently, the management of the UI has warned against religion intolerance, which may cause crisis within the university community.

The situation forced the management of the school to hurriedly cancel the morning assembly and stop academic activities.

Deputy vice chancellor (Academic) of UI, who is also the chairman of ISI governing council, Prof. Abdeen Aderinto, warned that introducing religious sentiment into the 55-year-old school would divide the students and distract them from attaining academic excellence.

Aderinto disclosed that the UI management had on Friday received a letter from International School Moslem Parents Forum threatening that their female students would from Monday (yesterday) wear hijab to classes.

“We have a Muslim community association on campus here; they (parents’ forum) didn’t inform them of their agenda. I am a member of that community. There is also Parent Teacher Association (PTA) where all issues about the policies of the school are discussed; they didn’t bring the issue there, only to write the principal of the school last Friday and threatened to start enforcing wearing of hijab.

“This was strange and caused panic this (yesterday) morning. I was called and I went straight to see what was happening. The teachers said they were not safe to teach; that is why we stopped academic work. But we took SSS 3 students to another location for classes because their final examination is fast approaching,” he told The Guardian.

Meanwhile, 201 of the 7,577 students that bagged their first degrees at the university this year made first class honours.

The vice chancellor, Prof Idowu Olayinka, disclosed this yesterday in his address during the convocation of the institution at the International Conference Centre of the university.

Miss Grace Agi from Faculty of Public Health emerged the best graduating student.

The Guardian learnt that 1,735 students made second class upper division, and 4,366 students graduated with second class lower. Also, 834 students made third class and 69 students graduated with pass. A total of 372 students were grouped as unclassified.

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