Adebayo Adenrele
The Yoruba Regional Alliance (YRA) worldwide in collaboration with all Yoruba self-determination organisations on Tuesday protested against the Independent Shari’ah Arbitration Panel recently instituted by the Islamic body in the state.
Recalled that the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti, Oba Rufus Adejugbe had earlier disbanded the Islamic legal system but controversies have continued to trail especially, following condemnation by a Muslim body, saying the monarch does not have the power to dissolve the panel.
The protesters gathered at a hotel in Adebayo area of Ado Ekiti where there chanted songs carried placards with various inscriptions such as, ‘No to Sharia in Yorubaland’, ‘Sharia will cause war’, ‘Sharia is constitutional blunder’, ‘We reject Sharia’, among others.
The protesters were prevented from moving round the streets as planned by the police in order to avoid possible crisis.
Addressing Journalists, the leader Yoruba, Regional Alliance Worldwide, Opeoluwa Akinola alleged that the struggle to introduce Sharia into Yoruba land is an attempt to cause chaos and disharmony, saying the practice does not represent her values.
Akinola noted that the Yoruba people irrespective of their religions, have co-existed peacefully for generations without the sharia penal code wondering what the Sharia law introduction is going to achieve that the existing penal codes and legal systems operative in Yoruba land cannot.
In an interview, the chairman of Yoruba Nation Religious Council (YONAREC), Comrade Oluwafemi Edafemi and others who spoke said the group is opposed to the introduction of the Islamic legal system known as Sharia into Yoruba land.