Youths urged to protect holy sites

The Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) has urged youths across Nigeria to protect religious places and holy sites due to their importance to unity and national development.

Muslim and Christians clerics made the call in Abuja yesterday at a high-level engagement with youth religious leaders on ‘Protection of Holy and Sacred Sites’, organised by a KAICIID Fellow, Uzoaku Williams.

Williams said, “The roles of young leaders’ is also to foster unity among the citizens especially the youths who are the ones that are mostly involved in mass actions that led to the destruction of the holy places.” 

A former president of the Christian Council of Nigeria, Most Rev. Benebo Fubara-Manuel and a former Chief Imam of the National Assembly Legislative Quarters Mosque, Apo, Abuja, Sheikh Muhammad Nuru Khalid, said perennial attacks on sacred places and holy sites in the country might put the country wellbeing at risk.

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Fubara-Manuel regretted that youths were often used in the desecration of holy sites.

“They’re sometimes picked as political thugs or as misguided and misinformed about the history of their faiths or their communities and made to engage in war or in some destructive activities,” he said.

Khalid said attacks on worship centres in the country were the handiwork of the enemies of the country, and that worship centres,  as places of refuge, must be protected by stakeholders.