The religious crisis currently rocking the International School, Ibadan, the secondary school of the University of Ibadan started by the Muslim Parents Forum over wearing of Hijab took a new dimension on Wednesday.
Due to the crisis, the secondary school has been shut for nearly a week as the Islamic group protested in front of the school gate that female Muslim students of the school be allowed to wear the Hijab as part of their school outfit.
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Members of the Muslim Parents Forum had also twice in the last 10 days distributed Hijab to their female pupils against the prescribed dress code of the school.
The school management however insists the students must follow the normal dress code of the school.
Management had also organised a series of meetings between the Islamic group as well as the PTA of the school in an effort to douse tensions at ISI.
The Muslim parents however always walked out of the meetings midway, citing irreconcilable differences with management and stakeholders of the school.
On Wednesday, several Christian parents in the company of an Ifa worshipper as well as some Muslim parents stormed the office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academics) of the University of Ibadan, Prof. Adeyinka Aderinto, to register their displeasure against the actions of the Muslim Parents Forum.
The placard carrying parents which included an Ifa Priest and researcher as well as the father of two pupils in the school, Awosanmi Abe, condemned the approach of the Muslim parents to the issue of hijab.
According to the fresh protesters, wearing of hijab in the 55-year-old school was capable of dividing the students along religious lines.
The other leaders of the fresh protests included Olalekan Thani, a lawyer, and Olusola Aleshin who also argued that ISI was an indivisible entity, which no one or group should be allowed to divide for any reason.
They described as dangerous a situation where little children were being made to discriminate against each other along religious, ethnic and other sentiments instead of emerging as global citizens.
The protesting parents delivered a letter entitled, ‘Clamour for the introduction of religious emblem for our children in the International School, University of Ibadan’, in which they urged the school board headed by the DVC to ensure that the rules and regulations guiding the institution which all parents signed to uphold, reigned supreme.
The parents said that the pupils were friends and colleagues as well as their parents, stressing that any attempt by some Muslim parents to divide them should not be allowed to succeed.
The parents said further they received the news of the second closure of the school in the space of two weeks with serious pain and trauma;
“We want to use this medium to inform the management that the school is not only populated by the two dominant religions, but also has traditional believers. These groups have vowed to enforce their rights in line with their Muslim counterparts’ claim to the right to use of their religious emblem in hijab wearing.
A scenario in which armlets and Ifa traditional beads are freely used as religious symbols in the school will not be funny. What will then become of the uniformity concept of the uniform when the school environment can be taken as a market place of sorts, where a rainbow of apparels is the order of the day? May the day never come when the ISI becomes the example of what a school environment should not be.”
They noted that the ISI Muslim Parents Forum’s position was an attempt to disrupt the academic process as well as the atmosphere of love and unity already entrenched among the students.
They insisted that the rules and regulations of the school must be binding on all consenting parents and their wards, and that the choice of language and procedure adopted by the Muslim parents in their letter dated November 9, 2018 to the school principal and copied to the Chairman of the Board of Governors was both derogatory and an usurpation of the powers of the school board.