Buhari cautions Supreme Council of Sharia

President Muhammadu Buhari has warned the Supreme Council of Sharia to watch against making baseless and divisive statements.

This was in reaction to the organization’s claim that the President had let Muslims down by his failure to attend the emergency summit of Organization of Islamic Countries called by Turkey to discuss US declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.

Buhari spoke in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja on Saturday through his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu.

He said the allegation by the Supreme Council of Sharia “was totally misleading and baseless.” Shehu explained that the President had to go to France to attend the Climate Change Summit because he had earlier given a firm commitment to President Emmanuel Macron.

According to Shehu, the President sent the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, to represent him at the Turkey meeting of OIC. He explained, “The Paris summit on climate change wasn’t a junket. It was also about the problems of the Lake Chad region which affects Nigeria as well as the neighbouring countries.

 “About 30 million lives are involved. Without the drying up of the lake, we would probably not have had the acute poverty that nurtured the environment for Boko Haram terrorism.

 “As a respectable religious organisation , an organisation that we hold in high esteem, the Supreme Council for Shari’ah could have helped themselves and the nation by checking the facts before the outburst, which sadly, was repeatedly aired by the international radio”