The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, on Friday, inaugurated the reconstituted Abuja National Mosque Management Board and the Board of Trustees of Educational, Social and Health Mission (MESH).
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that MESH is the project implementing arm of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA).
Abubakar III, who is the President-General of NSCIA, urged members of the boards to work assiduously towards promoting the ideals of Islam and supporting Muslims.
The Sultan also urged the national mosque board to look at ways and means of funding the mosque’s renovation and development.
Abubakar said: “The national mosque should not just be a place where Muslims would only observe five daily prayers and go.
“But, it should be a national centre for the advancement of Islamic culture and education.
” We made some arrangements in the past but just that it didn’t come to fruition that we should be inviting Imams from other parts of the country, hold seminars and interactions.
” We also plan to be inviting other Islamic leaders from across the world to meet with the leadership of the Islamic community in Nigeria.
“Especially our Imams, those who couldn’t go outside we will bring people from outside the country to interact with them.”
According to the sultan, the programme could not come to fruition due to the paucity of funds
Abubakar said that it waz time to revisit the plan, adding,” we want to see how we can bring it back to life so that the national mosque will be busy seven day a week.”
The sultan, who decried that the Muslim community was far behind developments in the country, said, “the reconstitution of the two boards was an opportunity for the Muslims to rise to the occasion and hit the ground running.
” And as we are inaugurating these boards, we are also expecting a new government to come in so it is an opportunity to us to hit the ground running with the government to see what we can do together to help the government and ourselves.”
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