• How we established JAMB centre, school, radio station in Iwo to combat Islamophobia
• Says religion no basis for discrimination
Retired Professor of Sociology at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Lai Olurode, has urged Muslims in Nigeria to go beyond lamentations and create alternative platforms to challenge religious discrimination and marginalisation.
Olurode retired from the services of the university in 2022 after 40 outstanding years of stewardship.
He was among the retirees celebrated by the UNILAG Muslim Community (UMC) on Friday at a special event in the Islamic Hall Centre, UNILAG Central Mosque, Akoka.
Speaking to Muslim News in an exclusive interview on Friday, the former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, UNILAG, advised Muslims to stop bemoaning the incidence of religious discrimination and marginalisation, urging them to rather create alternative platforms to challenge. it.
He cited instances of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) centre and radio station established in Iwo to address the incidence of discrimination and bias against Muslims.
Radio station
On the radio station, he said, “We had only one radio station in Iwo (Bowen University Radio) at the time. But that radio station would not even allow the mentioning of Muslim names.
“They would not even accommodate Muslim jingles. So, I just thought that we can’t be fighting. We floated a community radio named Ayekooto 88.3 FM in Iwo. Though, it may not be on top in Osun State for now, it’s one of the most-listened-to radio stations in the state. We can do better, and we are happy that at least we can showcase both Islam and Christianity. And, we can’t complain that we face discrimination there.”
JAMB centre
“When we had a challenge with our children writing JAMB one time, the board told us that we needed to get our acts together and have a centre. We can allow both Muslims and Christians to be there instead of complaining. When I got that information, we decided to have a JAMB centre in our school for all students in the community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.
“Alhamdulilah, for the past three, four years we’ve been running a JAMB center. You won’t believe that Christians would come with their candidates to register, without discrimination, despite the discrimination our children face in their schools. They saw that we prohibited any kind of extra charges. So, that’s the beauty of it,” he noted.
Prof. Olurode urged Muslims to look for better opportunities to showcase Islam.
“We can’t be lamenting. Lamentations would not solve any problem. If you lament and take no action, nothing is going to change. You remain poor, unknown. You can’t project or put Islam on the front burners. But when you create alternate institutions, you can showcase Islam.
“You can see the Islamic-friendly universities we now have. Fountain University, Crescent University, and Al-Hikmah University, among others. If we had continued to lament, nothing would have changed. So we can’t be doing that all the time. The little you are also doing at Muslim News Nigeria is part of it. You are providing an alternative for the voices of Muslims to be heard.
School project
Olurode added that his school project in Iwo was partly to counter his discriminatory experience at Baptist High School during his secondary education where he had to change his name from Dauda Bilawu to Lai Olurode to gain admission.
“The school project started in 2010. Again, we didn’t plan to build a school. My wife and I just wanted to build a library, but somebody said how do we sustain the library. He now told us that we can have a school and a library in the school. It was purely an unintended consequence of an action. But I must tell you that if there’s anything today that makes one happy, it’s that school. The school is known as The Wings School.
“As an afterthought, the school project was to counter my personal experiences about going to school; a Baptist school where one faced tremendous discrimination. The good thing about it is that the Christians trust us so much that their children are there, even in the boarding house,” he noted.
“My name in primary school was Dauda Bilawu. After primary education, I sat exams for secondary school. Everybody in Iwo won’t go to Baptist High School. There were other schools but that was the class school believed to be for the special students. We struggled to get in there, and I noticed I did my best. I was one of the best in my primary school days but the school didn’t take me.
“Then I was wondering what could have happened. I ran to one of our fathers Alhaji Jabbar Olurode. He went to the school because he was friendly with the principal of the school. The principal was a Christian to the core. He asked for my name. I said, Dauda Bilawu. He said, what is Dauda, what is Bilawu? So for me to be accommodated, I had to change my name to Lai Olurode.
“There were some of my predecessors who attended the same Baptist High School and retained their names but lost their Islamic identity. I had a narrow escape. It was by the mercy of Allah. I was baptised. Most of us at that time were baptised. With time, when we became more conscious and firmer, then we knew we could challenge anybody to it. So, the Daud(a) in my name started to feature. Just to access that scarce resource at that time which was in their hands, I had to change my name. It was not as if one was ashamed of the name.”
Love for children story books
The ex-INEC Commissioner had also written children’s story books to counter discrimination against Islam and Muslims.
“That was in the 1990s. I developed an interest in writing storybooks for children. You see discrimination when you read standard texts for children. Hardly would you see Muslim names featured there. They were not written with our children in mind.
“I stood to counter that and provided a kind of mixed literature for children so that they can read and have a national outlook of how Nigeria is.
“I think I have three sets of them — Ayo goes to the village, Ayo returns from the village and Ayo and his stepmother. In the third edition, I ensured that the second wife was from a Christian family just to show how religion should not be the basis for discrimination, though it counts and matters. The books were published in the 1990s. We’ve reissued them a couple of times as well.”
His consciousness of Islam
Prof. Olurode said his consciousness about Islam deepened at the tail end of his undergraduate days, noting he built on it during his NYSC year, through to his masters programme and career at the university.
“Well, as a student, I wouldn’t say I was conscious of Islam. Of course, I know Islam is my religion. I was practising the religion because when you come from Iwo, your first call is Islam, generally speaking. But in terms of activating that identity and bringing it to the fore, it was towards the end of my stay during the first degree and during my NYSC year that I started to realise that I was not maximising the opportunities that I had as a Muslim.
“And again, in some of the textbooks that we read about Marxism and other radical literature, one became conscious that religion should not be a falter. That’s how one started to take that religion seriously, particularly because we thought that Islam has great potential that is not being explored or utilised.
“By the time I was done with my NYSC and I returned as a student doing my masters in Nigeria and abroad, what could be said to be hidden in me as my Islamic identity became activated. And I started saying that I think I owe that religion a debt and I needed to do more.
“Alhamdulilah, we had a foundation, Islamic Network for Development (IND) and we received generous support from various organisations to reach out to people, the junior ones, to mentor them and prepare them for the task ahead.
“Before becoming the chairman of UNILAG Muslim Community (UMC), for the past 30 years or so now, we had a platform in Iwo; we call it Ola-Olu Muslim Society through which we celebrate people who have done tremendously well for Islam and Muslims. We celebrate them, whether living or dead. We go into our records and ask people around so that we can celebrate them and showcase how they’re exceptional individuals. This will serve as a reminder and resonate with the rest of society that they also put in their best.
“Most of the people we have celebrated, I didn’t know. There was a woman we celebrated last year, she’s from a Muslim family and got married to another Muslim family. But somehow along the line, they converted to Christianity. But the woman remained resolute; she didn’t convert. Even though the children persuaded her to change her religion, she remained a Muslim.
“We inquired for such people and celebrate them. We had people whom we heard walked from Iwo to Makkah. We searched for them and celebrated them too. We have a long list of people that had been celebrated,” he added.
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Why I quit Political Science for Sociology: Prof Lai Olurode (Part 1)
• Ex-INEC commissioner retires from UNILAG after 40 years
Born as Dauda Bilawu on November 2nd, 1952 at Iwo, famously known as the city of the scholars, Prof. Olurode received his Secondary School education at Baptist High school, Iwo between 1968 and 1975. Read HERE
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