An Islamic scholar with the Lagos State University, Dr Mustapha Bello, has explained why setting up of universities is not common with Muslim organisations, unlike their Christian counterparts.
According to Bello who lectures at the Department of Religious and Peace Studies, education is a social service that the government is expected to render to the citizenry, but notes that the involvement of faith-based organisations in education in Nigeria is as a result of the failure of the state to meet the needs of the citizens.
“Apart from education, the faith-based religious organisations that established universities in the country are also involved in empowerment in poverty alleviation, healthcare delivery and others, even though those are not their core areas of
operation.”
Bello noted that as at the time government deregulated education in the country, the Christian faith responded earlier by funding education through the activities of the early British colonialist who were Christian missionaries.
“Islam came ahead of Christianity in terms of gaining inroads to the Southwest or any part of Nigeria, but Christianity came with colonialism and education which also helped in making it to penetrate fast,” he said.
Bello added that mosques and other Islamic organisations are not very buoyant, being another reason they have not been able to set up institutions of higher learning, which are capital
intensive.
“If you look at the organisational structure of mosques, you will find that most mosques are not profit-making, compared to what we find in the Christendom, particularly in the Pentecostal extraction.
“From the extensive research that I have done on Christian-faith universities, we still find many Muslim students attending them. So Muslims don’t really care about where they send their wards to, because even in the pre-independence era, before the establishment of schools by Ansarudeen, Anwaru Islam, and the like, Muslims attended Methodist schools, Baptist
schools.
“So, the need to have such schools was not really there for Muslims; but eventually, when more Christian schools and universities were coming up, as Islam and Christianity are like two products in a competitive market, Muslims too now felt they were lagging.
“That was what berthed higher institutions like Islamic Mission for Africa, a research centre; Crescent University, owned by Prince Bola Ajibola; Fountain University, and Al-Hikmah University,” he explained.
