Islamic organisation urges Muslims to donate zakat to IDPs in N’East

THE International Centre for Islamic Culture and Education (ICICE) has urged the Muslims to fully donate their zakat (tithes) to the poor and over 1.5 million Internally-Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the North-East sub-region of the country.

Addressing newsmen in Maiduguri during the donation of N9 million worth of foodstuff and non-food materials to IDPs in Borno and Yobe states, the Director of ICICE, Annuur Mosque, Abuja, Malam Mele Kyari and President of Ummah Islamic Organisation, said if Muslim faithful all over the country can donate part of their zakat to the people displaced in the North-East, smiles could be brought to thousands of weeping faces.

Kyari, who lamented that the situation at the IDP camps, which were populated with over 60 per cent under-aged children that have many losing their parents to the Boko Haram crisis calls for urgent attention of well-meaning Nigerians.

If the rest of us want to leave to enjoy ourselves in the country, he said, the Federal Government as well as international donor agencies could not be left alone to give aids to the distressed people of the North-East.

He said: “One of the things we are encouraging is to call on the
entire nation, especially the Muslim Ummah which should know that part of the pillars of our religion is giving the zakat, if we can take out of this to help these people, it will go a very long way.”

He, however, lamented that “a lot of Muslims do not give out their zakat today or they do give their zakat but not in the right way. If they can give their zakat to the internally-displaced persons here, it will go a long way to ameliorate some of the sufferings we are seeing in some of these camps here.”

He said that visit to many registered and unregistered camps in both Borno and Yobe states have opened their eyes to the pathetic situation of the region brought about by the Boko Haram crisis and the need for the entire country to urgently do something about the situation.

“We have several children who have lost their parents to this crisis and if everyone of us do not do something urgently to solve this crisis and find something for these children, the may have a worse crisis than Boko Haram insurgency in years to come,” said Kyari yesterday at one of the Maiduguri resettlement camps.

He argued that the Boko Haram crisis goes beyond the North-East crisis but a national and West African sub-regional crisis that if not handled well now, may take a dangerous dimension in not too far a future.