Many people talk ignorantly about Nigeria's membership of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as an attempt to Islamise Nigeria. I had once posted a clarification on that and would like to reiterate that Nigeria's membership is for the good of Nigerians.

Know that the Islamic Development Bank is a financial organ of the OIC. To access funding from the IDB, it is required that countries are member-nations of the OIC. Nigeria has been a member of the OIC for over 30 years and has immensely benefited from being a member.

The IDB offers interest-free loans to nations unlike other multilateral development banks. This removes the burden of servicing debts from such nations. No doubt, that the IDB operates in line with Islamic guidance and thus doesn't fund projects forbidden by Islamic tenets (alcohol, gambling, etc). It is on record that during the last global financial meltdown, ONLY the IDB and those who FULLY adopted the Islamic banking system were NOT AFFECTED.

Successive governments in Nigeria had continued to patronise the bank. The Jonathan administration is no exception. In a 2012 report by Daily Trust, I got it that the bank injected $4bn into the Nigerian economy for the next 3 years (2012-2015). Before then, it had committed about $470 million (N72.9 billion) in project and trade financing operations in various sectors of the Nigerian economy.

At the signing of the pact with the Nigerian government then, the President of the IDB Group, Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, used the opportunity provided by the forum to disabuse the minds of Nigeria about the Islamic banking system.

He said: “The Islamic Development Banking Group is not a religious institution. It is a multilateral development finance institution similar to the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

“Like those institutions, the Islamic Development Bank seeks to promote the socio-economic development of its member countries by providing financing and technical support to critical priority development projects.

The difference from other institutions is that the modes of IDB financing are based on Islamic finance principles which are based on the productive relationship between financial assets and real economic development aspirations.”

He added: “Unlike the other multilateral development banks, the IDB does not deal with interest. Another distinctive feature of the IDB is that the membership of the IDB is composed entirely of developing countries, all in the Southern hemisphere countries which have broadly similar constraints and development challenges. In its lending activities, the IDB promotes solidarity among its member countries.”

He listed some of the many intervention projects the bank was undertaking in Nigeria to include as the National Programme for Food Security, Zungeru dam project, Mambilla hydroelectric dam project, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway project, National Railway Rehabilitation project and the Shagamu-Benin dual carriage project.

Ali stressed that the IDB had been rated Triple-A by the world’s leading rating agencies for almost the past ten consecutive years, before, during and after global financial crisis.

So, stop spreading the falsehood that Nigeria's membership of the OIC is an attempt to Islamise the country.

Whao

Reolam:
Whao

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What most ppl don't know is in fact loosing membership of the OIC will affect Nigeria negatively most especially now that our economy is in serious trouble

The Islamic Development Bank is also one of the banks arranging a loan of $5.7B for Nigeria to finance projects this year.