By Monday Ogar
A religious clash was averted in the University of Calabar yesterday, as members of the Muslim Student’s Society of Nigeria, MSSN were holding their annual Muslim week celebration as part of the 2014/2015 academic session student’s week in Malabor square.
The event which holds annually in the school is organized by the Muslim Student’s in the University campus and was on going as planned until one of the invited Islam cleric started making statements that the Christian students termed as ‘blasphemy’ and an insult on their religion.
A student who didn’t give his name told our correspondent that the students got angry and drove away the Muslim students and the preacher after the Islamic cleric who was the guest lecturer referred to Jesus as a ‘bastard’.
When the SUG President of UNICAL, Emmanuel Ajang, who was at the Obudu cattle ranch for another activity in the student’s week was contacted, he maintained that “Actually it was not part of the student’s week anyway; it is unfortunate it happened during our student’s week. In our students week the usual practice is an excursion to the ranch so I was not on campus when the incident happened, so we are all here at the ranch.
“I was not on campus but I got the information but my reaction is that it is very unfortunate for a muslin cleric to come and start blasphemy Jesus on campus, I know we all have to freedom of worship but it is as much as we have that rights, our rights ends where another person’s right begins”.
Continuing, he said, “I feel it was wrong for the Muslim cleric to make those blasphemous statements especially in an environment mostly crowded by Christians, however when I get back to Calabar I will get proper details of what happened and we will do a formal reaction”.