From DailyPost...
When Miss Charity (Aisha)
Uzoechina, 24-year-old daughter of a Pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church
of God, RCCG, left their Abuja home to further her studies at the Federal
Polytechnic, Bida, Niger State, her parents had no inkling that it was the beginning
of many days of sorrow.
Instead of the formal education
she traveled to acquire, the young Christian girl is now allegedly pursuing her
new faith of Islam at the palace of the Etsu Nupe.
For the parents, the pain is not
just that Charity has abandoned her Christian faith, but that she now stands
completely separated from them.
She was alleged to have converted
to Islam on her own volition and changed her name to Aisha.
However, contrary to these
claims, Pastor Raymond Uzoechina is insisting that his daughter is a victim of
forced conversion to Islam.
The RCCG Pastor has, therefore,
called on security agencies to investigate activities at the palace of the Etsu
Nupe, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, to ensure that many people there had not been
forced to convert to Islam and held against their will.
He said: “Apart from my daughter,
there are so many people at the palace. There is need for the police to
investigate and ensure that the people are not suffering the fate of my
daughter”.
Pastor Uzoechina believes that
his daughter was kidnapped and hypnotised.
Narrating the genesis of the
problem, he said it all started on March 1 and 2 when he got a call from an
aide of the emir, asking him to come to the palace.
On getting to the palace in Bida,
he said he met his daughter with two other women, adding “the man said these
women brought my daughter to the palace that she has embraced Islam and she has
also been withdrawn from school. Those women even claimed they have taken her
through the rudiments of Islam and have started looking for a school for her.
At this juncture, I demanded that I am going home with her. But the man
declined, saying only the emir has the power to allow the girl go with me. They
took me to the emir but the emir refused my plea, saying I should come back
next week.”
He continued that on March 4, two
people who claimed to be from the Bida Sharia Court emerged with his daughter
with a folded paper and asked him to sign but he refused.
Pastor Uzoechina got the greatest
shock of his life when he tried to take his daughter but was told that she was
now under the custody of the Sharia Court.
The Sharia Court 1, which said it
arrived at the decision because the girl claimed her father could kill her
following her change of faith, also accused the defendant (Pastor Uzoechina) of
shunning an invitation to appear before it to defend himself.
“At this juncture, this
honourable court hereby orders that the custody of the plaintiff be entrusted
in the hand of Etsu Nupe for the time being and the Etsu Nupe should employ a
qualified Islamic scholar who will be teaching her and showing her what the
Islamic customs is all about and the plaintiff can even be watching and
selecting a man of her choice whom she will want to marry as her partner”, the
court held.
In this state of confusion,
Uzoechina said he had appealed the decision of the Sharia Court 1 through his
lawyer, Anthony Agbonlahor.
The lawyer also petitioned the
Chief Judge of Niger State, complaining about the conduct of the judge of the
Sharia Court 1, Justice Abdulkadir Idris, saying that the court had no right to
take custody of the girl.
“Contrary to the principle of
natural justice vis- a-vis fair hearing, our client was not served either with
the court summons/processes or hearing notice. The case was filed on March 4;
the case was heard March 4 and judgment delivered on the same day. In fact,
judgment was also executed on the same date. The question is: why the
urgency?”, he wondered.
Also, Pastor Uzoechina is still
bemused over the fate of his daughter as well as the decision of the court.
According to him, “They (sharia
court) have fixed Thursday, August 1 for ruling on our appeal that they don’t
have jurisdiction. You can’t judge a Christian in a Muslim court. I am
appealing to them to vacate the judgment because they don’t have jurisdiction.”
How can I kill my daughter?”
Concerning her daughter’s alleged
fear that he would kill her, he said “That is not true. My daughter cannot make
that allegation. Why should I kill her? We asked them to bring her to the court
so that my lawyer can cross-examine her but they refused.
“If she has converted to Islam,
must she practice at the Etsu Nupe’s palace? Is Etsu Nupe the chief security
officer now? They should not separate me from my daughter. She has stayed in
the palace for six months. If they say I will harm her, let them release her to
the Inspector General of Police, leader of the Christian Association of
Nigeria, CAN or ask me to write an undertaking. Why is my daughter still under
Etsu Nupe’s enclave? I am only talking about my daughter; there are so many
people at the palace. There is need for the police to investigate and ensure
that other people are not suffering the fate of my daughter. They did not allow
my wife to see my daughter when she visited the
palace.”
Be that as it may, the Etsu Nupe
is not in any way moved by the Pastor’s arguements, instead the emirate has
produced legal documents where Charity reportedly said she had converted to
Islam and alleged that his father could kill her for the action hence the need
to seek protection from the Palace and the Sharia Court, which the court
granted.
The Etsu Nupe has refused to
release the lady to his father citing the sharia court ruling.
The emirate also absolved itself
of the allegations of kidnapping and hypnotizing the young Christian girl.
It said in a statement that Miss
Uzoechina approached the monarch for protection over her change of faith from
Christianity to Islam on February 15.
It continued that “the royal
father invited the father of the girl for talks, with the hope of reconciling
them. On March 2, the father came to the palace and was taken before His Royal
Highness. It was at His Royal Highness chamber that the father came face to
face with his daughter. After discussions with the girl and her father, the
Etsu Nupe asked the girl to go back home with her father to resolve the matter
as a family.
“The girl refused to go home with
her father fearing that the father may harm her going by the encounter at the
Etsu Nupe’s palace. The girl left the palace and approached a court in Bida for
protection, a request which the court granted the girl. The girl has since been
in the custody of the court in Bida. Her reason was that her father insulted
her and she was scared that he may harm her because of his utterances during
their short meeting.
As it stands not, it will take
only the court for the young girl to be re-united with her family. The long
awaited August 1, 2013 ruling of the Bida Sharia Court 1 may not even be the
end, but beginning of a long legal battle.
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