Tension In Osun As Religious Crisis Looms In Secondary School

The decision of the Osun State government to introduce a new education policy which came with school mergers has continued to brew tension in the peaceful state.

Fears that a religious crisis may result from the now frequent altercation between Muslims and Christian students has enveloped schools in Osun state. Baptist High School, Iwo is one of such, where students yesterday wore different dresses that suited their religious inclination to school, thereby defiling the state government uniform specification recently introduced in all public secondary schools in the state as part of the schools reclassification programme.

The students also sang different religious songs while on the assembly for the morning devotion.

The Christian students who wore white garments sang Christian songs, while the Muslim students whose females appeared in veil sang Muslim songs.

A worried school authority ended the devotion abruptly and sent students to their various classrooms before informing the state Ministry of Education of the development.

In his reaction, Commissioner for Information and Strategy in the state, Mr Sunday Akere said government was aware of the development and was making efforts to bring sanity back to the system.

According to him, officials of the state Ministry of Education have been drafted to the school to prevent further breakdown of law and order.

It would be recalled that the deputy governor Mrs Titi Laoye-Tomori recently held a peace meeting between Christian and Muslim leaders in the community to forestall religious crisis, but yesterday’s development shows more needs to be done to ensure a religious crisis does ensue.