Muslim group blasts Army for recruiting more Christians into Nigeria Defence Academy

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has lamented what it termed the lopsided recruitments, recently made into the Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna.

Director of the organisation, Prof. Ishaq Akintola in a statement on Monday claimed that the figures listed, particularly for states with Muslim majority population, revealed shocking lopsidedness in the recruitments, as contained in the list of successful candidates in the 65th Regular intake.

He said the list showed that more Christians were picked in Muslim majority states in the North, citing examples including where only five Muslims were picked in Borno state as against eight Christians, only four Muslims picked in Gombe as against ten Christians, while only three Muslims were picked in Kaduna State as against eleven Christians.

“MURIC considers these figures as lopsided, discriminatory and provocative. The exercise appears to have been heavily tainted with religious bias calculated to edge out Nigerian Muslims from military formations in the country.

“It gives undue military advantage to Christians thereby endangering the lives and properties of Muslims nationwide. We frown upon recruitment exercises which fail to recognize the diversity of the Nigerian people.

“NDA is an elitist military institution whose graduates control the military. It will be dangerous for us as a nation if such an institution consistently produces a core of officers whose religious belief tilts towards any particular religion,” MURIC said.