An Islamic human rights organization, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has accused the Lagos State Ministry of Education of inserting Bible knowledge questions in the 2022 entrance examination for Lagos State public schools. The group alleged that the development gave Christian candidates an edge over their Muslim counterparts and put Muslim candidates at a great disadvantage as they are certain to miss those questions.
This was disclosed in a press statement issued on Tuesday 2nd August 2022 by the group’s director, Professor Ishaq Akintola.
The statement reads:
“Our office has been inundated by reports of strange questions in a general paper set for the Lagos State Primary Six Placement Test Into JSS 1 in Lagos secondary schools held on Saturday, 23rd July 2022. The reference number on the question paper was LSA/PT/2022.
“Although the paper was captioned English Studies/Verbal Reasoning/General Paper, specifically, questions 12 and 14 were straight from the Bible and only Christian candidates could have made head or tail of them. These two questions were designed for Muslims to fail.
The questions were designed to upset Muslim students and make them lose confidence in themselves thereby leading to confusion, frustration, and ultimate failure. The caption of that paper should have been ‘Common Entrance in Lagos State…Muslims Come and Fail’.
“Question number 12 which is an objective, says, ‘Paul was born in a city called …Tarsus…Jerusalem…Jordan…Bethel. Candidates were expected to pick one of the four options. But how on earth is a Muslim candidate expected to know what to pick? Ditto for question number 14 which reads ‘The English Bible was translated into the Yoruba language by …Pastor Joseph Ayo Babalola…Bishop Benson Idahosa…Pastor Enoch Adeboye … Bishop Ajayi Crowther.
“Lagos Muslims pay tax like their Christian counterparts. Why then are they being relegated to third-class citizens? The tax paid by them forms part of the state’s internally generated revenue which is used to pay the staff of the Ministry of Education and its teachers, including those who drafted those two offensive questions.
“No attempt was made to balance the trend and thus mitigate the offense by adding two Islamic questions. The paper was therefore a direct assault on Islamdom. The authors are daring Muslim parents and other Muslims in Lagos State to do their worst.
“Therefore, we demand an apology from the Ministry of Education. Furthermore, we demand an investigation into circumstances surrounding the inclusion of such sectional, insensitive, repugnant, and religiously volatile questions in a general paper.”
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