Human rights activist, Femi Falana (SAN) said that those stealing our billions of dollars are Christians or Muslims, is this true?

Human rights activist, Femi Falana (SAN), has affirmed that religion is the real cause of Nigeria’s problems.

He noted that most of the people milking the nation’s treasury dry are either from Islam or Christian religion.

Falana disclosed this at the ongoing week-long conference of the Nigerian Judicial Expert Group.

Speaking on the topic “Law and Religion: The Role of the State”, held at the International Conference Centre, University of Ibadan, the soft-spoken lawyer said until Nigerians changed their perception about religion, the country will continue to retrogress.

According to Falana, “When Karl Marx said ‘religion is the opium of the masses,’ he was only emphasising the manipulation of religion by the ruling class. This goes on in our country. Nigeria is a secular state, there is no apology about it. This does not mean the country or government must not recognise religion.

“What Section 10 of the Constitution simply says is that ‘Nigeria as state shall not adopt any religion as the official religion of the state.’ In Nigeria today, the ruling class has hypocritically adopted two religions – Christianity and Islam. In Osun State, Governor Rauf Aregbesola has recognised the third one – traditional religion.”‎

Falana lamented that though majority of political leaders in the country patronised Christianity, Islam as well as traditional religion, they did not recognise officially, traditional religion.

“The ruling class is deceiving our people because when they get to the boardroom to manipulate the country, when they want to steal money, nobody remembers your religion.

“In fact, all the religions are represented where they are going to steal money. All the people stealing billions of dollars are Christians and Muslims.

“This has nothing to do with sex because the greatest crooks under the current situation are women. I am not saying this to really harass women. I am not being gender insensitive. I just want us to be critical and stop pretending. Don’t be used by the ruling class because our psyche is already militarised. Yet, we all feel as if we are still under military dictators.

“A lady, who was a former Managing Director of a bank, was made to forfeit to the Nigerian state N191.5billion. All the funds stolen by armed robbers since 1960 have not been up to N100billon. She had a jet. Some of them bought jets for their pastors in Nigeria,” Falana said.

“Again, members of the ruling class stole the money meant for procuring arms and ammunition to fight Boko Haram.

“So, we lost 20,000 people in the last six years. $15billon have been stolen from the money meant for procurement of arms. The funds were stolen by Christians and Muslims”‎, he added.