ON Wednesday, July 17, 2019, a humble Nigerian Muslim cleric, Imam Abubakar Abdullahi, stood tall and flew Nigeria’s flag high in America as he was among those the State Department conferred with the 2019 US International Religious Freedom Award.

Imam Abdullahi, a winner of the Vanguard Newspapers’ Lifetime Achievement Award, shared the honour with four others: Mohamed Yosaif Abdulrahman, a Sudanese human rights activist; Ivanir Dos Santos of the Brazilian Commission to Combat Religious Intolerance; William Pascale Warda of Iraq’s Hammurabi Human Rights Organisation and Salpy Eskidjian Weiderud of the Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process.

Apart from Vanguard’s Award, Imam Abdullahi had on June 1, 2019 been honoured by the US Mission in Nigeria with the Ambassador’s Peacemaker Award for Heroism by Ambassador Stuart Symington in Abuja and was later received in audience by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo along with a delegation which included diplomats from the US, UK and the EU.

Imam Abdullahi’s garlands of honour from home and abroad are well deserved because he demonstrated uncommon heroism and patriotism and set a good example as a genuine, God-fearing cleric. A citation on him at the US award ceremony said it all:

“Imam Abubakar Abdullahi selflessly risked his own life to save members of another religious community who would have been killed without his intervention. On June 23, 2018, ethnic Fulani herdsmen, who are predominantly Muslim, launched coordinated attacks on 10 villages in Barkin Ladi, killing hundreds of ethnic Berom farmers, who are predominantly Christian.

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“As Imam Abdullahi was finishing midday prayers, he and his congregation heard gunshots and went outside to see members of the town’s Christian community fleeing. Instinctively, the Imam ushered 262 Christians into his mosque and his home next to the mosque”. He offered to sacrifice himself rather than allow the killers to touch the victims and they were eventually spared.

In a country where religion has created the majority of the wars, crises and even terrorism that are shaking the foundations of our nationhood, the heroism demonstrated by Imam Abdullahi stands out in great relief as a beacon of hope that all is not lost. By putting his life at risk for people of a rival faith in great distress, Abdullahi showed there is nobility in every religion provided its adherents are willing to live by its tenets.

We call on Nigerians to emulate the shining example set by Imam Abdullahi because Christianity, Islam and other faiths have come to stay. All the bloodletting can never achieve any useful purpose except waste precious human lives unnecessarily and lead to more violence.

Nigerians need peace, love, justice and fair-play to cohabit happily and build a great nation where everybody can find fulfilment. We congratulate Imam Abdullahi and wish him the very best.