The Muslim Ummah of South West Nigeria (MUSWEN) has warned religious leaders in Nigeria to watch their utterances so as not to further worsen the already bad state of distrust among religious groups in the country.

MUSWEN, in a statement signed by its Executive Secretary, Professor Noib Daud, in Ibadan, called on the Nigerian Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) to address, with the support of government, the issue of unguarded utterances by religious leaders.

Apparently reacting to  a statement credited to the Enugu State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Reverend Paul Emeka, in one of the national dailies, MUSWEN expressed dismay over the call on the Federal Government of Nigeiria to invite foreign countries, specifically America and Israel, to come and help in fighting the Boko Haram group.

“Bad as the menace of the so-called Boko Haram is, Reverend Emeka’s unconfirmed allegation that the group was planning to carry out attacks in the “South-East, South-South and the South-West’ could not be a genuine or reasonable justification for inviting America and Israel to come and help Nigeria to fight the group,” the group said.

On the contrary, MUSWEN said that the Reverend’s choice of those two countries was a betrayal of a clearly sinister motive, in the light of the well known long standing and increasing distrust that exists between those two countries on the one hand and the Muslim world on the other.

According to the group, Nigeria cannot afford the luxury of officially inviting that kind of belligerence that has done so much harm to the world in general.