ROLE OF FAITH BASED HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATIONS IN AFRICA

By

Ibn Abdillah As-sudaisiy Al-Iloori

10th October 2024

Yesterday, I had the privilege to moderate a panel session on spirituality and the intersection between faith based humanitarian work in Africa. I had in the panel, Ustadh Abubakar Muhammad, the Amir of 1Ummah and Pastor Jeph Oluwagbemiga, a famous humanitarian officer with track records. 

I had anticipated that kind of opportunity where humanitarian stakeholders from different sectors of our community could come together to brainstorm and collaborate for a better future. 

I thank my sister, Dr. Aishah Adams  for giving me the opportunity to be part of that great initiative and I pray Allāh rewards her efforts abundantly.

There is no doubt about the fact that one of the greatest challenges Africa is facing today is poverty and hunger. In the same vein, we have a lot of people who can't cater for their health and education bills. Some people have their right trampled on and they want to defend themselves, but they lack the resources to achieve this. The need to collaborate with like minds to bring the problems under control is long overdue.

The present economic climate, especially in Nigeria is worrisome. With the rate of inflation, people can hardly feed themselves, let alone feed others. Many have now become beggars. Some people have resorted to self help committing various crimes to make ends meet. I believe the government is trying its best to solve the problem. I pray Allāh guides them aright.

It seems that some politicians in Africa have over the years used poverty and hunger as tools of exploitation of the people. Perhaps, they believe if people feed themselves comfortably, they will not be able to use them for their own cheap political gains. The rate of hunger in our society is one of the reasons vote buying in elections is rampant. Despite the fact that vote buying has been criminalized, it will be difficult to curb as long as the cost of food is still high in the markets. Governments and philanthropists across Africa are urged to pay more attention to projects that will make it easy for people to create wealth and feed themselves with ease. 

There is a need to champion the cause of humanity by fighting poverty and feed the poor to the best of our abilities. The role of faith based humanitarian organisations in achieving this objective cannot be overemphasized. Both the Muslim and Christian humanitarian organisations can collaborate to fix the problem of poverty and hunger in Africa. Humanity is the meeting point for all faith-inspired humanitarian organizations. The greatest of the divine gifts is the intellect. We need to make the best use of it. We can go beyond feeding the poor. We can encourage and empower members of our congregations to be innovative and create wealth for themselves. 

No religion supports begging. In fact, from the Islamic perspective, it is better for someone to go into the bush to collect firewood and make a living from it than to beg for a living. Unfortunately, many people you will see out there begging on the street are people who belong to one faith or the other. Street begging has become a normal thing and patronizing beggars is like encouraging the menace.

Then, there is a practice by which some religious leaders beg for money or extort from people at events. Even many of the faith based I have worked with rely so much on begging online and offline to fund their projects. This has led to donation fatigue over the years. The situation is so bad that many of those that are not truly in need have taken begging as a profession. People now beg for almost everything. The number of flyers out there to seek financial help for one thing or the other is just too much. This practice has even made it difficult to identify those that are truly in need. May Allāh ease the affairs of those that are truly in need.

One of the best ways to curb these problems is to begin to identify those that are truly in need and assist them to the best of our ability. The rich in our society need to rise to these challenges through the institutions of Zakat, Waqf (Endowment) and Sadaqah (charity). We have too many rich people who can champion the cause of the faith based organisations. Faith based humanitarian organisations need not to beg in an humiliating manner before their demands are met by the rich. A lot of rich people are lavishing their wealth on frivolous things instead of using it to uplift the standard of living of others. 

I recently heard that someone needed money for birthday and within 24 hours, his associates contributed over N600m. Whereas, Siddeeqah Foundation will be fine with N100m to help those that are in need for a year. This verse of the Qur'ān is very important:

وَاٰ تِ ذَا الْقُرْبٰى حَقَّهٗ وَا لْمِسْكِيْنَ وَا بْنَ السَّبِيْلِ وَلَا تُبَذِّرْ تَبْذِيْرًا

And give the relative his right, and [also] the poor and the traveler, and do not spend wastefully. (QS. Al-Israa: Verse 26)

It has been noted that every faith based movement needs humanitarian efforts to survive. No faith based effort can succeed without some welfare packages. If we want people to listen to our sermons, lectures and admonition, we need to feed them, help them to solve their problems first so that they will be able to listen to us effectively.

Over the years, I have worked and am still working with some faith based humanitarian organisations like An-nusra Foundation, Siddeeqah Foundation, Ummah Care for Inmate Foundation (UCIF), IslamAffair Care Foundation, Wellness Foundation and some benevolent individuals. The only source of funding the projects of these organizations is voluntary contributions from members and public solicitations. 

Meanwhile, I have noticed that there is so much focus on the month of Ramadan in our humanitarian services. Perhaps, it is due to greater rewards that is attached to doing good in Ramadan. But we need to change this narrative. We can extend our humanitarian projects to the other 11 months too. We can do more in the month of Ramadan, but other months too should not be neglected.