{"id":2932,"date":"2022-10-06T18:07:36","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T18:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/?p=2932"},"modified":"2022-10-06T18:07:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T18:07:39","slug":"religious-harmony-commission-bill-scales-second-reading-in-house-of-reps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/religious-harmony-commission-bill-scales-second-reading-in-house-of-reps\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Harmony Commission Bill Scales Second Reading in House of Reps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A bill to establish a National Religious Harmony Commission sponsored by Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, scaled Second Reading in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 27<sup>th<\/sup> September 2022 and was referred to the Committee of the Whole. According to the bill, the Commission will be responsible for the following, among others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Dealing with matters relating to the protection of the\nfundamental human right to freedom of religion and belief; <\/li><li>Assisting victims of religious discrimination or\nviolations and seeking appropriate redress and remedies on their behalf; <\/li><li>Monitoring, investigating and prosecuting cases of\nreligious discrimination, victimisation and harassment; <\/li><li>Monitoring and investigating all cases of religious\nextremism, hate speeches and utterances meant to incite religious violence and\nprosecute persons responsible for such speeches;<\/li><li>Creating awareness and promoting advocacy through\nseminars, workshops and conferences on religious harmony and inter-faith\npeaceful co-existence and any other programmes. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nbill establishes a Governing Council for the Commission comprising a Chairman,\nSecretary, representatives of various religions, including the Christian,\nIslamic and African Traditional religions, representatives of select government\nministries and agencies, as well as professional associations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nbill prohibits all forms of religious discrimination, violence, victimisation,\nharassment and religiously induced hate speeches. Complaints of violations of\nreligious rights may be made to the Commission&nbsp;\nby affected persons or their representatives. The Commission while enquiring\ninto such complaints, is empowered to call for information or report from\nindividuals, private or public corporations, government agencies or any other\nauthority. The bill also establishes a Legal, Investigation and Prosecution\nDepartment for the Commission, which shall be responsible for investigating and\nprosecuting offences related to the violation of religious rights. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where\nit establishes the violation of any religious rights by an individual or public\nservant, the Commission is empowered to direct the concerned individual or\ngovernment authority to pay compensation or damages to the complainant\/victim\nor his\/her family members or prosecute the perpetrating individual or\nauthority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nCommission will be funded by monies provided by the Government of the\nFederation, fees charged for services rendered by the Commission, gifts,\ntestamentary dispositions, endowments and philanthropic contributions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nigeria\nis a diverse nation comprising several ethnic groups and religions, which have\nsometimes been the basis for incitement that culminated in violence. Therefore,\nthe need for tolerance for the diversity of ethnic groups and religious cannot\nbe overemphasised. However, there may be questions raised as to whether this\nCommission will be duplicating existing functions of other agencies including\nthe National Human Rights Commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bill to establish a National Religious Harmony Commission sponsored by Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, scaled Second Reading in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 27th September 2022 and was referred to the Committee of the Whole. According to the bill, the Commission will be responsible for the following, among others: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2939,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions\/2939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}