A radical Muslim group that triggered panic over polio immunisation in northern Nigeria said on Tuesday it remains opposed to the vaccine, despite it being passed as safe by a hardline state government.Polio vaccination was suspended in Kano state in August last year after some Muslim imams alleged that the drugs distributed by United Nations health agencies had been laced with chemicals as part of a Western plot to make African girls infertile. On Monday, Kano's Governor Ibrhaim Shekarau announced that local tests had confirmed that the vaccine -- which has been in use all over the world for several decades -- is indeed safe, and ordered the resumption of vaccination. But Nafiu Baba Ahmed, secretary general of a small but influential pressure group known as the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, attacked the findings and warned that many Muslims will continue to shun the vaccine. "We believe that the Kano state government was forced into submission due to pressure and propaganda from the West," he said. "It's a blatant lie that the substances found in the vaccine are too insignificant to cause harm. Many a time a drug will be certified as safe but after some years will be withdrawn after a lot of damage had been done."
Asked whether his group will continue to campaign against the vaccination once Kano state, the Nigerian federal government and UN agencies have restarted the long-delayed campaign, Ahmed said: "We feel we have done our best. A lot of people will no longer take part in the polio vaccination exercise becuase of the fear that they have regarding the immunisation and in particular the scientific proof that it can cause infertility in children," he claimed. Shekarau's earlier decision to prevent the innoculation of infants in Kano, the teeming commercial capital of Nigeria's Muslim north, had been criticised by international health officials. The World Health Organisation and the UN Children's Fund said that polio, which they still hope to eradicate globally by the end of the year, has spread from Nigeria to other African countries once regarded as safe from the disease. With 257 cases, Nigeria now has more than three-quarters the world's active polio infections, which strikes babies and toddlers and leaves them with permanently withered or lifeless limbs, the UN agencies said. |