Two influential Islamic groups in Nigeria have urged Muslims to resist the government's immunisation programme aimed at eradicating the polio virus. They alleged the immunisation is dangerous.
The Supreme Council for Shari'ah in Nigeria (SCSN) and the Kaduna State Council of Imams and Ulama said in a communiqué issued at the end of a joint meeting in the northern city of Kaduna on Sunday they considered government motives for the programme suspicious.
Muslims, the statement said, must be "wary of the polio vaccination being aggressively and religiously pursued" by the government with the United Nations agencies - World Health Organization and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) - "because of its potential dangers".
Sheik T. Suleiman of the Council of Ulamas, who signed the statement with Sheik Zubairu Sirajo of SCSN, told reporters the two bodies had found evidence the polio vaccine was intended to sterilise children and control population growth.
"Our doctors have conducted extensive research on this. It is a plot by the Western world to reduce the population of Nigeria and other developing countries," he said.
"There has been absolutely no evidence to back up what they are saying. In fact, the contrary is the case - the vaccines have been independently verified and found to be totally safe", UNICEF-Nigeria spokesman, Tom Mshindi, told IRIN in rebutting the clerics' allegations.
"That such claims are being made indicates the extent to which work needs to be done to educate people on the essence of the polio immunisation effort."
In recent years international agencies involved in the polio eradication effort have encountered resistance to immunisation in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria, fuelled by the preaching of some clerics alleging that the vaccines either caused sterility or contained HIV.
To overcome this belief the agencies, working with top Muslim doctors in the region, have conducted widely publicised evaluations of the vaccines to prove to the public that there is nothing sinister about immunisation.
Nigeria is one of five countries which, together, account for more than 85 percent of new polio cases worldwide. The others are Afghanistan, India, Niger and Pakistan. All nine states where polio cases have been identified in Nigeria are in the north.