Exploiting the ignorance of the majority is wickedly selfish and sadistic. If truly the West or America has any plan to reduce Muslim population by inducing infertility through immunization, why do they need to achieve this objective only through vaccines?

Can't they achieve the same objective through foods and drugs, which we import and consume daily? Isn't their science advanced enough to achieve this objective by other means? Islam is expanding in the U.S. and Europe and one wonders why the West didn't see the need to reduce their Muslim populations through public health policies.

Nigerians may wonder why a medical doctor like Dr. Datti Ahmed should lend his support to this counter-productive propaganda against our children. Let us not forget, however, that the virus of extremism and confusion can also infect even educated men like doctors.

The Egyptian born Mohammed Al-Wazihiri, the successor to the late Osama Bin Laden as the leader of Al-Qaeda terror network, is a medical doctor! Did we also forget that Dr. Joseph Mengele, notoriously known as the Angel of Death, was a medical doctor administering lethal injection on the Jews during Hitler's Germany? The chief prosecutor to the 1946 Nuremberg war crime trials, the late Telford Taylor, said doctors without conscience are the ultimate evil!

Having wrongly converted many Muslims to the idea that polio immunization is intended to decimate their population in disguise, why should anybody be surprised at the latest killing of nine polio immunization officials in Kano State? The fact that armed extremists have now joined the campaign to express violent opposition to polio immunization is bad enough.

However, the responsibility for this tragedy must be laid at the doorsteps of those who started the anti-polio campaign in 2003. Manipulating the religious emotions of gullible Muslims for cheap popularity is vile and indefensible.

When you tell Muslims to reject polio immunization, you have a duty to give them alternative. Unfortunately, Dr. Datti Ahmed and his group have no such alternative of saving children from polio infection. Should we then abandon our children to their fates, watching them become cripples and permanently incapacitated, denying them the benefits of immunization? Poliomyelitis is preventable and although it is not a fatal disease, it can badly damage the quality of life of its victims.

In leading Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, vaccination certification is a requirement for entering the country. Do governments in Pakistan with 178 million Muslim population and Indonesia with 204 million not love their peoples by allowing their children enjoy the benefits of immunization? Moderate Muslim leaders must rise up to this challenge and save our children from being destroyed by cranks that thrive on causing confusion and disrupting our progress.

Although the Federal Government has paid one million naira each to the families of the polio immunization officials killed by unknown gun men, the problem still lies in the entrenched prejudice against the programme by fanatics who effectively have declared war against our children.

They are harming Muslims by this dangerous propaganda against the polio immunization policy. We therefore, have a duty to rise against these enemies of our children.. If they don't like polio immunization, it is their business. They have no right, however, to deny or discourage others from taking advantage of the immunization policy to protect their children.

-Zagga sent in this piece from Abuja