Islamic scholar Mufti Ismail ibn Musa Menk believes with Nigeria’s vast human and natural resources, the country can become the best in Africa.

The Zimbabwean cleric said this when he visited President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

To harness Nigeria’s greatness, the Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe’s Muslim community said the citizens must be united and also respect their leaders.

“We need to be a united people. We need to respect each other – the leadership that – we have we should appreciate it. We should acknowledge it. We should understand that if we are going to respect our leadership, we will be able to achieve as a nation. If you look at the countries that have failed, it’s because they don’t respect their leadership and they actually fail as a result,” he said on Friday after the meeting with Tinubu.

“But if we are going to rally behind the leadership and ensure that every one of us contributes positively to this nation, Nigeria can be the best nation in Africa, and in all honesty, I believe the population, the resources, and everything we have in Nigeria.

“Being an African coming from Zimbabwe, we always look at Nigeria as one of the biggest economies, if not the biggest in Africa. I believe it is the right time to be upright and honest and to serve the nation and in this way, we will be able to be a shining example for the rest of Africa. I always pray that we can be upright citizens, and in that way, we will achieve more than what we’ve actually dreamt of.”

He said he and the delegation of scholars came to Nigeria for a peace and unity convention.

The “idea is to be able to empower Nigerians as such to live together in harmony, to coexist; to respect each other with the differences – be from different faiths different backgrounds – in order to see the success of this nation,” he added.