By Abba Dukawa

The litmus test for true belief and genuine worship is that to lead a compassionate living. The Holy Quran clearly emphasized righteousness is not in precise observance of the prayers and other rites but in acts of compassion and kindness.

There are two hundred verses about Compassion among peoples in the Quran and all these verses stress the importance of compassion, love and kindness among peoples.

Despite the proliferation of mosques everywhere even in the markets and people hurriedly join prayers in congregations but in their conduct, there is no much compassion, love and kindness as Almighty Allah stressed.

It is in Nigeria, that traders take advantage of every period at the detrains of customers and poor who are struggling to survive untold suffering perpetrated by these selfish business tycoons.

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They mindlessly crave materialism by all means at expense of peoples hardship. I am not trying in any way to portray them as evils but their conduct makes them look like.

The wisdom Almighty made fasting obligatory to all Muslims is to bring equality between the poor and the rich. Allah willed to create equal experiences between His servants by giving the rich a taste of the pain of hunger so they will become more lenient to the poor. Instead to become more lenient their blindly putting peoples into abject hardship.

Sadly for essential commodities traders especially at Ramadan, the period has become an annual season to subject people to undeserved hardship by making millions of households go through hardship as a result of their heartless action of hike in commodities prices.

But only for them,  it has become a tradition to take their families to perform unnecessary lesser Hajj without considering millions of households in abject poverty due to their acts with a high cost of living.

If they can curtail their materialistic tendencies and pay attention to the teachings of the Holy Quran, surely, the society and people will certainly become a much happier place to live in and  Allah will bless them and protect their fortune but greed will not set their eyes-free.

To be fair, wealthy individuals, public servants, especially elected and appointees are more supportive in a display of compassion,  and kindness in this month. Despite the fact that elected and appointees are mostly insulted by the poor but are more supportive to them as they free millions of homes from lack of assorted grains and other goodies.

It is indeed instructive for traders to recognize that this year  Ramadan coincides with inflation which has hit another high record of 17 per cent with a high level of unemployment in the country, which has reached an all-time high of 33 per cent.

With this twin problem of unemployment and inflation, many are hoping that this year Ramadan assistance to the neediest in the society by wealthy peoples will be much more than that of last year because it coincides with COVID- 19 pandemic global shutdown which denied them an opportunity of performing lavish annual lesser Hajj.

We should, therefore, as a people, use the fasting period to examine our hearts, take responsibility for our misdeeds examine our hearts, make amends and also to seeks Allah forgiveness and refrain from evil vices.

Holy Quran stresses clearly righteousness is not in precise observance of the prayer and other rituals but in acts of compassion and kindness. Quran 2:178)

Stitch in time, they say, saves nine

Dukawa ,a Public affairs commentator can be reached at abbahydukawa@gmail.com