Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – February 2, 1984

I heard from the front early in the morning. The situation was the same last night. They are building a road to deliver supplies and power. In the public session of the parliament, the election bill was on the agenda.

At ten o'clock in the morning after breathing, the guests of Fajr came. They watched the performance of the parliament for an hour and chanted and sang hymns and then I spoke in detail. It was translated into Arabic and English. Abu Bakr Mustafa from Nigeria also spoke and was translated. We performed the congregational prayer under my leadership with the guests and had lunch with them in the restaurant. Between the two prayers, a guest from Senegal spoke about the leaders of the Tijani sect and praised our Islamic revolution. He strongly complained and appealed to the pressure that the agents of Saudi Arabia put on the Tijaniyya sect in West Africa as "infidels". He said that we are Sufis and we have more than twenty million members.

After lunch, Sheikh Khalifa came to my office and expressed his need and financial assistance and said that they have a majority in several African countries and that the new president of Nigeria, who recently came to office with a coup d'état, is one of them. I informed them about closing our embassy in Senegal; He was upset. I promised to help. I ordered the foreign minister to meet with them. Because of their attribution to the Prophet's (PBUH) family, they can be warm to us and we can use this great force against reaction and America in Africa.

Mr. [Ahmed] Zerhani also came. He gave explanations about the budget and raised the possibility of bad effects due to the spending of 40 billion tomans from the government's proposed budget in the [Program and Budget] Commission. It was decided to examine its possible effects in a joint meeting between the government and the commission.