He
also told that in spite of the clamour for a president of northern
extraction in 2015, Christians of that enclave “are solidly behind
Jonathan,” and also described some of northern governors’ actions as
religiously motivated.
Read the excerpts of a big interview below:
Q:
Former FCT minister, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai in a recent interview,
referred to the Christian Association of Nigeria as the mouthpiece of
the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), how did the statement come to
you?
I
take his utterance as an insult. For him to take our leader and
associate him with a political party is a total disrespect. It is not
just an insult to our leader; it is also an insult to the Christian
community in Nigeria. We cannot do that to the Muslims. I think
psychiatrists should examine el-Rufai. The way he has been talking of
recent is worrisome. I think he must tender an apology to the Christian
body and our president, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor in particular. We know
that the PDP has its own spokesman. How then will el-Rufai say that?
That is total disrespect. A true Muslim knows that he cannot just
disrespect a religious leader like that. Enough is enough. He’s been
saying a lot of things and we can no longer tolerate that.
Q: The same el-Rufai allegedly tweeted some derogatory things about Jesus Christ some months back…
We
responded to him then and also told him to shut his mouth. If it was a
Christian that said something like that about Islam, this country would
have gone up in flames. That tweet was deliberate. The man is so
arrogant and opens his mouth wide.
Q:
The president of CAN, Oritsejafor revealed sometime last year that the
Christian body would take Boko Haram to the International Criminal Court
(ICC). We’ve not heard anything about it since then. What is the
position of CAN right now on this?
As
at the time our leader, Oritsejafor made that statement, you would
agree that things were really bad in the country. We were helpless then
because nobody was listening to us. But when the Federal Government went
ahead and proscribed them, things became different. We’ve not abandoned
the plan to take the case to ICC. We have to study the whole situation.
The Federal Government has done a lot, even by declaring a state of
emergency. We are both living witnesses to the fact that the killings
have reduced. So, we are warning. We are supporting what the Federal
Government is doing right now. We support them. Christians are not being
killed anymore the way they used to kill them. We’ve not dropped the
idea. We are praying for the security agencies.
Q:
The atrocities committed by the sect for which CAN wanted to take it to
ICC are still there. Does that mean CAN is now going to overlook all
that since there is a planned amnesty for the sect?
I
am not saying that the atrocities will be overlooked. People are still
being killed. If you look at it the way it was, things have slowed down.
That was why I said we were watching. Our lawyers are studying the
situation.
Q:
The president of CAN has openly declared that the proposed amnesty
programme for Boko Haram members will fail. Judging by what you’ve said,
does CAN still maintain that stand?
CAN
has been very consistent since the Federal Government came up with that
word, amnesty. We said ‘no’ from the very beginning. We said you cannot
give amnesty to somebody you don’t know. Let them come out. We’ve never
supported amnesty because you cannot give amnesty to people you don’t
know. That was why when the committee on dialogue invited CAN, we said
we were not going to talk to them. There were two reasons for that. The
committee was given 90 days and it invited CAN towards the last week of
its sitting. We felt it was an after-thought. If you look at the
combination of the committee, out of over 20, only seven of them are
Christians. We felt there will be no justice. So, for us to go and sit
down and begin to talk to a committee that had already finished its
work, was not fair. We Christians are the people who are being killed
and whose churches are being destroyed. We didn’t understand. CAN has
never considered amnesty at all.
The
recent move by the Borno State government to demolish over 20 churches
in the state has been described by many religious leaders as a ploy to
Islamise the region and possibly the country, by shutting down churches.
What is CAN doing about that?
Everybody
is entitled to his own opinion. In our office, we have a letter from
the Ministry of Lands and Survey, Borno State. In that letter, they
wrote, using the authority of the governor that they were going to
remove the people living in that area. When we checked, we discovered
that there are many churches there. These churches have about 600 acres
of land. They have a school. That has a concern. They said they want to
build a housing estate. These people they want to evict are fully
settled. They were given the place a long time ago. For the state
government just to come around and say that they want to demolish the
churches, that raises some concern. We are not talking about
Islamisation. We are talking about fairness. There are 20 churches
there. I can even give you the names of churches in that area.
READ MORE: http://news.naij.com/48381.html
READ MORE: http://news.naij.com/48381.html
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