The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has disagreed with the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III for saying that Christians are not being persecuted in Nigeria and for faulting CAN and the US government’s position on the matter.
CAN, in a statement issued by its director of legal and public affairs, Mr. Samuel Kwamkur in Abuja yesterday insisted that Christians were being killed in Nigeria.
He cited the recent murder on Christmas Day of 11 Christians by the Islamic State in West African Province (ISWAP).
“If truly the Sultan said Christians are not being persecuted in Nigeria…then with due respect, he got it totally wrong… It was painful reading from the media that the Sultan said there was no case of Christian persecution in a country, where Christians are being killed on a daily basis and their landed property confiscated. It would have been better if the Sultan had remained quiet the way he did when those killings were taking place.
“Recalling the several hundreds of innocent people, whose lives were cut short by Fulani herdsmen in Southern Kaduna, Benue, Plateau, Adamawa and Taraba States, (states with Christian majority), it is an insult and insensitivity for anyone to be claiming that the unprecedented persecution did not occur. It is also an act of disrespect to the dead.
“If those responsible for the genocide in the Middle Belt were Fulani atheists, “whose main interest is to protect their cattle,” what stopped him from condemning the unprecedented genocide? By the way, if Fulani atheists took it upon themselves to be killing Christians the way they did in Benue, Southern Kaduna, Plateau, will it still not be called Christian persecution? Do Fulani atheists have the right to be killing people the way they did and are still doing in some part of the country…
“We are happy that the Sultan did not fault our claim that there were unprecedented killings in those areas. Maybe the security agencies would have helped to unmask the culprits and their religion, if they had not appeared powerless while the killings lasted. It is reprehensible that to date, those who killed our brothers and sisters after raping and maiming them for weeks are still at large as if they were spirits,” said Kwamkur
Staying on the killing of hundreds of Christians by the Fulani herdsmen in Southern Kaduna, Benue, Plateau, Adamawa and Taraba states, Kwamkur said: “According to a highly respected organisation, the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, a British non-profit organisation run by a member of the British House of Lords, Baroness Cox, no fewer than 1,000 Christians were killed by the Fulani herdsmen this year alone while about 6,000 have been killed since 2012 and 12,000 displaced. If this is not persecution, what is it?”
Kwamkur said CAN would only stop complaining when there’s a just society, where the rule of law, fairness, and social justice are allowed and appealed to the federal government to let the Constitution be its guide in all its policies and operations.
