*As group says successful candidates’ list vindicates it, FG, JAMB
*Time President Buhari must move against CAN – Muslims
*Says “We’ve had enough atrocities from them”
By Kemi Kasumu, General Editor and Busola Samuel
In a statement issued by the group and signed by Oladapo, while breaking down the performance, he noted that out of the total 5,253 successful candidates released by the Police Service Commission, Southern zone produced 2,374 representing 45.2 per cent, while the northern zone produced 2,840 representing 54.2 per cent. He said the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, produced 42 candidates, representing 0.8 percent of the total successful candidates. The situation is the same across other states of the federation. Is it, therefore, not wrong for anyone to accuse JAMB of engaging in religious or ethnic biases? The list is open for everyone to see.”
The Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government, no doubt, has had to grapple with diverse oppositions which include particularly the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) which, unfortunately, is a religious organisation being in conflict with it since period before its emergence till the presence.
The leading opposition being the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a political party that for 16 years held the administration of Nigeria only to be terminated at a time Nigerians looked out through fervent prayers to General Muhammadu Buhari as a rescue, which they achieved with the March 28, 2015 victory of the Daura-born President. While the PDP was firing its arsenal at surface, the CAN has never relented pumping actions from beneath all to ensure the collapse of the government, and there are many facts to prove this, angry respondents told The DEFENDER.
President Buhari has not wavered in fighting the corruption that he discovered has been the bane of Nigeria’s development for the 16 years of the PDP administration but while the PDP politicians have never left anything to chance struggling hard to discredit the anti-corruption crusader.
To achieve their collapse of the Buhari government, the PDP politicians, including the ousted Goodluck Jonathan, whose name keeps being on the lips of alleged looters undergoing trials in Nigerian courts, engage in twist of the President statements, telling lies without bothering about contradiction, spreading of hate speeches, dangerous rumours thereby further dividing Nigerian along religious and ethnic lines tagging it on the Buhari style of government, and even doing quite a lot of misrepresentations of facts to ensure they give President a bad name to stop him from continuing in 2019.
The angle of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in the whole of these is the most unexpected as the religious group has, at every point, made open political statements of hate against the person of the President which includes publicly raining curses during some of the recent protests they held nationwide over the issue of killings and the statement that Buhari should not expect Nigerian Christians will vote for him in 2019.
Earlier, CAN, supported by its elements in the Nigerian media, it was gathered, had waged an unnecessary war against the Buhari’s government when it was hyped that the President had made Arabic and Islamic education compulsory for Christian students thereby fulfilling his alleged Islamisation of the country.
CAN went underground when all its lies became open, yet, up till present, it never thought it fit to apologise to the government that it told lies against and the sensibility of the over 90 million Nigerian Muslims that it offended. Neither the media that helped it hype those lies against the government and the Muslims had even made it a point of order to ask questions why CAN is the only group always found with the kind of atrocious behaviour unexpected of any normal religious group.
The latest being the just concluded test said to have been conducted by Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for the new recruits into the Nigerian Police on the instruction of President Muhammadu Buhari.
To CAN, anything that has to do with Professor Ishaq Oloyede is Islamic just like it takes anything that has to do with President Buhari, which has always informed the attitude of the Christian group towards them such that despite the many positive contributions these personalities have made, which have brought huge improvements to the Nigerian system particular Oloyede’s JAMB, CAN has chosen to misrepresent them to the detriment of the progress that Nigerians regardless of religion and ethnicity should experience.
The news about Police recruits being made to write compulsory Arabic test was heard from the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
Only this Sunday, The DEFENDER gathered, the leadership of an Abuja-based non-governmental organisation, Lygel Youths and Leadership Initiatives (LYLI) said the list of successful candidates in the police recruitment test conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), and as released by the Police Service Commission (PSC) must have absolved the JAMB and the Federal Government of the allegation levelled against them that candidates were tested in Arabic language.
Lekan Oladapo, the Executive Director of the group, who was reacting to the allegation among a section of Nigerians, noted that the geographical distribution of the successful candidates have shown that all the geo-political zones of the country are adequately represented in terms of their performance.
In a statement issued by the group and signed by Oladapo, while breaking down the performance, he noted that out of the total 5,253 successful candidates released by the Police Service Commission, Southern zone produced 2,374 representing 45.2 per cent, while the northern zone produced 2,840 representing 54.2 per cent. He said the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, produced 42 candidates, representing 0.8 percent of the total successful candidates.
He said: “If you break it further, you would realise that each of the states is well represented. For instance, in South East, where we have Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo, the successful candidates were 114, 146, 91, 119, 181 respectively. Whereas in North East, we have Adamawa with 140, Bauchi (133), Borno (189), Yobe (110), Gombe (75) and Taraba with 112.
“The situation is the same across other states of the federation. Is it, therefore, not wrong for anyone to accuse JAMB of engaging in religious or ethnic biases? The list is open for everyone to see.”
The group has, therefore, advised Nigerians to address issues without sentiments and stop creating avoidable crisis.
It would be recalled that the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, had alleged the Federal Government of making Arabic language compulsory for all applicants shortlisted for recruitment into Nigeria Police Force in aptitude test.
In a statement by its National President, Rev Samson Ayokunle, the Christian umbrella body had demanded an evidence of cancellation of the aptitude test, which was organised by JAMB and held in 156 centres across the country.
The statement had read: “The just concluded Nigeria Police entrance examination using JAMB Computer based test (CBT) where Arabic language (the official Islamic language) was made compulsory for Muslims and Christians alike is another dirty slap on the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
“To many Christian youths who sat for that examination, the display of the Arabic language questions came as a rude shock.
“Many could not recover from the setback until JAMB logged them out of the CBT platform. Obviously achieving the aim of the Islamic extremists who are hell bent on fostering their religion and culture on the Nigeria Police Force.”
Perhaps it is one of the problems President Buhari would have had with his own religious constituency, the Nigerian Muslim Community, and his ethnic group, the North, being that much as CAN has been frequent committing these atrocities that, if the Muslims and North were not being patient, would have sparked religious and ethnic unrest in the land.
They are of the mind that the President, who would have acted fast when such misdoing is done by Muslims or Northerners, has failed to move against the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
A particular Muslim in the North, who spoke under condition of anonymity, even asked, “Is it because of politics that Buhari is allowing CAN to carry out all of these provocations against us, his own Muslim people and even Northern people so that Christians will not say he is fighting them? Has the President ever found out from Nigerian Christian if this CAN that actually represent Nigerian Christian Community and even that if they are the ones that send the group to always launch attacks against Islam and any government headed by Muslim or Northerner? He should know that equity and integrity are in the ability to stand against evil and hypocrisy no matter who is involved and for this reason, CAN has committed enough atrocities for this government to move against it like it did against the Islamic Movement of Nigeria in Kaduna. Will heaven fall if CAN is proscribed by this government? Something fast should be done because we have had enough from CAN!” He said.
