By Kemi Kasumu
Three days after Nigera’s President Muhammadu Buhari declared that 90 percent of Boko Haram victims are Muslims, the declaration has been re-echoed due to what some watchers of events called the hypocrisy of some critics over the presidential position they described as statement of fact.
They are however disappointed that the critics, mainly Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and few other remnants of coalition that still nurse grudges one year after losing a presidential election they mischievously tried hard to scuttle, failed persistently to justify their denial of the President’s claim.
Among the critics is former Minister of Aviation Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, whose criticism of the existing facts had earned him a baptism by Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) that called him, “a liar”.
This development was coming more, following attempt by some Christian leaders in the country to deny or twist the narratives over the christianism of arrested Nathaniel Samuel, who attempted to bomb the Kaduna branch of Living Faith Church.
The Christian leaders, particularly those within the CAN hierarchy, had flared misinforming the public and international communities that judge Nigeria by CAN’s information of “Christian persecution” in Nigeria, made huge efforts to dodge the Christian identify of Samuel when they said with all boldness that he is actually a Muslim but that police paraded him as Christian.
The CAN leaders have since been presented by father of the suspected bomber as religious leaders perpetrating falsehood through the Nigerian airwaves, digital and print media although they continue to take followers for granted over their misleadership like they have committed no wrong.
The Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA, MURIC and Special Adviser to President Buhari on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie, further exposed their lies by listing out to the CAN leaders many attacks carried out even on churches by Christian terrorists in Nigeria but were mischievously tagged to Muslims.
It takes the intervention by God him that all of these Revelations are now coming out, which CAN had worked on the media to hide for years, a respondent, who chose not to be mentioned, said.
The DEFENDER reports that few years back, pastor of a Baptist Church who doubled as CAN Chairman in Ola Oluwa Local Government Area of Osun State, had sponsored three members of his church to dress like Islamic clerics and come to attack his own church at the peak of a Sunday service. The findings revealed that their Christian identify would have lost and blame shifted to Muslims therefore further endangering the Muslims of South West, had the trio of fake Boko Haram not been arrested and tortured by youths of the community.before they handed over police, an account by Academy of Islamic Propagation in Nigeria, ACADIP, said.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday said 90 per cent of all Boko Haram’s victims in the past years have been Muslims.
The insurgents began their heinous activities in 2009 after the killing of the leader Mohammed Yusuf. Global Terrorism Index indicates that the group since 2009, has killed tens of thousands and displaced 2.3 million.
President Buhari in an article published in Speaking Out, a guest opinion column for “Christianity Today”, said that the perception that members of the sect were always targeting Christians in Nigeria is not true.
According to him, the terrorists have targetted vulnerable Nigerians without discrimination.
“it is the reality that some 90 per cent of all Boko Haram’s victims have been Muslims,” Buhari said.
“They include a copycat abduction of over 100 Muslim schoolgirls, along with their single Christian classmate, shootings inside mosques; and the murder of two prominent imams.
“It is a simple fact that these now-failing terrorists have targeted the vulnerable, the religious, the non-religious, the young, and the old without discrimination, ” the President stressed.
The President assured that his government was committed to bringing an end to activities of insurgents.
Buhari warned individuals, organisations and groups seeking to divide the country through religion to have a rethink.
“There is no place in Nigeria for those who seek to divide us by religion, who compel others to change their faith forcibly or try to convince others that by so doing, they are doing good,” Buhari said.
“We may not, yet, be completely winning the battle for the truth. Christianity in Nigeria is not—as some seem intent on believing—contracting under pressure, but expanding and growing in numbers approaching half of our population today.”
President Buhari stated that the terrorists today only attempt to build invisible walls between the adherents of the two major religions in Nigeria.
“They have failed in their territorial ambitions, so now instead they seek to divide our state of mind, by prying us from one from another to set one religion seemingly implacably against the other,” Buhari said.
