Kaduna Christians threaten to defend selves
Feeling their backs on the wall, Christians in the southern part of Kaduna State have threatened to take the laws into their hands, if the government, to which they submitted their sovereignty under the social contract, refuses to act.
Congress of Northern Nigeria Christians (CNNC), during a world press conference yesterday in Yola, Adamawa State, asserted that Christian youths constitute over a quarter of the country’s population, noting that it would be dangerous to allow such group to embark on self-defence.
The group told the Federal Government that it would not hesitate to mobilise Christian youths in the country to defend their brethren against bandits, if urgent actions were not taken to end “the genocide” in the predominantly Christian southern Kaduna.
According to the National Youth President of CNNC and President of Coalition of Christian Groups for Good Governance (COCGOG), Daniel Kadzia, the Federal Government and Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna have the emergency task of ending the killing of Christians in Kaduna or the Christian youths will mobilise to defend themselves.
El-Rufai’s comment on the southern Kaduna killings, he added, is a pointer that government is deliberately playing politics with the lives of Christians in the state.
“The killings in Jos during former Governor Joshua Dariye, where a state of emergency was declared by then President Olusegun Obasanjo, was child’s play to the level of killings going on in southern Kaduna. So, if not politics, the governor has proved that he is incompetent and the president is supposed to do the necessary thing by declaring a state of emergency in Kaduna,” he stated.
Apparently alluding to the revolt in Central African Republic (CAR) in June 2013 when the Christian majority retaliated the attacks by Muslim sects, Kadzia warned that the Christian youths should not be taken for granted as “they have the capacity to protect their territories where the Federal Government failed.”
MEANWHILE, Senator Shehu Sani, who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th National Assembly, has appealed to both Christians and Muslims in troubled areas to unite and fight terrorism.
During a peace parley between Christian and Muslim leaders in Kajuru Council, Kaduna, Sani told the groups to embrace peace and fight the common enemy.
He pointed out that the killing of innocent people in Kajuru and other parts of southern Kaduna was already threatening the peace and unity of the country.
Also, when he visited the National Headquarters of Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU) in Kaduna yesterday, he pledged to support the union against the genocide.
Sani, who was received by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of SOKAPU, said: “Whenever people face cruelty, genocide, massacre and all kinds of atrocities, it is the moral duty of every man of conscience to lend his voice. I have spoken for the people of Zamfara very elaborately. I did so for Sokoto, Katsina, Niger, Taraba states and for, Borno, Benue and a host of others who are facing similar evils.
“You can’t rationalise or give excuses for an act of genocide, cruelty, mass murder and execution of human being.”
SOKAPU President, Jonathan Asake, had lamented that Kaduna had never been as divided.
He said that Sani’s voice before he got into government, while in the senate and now out of it had been consistent for the suppressed, for justice and fairness.
For Sani, Christians and Muslims must unite to fight banditry that threatens the peace of the region.
According to him, the report of genocide in southern Kaduna is a disgrace to the people of northern Nigeria.
“We have been witnessing killings and bloodshed in Kaduna for 40 years in the name of religion or ethnicity,” he disclosed.
Follow our socials Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google News.
