ABUJA, MAY 9, 2018 – President Muhammadu Buhari has declared that the masterminds of the growing killings were out to cause war in the country for their selfish purposes.
He vowed to bring the perpetrators to book and protect all Nigerians.
Buhari through his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said: “These persistent killings are not spontaneous; there are subterranean forces with a sinister agenda to instigate war in the country for selfish purposes.
“Although unconventional war is particularly complicated, our security forces are making rigorous efforts to better understand these enemies with a view to decisively check their evil attacks,” he said.
But the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Advisory Board has said that the killings were part of the plots by some Islamic fundamentalists to fully Islamise Nigeria by 2025.
Through the chairman of the board and Methodist presbyter, Anyanya Circuit in Akwa Ibom State, Very Rev. Otuekong Ukut, CAN said that the massacre of mainly Christian communities in the North and the Middle Belt by herdsmen and Boko Haram terrorists was to dislodge Christians from their ancestral lands and pave the way for the total Islamisation of the country by 2025.
In a statement he issued on Monday, Shehu said that the rising spate of incessant killing of innocent Nigerians across the country was the handiwork of sinister selfish interests insistent on instigating war in Nigeria.
On the weekend killing of scores of persons in Birnin Gwari, Kaduna State , Shehu quoted Buhari to have said that “these persistent killings are not spontaneous; there are subterranean forces with a sinister agenda to instigate war in the country for selfish purposes.
Buhari extended his condolences to the families of the victims, the government and the people of Kaduna State over this unfortunate tragedy, assuring them that his administration would never abandon them to their fate.
He said: “I am deeply outraged by this unwarranted, unprovoked and reckless destruction of lives by bandits who belong to the lowest level of civilisation. I feel the pains and devastation of the families of the victims, and this administration will do everything possible to ensure we defeat these enemies of humanity.”
The President approved the establishment of a new Battalion of the Nigerian Army and a new Police Area Command in Birnin Gwari Local Government Area of Kaduna State, as part of measures to scale up the security response to the banditry affecting the .
He further assured Nigerians that security remained the priority of his government and would not tolerate the persistent killing of innocent people in order to set Nigerians against one another.
Buhari explained that the new Army Battalion and the Police Area Command are the latest in a series of law enforcement measures to ensure more effective protection of lives and property, in and around Benue, Kaduna, Taraba, Zamfara and Nasarawa States.
Last week, the Nigerian Air Force took delivery of two new helicopter gunships, for deployment in parts of the country affected by banditry.
A Quick Response Wing has also been established by the Nigerian Air Force in Taraba State, while a Joint Military Intervention Force is fully on ground in Benue State.
In another statement, Buhari accused the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of tribalism in its letter to the United Nations (UN) alleging that he had been behind the wanton killings by suspected herdsmen in the Middle Belt region.
The President said that the letter written by PDP Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, to the UN Secretary-General, confirmed the party as a bad loser, desperate for another chance after it were kicked out for failing Nigerians.
Describing the letter as preposterous and comical, Shehu in the statement he issued on Monday, said that the PDP was merely elevating beer parlour gossips and trying to make political capital out of the killings of innocent Nigerians.
According to him, “regarding the accusation that President Buhari is behind the spate of herdsmen and farmer clashes in the Middle Belt of Nigeria, all we will say is that it as an embarrassing charge that the PDP would make, conveying an allegation from the beer parlours of Nigeria to an international body like the UN.”
In a key note address at the 8th annual Synod of Ebenezer Methodist, Umuahia, Rev Ukut called on Christians to resist the evil agenda of the Islamic fundamentalists.
Ukut said that already, all northern states had fallen to the Islamic fundamentalists, hence, their desperate push towards the Middle Belt and Southern parts of the country, which he said, must be resisted at all cost.
He warned Christians not to joke with the 2019 elections which, according to him, will decide the fate of the country, depending on the religious inclination of the winner of the presidential poll.
The cleric wondered why some Christians were still standing aloof while the “jihadists” were registering under-aged voters to help them manipulate the outcome of the elections in their favour.
He urged Christians of voting age to get their voter cards and use it wisely in 2019.
He regretted that the security agencies had appallingly decided to look the other way while herdsmen continually spill the blood of Christians in the country.
“They have captured all the northern states and have now pushed into other parts of Nigeria to meet the target of 2025.
“They have captured the Federal Government of Nigeria and all the arms of defence – the Army, Air Force, Navy, Police, Civil Defence, Customs, Immigration, Prisons and the Presidency, among others,” he said.
The cleric supported the clamour for political restructuring, insisting that it the remains the only survival option if Nigeria is to continue as a united entity.
He however, suggested that if it becomes obvious that Nigeria could no longer peacefully co-exist as one political entity in view of the daily killings of Christians and the government’s criminal silence, it would be better if the country is dissolved into manageable smaller entities.
He supported a fragmented Nigeria as earlier suggested by the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) “where (North-Sarduana Republic), (Middle Belt-Tiv-Tukun), (West-Oduduwa) as well as (East-Biafra) and (South-South Atlantic Republic) will be on their own to end the bondage once and for all.”
