Christian leaders in the North have urged their followers to disregard antics of Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, to further divide Nigerians along religious and ethnic lines and plunge the nation into chaos.

In a release made available to The Guardian in Kaduna, the Christian body said: “Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) admonishes all and sundry not to be deceived. That we suffer fuel scarcity and lack of new currency together shows that Nigeria is for Muslims and Christians and only true leaders respect our togetherness as a natural phenomenon.”

The group urged “all Christians in Northern Nigeria not to fall for el-Rufai’s ploy to build unnecessary tension among the people and diverting attention, when we have serious issues in the nation needing urgent explanations.

“El-Rufai’s raising of the question of religious identity could correspondingly be a political game aimed at stirring up naive persons to be emotive, thereby, spilling votes or wasting them, to help El-Rufai’s candidate have an upper hand in the forthcoming election. The quest for a Nigeria, which embraces people, irrespective of their place of origin or faith, must not be sacrificed on the altar of divisive politicians.”

The statement was issued by the Kaduna State chairman of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Rev. John Joseph Hayab, who also doubles as the vice chairman of Northern CAN.

The group accused the governor of using religious card to whip up sentiments in Kaduna State through a Muslim-Muslim ticket in 2019, adding that a similar card was introduced through the presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, with a conviction that he could, thereby, win the 2023 polls.

The statement added “Governor El-Rufai should be known by now as one who loves to divert attention from burning issues of the day, playing on the religious divide in Kaduna State and the North.

“For all we know, the governor comes up as an attention seeker. And, now that his days in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House are numbered, he has started another joke. People of goodwill will not forget in a hurry the first strategy el-Rufai used to further divide the populace in Kaduna State when he emerged as governor in 2015.

“Shortly after he was sworn in, he made baseless assertions that Christians in the state were only 30 per cent while Muslims were 70 per cent. Such a claim is not backed by any official data, either by the National Population Commission or any accessible data. But el-Rufai made such an unwarranted utterance, to pave way for his selfish agenda, scheming how to divide and polarise a diverse society for his gains.

“In a just society, one does not require numerical force to dispense justice. But zealots of dissension, like el-Rufai, have always engaged the religious divide to make fraudulent claims.” (The Guardian)

Update news