CAN, by rejecting US policy shift on Nigeria, ‘appears forever incapable of doing the right thing even by mistake’ – Public Affairs Analyst

By KEMI KASUMU

“The argument based on the logic in illogicality is clearly entombed in the statement from the CAN’s President that reads: “The US government did not contact us when they were listing Nigeria among the ‘countries of particular concern’ on religious freedom, neither did they seek our opinion before removing Nigeria from the list. If they had done, we would have been able to compare the statistics then and now on the issue of freedom of religion in Nigeria”. In other words, CAN knows that its opinion is inconsequential as far as US decisions on this matter is concerned.”

Just like it is said that it cannot be finished until it is finished, the widespread condemnations that have hit the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) over its insistently “unjustified” misrepresentation of Nigeria as a country where Christians are killed by a President Muhammadu Buhari, who by chance happens to be of Islam background, may not have subsided.

This is because, there has been another voice that has revisited the Christian group’s recent rejection of United States removal of Nigeria from the religion freedom blacklist whereby its President, Pastor Samson Ayokunle, slammed Washington saying it erred by taking such decision.

Mr. Oladosu Adedimeji, a public affairs analyst, in his new article distributed to the media including The DEFENDER, said the CAN allowing itself to be dragged continuously on such path, which many commentators have described as seeing ghost where others see life, shows that it is incapable of doing things right even by mistake.

According to him, “On Friday, the 19th of November, 2021, and in furtherance of its self-imposed mandate as the ‘police’ of the whole world, the United States issued a declaration on removing Nigeria from the list of ‘Countries of Particular Concern’, the term it uses to designate nations that severely violate religious freedom.

“But less than 24 hours after, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), in a statement by its President, Dr. Samson Ayokunle, expressed its rejection of the US policy shift.

“A quick but not necessarily flippant reading of the statement would compel the conclusion that like the leopard that cannot change its spots, CAN appears forever incapable of doing the right thing even by mistake,” he said.

Adedimeji did not just slam CAN for no significant cause.  He cited the implication of the religious organization behaviour considered to be anti-progress, anti-peace, and anti-development.

“In other words, the CAN’s statement, like the ones it has always issued over the years each time religion and religious practices in this country occupy global attention, was premised on, at least, four arguments; arguments that were both visionary and logical except that the part that was visionary was not logical, and quite ironically too, the part that was logical was not visionary,” he said.

Analysing the CAN’s statement he said, “The first argument on which the Association premised its rebuttal of the US decision is based on non-availability of data. According to the CAN President, his Association was “at a loss on the data or statistics used by the US government in arriving at delisting Nigeria from the list”. Only a genius such as Reverend Ayokunle with deep knowledge of international relations and an expert in the US global geopolitics would have expected the government of the United States to have shared sensitive data at its disposal with non-state actors like CAN before making its conclusions public.

“But the tenor and strength in the argument on the non-availability of data upon which the CAN President hinged his dissent actually pales into insignificance when we consider the second argument, namely argument based on the logic in illogicality.”

In the article titled, “US policy shift and CAN’s politics of illogic”, Mr. Adedimeji said:

“The argument based on the logic in illogicality is clearly entombed in the statement from the CAN’s President that reads: “The US government did not contact us when they were listing Nigeria among the ‘countries of particular concern’ on religious freedom, neither did they seek our opinion before removing Nigeria from the list. If they had done, we would have been able to compare the statistics then and now on the issue of freedom of religion in Nigeria”. In other words, CAN knows that its opinion is inconsequential as far as US decisions on this matter is concerned.

“But the President of CAN still went ahead to argue that though it would be both jejune and puerile for his Association to request that the US should have sought its opinion, it would still wish that was done! In fact, as if it was his intention to ensure that the illogic in this argument becomes logical, the CAN President concluded by saying: “Once again, we urge the US government to help us by allowing us to know what has changed between the time our country was put in the list of ‘countries of particular concern’ and now”! Is there a better way to dig one’s grave with one’s teeth than this?

“The third argument is probably that which is premised on the nation’s vulnerability and insecurity particularly in parts of north-eastern Nigeria. Here the CAN President premised his argument on the killings and violence being perpetrated by “…ISWAP, Boko Haram and other terrorist organisations…” He contended that “Christians had faced and are still facing persecution…” and that “…bandits have joined other militant Islamic groups to be ferociously attacking churches, killing worshippers and kidnapping for ransom….” There is therefore no doubt that this statement is weird, mendacious, preposterous and baleful. It is sui generis for the fallacies upon which it premised its arguments and for the solecism in its conclusion,” he tore up Ayokunle’s otherwise position paper.

“If CAN’s argument were to be upended, then Christians in Nigeria should be accused of systematically oppressing and carrying out overt and covert Christianization agenda in the country. Or how else might the recent invasion of public secondary schools in Oyo State by Christian missionaries be described? Or how else might the attempt to force young and highly impressionable Muslim students into abandoning Islam other than Christianization agenda? How else do we describe Christian prayer sessions every morning in government offices and the disciplinary actions being meted out to conscious Muslim public servants for their refusal to join in singing and dancing for Jesus Christ?”

He then comforted himself saying, “Discerning Nigerians are fully aware that Muslims in the north-east have been the most adversely affected by the egregious activities of the insurgents in the region; the Muslim faithful have suffered more; countless number of mosques have been lost to the violence than churches. To claim, as the CAN President has done, that Nigerian Christians have “…lost many people and places of worship” to the activities of the herders in the “Northcentral and the Northeast part of the country” is to indulge in argument ad passiones – argument based not on facts, but on assumptions, conjectures and suppositions. It is an argument that would have enjoyed some plausibility had it been that Christians constitute the majority in the northeast where Muslims have been killed in their thousands simply because they did not subscribe to the infamous ideology and methodology of the Boko Haram.

“If CAN’s argument were to be upended, then Christians in Nigeria should be accused of systematically oppressing and carrying out overt and covert Christianization agenda in the country. Or how else might the recent invasion of public secondary schools in Oyo State by Christian missionaries be described? Or how else might the attempt to force young and highly impressionable Muslim students into abandoning Islam other than Christianization agenda? How else do we describe Christian prayer sessions every morning in government offices and the disciplinary actions being meted out to conscious Muslim public servants for their refusal to join in singing and dancing for Jesus Christ?” Oladosu Adedimeji said more in the article earlier published.

It will be recalled that in a recent report titled “US erred in delisting Nigeria from religious freedom blacklist, CAN kicks, replied”, with link: https://thedefenderngr.com/us-erred-in-delisting-nigeria-from-religious-freedom-blacklist-can/ , The DEFENDER quote a source saying: “The questions many, including fellow Christian faithful, have asked but which CAN has been unable to answer are: One, how many Muslims outside the circle of criminal group called Boko Haram have come publicly to justify violence either by Qur’an or by self design of leaders? Where has it happened in history that a President that got popular votes of his people would use the military power of state to kill the same people?”

“Don’t forget this same CAN through its level leaderships has publicly defended and protected ‘Christian’ terrorism like the young pastor that was caught with bombs wanting to bomb Winners Chapel in Kaduna on a Sunday and its kick against a Yola court’s sentence of five Christian youths, who killed a Fulani man, unjustifiably, and threw his body inside mud. In defending them, CAN clearly stated ‘these are Christian youths’ that should not die; meaning what?

“Also, in the killing of Major General Alkali Idris, which was described as an act of terrorism and barbaric, it was also CAN that was found especially defending protesting Christian women, who blocked the Army from searching a certain pond in Jos, which was suspected to be pond of horror where those killed for religious reasons on the Plateau were thrown. Recall that when the Army stood its ground and carried out the search of the pond, not only General Idris’ body was found, his car and many other leads were recovered. CAN provided shield for those killers before they were arrested.

“But the intervention of Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, and timely efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari and Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong, a massacre that was clearly based on religious intolerance, in Jos recently, was huge enough to cause reprisal. It was CAN that was found behind all of these.

“In all the Boko Haram killings from 2009 till date, notable victims, who have been killed, have been Muslims. Of course, St. Fimberrs Church in Jos and a church in Maraba, Niger State/Abuja border were attacked by Boko Haram. All Muslims, leaders and followers, came out to condemn them and called on government to use maximum force to neutralise the criminal elements as, according to them, there is no connection between Islam and violence let alone terrorism. But CAN defended killing, by burning to ashes, of over 1,000 Muslim worshipers at praying ground in Jos on a Sallah day.

“When, during a Ramadan year, Boko Haram attacked UN House in Abuja, body counts later showed that majority of victims, who died by that terrorist attack, were fasting Muslims. There were also Christians. But CAN went and profiled the incident and brought out 19 people it identified a Christians and declared that attack was targeted at christians, creating the impression that only Christians were victims, who were killed.

“What is more saddening is that, the extent of education, up to Ph.D of CAN leaders such as Samson Ayokunle, does not tell them how their baseless claims are no more than igniting hate, provocations and, therefore, causing insecurity in the land. CAN in Nigeria are so confident that they have monopoly of hypocrisy and hide and seek. Following COVID-19 lockdown, they declared that the lockdown in Nigeria was war by Muslim President in power against the Church to persecute Christians. This Samson Ayokunle led CAN wrote to America under Donald Trump. Trump believed their falsehoods and asked President Buhari: ‘Why are you killing Christians in Nigeria?’

“That has been the huge joke by which CAN has misrepresented happenings in Nigeria. Recall how CAN Chairman in Ola Oluwa Local Government Area of Osun State sent three youth members of his own church, Baptist, to dress like Muslim sheikhs, and launch attack on his own church Sunday service at its peak. It took the  intervention of community youths, who arrested and tortured them to the point that they confessed that they were actually sent by their pastor (he has a name) who is Chairman of CAN in the local government area. The record is there and witnesses are still alive.  Their plan was to attack the church and claim Boko Haram attack to endanger the Osun Muslims and prove their lies that Governor Rauf Aregbesola was going to import Boko Haram terrorists into the state, just because the state government allowed Muslim rights like he did to members of other religions.

“If former President Donald Trump could believe the stories told to him by Nigeria’s Ayokunle led CAN that COVID-19 lockdown, which was problem suffered by over 170 countries of the world closing down mosques including Holy Ka’abah and the Vatican, was singular mission to persecute the Church and kill Christians in Nigeria, what else can be called deliberate fabrication and falsehood founded on hypocrisy?” He asked.

The Muslim Ummah source, who sought not to be mentioned, concluded with what CAN publicly did in the build up to 2019 general elections in Nigeria.

“CAN staged many protests and publicly campaigned that no Christian should vote for any Muslim at the elections. This was done that even CAN was found always queuing behind everything that was out to collapse the sitting government at the time and yet, the same Buhari government it accuses of persecuting and killing Christians did not consider arresting and prosecuting its leaders. CAN stood behind #EndSARS elements that killed over 37 security officers, burned over 400 BRT buses and destroyed many public infrastructures including an Igbosere court in Lagos. CAN did more.

“Now that there is a more sensible man in power in US, who does not believe in buying cheap or costly lies from CAN of Nigeria, there is an ongoing effort to right the wrong of Trump but CAN is saying no. America erred. Noted,” he said.