CAN and its controversial demand for “Christian Senate President” of Ninth Assembly – A Special Report

By BASHIR ADEFAKA

The battle against politically motivated division along religion line in Nigeria is climbing to further height with some Nigerians now taking up the bull of the act by the horns, saying “Our eyes have opened”.

It will be recalled that for the larger part of Nigeria’s 20-year-old democracy, Christians by virtue of being Presidents had dominated the administration of the country with Muslims feeling cheated but could not complain.

During Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight years tenure, Nigeria witnessed situation where even appointments from Muslim dominated North were Christians. Attempt by Plateau State Muslim Community to, in that period, nominate a Muslim for a Federal Board Chairman to be appointed by the President snowballed into the Jos crisis of 2004 leaving several Muslims dead.

The DEFENDER’s investigation revealed that the improper handling of the aftermath effect of the Jos killings led to reprisal attacks by Muslim youths in Kano where Christian casualties were recorded.

Our investigation further revealed that the reprisal attacks were ignited by sighting of dead bodies of Kanowiyyah (Kano indigenes) as they were brought into the ancient city from Jos.

Many experts blamed the then government of Plateau State for allowing the bodies to have been moved to Kano, knowing the volatility of the nation’s second largest commercial nerve centre that is the political headquarters of Nigeria. The Bola Ajibola Panel of Enquiry on the Jos Crisis submitted its reports.

For that long period when Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) held sway in the country, the only complaint our findings credited to the Muslims was in the shortchange by media underreporting their plights even to the extent that “what we did not do, the media reported it to our credit”, one of our sources said.

It became worse when in the buildup to 2015 presidential election, PDP elements moved from house-to-house, community-to-community telling Nigerians how APC was Islamic party and why it’s presidential candidate General Muhammadu Buhari must not be voted. Doing so, they said, would lead to the Islamisation of Nigeria.

The Afenifere and Ohaneze Ndigbo on the other side of ethnic divide mounted the stage doing anti-Buhari/Fulani campaigns saying “a vote for APC is a vote for Northernisation of Nigeria”.

The situation was so disastrous that it took Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar weeks moving round Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones to get people understand why the claim of Islamisation and Northernisation agenda is not possible by anybody. He said “neither can anybody Islamise nor christianise Nigeria” because, according to the retired Army General turned monarch, Nigeria as a multi-religious and cosmopolitan society cannot be monopolised by any religious group or tribe.

We found out that what put a monarch like Sultan to such tedious task was no more than mischievous, unpatriotic politicking by some political elements in the country.

“It is unfortunate. I am a Southerner and a Christian. I will be doing a great disservice to my fatherland if I can’t give credit to this Fulani man called Sultan. He practically took up the job President of any country should do in not only preaching peace but also seeing that peace reigned. Yet, we have a religious group like Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) sabotaging his peace efforts at all times, more under Ayo Oritsejafor”, the source said.

That was Nigeria’s situation before President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) came on 29 May 2015 and upon his arrival he said, “I want to lead a Nigeria where Muslims and Christians will practice their religions without fear”.

To show that presidential Change Agenda did not mean anything to them, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) was fingered to have teamed up with a National Christian Elders’ Forum (NCEF) and some others reported by Vanguard as Retired Christian Generals notably Lt. General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma and Brigadier General Zamani Lekwot in sabotaging the President’s great work with Obasanjo leading another coalition of #CorruptionFightBack by post-2015 elements on the other side.

The findings revealed further that the work of this fresh gangup against the Buhari Administration was to blackmail the President and his government with claim that, as Fulani man in power, he was supplying weapons to his tribe’s herdsmen to kill other non-Fulani Nigerians, an allegation that Buhari refused to respond to until a time he travelled to UK where his friend, Archbishop of Canterbury, asked him related question and he opened up: “It is not possible for an elected President to kill or sponsor killings of his people who voted for him”.

Although President Buhari cleared the air on those allegations but, during the 2019 election, the CAN used same in campaigns against him tactically or openly asking Nigerians not to vote for the Fulani President. CAN and the ethnic nationalities of Middle-Belt, Afenifere and Ndigbo chose Atiku Abubakar of PDP against him, though Atiku is a Muslim as well as Northerner like Buhari.

“What that tells you is that, what unites anti-Buhari crusaders, apart from hate for his region of Islam, is corruption,” the source said.

In an exclusive interview with The DEFENDER in Ibadan 17 November 2018, President of CAN Pastor Samson Ayokunle denied all allegations that he was anti-Muslims. The interview was on the sideline of a visit to the Sultan in his accommodation in Ibadan, Oyo State.

Members of Muslim Ummah of South West who read his denials, when published in The DEFENDER, disagreed saying the CAN leader was lying and that in no distant time he would prove himself wrong.

On Sunday 31 March 2019, the CAN President was again in the news with a demand that President of the Nigeria’s Ninth Senate, dominated by APC his association hated and campaigned so much against its Muslim/Fulani presidential candidate, must be a Christian.

It was a demand that has drawn ire of not only Muslims but even non-Muslims alike. They are all speaking with one voice that CAN, again, goofed.

In response to the CAN’s demand for a Christian Senate President or Speaker, because according to the religious group, the President and the Acting CJN are all Muslims, a Nigerian by Facebook social media name, Egalitarian Danali Ozovehe, ventilated his concern.

Ozovehe said: “At some point during Goodluck Jonathan’s administration , David Mark was the Senate President, Olubunmi Patricia Etteh was the Speaker of the House of Representatives and Aloysius Katsina Alu was Chief Justice of the Federation!

“Did you hear anything from the Muslim organisations?

“CAN of worms, CAN of confusion! But wait o!
Since APC is an Islamic party as alleged by CAN why are they now begging for a position in an Islamic government?

“CAN campaigned in all the churches in Nigeria against the APC; and the votes that led to the emergence of the incoming government came mostly from the Muslim dominated parts of the country; so I urge CAN to redirect their letter to the secretariat of the party they campaigned for. They want to reap from where they didn’t sow,” he said.