*Not all Bishops are your members, your candidate is Peter Obi, CAN replied
*’Christian body, for the third time, laying bad precedence for country’
*Division we have today started by CAN in 2015 – Critics
*If Tinubu chose Pope, voters on religious sentiment won’t vote for him
By KEMI KASUMU
The leadership of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has been warned to stop deceiving Nigerians under disguise of anti Muslim-Muslim ticket as, according to critics, it is told that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has never been its loved party since 2015 when it saw that the favoured candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, was a Muslim and Northerner.
This warning was coming upon yet another villifying statement, through which the supposedly Christians’ apex body in Nigeria is said to be advancing its war against the ruling party.
The DEFENDER recalls that CAN, although not just starting, had drawn a battle line with APC when presidential candidate the religious body thought would be Christian, once comes from Southern part, turned out to be a Muslim, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose region of South West is indisputably either Muslim majority or virtually at equal in population size with Christians.
Recall also that front line Islamic rights group, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), had insisted that Christians’ claim that Muslims are minority in the South West was false hence, for 2023 election, the Presidential Candidate to emerge from there must be Muslim.
Tinubu has not only tolerated a Redeemed Christian Church pastor, Oluremi, as wife for 40 years but also, he has allowed her build a church in his residence without itches, a level of good character taught by Islam but which none can display of the Christian leaders, not only waging this war but also writing misrepresenting letters and reports to United States of America to blacklist Nigeria about, we gathered.
Oyedepo’s church pastor
One of them inside the Church has just called the APC evil party in power because it presents Muslim, despite that it has fielded his fellow tribesman of South West as presidential candidate and urged his congregation to “vote for the party that favours the Church and vote for the tribe that favours the Church.”
The Christian leader, named Assistant Pastor of Living Faith Church, David Abioye, was clear in his instructions to the church members, who screamed in acceptance to his command as he dished it out.
He said: “And now, in clear instruction, vote only in the favour of the Church not for your party. Any believer that sells out his faith in the name of party is heading for hell. Are you hearing that? Don’t open your eyes and vote for people who will kill you. If you kill your conscience, you would answer before the Lord.
“We may not have the best of candidates but we know them in grace. You know a better candidate than evil candidate. If you are not sure, check the antecedents, check history. It’s unfortunate that we have dead minded people all around the nation, who don’t check history, who are carried away by poff-poff and donots and money that cannot last. Somebody gives you N50,000 to last you, your suffering for four years. Men! Let your brain come alive. Let your conscience come alive.
“Christians were killed and no apology by people who are in authority and you will still blindly go and vote for them. Churches are destroyed, nobody bothered to build them back and you will still go and vote for them. Hear me, even if the people who are there answer the name of a Christian, and they do that, turn them off. Turn! Them! Off! Turn! Them!! Off!!!
“Four years ago, everybody had warnings like this and many people still cheapishly went ahead to do what is wrong. I hope by now we are wiser! I hope by now we are wiser!! I hope by now we are wiser!!! I hooope! by now we are wiser!!!! Vote in the interest of the Church. Vote for the interest of the Church! The line is very clear. Vote for the interest of other ethnic groups in Nigeria. This nation is not a Fulani nation, in case you don’t understand what I’m talking about.
“Some people have even sold out their rules. They don’t care about what happens to their regions, to their zones, to the ethnic background that they have, all because of money. But time is going to catch up with every evil person in this nation. Is somebody hearing me at all? The Church is yours, you have the power to do so, do what you can and God will do what you cannot. Our God, who does not sleep or slobber, will act in your favour, will act in the favour of the Church,” the Bishop Oyedepo’s Winners church senior pastor, David Abioye said as captured in the viral video.
In further exposition of themselves as elements behind what continue to be tagged as devilish and dangerously divisive reports and unchecked media propaganda the US Senators and other foreign collaborators acted upon to call for State Department’s re-enlistment of Nigeria as Country of Particular Concerns (CPC), the Living Faith Church pastor told his congregation that they must not vote a party in power that has been killing Christians and destroying Churches.
As exemplified in the pastor’s ostensibly orchestrated fallacy, these religious propagandists erroneously claimed that Nigeria is at war with the Church and that the Fulani-led Federal Government since 2015 has been killing Christians in the country. The DEFENDER’s crosscheck can authoritatively report those claims in Churches, videos, Christian Television networks and by Christian Association of Nigeria-led local propaganda as unverifiable as they have no proofs recognised by any God-fearing and patriotic sources.
Pope
A response to the Winners Chapel’s pastor’s outburst and video circulating of bishops on attendance at APC unveiling of vice presidential candidate said: “It is clear to me that if Tinubu chose the Pope, those who want to vote on religious sentiment will still not vote for him. They will claim the Pope is fake or cloned. Do they need for the pastors and Bishops to be there? It depends on the strategy they wanted to achieve. Did it work? I don’t think so.
“In every political contests, there must an agenda. Unfortunately in Nigeria, our agenda are predicated on religion, ethnicity and biases. It has never been on competence. Whether we choose to accept or not, the religious organisations have polluted the political atmosphere. CAN is the biggest culprit in the fame.
“CAN does not speak for the whole Christian body and all they could have said, those Bishops are not our members but calling them mechanics, etc, shows that they (CAN) are partisan.
The latest criticisms of CAN and the Churches’ anti-APC campaigns were also reignited by Kaduna State Chapter of CAN trying to run fellow Christian Bishops down because they refused to toe their line of politicisation of religion in the country.
The Kaduna chapter, believed to be acting the script of national secretariat of CAN, had described the Bishops at the official unveiling of the former Governor of Borno State, Senator Kashim Shettima, as running mate of presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre Abuja on Wednesday, as Nollywood actors.
Rev. John Joseph Hayab, the Kaduna state CAN Chairman, said in an interview that the Bishops did not have enough time to learn how to wear bishop’s garments.
He explained that Christians in the country would not lose sleep following the Tinubu/Shettima presidential candidate in next year’s presidential election.
According to Rev. Hayab, who is also the CAN chairman of 19 Northern states and FCT, “the people we saw at the unveiling of Shettima as the presidential running mate to Bola Tinubu paraded as Bishops are people who did not have enough time to learn how to wear Bishop’s garments. Take a closer look at their photo and you will see another Nollywood movie.”
“CAN wonders why the desperation of the All Progressives Congress, firstly, there was a story claiming to have come from the Chairman of CAN Borno State identifying with Kashim Shettima, only for the story to be refuted by the same source.
”Christians in the country remain focused on conducting themselves in accordance with the laid down constitution of the country by casting their votes to credible candidates in the 2023 general elections.
“There was another lie that Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his running mate were on their way to meet CAN, president, one night.
“A meeting that was not true and was on a night that the CAN president was in Alabama USA attending Baptist World Alliance Conference which he is the Vice President.
“It was alleged that the All Progressive Congress presidential candidate met with Papa Adeboye, which the RCCG later refuted, saying that there is nothing in it but an act of desperation story that they met Papa Adeboye.
“If Christians are not important why the desperation? The All Progressives Congress presidential candidate is free to hire mechanics and other artisans and sew clerical garments for them. It is an effort that will not change the need for fairness and justice that CAN is calling for.
“CAN appreciates that we are in a democracy, no need to do funny and dubious things just to prove a point because it will at the end bounce back.
“Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s team should simply do what is right and stop the drama. Because of desperation, the newly robed Bishops took the shine off the occasion more than the candidate that was unveiled. What an irony.
“Nigerians should vote credible candidates in the 2023 general elections, that it is the only way the country could be restored and take its place in the comity of nations,” he said.
In the meantime, the CAN leaders, believed are trying to replace Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the carriage and circulation fake and twisted information to disparage their targetted enemies namely APC, Islam and Muslims of Nigeria and Northerners, have been told to watch their tongues so as not to cause more troubles than they have already caused for the country.
Among the critics, who are mixture of Muslim and Christian supporters of APC, were those who exposed CAN as a religious group that since 2015 has hidden under the rights of religious practice and freedom of speech to launch political campaigns in ways that have divided Nigeria along religion and ethnicity lines.
They said CAN told his Christian Church members in the buildup to 2015 general elections that Muhammadu Buhari of APC was going to power to convert all Christians in Nigeria to Islam, kill members of other tribes and take their land and give to his tribesmen, Fulani Northerners. Although those claims failed to come through, CAN did much causing misinformation through main and social media in the land, which led to many deaths especially in Kaduna, Benue and Taraba states and attempted another such misrepresentation of happenings in Zamfara but quenched by then Governor AbdulAziz Yari Abubakar.
“The only person that will be Nigerian President and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) will not cause insecurity either alone or by collaboration with some local and foreign elements, is when he is a Christian. Don’t be surprised, if Anambra man becomes President today, the moment CAN knows he is a Muslim, it must cause security problem. That is what is happening,” one of them said.
He continued, “I can assure you that although Atiku was on its table in 2019 being Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate that has always been CAN’s party of choice, it has gotten an alternative to Atiku for 2023 in the person of Peter Obi. That was why those pastors preaching in the Churches are telling their followers to vote for party and person that favour the Church and Christians.
“You can imagine that pastor saying ‘you may not not understand what I am saying. Is Fulani the only tribe in Nigeria? Why do you vote for party of people that are killing Christians?’ This is the peak of any use of religion to divide Nigerians against themselves. And they are doing this with assurance from their United States helpers that any attempt by the government to check their excesses will be used against it as religious intolerance against Christians. Good enough, even to the dismay of many Muslims the so called Federal Government of Islamisation watch these Christian Agenda persecuting Muslims and advancing the insecurity in the land but does nothing to stop them.
“Boko Haram victims are 95 percent Muslims. People in the IDPs camps are 95 percent Muslims. CAN controlled school managements are persecuting Muslims in Southern and North Central schools, even killing Muslims students, yet, these same Christians go abroad to blackmail Muslim Ummah of Nigeria and Muslims in power as leading a country that is at war with the Church and kiiling Christians.
“Anyway, now that they have drawn a battle line to produce a Christian President in 2023 because they believe Christian population is huge enough to produce Christian President in the coming election, they should go ahead. But I can only assure you that Muslims of Nigeria with their patriotic and non-CAN Christian citizens will produce a Nigerian President that will be free of all the complications Christian Association of Nigeria,” he said.
