Concerns about worsening insecurity in the country remained on the front burner wednesday as the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) urged President Muhammadu Buhari to declare state of emergency on insecurity and accused Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) of playing politics with the security challenges confronting the country.
The Christian umbrella body also took a hit from the presidency, which in a statement yesterday accused it of making utterances that could deepen the rising division in the country.
Buhari too was not spared as Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Afenifere, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar upbraided him for his comment on the ratio of victims of Boko Haram killings, which he put at 90 per cent Muslims and 10 per cent Christians.
Weighing in yesterday the NSCIA urged the federal government to declare a state of emergency on insecurity in the country, describing the scale of the crisis as unacceptable.
NSCIA voiced this sentiment on the state of the nation when it briefed journalists yesterday.
The council called on government security agencies to use every means to arrest the descent into anarchy, saying the country can’t continue under the atmosphere of needless killing of the innocent and human security being at its lowest ebb.
The council that spoke through its Director of Administration, Mr. Yusuf Nwoha, accused Christian leaders of seeking to score cheap political goals and engaging in propaganda rather than see the current insecurity as a monstrosity that has become a national challenge and requiring collective action.
He faulted the recently organised street protest in Lagos, led by the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, describing it as a show to give colouration to insecurity.
It said the protest was fueled by hypocrisy and hubris.
Nwoha accused CAN of intentional misrepresentation and of discrediting the government and Muslims to provoke foreign occupation of the country by attributing the spate of bombings in the country to Muslims.
He said Christians had been committing murder and kidnapping in Nigeria and had been resorting to propaganda to put Nigeria and its Muslim population on the defensive.
Nwoha cited the attempted bombing of the Living Faith Church on February 2 by one Nathaniel Samuel, saying Muslims would have been blamed had the mission succeeded.
“It is incontrovertible that more Muslims, including Imams have been slaughtered, displaced and dismembered than Christians since Boko Haram became a hydra-headed monster. Indeed more mosques have been bombed or destroyed in the bloody campaign, which has consumed precious lives including those of our professors. To suggest that Christians are killed because they refuse to embrace Islam stands logic on its head. Were Muslims killed in mosques, markets and villages because they refused to denounce Islam?” NSCIA queried.
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