National President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor has again urged the Nigeria Police authorities to get to the bottom of the fresh violence and allay the fear of every Nigerian that the explosions in Kaduna in December 2011 where at least six persons were said to have died, was not orchestrated by religious bigots.
He said the security authorities must now rise above religious, ethnic and other primordial sentiments to demonstrate their avowed neutrality to the whole world that they are not part of a grand design by a clique who are bent on destabilising the nation on the altar a particular religion to the disadvantage of the other.
The CAN president who was in the Kwara State capital, Ilorin for the second quarterly meeting of Nigeria Inter-Religious Council meeting readily aligned himself with the position of the Catholic bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah and the Arewa Youths Forum who lampooned the northern leaders over their roles in the under-development in the region.
“Day in day out people blatantly tell the whole world that the crises in the North is political and economic, but the target of the violence is always the Christian folk. Can’t we co-exist in a country given to us by God Almighty? I think the elite class in that part of the nation must stand up to admit that there is the urgent need for them to honestly address these issues frontally,” he stated.
The CAN president also charged northern leaders to embrace peace in a nation with several millions of enterprising individuals seeking peaceful atmosphere to go about their dreams which in return helps to development the informal sector of the economy.
Oritsejafor is of the opinion that the un-abating crises in the North had taken a toll on the nation’s economy, arguing that foreign embassies are currently dissuading their nationals from coming to Nigeria for security reasons.
He reiterated his call on the Federal Government to demonstrate the needed political will to deal with the growing trend of terrorism in the country by fishing out all the merchants of deadly operations in parts of the country and bringing to book to deter others.