[FILE
PHOTO] Thursday, July 5 members of the Christian Association of Nigeria
(CAN) from the 19 Northern States and Abuja, led by Rev. Dr. Yakubu
Pam, visited him at the State House. Photo: TWITTER/ NGRPresident
The Federal Government has, yesterday, been dared by the Christian
Association of Nigeria (CAN) to produce facts proving its appointments
are not lopsided, The Guardian reports,
“We are disappointed and shocked that despite appeals to the
president to break the domination of the security apparatus by people of
the same religion and language in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic
nation, Buhari has turned a deaf ear,” CAN said, regretting that his recent appointments neither featured a Christian nor a southerner.
Buhari had picked Yusuf Magaji Bichi, a Muslim from Kano State, to
replace Matthew Seiyefa as head of the Department of State Services
(DSS); Hajiya Zainab Ahmed as supervising finance minister, following
the resignation of Kemi Adeosun; and Abbas Umar Masanawa, named the
managing director of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company.
The umbrella body described the “lopsided appointments” as a
“hallmark” of the Federal Government in key ministries like interior,
defence, education and information and “challenged the federal
ministry of information and the presidency to contradict this fact with
evidence by publishing the names of all heads of parastatals and
agencies including their states of origin and religion.
“These are all parts of the gradual and subtle Islamisation agenda.
We are sad that those who are benefitting from the existing
order, Christians inclusive, have been dismissing this alert with a wave
of the hand.
But CAN, as watchman for the nation, will refuse to be intimidated,” CAN said.
But the presidency has always insisted Buhari’s appointments are
fair. Spokesman Femi Adesina in one of such affirmations declared: “To
claim, suggest or attempt to insinuate that the president’s appointments
are tilted in favour of a section of the country is simply untrue and
certainly uncharitable.”
In a statement yesterday by its president, Rev. Dr Samson Ayokunle, CAN said: “We
wish to place on record, once again, the dangerous and religious
discrimination and partiality that have characterised the President
Buhari-led administration.
We believe the marginalisation of Christians is deliberate, to heighten the tension in the land for whatever reasons.
CAN is fully persuaded beyond any reasonable doubt that it is
the lopsided appointments in the security agencies that are largely
responsible for Christians becoming endangered species in their
fatherland under the leadership of Buhari.”
Condemning the “unprecedented protection and favouritism” allegedly enjoyed by “murderous Fulani herdsmen,” CAN said: “Rather
than arrest and prosecute them, security forces usually manned by
Muslims from the north offer them protection, as they unleash terror
with impunity on Nigerians.
“The bottom line is that President Buhari failed woefully to protect Nigerians.
He willfully permitted the herdsmen to operate, killing people,
destroying communities, wholesale, destroying farmlands and turning the
entire Middle Belt into a killing field, all the while enjoying
government’s protection from counter attack, arrest or prosecution.”
It said: “Through his partial, sectional and discriminatory
appointments, particularly in security and education, President Buhari
violated Section 14, of the constitution, which states, ‘the composition
of the government of the federation or any of its agencies and the
conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to
reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote
national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring
that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from
a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or in any of
its agencies’.”
The association noted: “For anyone to be asking all
well-meaning Nigerians, including some media houses, to stop complaining
of the lopsided appointments in the security apparatus of the country
is reprehensible, insensitive, and wicked.”