By Tunde Johnson, Abuja
The leadership Jama’atu Nasir Islam (JNI) says Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is to be blamed for the current herdsmen attack in Benue State and other parts of the country.
Reacting to a statement credited to CAN, Khalid Abubakar Aliyu, Secretary General of the JNI, who was addressing a press conference in Kaduna on Sunday said that the CAN is using herdsmen to destabilise Nigeria so as to achieve its “agenda.”
Aliyu accused that CAN of overheating the polity ahead of the 2019 general election.
“We, nonetheless, make bold that CAN is deliberately covering up by using the herdsmen debacle as a franchise to perpetrate evil, as witnessed in the Book Haram tale.
“Seeing that they have gotten away with those crimes, CAN has now devised a new approach to destabilise Nigeria in order to achieve their agenda,” said the JNI scribe.
While describing the statement ascribed to the CAN’s scribe as one overheating the polity ahead of the 2019 general elections, Aliyu advised the CAN to register as a political party to test its popularity.
He described the press conference addressed by the CAN Secretary-General on the 16th of January as “mendacious, provocative, full of blatant lies and misinformation, disinformation as well as seditious to the state.”
According to him, some Christian leaders across the country are making hate and inflammatory speeches, whose repercussions are better imagined.
He said, “The ‘herdsmen’ debacle: it must be understood that this is a coinage mischievously invented by CAN over time and its biased errand boys among media practitioners to stereotype an ethnic group so as to achieve a pre-planned agenda.
“Moreover, why not call a spade by its name? And why is the whole herdsmen issue heightened now in 2018?
“Simply, CAN is unnecessarily overheating the polity because 2019 is around the corner.
“Our take is that CAN should better go and register as a political party and contest election if they want to test their popularity!
“We, nonetheless, make bold to say that CAN is deliberately covering up by using the herdsmen debacle as a franchise to perpetrate evil as witnessed in the Boko Haram tale, as cases of Christians dressed in Muslim garb to bomb churches is still fresh in our memories.’’
