Buhari Insensitive to Yearnings of Nigerians – CAN

The leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has condemned in strong terms the failure of President Muhammadu Buhari to be fair to all sections of the country in the three recent appointments.

The President has made three key appointments in the last few days, but none of them comes from the South and none is a Christian! He appointed Yusuf Magaji Bichi, a Muslim, from Kano State to replace Matthew Seiyefa, a Christian from Bayelsa who had been operating in an acting capacity since Lawal Daura was sacked in Buhari’s absence.

Mr Abbas Umar Masanawa was also named the Managing Director of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company, just as Hajiya Zainab Ahmed was appointed the acting Finance Minister to replace Mrs Kemi Adeosun who resigned as a result of her failure to participate in the NYSC programme and for parading a forged NYSC Certificate of Exemption.

We wish to place on record, once again, the dangerous and religious discrimination and partiality that have characterized the President Buhari-led administration. We believe the marginalisation of the Christians is deliberate to heighten the tension in the land for whatever reasons.

CAN notes with disappointments, shocks and surprises that despite our appeal to President Buhari to break the domination of the country’ security council by people of the same religion and language in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic groups that make up Nigeria, he still derives pleasure in turning a deaf ear to the Voice of Wisdom and Reason as manifested in the three appointments.

As we noted in our January Press Conference, “Under President Buhari, the murderous Fulani herdsmen enjoyed unprecedented protection and favouritism to the extent that the herdsmen treat Nigeria as a conquered territory. Rather than arrest and prosecute the Fulani herdsmen, security forces usually manned by Muslims from the North offer them protection as they unleash terror with impunity on the Nigerian people.

“The bottom line is that President Buhari failed woefully to protect Nigerians. He wilfully permitted the Fulani herdsmen to operate, killing people, destroying communities wholesale, destroying farmlands and turning the entire Middle Belt into “killing fields”, all the while enjoying government protection from counter attack, arrest or prosecution.

“By failing to curb the attacks of the Fulani herdsmen President Buhari has failed to uphold Section 14, Para. 2 (b) in the Constitution that ‘the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government:’
“Through his partial, sectional and discriminatory appointments, particularly in Security and Education, President Buhari violated Section 14, Para. 3

“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 State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”

The President who at his inauguration three years ago promised to be fair to all has been consistently and persistently discriminating against Christians and Southerners in all his appointments and policies.

CAN is also disappointed with the justification of the illegalities being perpetrated by Buhari in the lopsided appointments by the Presidency including a handful Christians in his government who are doing so primarily to keep their jobs, at the expense of the majority.

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.