Crowd gathers outside an area where a bomb was planted at a Christian church in Nigeria near the capital of Abuja. The Boko Haram group has claimed responsibility., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Fasehun urges FG to dialogue with Boko Haram
On December 29, 2011
Nigerian Vanguard
By ABDULWAHAB ABDULAH
Founder of Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC, Dr Fredrick Fasehun, yesterday, has said if care was not taken, the insecurity in the country may lead to a revolution.
Condemning last Christmas day bomb attacks on innocent Nigerians in the Northern part of the country, Fasehun, said it was time President Goodluck Jonathan, as the chief security officer allow influential Nigerian to intervene on the security matters and find solution to the problem.
Speaking at a briefing organised to proffer solutions to problems facing the country, he maintained that it was not enough to condemn the killings but that government must allow influential Nigerians mediate in the crisis.
He said government should get reputable Nigerians to meet with aggrieved individuals, put them together and meet with the Boko Haram leaders to put an end to the ceaseless bombings and killings.
He maintained there were Nigerians, who command respect, who could meet with the group and get them to surrender their weapons, adding that the security situation, particularly armed robbery and kidnapping was becoming more worrisome.
He decried the reactions of security operatives to insecurity in the country, lamenting that the operatives in themselves are paradoxically not secure, saying “there is hardly any street in Lagos State without vigilante group.”
Calling on President Jonathan to put on hold the plan to remove fuel subsidy, Fasehun cautioned the president not to go ahead with the removal, saying “he may not like the outflow and the reaction from the removal of the subsidy.”
He said oil subsidy removal was like adding salt to the injury of Nigerians, noting that such decision at this time will further impoverished the downtrodden, who are already down and struggling to survive.
Warning those advising the president on the removal, he said, “oil subsidy removal will do a lot of damages to this country and when the damage is open, a million of Okonjo Iweala will not stop it.”
Seven hurt as bomb hits madrassa in Nigeria
5:31pm EST
By Austin Ekeinde and Tife Owolabi
PORT HARCOURT/JOS (Reuters) - Assailants threw a homemade bomb into a madrassa in southern Nigeria's Delta state, police said, wounding seven people and escalating tensions between Muslims and Christians after a spate of church bombings across the nation.
Six of the wounded were children younger than nine learning the Koran at the Islamic seminary, or madrassa.
In a separate incident, armed Fulani herdsmen shot dead three members of a family in the ethnically and religiously mixed Plateau state on Wednesday, witnesses and officials said.
The school attack on Tuesday night came two days after Christmas Day bombings of churches and other targets by Islamist militant group Boko Haram killed 32 people in a coordinated strike that seemed aimed at igniting sectarian strife.
"Some men driving in a Camry car threw a low-capacity explosive into a building where an Arabic class was taking place," police spokesman Charles Muka said.
"Children aged between four and nine were taking a lesson. Six children were injured and one adult," he said.
He said police suspected a local vigilante group.
Boko Haram, a sect which aims to impose Islamic sharia law across Nigeria, claimed responsibility for the December 25 attacks, the second Christmas in a row it has caused carnage.
The worst attack killed at least 27 people in the St Theresa Catholic church in Madalla, a town on the edge of the capital Abuja, and devastated surrounding buildings and cars as worshippers poured out of the church after Christmas mass.
The attacks risk reviving sectarian violence between the mostly Muslim north and Christian south, which has killed thousands of people in the past decade.
"DECLARATION OF WAR"
Speaking at a meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday, Ayo Oritsejafor, head of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), an umbrella group for all denominations, said Christians had become victims of "Islamic Jihad."
"It is considered as a declaration of war on Christians and Nigeria," Oritsejafor said. "CAN has found the responses of ... Islamic bodies on this matter to be unacceptable and an abdication of their responsibilities."
"The Christian Community is fast losing confidence in government's ability to protect our rights."
Jonathan promised to do more to tackle the threat of Islamists and hinted at a reshuffle in his security services.
"We will restructure ... and make sure we get a team that will meet with the challenge we are facing today," he said. "I will plead with religious leaders, both Muslim and Christian leaders, to work together."
Nigerian Christians fear the Christmas Day bombings could lead to a religious war in Africa's most populous country.
There was no suggestion the killings in Plateau had any link to Sunday's church bombings, as the victims were Christians.
The state is a tinderbox of ethnic and religious rivalries over land and power between local people and migrants from other areas that often take the form of sectarian strife between the state's Christian and Muslim communities.
Women wept and wailed in anguish over the bodies of a husband and wife in their thirties and their baby child, all of which were riddled with bullet holes.
"When the Fulani herdsmen came around late in the night, I managed to escape through the window before they killed my son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter with guns," said Mary Pam, the mother of Philip Francis, one of the victims.
(Additional reporting by Felix Onuah in Abuja and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu in Onitsha; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Myra MacDonald and Matthew Jones)
No comments:
Post a Comment