The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has strongly condemned what it termed lopsided appointments by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, especially in the security sector.
CAN said that Buhari’s security-sector and other appointments appeared to favour the north against the south and dared the Ministry of Information to publish details of the president’s appointments to key parastatals and agencies to disprove its claim.
According to a Monday statement by CAN President, Dr Samson Ayokunle, the Christian body said it was “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“.
Recall that President Buhari recently replaced Bayelsa-born Acting Director General of the Department of State Services, Matthew Seiyefa with Kano-born Yusuf Magaji Bichi, drawing widespread condemnation.
Many Nigerians also kicked against the recent appointment of Zainab Ahmed, former Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, to replace Mrs Kemi Adeosun as Minister of Finance.
CAN in the statement claimed that the purported lopsided appointments were part of an “Islamisation agenda”.
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“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,” the statement read in part.
The Christian body further 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.”
The body said the alleged lopsided appointments have helped to provide “unprecedented protection and favouritism” accorded “murderous Fulani herdsmen” in the country.
“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.
“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’,” CAN stated.
The statement further read, “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.”
However, the Federal Government has at different times vehemently denied allegations of lopsided appointments and pursuing an Islamisation agenda.
“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, ” presidential media aide, Femi Adesina, said in a November 2017 statement.