CAN berates Buhari over killing of Christians, reveals 105 Baptists killed in Kaduna in 8 months

Christian Association of Nigeria has berated President Muhammadu Buhari over his conversation with the United States President, Donald Trump.

Buhari did reveal at the end of the Ministerial retreat on Tuesday that Donald Trump asked him why he was killing Christians in Nigeria, but that he told him, “it was herders and farmers’ clashes which was a cultural thing.”

Piqqued by the revelation, CAN’s Vice President and Chairman of the Association in Kaduna State, John Hayab described Buhari’s response as weak.

He said: “Buhari and his government will never stop from amusing us with their tales by moonlight because what is happening in Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina, Birnin Gwari, Southern Kaduna, Taraba, Plateau and others cannot be described as a cultural thing.

“President Buhari’s weak story about his conversation with President Donald Trump further confirms why his government does not care about the killings in our country by calling them cultural things.

“Just this (Tuesday) evening, I received a report from the Kaduna Baptist Conference President about the number of their members that have been killed by bandits in Kaduna State from January 2020 to date to be 105 and our President will call it a cultural thing? All we can say is may God save our Nigeria.”

‌Buhari explained that he was the only President from the under developed countries that had the privilege of meeting Donald Trump in his office on invitation in the heat of bloody clashes between herders and farmers.

Buhari who believes that killings in Nigeria has nothing to do with religion or ethnic, said it’s cultural which he told the US president.

He explained: “When I was in his office, only myself and himself, only God is my witness, he looked at me in the face, he asked, ‘why are you killing Christians?’

“I wonder, if you were the person, how you will react? I hope what I was feeling inside did not betray my emotion, so I told him that the problem between the cattle rearers and stagnant farmers, I know is older than me not to talk of him. I think I am a couple of years older than him.

“With climate change and population growth and the culture of the cattle rearers, if you have 50 cows and they eat grass, any root, to your water point, then they will follow it. It doesn’t matter whose farm it is.

“The First Republic set of leadership was the most responsible leadership we ever had. I asked the Minister of Agriculture to get a gazette of the early 60s which delineated the cattle route where they used meagre resources then to put earth dams, wind mills even sanitary department.

“So, any cattle rearer that allowed his cattle to go to somebody’s farm would be arrested, taken before the court. The farmer would be called to submit his bill and if he couldn’t pay, the cattle would be sold, but subsequent leaders, the VVIPs (very very important persons) encroached on the cattle routes. They took over the cattle rearing areas.

“So, I tried and explained to him (Trump) that this has got nothing to do with ethnicity or religion. It is a cultural thing.”