Civil advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA) has said that Nigeria would have been boiling should Imams be kidnapped or murdered the way the marauders are terrorising and annihilating Christian leaders in the country.
HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement, categorically stressed that “President Muhammadu Buhari, the service chiefs and all the heads of security agencies who are Muslims would have swung into action” and taken more decisive actions “should kidnappers start feasting on Imams.”
The group emphasised that “the spate of kidnapping and gruesome killing of Christian leaders and their followers was pure persecution.”
It asked “why Imams have not fallen victim to abductions and killings if the problem is a general one and not targeted at Christians as seen in the last few years.”
At the weekend, terrorists murdered another Christian cleric, 50-year-old Catholic priest, Rev Fr. Vitus Borogo, in Kaduna State, at Prison Farm, Kujama, along Kaduna-Kachia Road.
This followed the abduction and killing of Reverend Father Joseph Bako of St. John Catholic Church, Kudenda in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State recently, The Trumpet gathered.
“About 20 Christian clerics have either been kidnapped or killed just in 2022 and there has not been one report of the kidnap or the killing of an Imam. This is not in any way inciting the kidnap of Imams but the unending attacks on Christian clerics is suspicious, that clandestine forces are after Christian clerics,” Onwubiko said.
“The Prelate of the Methodist Church Nigeria, His Eminence, Samuel Kanu Uche; the Methodist Bishop of Owerri, Rt. Rev. Dennis Mark; Founder of Solid Rock Kingdom Church, Apostle John Okoriko; Rev. Fr. Alphonsus Uboh of St. Pius X Parish IkotAbasi in the Mkpat Enin Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State; amongst others have been kidnapped just this year.
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“Now, the bloodthirsty marauders, buoyed by the nonchalance and inaction of security agencies led by Muslims, have the audacity to murder Rev Fr. Vitus Borogo.
This is totally unacceptable and must stop forthwith. “The hot and sizzling Jihad against Christians allegedly supported by Islamists is alarming and condemnable.
The fact that all the internal security institutions are led by Muslims in the last seven years and Christian are being killed and kidnapped in targeted and coordinated manner shows a pattern.
HURIWA urged the President to rejig the headships of the internal security institutions like the police, the Army, the Department of State Services, Customs, Immigration, Prison, Civil defence, NIA, amongst others to “inject representatives of Christians.”
It added: “HURIWA alerts the whole world, the United Nations, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Pope Francis, and other international powers to take notice of the genocide of Christians in Kaduna, Owo in Ondo, Plateau, amongst others and pressure the Buhari government to end the carnage.”
