Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has predicted a return of peace to the country in no distant time, assuring that kidnapping, banditry and insecurity among other challenges bedeviling the country would soon become a thing of the past.
Osinbajo stated this while speaking as the Special Guest of Honour at a one-day peace and security summit, organized by Kaduna State chapter of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) held at ECWA Goodnews church, Narayi, Kaduna.
Represented by the Chaplain at the Aso Villa, Pastor Joseph Oluseyi Malomo at the summit, the Vice President said, “We all desire a nation devoid of any form of kidnapping and terrorism.
“We have heard prophecies of a shining Nigeria, we are longing for the day those prophecies will come to reality. We need to fight the fight of faith because God’s plans for the greatness of Nigeria have not changed, it will surely come. We need to pray for Nigeria.
“Many are weighed down because of problems they are going through, we must as Christians keep the Altars of God burning with prayers to overcome these problems.
“We must keep faith and see the problems we are going through as bread. God will take us to the promise land of a great nation with great value. We must reject politics of identity and ethnicity. Nigeria is going to be a shining nation, and insecurity will soon end” Osinbajo prayed.
Meanwhile, the Guest Speaker at the event, Professor of Theology and Social Ethics, Yusuf Turaki, said the government knows the kidnappers, bandits and other criminal elements terrorizing Nigeria, but has continued to reward them through the payment of heavy ransom to the detriment of the nation’s security.
In his own argument at the summit entitled, “Nigeria’s Insecurity: The church’s response in the 21st century”, Turaki, a middle belt leader lamented that violence has taken over the country to the extent that every segment of the society now speaks violence, adding, “everybody is overwhelmed with violence”.
Turaki disagreed with politicians who are blaming killings in middle belt on farmers/clash, saying it is a deceptive narrative akin to what he called a repetition of the Sokoto jihadist war.
“These are Foreign Fulani who have been allowed to enter Nigeria so that they could help their brothers in Nigeria to kill innocent citizens and wreck havoc on our ancestral lands.
“These Fulani occupy the lands, carrying AK47, killing people, destroying communities in the middle belt and other parts of the country.
“And the government knows them, government pays them to destroy ancestral lands. Politicians know the bandits that enter Nigeria, but they will not tell us.
“Politicians have devised a wrong narrative that is deceptive, saying it is farmers/herders clash in middle belt, if it is clash, how comes Fulani are carrying AK47 to kill the people.
“Nigeria is well blessed with intelligent people but they cannot up till today solve insecurity in the country. Something terrible has befallen our country. God, open the mouths of the people, let them speak the truth and die for the truth.
“What the Fulani are doing now is exactly what Sokoto jihadists did in those old days. They kidnapped and asked people to pay ransom in those days. If you cannot pay, they sold you into slavery or killed you. So kidnapping is not different from what happened during the Sokoto jihadist’s war. They captured infidel.It is being repeated now in Nigeria,” Prof. Turaki said.
