The Kaduna State chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Reverend Joseph Hayab has said that Nigerians don’t need a prophet to tell them the country is at war with gunmen, kidnappers, and bandits.
Speaking at an intercessory prayer organised by the national CAN against insecurity in the country, Reverend Hayab warned government at all levels not to take the patience of the citizens for granted, lest they may resort to self defence.
He said, ‘The national executive of CAN through the national President issued a circular looking at the challenge of insecurity, the instability in our land, lack of positive progress even as we match to another year that government was sworn-in declared Friday 28- Sunday 30 of may for Christians all over Nigeria to fast and pray to seek the face of the Lord concerning this country and also to challenge ourselves on the need to act responsibly as Citizens. Nigeria have gone a long way despite years of independence, years of a different kind of government, it seems not to have tangible progress that we can be proud of, the government of the day wants us to sing praises of their doings but the reality is that Nigerians are still suffering due to poverty, hunger, kidnapping, banditry ethno religious crisis, the best contributions we can give is to pray.
‘Many of us are obedient citizens, our leaders are exploiting our obedience to continue to cheat us, for you to challenge any leader you must first of all look at your self, when we pray and do what is right we can hold our leaders responsible, everybody is doing the right thing no one can challenge the other, that is why our leaders do evil and go Scott-free. It was exciting news when I heard the release of Greenfield students, we prayed for the greenfield last Sunday, we celebrate with them, we thank God they are saved even though the parents paid ransom and the things they did which shows that we really have a long way to go if our leaders will be truly a government, a government that doesn’t take pride in securing her citizens only come out to issue a statement after the people have suffered to cough out money over N150 million and bought motorcycles that is not less than N500,000 , something is wrong with Nigeria.
‘Nigerians must wake up, our leaders took an oath of office to protect lives and property, if they want us to start protecting ourselves there will be confusion, we believe that they are the ones to protect us, if they don’t they are asking us to do, we don’t want to take laws into our hand but then if the going gets though and there is nowhere that Nigerians may have no option but that is not what we pray for.
‘Nigeria is not secured, the reality is that Nigeria is not safe, everybody is living in fear. Nobody needs any prophet to tell you that Nigeria is already in a terrible situation of war, it may not be a full-blown war but when your citizens are not secured, what do you then call war?, the challenge we have is that our government is exploiting the simplicity of our Patience because there is no country that have patience like Nigerians.
‘Nigerians are patience people, you can have issue of increase in fuel price and citizens are grumbling without doing anything it can never happen in other countries of the world if you have a situation of fuel scarcity for 48 hrs someone must go. People are being killed in hundreds and nobody has resigned and nobody has been dismissed and Nigerians are still keeping quiet, our leaders are exploiting our Patience, our leaders have tactically divided us on region, religion, and different form of identity so that we cannot even come together collectively and cry forth of their ineptitude.
‘When we do that we start fighting among ourselves say we are attacking our leaders because he is of the other religion that is why you are attacking him, Nigeria is at war even if its, not a physical battle, Nigeria is at war with conscience peace and unity of our people, our government must wake up because Nigerians voted for Buhari because we believed that this man can do something, unfortunately, it seems we have a weak Buhari we don’t know what is wrong. We are praying because we have hope’.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
