The Christian Association of Nigeria has described as provocative and inciting, claims by Islamic organization, Jama’atu Nasril Islam led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Abubakar Sa’ad III that the process of selecting delegates to the National Conference done without fair representation of Muslims.
The Christian body also threatened to boycott the 2016 population census and subsequent exercises if there is no provision for religion.
Secretary-General of JNI, Dr. Khalid Abubakar had claimed that Muslims were cheated in the process in spite of having the largest population as review by many international agencies.
“Democracy is a game of numbers but it has not been respected, because Moslems constitute the majority in the country, Christians, who by all acceptable records are not more than 40% of the country’s population ironically constitutes 62% of the total delegates”, Abubakar had lamented.
“It is disrespect to the conscience of the Moslems that of the 20 delegates of the Federal Government, only six are Moslems; no Moslem is deemed fit to make the delegates of the Nigerian economic submit”.
But responding on Saturday, General Secretary of CAN, Dr. Musa Asake reminded JNI of the argument and refusal of Muslims to include religion during the last census in Nigeria. He appealed to JNI not to use religion as a basis for their reservations about the National Conference, as the conference will do Nigeria a lot of good.
“The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) read with consternation the provocative and inciting statements by Secretary General of the Jama’atul Nasril Islam, (JNI) Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu at a press conference in Kaduna recently.
“The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), therefore, with grieve and concern, feel constrained to respond to the unprovoked defamation of Nigeria Christians by the Ja’amatu Nasril Islam (JNI) through its Secretary General.
“This is disappointing especially coming from a person of Khalid’s standing in educational attainment. To assume or suggest, as it were, that Muslims are more than Christians in Nigeria as the basis for his argument when no census anchored on religion has been carried out is logically faulty. When and how are these figures by the international agencies arrived at? Which of the international agencies have census figures that Nigerians do not have? Has there been any census by international agencies in Nigeria? To put forward a suggestion or theories like this one by Dr. Khalid, for others to consider should have been well thought out”.
CAN maintained that the JNI Secretary-General goofed, having put out insensible arguments and thoughts. It challenged him to make public the source of his population figures that shows that Christians in the country are 40%.
It added that should JNI not respond to the population issue and produce its claimed sources, CAN will use alternative means to ascertain the fact of their publication, as it cannot continue to allow people like the JNI to make “reckless and false statements”, bringing division among Christians and Muslims, when there is a lot of ongoing effort towards peaceful coexistence of Christians and Moslems.
“The body of rules, ideas, principles and techniques that applies to subjects like census figures must be those matched by empirical evidences. Dr. Khalid’s ideas, thoughts and beliefs about the 40% Christian population and 62% of delegates being Christians are therefore mere speculation and conjectures to buy in the idea of a region’s reluctance to attend the conference. It is another way of using religion to shoot down the conference
“CAN may need to remind JNI of the argument and refusal of Muslims to include religion during the last census in Nigeria. We appeal to JNI not to use religion as a basis for their reservations about the National Conference. We believe the conference will do Nigeria a lot of good. Meanwhile, the JNI Secretary General should come out with the figures that make the Muslim population to be more than that of Christians as we, in CAN, will boycott future census in Nigeria beginning with the 2016 exercise if they do not include religion. Enough is Enough”!
