Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor
is the President, Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN). He was recently
re-elected for a second term. In this interview with journalists, he argues
that Christians are being treated by the government like second-class citizens.
He accuses the Central Bank Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi of working
for a section of the country by promoting Islamic banking with public funds. He
also speaks on Boko Haram and other issues. Excerpts:
You
have been re-elected for a second term as the President of Christian
Association of Nigeria (CAN); what were the challenges you faced during your fi
rst tenure and what is your agenda for the second tenure?
One major challenge was to try to reposition the church in
Nigeria to make sure that it is at par with other religions in this country.
What I saw was a situation where Christians were like second-class citizens in
a country that has, probably, more than half of its citizens as Christians. It
was a big challenge and it is a challenge that we must continue to tackle. It
is a major challenge and also a major goal that I intend to work on, to ensure
that Christians are treated as true citizens of this country.
Because of my efforts to address this challenge, I am probably
one of the most misunderstood persons in Nigeria today. I faced it for three
years and I am hoping that in the next three years, probably many people will
begin to understand me in this respect, especially when they gradually begin to
discover the reality of the things that are happening in this country. For
example, the most recent one is when the Chairman of the so-called Presidential
Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the
North came out to say that they had met and struck a deal with the Boko Haram
Islamic sect, and I said which Boko Haram? Because we have had experiences in
the past where Boko Haram will come out to say they will stop killings and the
next day people are being killed! When I heard what the chairman of the
committee said, I now said, let us wait and see because Shekau (the leader of
the sect) is going to come out to tell us what the real thing is, whether they
had a deal or not. It didn’t take time; Shekau came out and contradicted
everything the chairman of the committee said.
He (Shekau) said he didn’t know the man and that they had no
deal with the committee. He said they are working in the vineyard of Allah and
that they will continue (with their attacks) until they established an Islamic
state in Nigeria. A lot of people vindicated me for my comments.
My belief is that with time, they will begin to see that I have
no hatred for any group of people in Nigeria. Anything I say is not coming out
of hate, it is coming out of love and love does not hate truth. Love is a
foundation for truth. The Bible says “tell the truth in love”. I believe that
within a short time, a lot of those who really thought I hated some people
would begin to see that I have no hatred for anybody. I will love to work with
Muslims, live together and do things together but that should not negate truth.
There are a few things we are doing in CAN. We are building a
Jubilee Centre that will have 50 bedrooms where people can come and pay a
little money to be able to spend the night while in Abuja. At the same time, it
will make some money for CAN because; the association needs money to run its
affairs. The Centre has a conference hall and different kinds of facilities. We
believe God that, this year, we would be able to dedicate the Centre. We will
continue to strengthen Christian unity among us because as Christians, that
will not stop until Jesus returns.
You
spoke about Christians being treated as secondclass citizens in Nigeria; in
what ways are they treated as second-class?
Very good question! Actually, in my own opinion, Christians are
being treated as second-class citizens in virtually every way! Let me give you
some few examples because if I begin to tell you everything, you will not even
have space to publish them in your newspapers. For instance, in the education
sector, Almajiri schools are being built everywhere (in some states of the
North), I don’t know how many of such schools, but everybody knows that in
2012, the Federal Government spent N5 billion for the construction of Almajiri
schools in the North.The Almajiri schools are exclusively for Muslim children.
There are several millions of Christian children who cannot go to that school.
How are we giving those Christian children the same opportunity to be educated?
Automatically, they have been made second-class citizens.
Don’t forget that the schools which Christians used their money
to build were taken over by the government, and the same government is using
public funds to build special schools for Almajiri. That shows that Christians
are just second-class citizens. The government is running all those schools
taken from Christians the way they want. Both Christians and Muslims go to the
schools but the Almajiri schools are exclusively for Muslim children only.
When you go to the judiciary, it is still the same story. I am
so glad that I read what a lawyer, Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, said in the newspapers
recently. He noted that the constitution is being reviewed and there are
provisions for Sharia for Nigerian Muslims, there is customary court, what is
the provision for Christians? The general courts are shared by both Christians
and Muslims. When Christians have some very knotty issues that are purely
Christians in nature, where will they go to? The regular courts may not have a
very clear solution to such cases. Agbakoba has come out to say he may sue the
Federal Government and the National Assembly. This to me is a very interesting
move. I just hope that our Muslims brothers will appreciate what I am trying to
explain. In the Sharia courts which are funded with public funds, only Muslims
are employed there. From the cleaner to the judge, no Christian can be employed
in the Sharia court. In the regular courts, there are both Muslims and
Christians as well. From the lowest level of the court, to the highest, they
are there. They are the ones that head the Supreme Court and most of the courts
with the Sharia court exclusively for them. What is the judicial system for
Christians? It is not there, so they are second-class.
Go to the government owned media houses and see that is
happening there, especially the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). I don’t
know now because some of them retired at a point, but before their retirement,
seven directors out of eight were Muslims. Turn that around and see what will
happen. What do you call that? Second-class citizens. A judge in Abuja came out
to say Islamic Banking is illegal, but he added a caveat to it by saying that
his hands were tied, he cannot do anything about it because it was not the
right people that came to court. I am still wondering who the right people to
come to court are!
But the important thing he said was that Islamic Banking is
illegal. It is illegal but it is functioning at its peak, established and
financed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), not Central Bank of Islam. The
governor of the CBN almost seems to be working for a section of the country and
nobody can say anything and it is going on! Yet it is something that it is
supposed to be illegal. What the CBN ought to have done was to have one unified
system for non interest banking, but instead of doing that, what it did is to
specifically come out with a set of guidelines for Islamic banking, saying they
had another set of guidelines for others. Who are these others? They are the
Christians. It is amazing when you see these things happening. Every area you
look at, it is the same story. Go to institutions of higher learning,
especially in the North, there are courses that Christians will never be
offered admission to study, that is if you even get admission at all because
you are a Christian and that automatically make you a second-class person.
In some
northern states, the teaching of Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) in public
schools is prohibited. Why do you allow for the teaching of Islamic studies,
but you cannot allow the teaching of CRK?
I am puzzled about this? Let me even go further, if I go to NTA
Sokoto today and say here is my money, I want to preach on NTA that is funded
with tax payers’ money, they will throw my money away and say you cannot preach
Christianity on NTA Sokoto. We know that in some of the northern states, there
is an unwritten law that you cannot sell land or building to be used for church
or a brothel. So the church and a brothel are equated on the same level! How do
you describe that? In the last 20 years, there is no church in some of these
northern states that have Certificate of Ownership (C of O) as we speak today.
This is one Nigeria, but it is like Animal Farm. Some animals are more equal
than others. That is what we are seeing in this wonderful country called
Nigeria. They can abduct your daughter and forcefully marry her. They literally
kidnapped people’s daughters who are Christians and give them out for marriage
but they will never allow their daughters to marry Christians. Imagine a pastor
going to abduct an Imam’s daughter; do you think we will still have one
Nigeria? In some of the northern states, the government spends millions of
naira to sponsor Muslims to pilgrimage to Mecca without extending same gesture
to Christians who are even indigenes of those states.
We are aware that in some of the far northern states, foreigners
(Muslims from Niger and Chad republics) are more accommodated and are accepted
into the scheme of things than Nigerians who are Christians from other states
of the federation. You recall how a Christian was rejected for appointment as
the Vice Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria some years back
even when he emerged as the most qualified during the interview for the
position. There are so many of these injustices against Christians, we can go
on and on. That is why in my own opinion, Boko Haram is just the latest
manifestation of this same process of marginalisation and oppression that had
taken place through the years. It has reached a point where it appears like we
accept it.
I believe that the time has come for us to say no, it cannot be that
way. This is not because anybody has hatred towards anybody. We all have equal
rights as Nigerians; I have a right to ask for my right. That does not mean
that I hate somebody. I am only demanding that I should be treated equally and
fairly like others.
So these are some of the few things that made me see Christians
literally as secondclass citizens in their own country.
There
is agitation for amnesty for Boko Haram and nobody seems to be thinking or
talking about the thousands of victims of these murderers. What is your comment
on that?
It is very, very unfortunate because in any situation, I almost
used the word conflict, but it is not a conflict because what we have is
genocide as far as I am concerned. To me, I will want to call it religious
cleansing. That is what we are actually experiencing. In any situation where
lives are lost, the number one and overwhelming interest should always be about
the victims. Look at the so-called dialogue and reconciliation committee that
was set up! There are 28 people, five are Christians, so who is representing
the people who are the victims or the people you are supposed to be
reconciling? Who are you reconciling with whom? It is difficult to comprehend.
I think the approach is very wrong. You can’t even talk of amnesty; it is not
something to be discussed at all! What we should be talking about are these
wicked people who have made orphans out of so many children, widows out of so
many women. They should be able to come out when they realise that what they
are doing is wrong and publicly say we are wrong and we are so sorry, forgive
us.
If they come from that point, then you are ready to talk of
reconciliation, you are talking of forgiveness, then there can be genuine
meeting of minds. We can discuss and say, since you feel this way, we can now
start to talk because Christianity is a religion of peace, love and
forgiveness. That is what the Bible taught us. In fact, that is why Nigeria is
so peaceful because more than half of the people in this country are a group of
people who believe in love, peace and forgiveness. If they come from that
angle, then we can now start talking and at that point, there could be a
discussion of any other thing that will take place, but not where we are now.
Where we are today is that we are having a group who are killing innocent
people and coming out to boast about it and say, you who want to give me
amnesty, I am the one to give you amnesty. Which amnesty are you giving them? I
don’t think there is room for that discussion right now. I think the government
should strengthen the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) which is doing its best
to curb this thing and reduce it to the barest minimum. The military should be
encouraged and empowered the more to address the situation. But they must be encouraged
to operate within the rules of engagement. We can see that since the state of
emergency was declared in the three states, there had been tremendous
improvement in so many areas, although we know that killings are still going
on, there is a lot of improvement. I am more concerned about the victims of the
killings and I think anybody else should be, not about these criminals, these
wicked people who are going out there and killing innocent people.
Look at those school children they killed in Yobe State
recently. Shekau came out excited about it and said they will do more. What he
was saying basically was that, the fact that these children who are Muslims are
sent by their parents to acquire western education, it automatically makes them
infidels. People must always remember to connect this with Christianity because
when they say they are against western education, they are against
Christianity. It is Christianity that brought western education. They are
against it and are fighting it because western education has its foundation in
Christianity…. That is why they are against Muslim parents that want their
children to compete in the global village that we are today. These are serious
crimes that these people have committed against God and man.
We
understand that you have been making efforts to unite Nigerian Christians
outside the country. How successful has that been?
I give glory to God because we are succeeding. I feel it is
necessary for Christians to be united and be praying because we don’t carry
guns, knives; all we have is our God and our voice. Every day we notice that
our voice is being drowned by certain forces who want to make sure that our own
point of view is suppressed and not heard. The world is now a global village.
If the world is this, it means that whatever happens in Nigeria reverberates
across the world. But when it reverberates around there, whose voice does the
world hear? Sometimes what I heard as I travel around the world is that it is
the Christians that are killing people in Nigeria. This is shocking and I
noticed that there are many Nigerian Christians around the world, if they too
can join us to start speaking out and re-echoing what we as Christian leaders
are saying, it will probably help. To the glory of God, we know that in
America, there is what is called Nigerians-Americans Christian Association. We
have encouraged them and they are actually a great encouragement to us right
now. They are becoming very formidable in America today. They are doing a great
job, holding up our hands and are speaking as we speak and they are following
events very closely in this country. We are hoping that in Europe, we will have
such things happening in the United Kingdom (UK), then gradually France and
other countries across the world so that the voice of the church in Nigeria
would be heard.
We are beginning to understand that the church must also have a
global agenda, not an agenda to take over the world or violently kill people,
not at all, but to preach the gospel as we are instructed in the Bible and
protect ourselves from a very dangerous satanic invasion that is coming from
the pit of hell. I believe God will help us because anybody who organises
things that will kill people is wicked. I read a document when I was in the
United States of America that Boko Haram is the second most violent terrorists
group in the world. According to the document, it is only the Talibans that are
ahead of Boko Haram in the number of people they have killed in the whole
world. That is to tell you the level of destruction of lives and property that
these people have indulged themselves in. As I always say, we are ever ready to
partner with our Muslim brothers. We love them, we wish them well, but we will
continue to tell the truth because the Bible says you will know the truth and
the truth will set you free. If we work on the basis of truth, we can work
together well and build a great nation that we will all be proud of.
Some
western nations are trying to blackmail Nigeria over this issue of same sex
marriage, what is your reaction to this?
Fortunately, in this country, both Christians and Muslims
opposed same sex marriage and it is on record. Nigeria must never succumb to
the world. President Jonathan must understand that he was voted by Nigerians.
When you are voted into a position, you are voted to do the bidding of the
people who voted for you. So he must not allow Obama or the British Prime
minister to put pressure on him to bend to what they want. If they want men to
be marrying men and adopting children, that is their society, not Nigeria.
Nigeria is a country that has said no to same sex marriage. I don’t see the
President refusing to sign the Bill against same sex marriage into law as soon
as it gets to him. Nigeria cannot be a place for such things. We are battling
with enough problems; let us not complicate things for ourselves. Same sex
marriage is not for this part
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