President of the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC), Reverend (Dr) Israel Adelani Akanji, in this interview with Assistant Northern Bureau Chief, Ishola Michael, in Gombe, speaks on the recent gruesome killing of innocent people in Plateau State, and what the Federal Government should do about the insecurity of the nation.
Are you satisfied with the response of the government so far on the recent killings of people in Plateau State?
I have responded to what happened in Barkin Ladi, Bokkos, Mangu, and other places in that axis of Plateau Central Senetorial District, if you recall, the previous year, 2022, the same thing happened in Rafin Maitunbi, Kantoma, and others was sacked, people had to run away from those places to like Mangu, Barkin Ladi and others locations for safety and take refuge. I had the opportunity of going around to see things. I saw people in helpless situations. That was in May, less than a year since we went on that visit. Again, in December there was a deadly attack even on the eve of Christmas to give people a black Christmas. To me, that was very disrespectful to our faith as Christians. People know that that the period we were celebrating the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. They so dishonored us. we cannot dishonour people of other faith like that because anything they respect, we respect; anything they cherish, we cherish with them. But for people to just disrespect us like that, visit people with such magnitude of a gruesome murder, was so unexpected.
Are you impressed with the present situation?
I want to say that, in truth, we have seen a difference in the response of the Federal Government to the issue, a complete difference from what it used to be. In the past, these hoodlums, criminals, bandits, and terrorists would storm villages and communities to kill people indiscriminately for not less than 48 hours with nobody stopping them. The only time you would see the security agents was when they were already gone, nobody would be arrested, Can you imagine the might of Nigerian Army, how strong we are security-wise as a nation? We have helped other nations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and other parts of Africa. We have settled several countries internal insecurity problems only for us in Nigeria to be folding our arms when we have such a strong army.
For me, it is a disgrace that they will not be able to produce one person who has been caught after the killings of about 200 innocent people on the eve of Christmas in a country that has security apparatus in place. That is unacceptable, and at this level, we must not be deceiving ourselves. I believe that we need to sit down at a round table and ask ourselves the question: do we want Nigeria to continue or not? If indeed we want Nigeria to continue, every life must be respected.
Has the government done enough since the incident?
I appreciate the Federal Government for the prompt response the vice-president, and all the Service Chiefs have all gone to Jos. They have responded, and we have seen them. It is not like in the past when nobody showed up. I am happy for what they have done and also they have made a lot of promises of how they are going to help the people affected as well as eliminate all these evil people in our society. I am very happy that they have made these promises. But, you see for us in Nigeria, until those promises are followed up with actions and these things are discontinued, we will still be holding the FG responsible on the issue of security. So, we thank them. They have done the first part, but then the other part is very important.
What should be the next step?
They have spoken; we are grateful. We thank God that they have spoken. The FG has responded but we are holding FG responsible for the implementation of the promises made. I have always said that part of the problem in Nigeria is that when our leaders make promises to the people, they don’t fulfill them as has happened in the past. Now, I am expecting that the current government led by President Bola Tinubu will act on what it says.
We are also delighted with the way he is treating the corruption going on in the country. You can see that the president said that he will not have tolerance for corruption and he is truly taking action. So, I can see him as a person fulfilling the promises made and, therefore, I have the hope that all that the service chiefs and VP have said will yield positive results. We are now waiting. May God help the government and We will be praying for them to be able to fulfill their promises.
As religious leaders, what roles will you play to avert a recurrence of such and gruesome killings?
As religious leaders, the role we will play is the role we have always played; we are usually left with the casualties. We go there to see them, sympathise with them, and take care of the wounded and we are grateful that the government has stepped in to be able to assist people that have been physically wounded and assist families that survived those attacks. Those are steps that are quite new from the government. So we are grateful for those steps and I want to appreciate.
For us in the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), we are still gathering funds, putting money together and tasking ourselves to be able to go and take care of the churches. We are encouraging each denomination where these people come from to also do something in addition to what CAN is doing. In May 2023, on our own as Baptist, Nigerian Baptist Convention, because we were affected, we went down and took care of the people. When we go as a church, we don’t take care of our people only, we take care of everyone. We don’t take care of only Christians, we take care of non-Christians too, particularly Muslims who are also involved in the heinous criminal attacks leading to suffering and hardship.
We share what we have with them because suffering against humanity is what God does not want and God wants us to take care of the people that are suffering irrespective of their faith and religion. We have to do that, and, that is what we are doing, taking care of them. But that which we will continue to do is to use our opportunity and platform to speak, to continue to remind the government agencies in charge because we cannot take the laws into our own hands. We cannot say because people are bringing guns, we too should go and get guns. We have never said that to our people and we will not do that. But while we are not doing that, we will continue to be on government’s neck.
The reason it seems we are attacking the government is because we don’t carry arms. We don’t have what to fight. Can you imagine that out of all the 190 people that were killed, none of the terrorists was among? Is this how Nigeria will continue? That is why we are saying that there should be more action. On our part, we will continue to speak to the government. It is not that we hate the government. No, we love the government; we know that it is not easy for them too, but they must treat everyone equally. There is no way we can talk about these things and our emotions will not rise and our hearts boil. The only thing we have is our mouths; we cannot fight.
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