The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) has released a 10-point statement on the polity, calling for decisive actions to be taken in the interest of the masses’ welfare and development in the country.
This was part of the outcome of its second quarter national executive council meeting, held at the Bishops’ Court, PFN national headquarters, on June 29, in Lagos, at which a number of religious and national issues were raised, and exhaustively discussed.
A statement, by the PFN president, Reverend (Dr) Felix Omobude, on the resolutions at the NEC meeting was made available to TribuneChurch.
In the statement, which touched on topics ranging from the economy to herdsmen’s clashes, insecurity, restructuring, fight against corruption, fairness in appointments, among others, the PFN, while condemning what it described as “the destruction of Churches that often occurs in the Northern part of the country,” noted that “the Constitution guarantees the freedom of worship to all Nigerians and that right cannot be capriciously breached by anyone.”
The statement read: “Churches that have been destroyed to be rebuilt by the state governments along with the ones destroyed by Boko Haram and appropriate compensation paid to the victims. We restate our call on state governments in the parts of the country in the habit of withholding the issuance of Certificates of Occupancy on landed property owned by churches to immediately issue them and desist from the practice of discrimination on the basis of religion.”
The PFN commended the Federal Government for the progress made in tackling the Boko Haram insurgency and efforts made to secure the release of some of the Chibok girls and rehabilitating them. The organisation urged government not to relent in its efforts at ensuring the release of the remaining girls and others still in the captivity of Boko Haram.
The organisation lamented the developments in Southern Kaduna, “especially the lack of prompt response to guarantee the security of lives and property there,” and called for more attention to be paid to the plight of the victims of the Southern Kaduna crisis.
According to the statement, a delegation from the PFN recently paid a visit to Southern Kaduna and made a presentation of N15 million worth of relief materials to the different groups, irrespective of ethnicity or religion.
“From this visit, we can see that there is much more that urgently needs to be done for the people of Southern Kaduna and urgently too. We call on the Federal Government and Kaduna State government to immediately improve on their rehabilitation efforts,” Omobude stated.
The body called for more measures to improve security, while restating its position on cattle rearing/ranching, calling on state governments “where cattle rearing is a part and parcel of their culture, to build ranches and develop reserves where cattle owners can husband their animals without travelling long distances where they stray into farms, destroy crops and constitute nuisance and threat to other communities.”
The PFN restated its belief in the unity of the country and a commitment to one Nigeria where people of different faiths and tongues can continue to live together as one, and called on government to ensure the practice of federalism in its true form.
“We urge the government to pay attention to the calls for restructuring and find a way to push for further devolution of powers, while adopting an all-inclusive approach to governance and development in the country.
“The PFN is concerned about apparent lopsided appointments into sensitive positions by the Federal Government and urges for balance and an all-inclusive approach in making appointments so as not to exacerbate the increasing mistrust along ethnic and religious lines in the country,” the statement read.
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