Your Excellency,
With consternation and utter disillusionment, we watched the now viral videoclip in which the former governor, Nasiru El-Rufai, while addressing a group of Islamic clerics with you sitting by his side, made comments that objectively amount to a divisive, bigoted, hateful and completely unstatesmanlike declaration of Islamic political supremacism in Kaduna State and Nigeria;
The NCDPA KADUNA ZARIA AND KAFANCHAN CHAPTERS are three chapters of the Nigerian Catholic Diocesan Priests Association, domiciled within the boundaries of Kaduna State;
Having soberly considered the contents and implications of such communication by a former State Governor who is known to be your close ally, we feel compelled to write you, to know where you stand with regards to the commotions Mallam El-Rufai intends to propagate and perpetuate in our State;
We congratulate you on your emergence as Governor. We wish you well and sincerely pray for you to succeed in accordance with objectives of government and governance run with good intentions. It is however necessary to note that the success of a leader does not occur when he does his own will, but when he fulfills the desires and yearnings of the people he governs. In Kaduna State, the establishment of long-lost peace and harmony amongst the people due to insecurity and injustice, must be paramount. May your success know no bounds should you mean well, as you strive to uphold the tenets of fairness, justice for the masses and the fear of God;
We write you today because we are responsible stakeholders in the affairs of our beloved State with our own congregations and followers. We cannot fold our hands and watch unpatriotic persons who neither live in the state nor care about it, come and set it ablaze at will. Moreso, we and our congregations have prominently been at the receiving end of the terrors of ineffective governance, especially in the last eight (8) years;
For the avoidance of doubt, the now-viral video in reference, is that in which ex-Governor Nasiru Ahmed El-Rufai among other things, speaking in Hausa language, categorically made the following points, that:
most Christians in Kaduna do not vote his party (the APC), hence the reason why he orchestrated their exclusion from being even Deputy Governor;
APC can win elections without the Christians;
for the same reason, he deliberately excluded Christians in all the top cadre of the governance of the state, to wit: Governor, Deputy Governor, Secretary to the State Government, Chief of Staff to the Governor, Commissioner of Finance etc, whom he bragged, are all Muslims;
Muslim dominated LGAs like Kubau benefit more from government than Christian dominated LGAs like Jaba;
according to him, that is what Islamic clerics taught Muslims, and that is justice for him as a Muslim;
in his campaign, he made the Christians believe that his party does not discriminate anyone on the bases of religious affiliation, but it was meant to deceive them as they would certainly discriminate;
campaigns were not ran by their politicians but by the Islamic clerics, and this was done up to the Polling booths with the assistance of the Islamic paramilitary group – Yan Agaji;
the policy of exclusion of Christians in governance has just begun, and will continue until the Christians cannot resist anymore;
the ex-governor kept referring to the Christians as “Them” and the Muslims as “Us”, to emphasize that the Christian does not belong, yet will still contradict himself by saying that his government is fair to all;
Mr. Governor, this, to every decerning mind, is not only the evidence of discrimination and the provocation that most Christian communities and individuals have endured in our state, especially during the reign of former Governor Nasiru El-rufai. It is also an explanation for the many unjust policies of his administration, uneven distribution of state resources, the wanton killings and kidnappings that afflicted the Christian dominated areas, and the nonchalance and sometimes scornful response of government to the distress calls of victims;
It is important to call your attention to the fact (which we believe you already have details of), that during the pendency of the last administration, our association almost lost count of our members who were steadily being targeted, kidnapped and killed! In most cases, Priests were executed after paying huge sums as ransom. This is apart from the several other pastors of other Christian denominations and countless whole Christian communities that are being steadily raided, ransacked, burnt down and their inhabitants either taken for ransom or slaughtered without any of the perpetrators brought to book, nor any support for the survivors from the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), or the National Emergency management Agency (NEMA), nor from any other government agency. The only response that would usually come their way from government has been bizarre and inhumane accusations that they provoked their killers, tagging the atrocities as justified revenge killings, with punitive curfews and proscription of socio-cultural and developmental associations of some socio-cultural communities;
We are fully aware that as guaranteed both by Natural Law and the Nigerian Constitution, Kaduna State and its resources is our common patrimony irrespective of ethnic, cultural or religious diversity and disparity. As such, elements who are notoriously seen to be despotic, divisive, inciting and eminent failures in building peace should be hiding their faces in shame, rather than be publicly seen standing by you and using your religion or party to promote extremist exclusion and anarchy without consequences, because ours’ is certainly not in a lawless society;
Mr. Governor, our disappointment and shock did not stem only from the utterances of the former governor, but more from the endorsement he received from the audience, made-up of Muslim clerics who excitedly cheered him on. It was more shocking because these are the same clerics with whom we have been in constant dialogue and discussion on how to help entrench harmony, peace and mutual respect for our different faith-persuasions. They are the same clerics we have called friends and partners in inter-religious dialogue, and now they seem to stab their friends in the back;
Mr. Governor, we do not intend to conclude that you are in agreement with all the content of the former Governor’s utterances, as you have given no explicit reason to suggest so (yet), even though you were present at the occasion! We therefore earnestly expect your direct official reaction to the utterances of your predecessor in office, the former Governor. This non-negotiable expectation will go a long way to re-affirm the populace that the Constitution is respected by you, and thus bring some measure of the now deeply-battered (if not decimated) calm, quiet and confidence needed. This is the expectation among both Christians and Muslims for assurance that you intend to be a leader for all;
We expect that you will use your good office to correct the fallacies that the former Governor’s actions and comments have created and propagated, these fallacies are, that:
Christians and Muslims in Kaduna State are at war with each other;
your party, the APC, is a party for Muslims;
being a Christian in Kaduna State is a misfortune if not an offense, as religion automatically excludes one from certain state privileges which should be accessible to all citizens;
the inter-religious dialogue promoted even by the state is a mere ploy to deceive non-Muslims and subjugate them to Islamic political domination;
your campaign promises were insincere and not ever to be trusted;
against the provisions of extant laws, Muslim religious clerics and places of worship have become political campaign officers, and offices/hubs respectively, and so on;
We are writing you because we want you to succeed. Religion occupy the place given it under the Constitution, and should never be used as a cover up for incompetence and failure. The peace and progress of our state should never be traded for some atrocious political expediency. We assure you of our unrelenting support and prayers, trusting that God will give you the wisdom to govern and give Kaduna State an enviable reputation among other States.
Signed:
Rev. Fr Joseph Gandu (NCDPA Chairman Kaduna Archdiocese)
Very Rev. Fr Douglas Rock (NCDPA Chairman Kafanchan Diocese)
Very Rev. Fr Samuel Ameh (NCDPA Chairman Zaria Diocese)
CC:
The Office of The President
Federal Republic of Nigeria
Aso Rock Villa
Three Arms Zone Abuja
The Vatican
Through
The Apostolic Nuncio to Nigeria
His Excellency, Archbishop Antonio Guido Filipazzi
Pope John Paul II Crescent Maitama
Garki, Abuja
Archbishop Matthew Man’oso Ndagoso
The Metropolitan See,
Catholic Archdiocese of Kaduna
Bishop Julius Yakubu Kundi
Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan
Very Rev. Fr Michael Kagarko
The Administrator
Catholic Diocese of Zaria
