By Amos Tauna
Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, has challenged the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, to either endorse or disown the video clip of a Christian congregation where a Pastor is urging his audience not to vote for Muslim candidates in future elections in the country.
The human rights group in a statement says a pastor could be heard in the video telling his congregation inter alia, “2019 will be the deciding year. We must wake up. We will not use our hands to vote for people who will kill us. We will not vote for people who have value for cows than value for life…You can be in any party of your choice but don’t vote for anyone who is against your faith. Don’t vote for anyone who will forget your vote and slaughter your neck.”
Though the above video quotation of the Pastor did not mention a particular religion, including Muslim/Islam, the Director, MURIC, Professor Ishaq Akintola, in the statement believes that it is directed at his religion.
“The Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, has strongly condemned a video clip of a Christian congregation in which the pastor is urging his audience not to vote for Muslim candidates. The group described the video, which has gone viral, as divisive, parochial and archaic.”
MURIC said it was miffed that a section of Nigeria, nay, an Abrahamic faith could be planning something as heinous.
Continuing, the group said, “It is as conservative as it is unpragmatic and as reactionary as it is ludicrous. Although suspicion has been rife for some time that something like this was going on, it is only recently that concrete evidence has been obtained. We have the video. It cannot be denied. What is certain, however, is that this church is not the only one involved. The anti-Muslim campaign is being actively promoted in almost all churches. It just happened that only one was caught.
The group said it did not believe in religious politics. “In a nutshell, we reiterate our conviction that we do not believe in religious politics. We Muslims are prepared to peacefully coexist with our Christian neighbours in Nigeria.
“We urge Muslims to get their PVC and vote for both Christian and Muslim candidates of their choice. The only provison is that such candidates must be reformers and game changers, not looters, kleptomaniacs and politicians in the daytime but armed robbers at night,” MURIC advised.
https://www.africaprimenews.com/2018/06/07/news/burundis-president-will-not-contest-presidency-in-2020-report/