Fred Ezeh, Abuja; Judex Okoro, Calabar
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) have kicked against a Yola High Court ruling which sentenced five Christians to death for allegedly killing a herdsman.
It was also a day CAN President, Dr. Samson Olasupo, in a statement by his media aide, Pastor Bayo Oladeji, expressed worry that the Nigerian security system is gradually being infiltrated by people of questionable characters.
CAN asked the Federal Government to prevail on Adamawa State Government, to reverse the death sentence passed on the five Christian youths who allegedly killed a Fulani herdsman.
The association made reference to recent media reports which indicated that Justice Abdul-Azeez Waziri of a High Court in Adamawa, sentenced Alex Amos, Alheri Phanuel, Holy Boniface, Jerry Gideon and Jari Sabagi to death for culpable homicide.
The convicts were said to have allegedly, on June 1, 2017, at Kadamun village in Demsa Local Government Area conspired and attacked three Fulani herdsmen, killing one of them, Adamu Buba, whose body was later found in a nearby river.
CAN also insisted it does not support jungle justice or criminality but was unhappy that hundreds of Christians in Kaduna, Benue, Taraba, Plateau states, are killed on daily basis, with neither arrest nor prosecution from the government.
It, thus, solicited the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari, in the death sentence passed on the Christian youths in Adamawa, even as it asked its legal team to carefully study the judgment to avoid miscarriage of justice and recurrence.
On its part, the PFN National Publicity, Bishop Emmah Isong, told newsmen, in Calabar, yesterday said the leadership, at all levels, vehemently oppose some policies that tend to divide Nigerians along religious lines rather than uniting the people and that although they are not supporting criminality in any form, but there must seem to be justice done whenever there is a clash between Christians and Muslims.
“Although we are not backing anybody to commit crime, we rather feel that justice must seem to have been done in the case of the five Yola people. The entire leadership of PFN protests totally against the judgment and call for appeal to squash it.
“It is high time the federal government intervened, to ensure that those Christians are not killed to forestall further religious conflict within that axis. Instead of killing people for herdsmen, federal government should rather find a way to curtail their activities and provide adequate security to all Nigerians, which the present administration promised on ascension to power in 2015.”