From Gyang Bere, Jos
President of Evangelical Church Wining All (ECWA), Rev. Jeremiah Gado, has said that a major crisis would engulf Nigeria if leaders of the coalition of Arewa youths who demanded the relocation of Igbos from the North were not arrested.
Gado, in a statement issued in Jos yesterday, said the quit order was capable of splitting the country if the matter was not properly handled.
Gado said: “Why is itdifficult, for instance, to arrest the Arewa youths issuing threats of eviction to the Igbo several days after their arrest order was issued by the Kaduna State government and the Inspector General of Police. Yet the recalcitrant youths are walking the streets free and issuing further threats through media briefings held in a government Arewa House facility under a security cover.
“Why has it been difficult to arrest and bring to justice the Fulani herdsmen destroying farms, churches, killing and maiming people while security agencies are always active and responsive to arrest peaceful agitators in the South-east, South-west and some parts of the North. Who is fooling who?
“The call for the eviction of the Igbo by a section of misguided Arewa youths has become even more worrisome due to the backing of some Arewa elders who obviously are the sponsors of the youths issuing the threats.”
He added: “Elders as the name implies are supposed to be the conscience of society and custodians of communal values to provide guidance to the youth. When such elders derail and behave in the opposite, the outcome of such society can best be imagined.
“It is important to state that other regions such as the South-west are also clamoring for self-independence and several other calls as the restructuring of Nigeria. To single out the Igbo on account of their ethnicity and religion for threat of attack and eviction from the North is a move taken too far.”
He said the church were not in support of the disintegration of the country as being clamoured by some regions and called on the Federal Government to critically look at the reasons behind the agitations and address them.
Gado stressed that the glaring marginalisation, discriminations, lopsidedness and exclusion of some sections of the country from the socio-political and economic arrangement of the nation were reasons for the agitation and mutual suspicion.