Buhari Has Refused to Meet CAN Over Southern Kaduna Killings - Asake Opens Up

 

While speaking in an exclusive interview with Vanguard, the General Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Reverend Musa Asake, expressed disgust about the federal government’s handling of the intractable Southern Kaduna crisis, saying CAN can only bark but cannot bite. 

 

Here are the excerpts from the chat;

 

They just started it but is the problem gone? We just had another gruesome killing of 12 people in Asso area of Jema’a LGA of Kaduna on Easter eve. Where was the military when the latest killings took place and not a single attacker was arrested? They (attackers) go in around 7.00 p.m., kill people and then go away. The Wednesday inauguration of a special operation, code-named ‘Operation Harbin Kunama’, to flush out bandits and other criminal elements in Southern Kaduna, to me, is actually going to help those people do their damage the way they want. I don’t see it solving the problem.

 

If the military has been there and they are still killing, how is it going to solve the problem now? I can guarantee you, if our boys had come out with sticks to defend themselves, they would have been arrested by the authorities and either taken to Kaduna or shot to death right there. That’s why we are telling our boys not to go out anymore but remain in their homes till they come for them. We don’t have guns.

 

If we speak out against these things, our speech is often tagged hate speech. People have been talking to me, I feel so discouraged. They know exactly what they are doing. If you listen to the story by  herdsmen, none of the officers or the authorities, nobody has condemned these people for  the way they talk as if it’s their right to come and demolish your home, take over your land. They are there now in some of the villages. What are the soldiers doing? The last time they invited me, I refused to go. We have to agree that before any peace discussion can go on, let these people leave the villages they are currently occupying, let the villagers go back to their homes. If you make peace now, these people are settled there forever and it’s our land that they want. It’s really sad.

 

Left to me, the ideal solution is to be ready to die; go for our land and protect ourselves. But do we have the means? If you get up now, the soldiers will just shoot you. But if these other people come in their Hilux vans and everything with their sophisticated guns, they allow them pass. They are there in the bush, none of the security operatives wants to go there. If they really want to get rid of these people, let them go into the bush and clear them out of that place. When you approach them with such reports, the next thing is that they move out of that place because somebody would have hinted them. But I’m yet to see the soldiers go to that bush near Kagoro hill where they are. Why don’t the soldiers want to kill them? They can just bomb them from the air but they don’t want to kill them but they are happy to kill our people. It’s a very sad situation.

 

That will help a lot because if they create a state for us and we are not able to manage it, that’s our own problem. But definitely, we will not allow someone to come in and start killing us and we will be keeping quiet.

 

 

There is nothing CAN can do. CAN can only bark like a dog without biting. President Muhammadu Buhari never wanted to meet with CAN leadership….that will be the only place you can go and lay your complaints on the table but he doesn’t want to talk to you.

 

So all we do now is to complain in the media  and how many people read newspapers? Who cares? I got tired of this social media thing. Things are happening there. I wish the brains that can create such writings can confront people but we don’t confront.