What does This CAN Want?

This our Nigeria sef! It is a country full of contradictions and lies. A country where almost everybody will like to make maximum capital out of every situation, no matter how holy or sanctimonious.

Nigeria is a country where people seek public office, not because they necessarily want to serve, but because they want to use the position to attain some greater heights, to get something out of the system, to enrich themselves.

Once they succeed in getting that position, in climbing to power, they will begin to do anything, no matter how despicable, to keep themselves permanently in office, or use it for some pecuniary interests.

When some Christian religious denominations decided to come together to form the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the aim, no doubt, was to galvanize members of various Christian religious groups, so that they would speak with one loud voice, instead of cacophony of voices.

It was also aimed at promoting the welfare and protecting the interests of individual Christians, as well as at advancing the cause of the Christian religion generally, particularly in a multi-religious, but secular country like Nigeria.

CAN was never envisaged to be a political pressure group that should always align itself with government before it could exist. That was why many Christian denominations thought it necessary, at that time, to belong to the group, and to rend their full support to the association.

In course of time, however, CAN began to derail. It began to lose focus as some people began to see it as similar to several of our Nigerian NGOs, an avenue of making some quick money, of extorting money from government.

The game plan is like this: the leadership of CAN will begin to make some big noise on a given issue. The government will be attracted and will see CAN as a very important group and will begin to talk with the group, to negotiate with them, and finally “settle” them. Then, the game will be over!

This appears to have been the lot of the leaderdhip of CAN these past few years. That is why some Christian denominations, like the Catholic Church, have begun to distance themselves from the association and are no longer enthusiastic about their continued membership of the group.

We then ask: what is of particular importance for the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria to rush to congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari for being declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission in this year’s elections, when almost everybody is complaining about the serious manipulation of the exercise, and when the final outcome is being challenged at the tribunals? The lawyers will say that it is sub judice.

Did the leadership of CAN consider the injuries, the bruises many people sustained during the exercise, the number of deaths recorded, people who lost their dear ones in the battle field called elections, before they decided to rush to Aso Rock?

What did CAN say about the hundreds of people who were killed in Kaduna shortly after the Presidential election and other Christians who are dying almost on a daily basis at the hands of Fulani jihadists, masquerading as herdsmen?

While the leaders of CAN were busy wining and dining with Buhari at Aso Rock and collecting their “transport money”, they forgot that the leadership of the three arms of government is on the verge of being completely taken over by members of one particular religion.

Did it prick the conscience of the lesdership of CAN that a prominent individual member of the association, the head of the judicial arm of government, is currently being persecuted by the powers that be, so as to edge him out of the system?

How is the CAN leadership so comfortable that Christians are virtually out from the headship of all our security agencies, which are in the firm control of those who profess a different faith?

Actually, some of us are at a loss about whan CAN really wants.