Senior Pastor of Word of Life Bible Church in Warri, Delta State and National President of Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, has said that his problem with most northern political and religious leaders was that they were not doing enough to convince members of the dreaded Islamist sect, Boko Haram to stop launching unprovoked attacks on Christians and the country in general.
Oritsejafor, who spoke when Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, former Chief Security Officer, CSO, to ex-Head of State, Late General Sani Abacha, led a team of Nigerians, under the aegis of his NGO, Al-Mustapha Peace, Unity and Development Initiative, on a courtesy visit to the cleric in Warri, accused northern elites of showing little concern for the plight of southerners affected in the crisis.
Al-Mustapha informed his host that he was in Warri to seek his understanding and support for peace and unity in the country in the face of the insurgency in some northern parts of the country and killing of innocent persons by Boko Haram.
According to the former CSO, one of the shocking findings by his group was that some individuals were benefitting from the crisis in the country hence they were at the moment sponsoring propaganda against him and his team for seeking the return of peace and unity in the country.
The CAN president, who said he was impressed by Al-Mustapha’s peace efforts, recalled that about eight years ago, he personally drove to Asaba, the Delta State capital to deliver relief materials to northerners that fled Onitsha and other parts of the East, when aggrieved easterners, on sighting the corpses of their kinsmen that were slaughtered during a crisis in the North, sought to avenge their kinsmen massacre.
Pastor Oritsejafor said, “There must be a way of reaching out to these displaced persons. Look at what is happening in Borno State. It is happening to both Christians and Muslims, but when you listen to the leader of these insurgents, Abubakar Shekau, he said in the last message that they are after Christians and anywhere they find them, they will kill them”.
