Abuja, 10 April, 2021 / 1:30 pm (ACI Africa).
Christian youth leaders in Nigeria have expressed their opposition to recommendations a section of Nigerian leaders have made to the Federal government to pardon and reintegrate “bandits and Boko Haram insurgents” who have been terrorizing the people of God in the West African nation.
On Easter Sunday, April 4, former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo and a renowned Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi, urged the Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal government to consider rehabilitating criminals who surrender, as a means of resolving the insecurity crisis in the country.
“We oppose amnesty and rehabilitation of bandits and Boko Haram insurgents, and the government will be wrong to think that, by doing so, they (bandits and insurgents) will turn a new leaf,” officials of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Youth Wing (YOWICAN) say in their Sunday, April 4 statement obtained by ACI Africa.
Such a move, the Christian youth leaders caution, "will simply be encouraging blackmail and hitting the lives of the defenseless citizens before firing squad.”
In their statement signed by YOWICAN’s National Chairman, Belusochukwu Enwere, the Christian youth leaders “condemn and frown seriously at the intra-communal war” pitting the Ezza-Effium and Effium clans within the territory of the Catholic Diocese of Abakaliki, Southeastern Nigeria.