Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, AYCF, has reacted to a recent claim by the Nigeria Christian Graduate Fellowship, NCGF, that there were moves by the Northern elite to wipe out indigenous Hausa Christians from the region.
NCGF, while reacting to different statements by President Muhammadu Buhari, Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA and Presidential Aide, Femi Adesina that 90% of victims of Boko Haram are Muslims, had provided an alleged breakdown of attacks on Christians in the region.
The NCGF had alleged an underground plot involving northern Muslim governors, military leaders, Emirs, Islamic clergymen to wipe out Christianity from the North.
According to the Christian group, “There is a deliberate policy by the northern Muslim elites (politicians, government officials, military, Emirs and Muslim clergymen) to persecute Christians and wipe out Christianity in the North.
“What is happening is an organized, supervised program to silence and displace Christians and ethnic minorities from their lands, with the active connivance of the Buhari administration and northern elites.
“This is all about territorial control and gaining access to the abundant natural resources of the indigenes of those communities.
“It is all about changing the political, demographic and economic dynamics of the region in order to enforce a Fulani and Muslim ethnic agenda. It is about primitive conquest and domination of the indigenes of those communities.
“The Muslim Fulani are simply trying to change the demography of the land to their advantage, just as with the recent policy of granting visa on arrival to West Africans suspected to be Fulanis from neighboring African countries.
“These allegations might seem alarmist to some but, in reality, have been internationally acknowledged, both in television broadcasts (for example, by the Christian Broadcasting Network) and in print.
“No less a scientist than the French public intellectual and philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy, published an article in the Wall Street Journal of December 20, 2019, titled: ‘The New War Against Africa’s Christians.’
“‘In it he stated: A slow-motion war is underway in Africa’s most populous country. It’s a massacre of Christians, massive in scale and horrific in brutality. And the world has hardly noticed.”‘
But reacting to its National President, Yerima Shettima, AYCF dismissed the claim as concocted lies built to create more confusion in the country, describing the group as confused graduates.
The AYCF leader told DAILY POST, “I’m sure these graduates are confused. How can someone even think of that? How can you wipe out a tribe, has that ever happened?
“Are the Hausas not also important to the region? The claim is not correct. The highest victims of the attacks and killings in the region are Muslims.
“So let them stop talking about certain people being wiped out. It’s not true that Christians are the highest number of people being killed in the region.
“Tell me the population of Christians in Maduiguri, tell me the population of Christians in Yobe and Adamawa, those are the epicenters of the attack. There’s no target of anybody. There’s no special bomb made for Christians or Muslims.
“Once attacks are carried out, anyone in that location is affected be it a Christian or a Muslim. There’s no technology for Christians and and Muslims.”
