Church leaders protest over killings in Kaduna

By Enekorogha Godbless

Religious leaders have taken to the streets of Kaduna state to protest against continued killings and unabated crime rate in the state on Thursday.

According to a source, the pastors unified themselves in Lagos state and made their opinion known to the government. The source said the pastors were disheartened with the high level of crime in the Northern part of the country.

The Men of God under the umbrella of the church made series of complaints to the government how hoodlums had been terrorizing christians in the north, especially in Kaduna metropolis.

According to one Reverend Emmanuel Adebayo the state government as well as the federal government ought to take swift action against terrorists who make life unbearable for christians in the state and Nigeria at large.

The pastors also asserted that the effort place by the state government to vanquish hoodlums in the state isn’t encouraging. This made them to call on the federal government to take swift action against bandit in the state.

The church leaders equally, during the protest demanded for compensation of all victims as well as giving scholarship to their children, to ameliorate the damage caused on them by the bandits.

“The essence of our gathering today is to put together what we refer to as ‘Kaduna prays’, a prayer work against insecurity.

‘ I am sure everybody knows that Kaduna is one of the states plagued by incidences of banditry and terrorism and various forms of criminality and of late, it has been on the increase.

“We believe that the government is doing their best but their best was not good enough. That’s why we have come out to seek for divine intervention concerning the issue of peace and security in Kaduna state and Nigeria at large.

“Obviously we are not satisfies with the way the government is going about insecurity at the federal level. However, we want to actually acknowledged the little efforts that have been made but we believe that more can still be done. Government needs to be preemptive.

“The government needs to be more proactive. We have been hearing about cry of our governor; he said he has been taken the reports to those concern; he said they know where they are and that they listen to their telephone conversation but the response from the security agencies are not good enough.

“So we are praying that God should touch their hearts to put in more efforts and to be more responsive so that thus issue of insecurity won’t be more reactionary but be preventive and we pray that God will give them more wisdoms on how to go about it in Jesus name.

“Some of the statements that the Kaduna state government has made such as bombing the forest, sure it’s a welcome development but what we expect is that the government should carry out precession attacks.

“When you said carpet bomb, they can hide among innocent people. So if you carpet bomb them, innocent people will die. So we believe that the government monitor their movement through intelligence and carry out the bombing.”