Presidency replies Catholic priest who blames Buhari for escalating wave of violence across Nigeria

The presidency on Tuesday replied a Catholic priest who accused President Muhammadu Buhari of not doing enough to check the incessant violence across Nigeria.

In a statement by Mr Buhari’s spokesperson, Mr. Garba Shehu, the presidency also blamed community leaders for the incessant violence across Nigeria.

Shehu was responding to a statement allegedly made by the Catholic Bishop of Yola Diocese, Mr Stephen Mamza.

Mamza allegedly accused Buhari of “sleeping on duty as Commander-in-Chief.”

The presidential aide said the Buhari administration has done a lot to improve the security in the North-east.

He then argued that Buhari was not to blame for the ethnic and religious violence that has claimed the lives of hundreds of people in many states in Nigeria including Adamawa, Taraba, Benue and Kaduna.

Shehu said rather than blame Buhari, community leaders are to blame for the violence.

“Sadly, one of the realities of today’s Nigeria is that it easy to blame President Buhari for the violence all around us. Community leaders are too scared to blame the warlords and the sponsors of killings we live with because they fear for their own lives.

“What is happening in several communities racked by inter-ethnic and religious violence is arising from the refusal of community leaders to point at known criminals in their midst for the law enforcement agencies to act against them. They rather blame President Buhari for their woes.”

Buhari has been criticised by many Nigerians for the insecurity across the country. While the government has indeed degraded Boko Haram, other forms of criminality including kidnappings, armed robbery, attacks on communities by armed persons, ethnic and religious violence have become commonplace across the country.

In an action that broke the old tradition of staying above politics, the Catholic Bishop of Yola Diocese, Rt. Rev. Fr. Stephen Mamza delivered a homily in which he spoke angrily against President Muhammadu Buhari, whom he described as “sleeping on duty as Commander-in-Chief.” This is not a fair comment.

There is so much that has changed in the past three to four years in and around Yola, and the Catholic Church in particular that a true assessment would show that but for the Change Administration of President Buhari, things would have continued the way they were, or even get worse. These could not have happened if a Commander-in- Chief was asleep.

Bishop Mamza was, and is still a strong member of the Adamawa Peace Initiative, API, composed of religious and community leaders which did the lovely work housing and feeding 400,000 displaced people from Northern Adamawa and Borno States in 2015. The API also did the extraordinary work of easing tensions between Muslims and Christians during that period and ensured that both groups did not turn on one another based on suspicion.

As widely reported by the local and international press, in the premises of St. Theresa’s Cathedral where Rev. Mamza ministered, there were more than 1,500 IDPs, mostly women and children on whom the church administered food rations and issued bags of maize, cooking oil and seasoning. We are truly touched and very grateful for the work that the Bishop and the others had done in that difficult period.

Now that Boko Haram has been degraded, the more than 400,000 displaced people absorbed by the Adamawa community have all gone back to Borno State and to those council areas in northern Adamawa.

In addition to the capital, Yola, the towns of Michika, Madagali and Mubi which had been occupied by Boko Haram during their military advances have since been retaken by the Nigerian military, whose personnel are also clearing litters of Boko Haram’s carnage and are, through the support of the administration as well as local and international partners, rebuilding roads and bridges, power lines, burnt schools, markets, destroyed churches and mosques.

Without an iota of doubt, the Northeast is better off with President Buhari than it was under the previous administration. That should explain the massive turnout of voters in the region, in spite of threats to life and property, to vote for the return of the President for a Second Term of four years.

Sadly, one of the realities of today’s Nigeria is that it easy to blame President Buhari for the violence all around us. Community leaders are too scared to blame the warlords and the sponsors of killings we live with because they fear for their own lives.

What is happening in several communities racked by inter-ethnic and religious violence is arising from the refusal of community leaders to point at known criminals in their midst for the law enforcement agencies to act against them. They rather blame President Buhari for their woes.

It is indeed an irony that in the week that Bishop Mamza was speaking, another Bishop with a known commitment to peace, and results to show for his work in neighbouring Plateau State, is being dispatched to go to Taraba, Adamawa and Benue States to work in collaboration with security agencies in mending broken inter-communal relationships.

This senseless violence can never be condoned by the administration and we sympathize with the families of those who lost loved ones as well as those injured. The administration’s intense security efforts and peace building will not only continue, but will expand in response to such explosions of violence in the country.