The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to put an end to an unending cycle of violence and killings in Nigeria, while stressing that compensation is given to churches, other affected persons.
The body, in a communique issued at the end of its special stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos on Sunday, February 23, 2020, and signed by its national president, Felix Omobude and its national secretary, Emmanuel Nuhu Kure, lamented the spate of killings, banditry, kidnapping, violence, wanton destruction of lives and properties across the nation, saying Nigeria has reached such a totally unacceptable level to warrant immediate and complete review of the security arrangement of the nation.
“The PFN calls on the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to do what it was elected to do by putting an end to this unending cycle of violence and killings in Nigeria, as security of lives and property is the primary constitutional duty of the government. We enjoin President Buhari to live up to his campaign promises and execute the responsibility of his office by defending the life of every Nigerian, no matter the ethnicity or religion.
“We wish to remind our President that he is the President of every Nigerian and that he, along with all our elected officials, have responsibility for the safety and security of all Nigerians. The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, notes that from the onset, Boko Haram has left no-one in doubt that the Church in Nigeria is its principal target. Its activities, especially the kidnapping and barbaric killings of Christian Clergymen, clearly establishes its evil mission and objective.
“On account of the monumental losses the Church in Nigeria has suffered from the destruction and burning down of thousands of churches and houses by insurgents and rioters across the Northern states of Nigeria, the PFN renews its call for adequate compensation to be paid to all affected persons and churches. We believe that the fair and just thing is for the government to come up with a remediation program to compensate victims for the hardship they have suffered,” it said.
The PFN restated its call for the Federal Government to activate the necessary mechanism and legal backing for the setting up of State Police in the country, saying it believed that the recent agitation and introduction of different variants of Regional and Community Policing models attested to the fact that Nigerians were yearning for an alternative approach to policing, one that incorporated direct participation by other tiers of government in tackling insecurity in the country.
The body said it was highly concerned at the intolerable level of poverty across the country, worsened by the high level of unemployment, especially among the Youths.
“We believe that the heightened anxiety in the land and spike in heinous crimes that we are witnessing correlates with a high level of unemployment in the country. We call on the government to urgently address the issue of youth unemployment and find ways to tap into our areas of competitive advantage to help with the creation of investment, entrepreneurial and employment opportunities.
“The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, is disturbed that millions of Nigerian children are out of school. We see this as a ticking time bomb, one which has not only provided tools for crime and terrorism in the past but one that can only provide a recruitment pool for terrorism and all sorts of crimes in the future. The PFN believes in the transformational power of good education. We call on government at all levels to ensure free and compulsory education for all Nigerian children, up till the secondary level, as a means of breaking this chain of poverty.
“The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, restates our call for the reform of public institutions to make them truly independent and in line with global best practices. We are disturbed at the fact that never in the history of Nigeria has our democracy been as corrupted as it is today. We call on the Federal Government, under President Muhammadu Buhari, to institute necessary reforms to deepen the democratic process by delivering to Nigerians a corruption-free electoral system,” it added.
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