CAN President, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor
Borno State-based pastor, Kallamu Musa-Dikwa, who accused the Christians Association of Nigeria of collecting N7bn bribe from President Goodluck Jonathan to campaign against the All Progressives Congress Presidential candidate in the March 28 election, has insisted that the CAN collected the said amount.
Musa-Dikwa on Monday in Kaduna insisted that the Jonathan government gave CAN N7bn to campaign against the APC candidate, Maj. Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).
He however said that neither Jonathan nor Buhari was fit to govern the country.
The cleric said CAN collected N7bn from Jonathan and not N6bn as alleged by the Rivers State governor, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, who is also the Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Organisation.
Amaechi had alleged that unnamed leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party paid N6bn to Christian clerics to campaign against the APC. The allegation has caused uproar among the Christian community, with the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria and the Northern State Christian Elders Forum asking Amaechi to name the church leaders who collected the N6bn.
But reacting to the challenge by the Northern States Christian Elders Forum, Dikwa, who is the Executive Director of the Voice of Northern Christian Movement, had told journalists in Kaduna last Thursday that the said money was channelled through CAN.
He said the Christians body got N7bn on January 26, 2015 and disbursed N3m each to state chairmen of the CAN across the country.
Dikwa, who was an Associate Pastor with the E. Y. N. Church (Enklesiyan Yan’uwan A Nijeriya) Farm Centre, Dikwa Road, Maiduguri, Borno State, under Rev. Emmanuel Kwajihe between 2002-2004, said the CAN had started threatening Christians in Borno that they must re-elect President Jonathan in the rescheduled election.
He said that he fell out with the national body of CAN when sometimes in 2013 some clerics from the United States (Christians Association of Nigeria-Americans) visited Nigeria and donated the sum of $50,000 to the victims of the Boko Haram violence in Borno State.
He explained that rather than disbursing the money to serve the purpose for which it was meant, CAN merely gave the victims a paltry N100,000.
The cleric added that when he asked the leadership of the body about the $50,000 for the victims, they became furious.
“This was the beginning of our disagreement with the national body of CAN,” he said.
On the alleged N7bn bribe money, Musa-Dikwa, who played a recorded audio of someone confirming that CAN had collected the money before members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Kaduna Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in Kaduna on Tuesday, said that when Amaechi first accused the clerics of collecting bribe to campaign against the Buhari candidacy, “I text (message) to the leadership of the CAN to repent or be exposed.”
He said since he opened the can of worms, he had received several threat messages from yet-to-be identified persons, who claimed that “I am against Christians and working for the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate.”
Dikwa said it was untrue that he was working for Buhari.
He also added that since the revelation, many of the CAN leaders had called him to confirm that the allegation was true and that they indeed collected the money (N7bn) and disbursed N3m to the state CAN in the 36 states of the Federation.
He said an insider within CAN confirmed to him that the money was collected on January 26, 2015.
He said, “There was no newspaper or news coverage of the disbursement of the N7bn to CAN. A national officer of CAN confirmed to me that CAN received the money and disbursed N3m to each state CAN.
“I sent text messages to the CAN leadership, asking them to repent otherwise I will expose them. Nobody replied me. That is why I decided to open up. Some people say that I am working for Buhari. It is not true. I am not working for anybody. It is not today that I started writing on Boko Haram. I stand for the truth. Boko Haram affects everyone, Christians and Muslims.”
“I am not working for anybody. I am standing for the truth. I am standing for righteousness and for my people, whether Christians or Muslims.
“I have always said that both President Goodluck Jonathan and Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari(retd) are not good for Nigeria. I am praying and I am always telling the people that God will stop them (Jonathan and Buhari).”
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