President Muhammadu Buhari says Muslims are the most victims of Boko Haram insurgency.
Mr Buhari stated this on Monday in an opinion article published on Christianity Today.
The Islamic terror group is said to be fighting for the islamization of the country which is a secular state.
But in the article, the president who recently said he was surprised at the continuous existence of the terror group, dismissed the notion that the terrorists were after Christians, saying most of the victims of the terrorists are muslims and that Boko Haram seeks to use religion in dividing Nigerians.
“Indeed, it is the reality that some 90 percent of all Boko Haram’s victims have been Muslims: they include a copycat abduction of over 100 Muslim schoolgirls, along with their single Christian classmate; shootings inside mosques; and the murder of two prominent imams. Perhaps it makes for a better story should these truths, and more, be ignored in the telling,” Buhari claimed.
“It is a simple fact that these now-failing terrorists have targeted the vulnerable, the religious, the non-religious, the young, and the old without discrimination. And at this point, when they are fractured, we cannot allow them to divide good Christians and good Muslims from those things that bind us all in the sight of God: faith, family, forgiveness, fidelity, and friendship to each other.
“Yet sadly, there is a tiny, if vocal, minority of religious leaders—both Muslim and Christian—who appear more than prepared to take their bait and blame the opposite religious side. The terrorists today attempt to build invisible walls between us. They have failed in their territorial ambitions, so now instead they seek to divide our state of mind, by pulling us from one from another—to set one religion seemingly implacably against the other.
“Translated into English, boko haram means “Western teachings are sinful.” They claim as “proof” passages of the Quran which state that Muslims should fight “pagans” to be justification for attacks on Christians and those Muslims who hold no truck with them. They are debased by their willful misreading of scripture—at least those of them who are able to read at all,” the president’s article partly read.
But a former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, is not buying the idea of the president.
Describing the claim of the president as a lie, Mr Fani-Kayode said the terror group alongside Fulani militia are targeting Christians in the country.
“This is a lie.The overwhelming majority of communities that BH targets are Christian,” the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain said in a tweet on Tuesday.
“The same with the Fulani militias.The killing of Christians in Nigeria is a common blood sport which shall continue as long as Buhari is President,” he added.
"90% of Boko Haram victims are Muslim"- Buhari
This is a lie.The overwhelming majority of communities that BH targets are Christian.The same with the Fulani militias.The killing of Christians in Nigeria is a common blood sport which shall continue as long as Buhari is President
— Femi Fani-Kayode (@realFFK) February 4, 2020
