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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