On August 22, at the Abdu
Gusau Polytechnic, Talata Mafara, Zamfara state, a moslem mob pounced on
one of the Christian students, and set about the not-unusual business of
gruesomely terminating his life. He had
been accused of blaspheming the Prophet of Islam.
In his statement in the later
national fall-out to the incident, Governor Abdulazeez Yari of Zamfara provided
some details: “From the intelligence
report I got from the security agencies, there was a fight between two students
and I think one of them injured the other and started shouting that his
assailant had abused Prophet Muhammad and other students came and beat the
other boy who is Yoruba and from Kogi State…..Some people said he was a Muslim
and some said the boy was a Christian, so they beat the student until he
collapsed and thought he was dead.” (http://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2016/08/25/blasphemy-yari-explains-how-eight-people-were-killed-in-zamfara/)
One can only imagine the kind
of mauling meted out to the young man – such that he actually collapsed and
appeared dead in every way! The
governor’s pretended ambiguity on the religious affiliation of the assaulted
student was based on the fact that the unnamed student had actually converted
from Islam to Christianity. According to
Christian students on the campus, the Islamists had long been looking for an
opportunity to KILL the convert, based on the charge of apostasy, which is
punishable by death in Sharia law which still operates in Zamfara state! (see http://christianresponse.org/news/student-counters-official-version-of-eight-christians-killed-in-zamfara-state-nigeria/). To the Islamists, once a moslem, for
ever a moslem!
Anyway, back to the story. Just as in the case of the Apostle Paul, (Acts
14:19-20) the young man, after being picked up by God-sent friends, did revive
and he was carted off to the hospital. The irate Islamists, as they have done
on countless occasions in diverse locations in Northern Nigeria, simply
re-mobilized and violently charged the hospital to finish the job. Again frustrated in this objective by Divine
providence, the mob reverted to the house of one of the good Samaritans who
reportedly had assisted in moving the supposedly-dead Christian convert to the
hospital. They burned down the house, and
with it, eight innocent souls.
From
the settings, it was presumed that all the eight students roasted to death in
the off-campus residential building were Christian. But the Christian body, Northern-CAN (not the
one affiliated with the Christian Association of Nigeria) later issued an authoritative
statement correcting that presumption. According to Rev John Hayab, the Public Relations Officer of Northern-CAN, “Our people on ground confirmed to us that none of
our people were killed. We don’t need to mention those that were killed.” http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/08/blasphemy-no-christian-killed-talata-marafa-northern-can/
Governor Yari however provided
the identity of those who were killed by the Islamic mob. In his account to ThisDay, he continues: “Then
the students went back to the polytechnic and burnt the shop of the person who
gave his car to rescue the boy and …… threw tyres on the man’s house and burnt
the house down. That was how everyone in the house was killed and everyone
killed in the house was Muslim.”
The Northern-CAN however expressed
sorrow that innocent lives, whether Christian, Moslem, or whosoever, were
needlessly terminated just because government is refusing to decisively address
a nagging national issue or provide adequate security for the citizenry. Even the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), an
Islamic body led by the Sultan of Sokoto, this time around, lent its voice in
condemning what it termed a “recurring” and “tediously monotonous” issue. The JNI went on to describe the incident as “most
unfortunate.” (http://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2016/08/25/blasphemy-yari-explains-how-eight-people-were-killed-in-zamfara/)
In what might be the first clear official
pronouncement by the JNI on the issues of blasphemy or apostasy, (both punishable
in the Sharia code by death, in sharp contrast to the provisions of the
Nigerian constitution), the body in its written statement, declares: “The
unfortunate attacks that ensued thereafter the alleged blasphemy of the Prophet
… are criminal and also stand condemned.” According to the report in the Morning Star News, the JNI Secretary-General Dr. Khalid Abubakar
Aliyu further added that individual Muslims do not have the authority to define
heresy or label someone as an apostate. See http://christianresponse.org/news/student-counters-official-version-of-eight-christians-killed-in-zamfara-state-nigeria/
No comments:
Post a Comment