The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) has pleaded with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to reconsider its stance towards the Anambra State governorship election scheduled for November 6.
The appeal followed a declaration of a one-week sit-at-home beginning from November 4 to November 10 by the IPOB over the non-release of its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
Speaking at a special prayer rally in Enugu yesterday, the Enugu State Chairman of PFN, Bishop Goddy Madu, said that any attempt to stop the election would throw up anarchy and would not be in the interest of the people.
He also took a swipe at the President Muhammdu Buhari-led Federal Government accusing it of failing woefully in its promise to secure Nigerians.
The PFN leader lamented that when Buhari was campaigning to be President, he promised to end the insurgency in six months, regretting that ‘today, not just that the Boko Haram insurgency did not end, but it has given birth to several other terrorists’ groups.’
Madu, however, said a boycott of the Anambra election ‘is a call to anarchy because in a democratic setting when you block elections, you give room for all manner of crises.
‘You are agitating for something, but you are using the wrong key to open the right door, what will happen – you will end up sweating for nothing.
‘The move of no election in Anambra come November 6 is using the wrong key to open the right door and it is not going to work out, because if the election did not hold, the governor by the constitution will not stay in office beyond one day and what will be the next thing- state of emergency will be declared.
‘The dream of the Attorney General, Abubakar Malami, will come to pass, which is a call for a state of emergency and then, under such situation, it will no more be a democratic setting, we are talking of slavery, but that is the time you will see the real slavery in your place.
‘We have not seen a state of emergency in Kaduna, we have not seen it in Zamfara, we have not seen it in Sokoto, but they are already preparing for it in Anambra; this is why our people must be very careful.
‘If we say that there will be no election, we are becoming followers and disciples of Malami, he is now having us as students and it will be very stupid of the Igbo to play into the uncultured mind of Malami. I say uncultured because if there is a need for a state of emergency, it should be a national state of emergency, not in a particular state.’
On the level of insecurity in the country, he observed that ‘insurgents have split into tens and hundreds of groups, bandits from Niger are different from bandits in Mali, the ones from Mali are different from the ones from Libya, and those ones are different from the ones from Somalia.
‘So, all the forests in Northern Nigeria and some forests in the South are now being occupied by bandits. You can imagine that they were able to invade the Nigerian Defense Academy, the training ground of our military, killed some and abducted others.
‘The implication is that the country is in a state of terror, even governors now go with Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), what then is the fate of the common man?,’ he asked.
Credit: Daily Sun