Don’t Negotiate With Boko Haram –Pastor Oritsejafor

With the subsequent activities of Boko Haram in the northern part of Nigeria,the National President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor shortly after celebrating his birthday on Monday by giving out cheques of N50,000 each to 30 disabled people has said Nigerians need to stop pretending boko haram is a political war and its high time we face reality. Boko Haram is a religious war and its high time Islamic leaders talk some sense into them including Shekau himself, he explains.

Now the third thing; this is also very important, Nigerians, I beg us, let us stop this pretence. It is either we are totally ignorant, which I will be surprised of, or we are totally wicked and pretentious. We keep saying that this thing is not religious; it’s an insult to the sensibility of the average Nigerian. So when will we agree that this is a religious problem? When Nigeria is wiped out? When these people overrun the whole nation before we will know? I read in the papers today that an insurgent was walking around the streets of Mubi preaching. The report states that Boko Haram patrol captured towns preaching to residents. Are they going round begging for food? They are preaching. Preaching what? Don’t we know what they are preaching? They are preaching Sharia. Why are we pretending to be politically correct?

There are Muslims that are good friends and I associate with. I love them. I cannot hate Muslims. Why should I? My religion forbids me to do that, but I am begging these people that Muslim clerics, the notable ones from all the denominations of Islam, because Islam has denominations; all the Muslim clerics, all the Muslim political leaders, all the Muslim traditional rulers; these three groups should please for God’s sake and for the sake of Nigeria and for the sake of their own future and their own children and children’s children, they should come together.

Boko Haram will not listen to me. Boko Haram is an ideology. Please ask this question, what is the Salafi ideology in Islam? What is the Wahhabi doctrine in Islam? Are there doctrines like that? Yes. What are the doctrines that these terrorists around the world believe in? The doctrines they are teaching, are they not coming out of this Wahhabi and Salafi doctrines? Boko Haram is basically an ideology. To defeat an ideology, you need a superior ideology. Many of our Muslim brothers have come to say to those of us who don’t know much about Islam that these people are not Muslims.

Alright, but what are these people preaching? Is it not from the Quran? Now you say you have the real thing that this is not the real thing. Then match the real thing with the unreal thing or with the fake. In other words, they must engage these people. There are few Muslim clerics that these people respect till tomorrow. From what I hear, they like discussing the Quran, up to Shekau himself. They must find ways to engage them. I will never have access to them. They don’t even want to hear anything about me because I’m an infidel. But they would listen to some of these clerics. They must locate them, find ways to engage them probably through some of these their Quranic studies and scholars, they may be able to get to a point where they can discourage some of their activities and gradually get them to become sane again.

Source: Vanguard