By Mick Oseji, Asaba
The Anambra State Governor, Charles Chukwuma Soludo, has decried threats of the United States President, Donald Trump, to carry out military action in Nigeria, ostensibly to wipe out the perpetrators of the alleged genocides of Christians.
The Daily Crucible reports that the United States government had on Friday declared Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) over alleged killings and persecution of Christians by Islamist extremists.
And less than 24 hours after the CPC tag placed on Nigeria, President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to cut off all aid to Nigeria and invade the country if the genocide against Nigerian Christians and burning of churches continued unabated.
However, speaking during Channels TV’s Sunday Politics, Soludo, who has been noticeably tackling killings and their perpetrators in Anambra State, said the Nigerian government needs to respond to the United States views on the security situation with the facts in a “deeper conversation.”
Citing the surfeit of killings and maiming in Anambra in the last couple of years, he said that even though both the victims and perpetrators were Christians, the butchery in bushes and forests in the Southeast geopolitical zone, especially in the Anambra section, was not driven by religion.
He said, “The role of the Nigerian government in protecting lives and properties, the record needs to be clear. I think it is a matter of conversation.
“As a country, America has its own rights to have its own views about what is going on elsewhere, but when it comes to what it does, I am sure it must also do what it does in terms of its own response within the realm of its own international law.
“But there is a deeper conversation. Our introspection about what goes on in the country. In this part of the world, Eastern Nigeria, it is not religious.
“People are killing themselves, Christians killing Christians, the people in the bushes are Emmanuel, Peter, John, all Christian names, and they have maimed and killed thousands of our youths, it has nothing to do with religion.
“Certainly, if Nigeria requests any assistance for the military, technology and hardware to deal with insurgency, then it is within Nigeria’s call.”
He noted that security challenges are not confined to one country or locality alone, stressing that even America has her own share of the challenges too.
“You have police men killing some blacks… I remember the black Lives Matter protest, and somebody will say maybe Africa should go and invade America because blacks are being killed, I am not quite sure because that is the way I see it.
“I think there is a need for deeper conversation. It must end in conversation, and I am sure the government of Nigeria will respond very robustly on behalf of Nigeria. Nigeria is such a big country, and the government is doing a whole lot to safeguard the country.
“In this part of the country, we are 95 per cent Christians, and around the southeast are Christians. The people in the bushes killing people bear Christian names; it is wider than the categorisation of Christians, Muslims.. Nigeria will overcome and it will end in conversation.”
