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).”