Clerics Task FG On Small Arms

CATHOLIC Bishop and Chairman, Southern Kaduna Christian Leaders Council, Most Rev. Joseph Bagibiri, has called on the federal government to check the proliferation of small arms and mop up illegal weapons in the hands of individuals in the country.He also urged government to muster the political will to bring to book all persons behind the post election violence that engulfed parts of the North recently.Addressing reporters in Kafanchan, Kaduna State, Bagibiri said that if lasting and sustainable peace is to be achieved in Kafanchan, government must uncover hideouts of illegal weapons and retrieve them.Disclosing losses incurred during the crisis in Kafanchan, the cleric said that about 350 people were buried in mass graves. He said the figure excludes burials carried out privately by families of loved ones.He said property worth over N1.5billion was lost during the crisis. He put the cost of rebuilding the over 300 houses destroyed at about N2billion.In his address, Pastor Kure of Throneroom Prophetic Prayer Ministry also appealed to the federal government to give orders for a house-to-house search for arms and ammunition in Kafanchan.He said: The federal government should investigate how arms found their way to the city and arrest those culpable; compensate those who lost their properties and means of livelihood and resettle them; investigate how foreigners from either Niger or Chad and other countries found their way into Kafanchan and settled in Matsirga by Madakiya in the last one year, and overnight, gained the kind of arms they used during the crisis which accounted for a lot of people being killed in that axis; and interrogate persons who brought them to MatsirgaKafanchan, who bought them motorcycles for commercial use.This will lead you to their sponsors. This is one of the only immediate things the government can do to convince the ordinary man, both Muslims and Christians, that this crisis will not reoccur or continue in the near future.
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