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 APC and Muhammadu Buhari has insisted
that the CAN collected the said amount.
Pastor 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.).
The cleric insisted that CAN collected N7bn from Jonathan.
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.
Reacting to 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
channeled 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 also added that 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, Pastor Musa-Dikwa 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. He said when Amaechi
first accused the clerics of collecting bribe to campaign against the
Buhari candidacy, “I [sent a] text to the leadership of the CAN to
repent or be exposed.