The Nigeria Baptist Convention, (NBC), has declared that it spent a whooping sum of N250m to secure the release of its students kidnapped from the Bethel Baptist College, Kaduna last year.
The Convention also scored the fight against insecurity by the President Buhari-led administration as below par, considering the number of innocent lives of Nigerians that have been lost through various acts of banditry and insurgency.
The disclosure was made by the President of Nigeria Baptist Convention, Rev. Dr. Israel Akanji, while speaking to newsmen in Gombe yesterday, during the 2022 International General Workers Conference for the North-East, which was held at the First Baptist Church, Gombe.
Israel Akanji said that, “Initially, we didn’t want to spend money; we didn’t believe in spending any money, that was how we began. I even said this openly that we will not spend money, but I am also saying it openly now that we have had to spend money, we were forced to spend money“.
He further stated that, “when our children spent one month and did not come and these bandits were telling us that they will start killing our children one by one, we had to weigh between our money being in our pockets and our children dying, or our children being released to us and we losing our money; so, we preferred to lose the money; since the government will not help us, we had to resort to self-help; that was what happened and we had to spend so much money”.
Still speaking on the issue of insecurity in Nigeria, the Convention President said that, “there is no doubt in our minds, there is no one that convinces many of us that this administration has done enough on security. We are not saying that they have done nothing; they have been saying that they are doing their best, but we are saying that their best is below the belt, far below our expectations”.
The Convention President further said: “there is no doubt in our minds, there is no one that convinces many of us that this administration has done enough on security. We are not saying that they have done nothing, they have been saying that they are doing their best but we are saying that their best is below the belt, far below our expectations”.
According to him, “Nigeria is divided into, North and South, East and West, Christians and Moslems and we have all these varieties in our nation. However, whoever will come to the leadership at the State level must be concerned about the people of the State, not only people whose speak his own language, whoever is going to lead the nation must be concerned about every aspect of the nation. These are the people we want”.
