….as Christians kick
Niger state government has declared Monday 18th March through Friday 23rd next week as work free to enable civil servants and political office holders participate in the monitoring and distribution of palliatives/Ramadan free feeding across the 25 Local Government Areas (LGCs).
This is coming as the Christians are calling on the state government to desist from adopting a divide and rule policy that would set one religion against others because, ‘every Nigerlite irrespective of religious inclination voted in the election that saw to the emergence of Governor Mohammed Umar Bago’.
Niger State Commissioner of Information and Strategy, Hajiya Binta Mamman had in a statement personally signed by her gave details of quantities of palliatives and Ramadan fast free feeding is to be conducted across the 25 LGCs.
The Commissioner who however thanked Governor Bago for making funds available to alleviate the sufferings of Nigerlites said, “Ramadan feeding centres have been set up in all the eight Emirate Councils with the Emirs as the Coordinators”.
The Commissioner while appealing to the Civil Servants and Political office holders to see the task as a call for service to humanity appealed to Nigerlites to cooperate with the officials and to be orderly at all distribution and feeding points for smooth, successful exercise.
Meanwhile, the Commissioners’ statement which did not make mention of what Christians in the state who started fasting (Lenten season) before the Moslems would get and/or if the palliatives were meant for Moslems alone or for every citizen of the state to avoid crisis.
Some Christians who spoke on the issue are of the views that the state government should have clearly state if the palliatives were for every citizen without necessarily attaching religious fasting to it because both Christians and Moslems observe fasting though at slightly different occasions and season.
Nuhu Theodore in an interview argued that, Governor Mohammed Umar Bago, a detrabalised person knows very much about Christian Lenten season involving fasting, hence the handlers of the welfare package should have been more careful attaching certain acronyms when sharing what collectively belongs to every Nigerlite.
“We all know how sensitive issues of religion can be especially in our environment coupled with the level of hunger and hardship, the government needs to be more careful to avoid misinterpretation of the good intentions for the masses”.
Our correspondent however reports that, as at the time of this report the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Niger state chapter were yet to react on the state government’s Paliatives sharing and the Ramadan fast feeding across the emirate Councils and LGAs.
