Luminous Jannamike – Abuja

The national Christian body, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) on Sunday revealed the real reason it visited Nigeria’s Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo.

Prof. Osinbajo

The real reason was made public in a press statement made available to media on Sunday by the CAN president’s (Rev. Samson Ayokunle) media aide, Pastor Bayo Oladeji.

According to the statement, the visit does not entail exonerating the Nigeria’s vice president of the corruption allegation trailing the disbursement of a certain N90bn election fund.

The Christian umbrella body said, on Sunday, that it was the duty of the court of competent jurisdiction to declare such an accused either innocent or guilty.

The visit according to the Association was to hear the VP’s side of the story rather than blindly condemning or throwing its weight behind him out of sentiments since he is also a cleric and church leader.

The statement reads in part, “The leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) can never endorse corruption and has never exonerated anyone accused of corruption because we are not a court of law.

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“Anyone accused of corruption has to prove his or her innocence with documentary evidence before the court of competent jurisdiction as we all know before his or her innocence can be upheld.”

Ayokunle, however, maintained that the move was not made in violation of the law, and also did not amount to an endorsement of the Vice President as widely reported.

He said, “After we had interacted with him and he said that the allegation was baseless and should be treated as rubbish,

“And not only that, that he said that he was going to pursue the matter legally to prove his innocence, we then assured him that if he is proved innocent, then we throw our weight behind him.

“We thereafter prayed for him and our nation Nigeria. We urged him to continue to serve the nation with clean hands.

“The leadership of CAN has never endorsed corruption. In our earlier visits to President Muhammadu Buhari, we had praised him for fighting war against corruption but urged him to make it comprehensive, sparing no one irrespective of political affiliation.”

Vanguard News Nigeria.