Reacting to the latest development, National President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor urged the Nigeria Police authorities to get to the bottom of the fresh violence and allay the fear of every Nigerian that yesterday’s explosion was not orchestrated by religious bigots.

He said the security authorities must now rise above religious, ethnic and other primordial sentiments to demonstrate their avowed neutrality to the whole world that they are not part of a grand design by a clique who are bent on destabilising the nation on the altar of a particular religion to the disadvantage of others.

“I have continued to urge the elite in the North to ensure that the regime of uncertainty is put behind us so that the country can forge ahead to harness its huge potentials for the benefit of the generations yet unborn,” Oritsejafor said in his first reaction to the news of another powerful explosion in Kaduna, venue of the just concluded ACF peace meeting.

The CAN president who was in the Kwara State capital, Ilorin for the second quarterly meeting of Nigeria Inter-Religious Council meeting on Tuesday, readily aligned himself with the position of the Catholic bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah and the Arewa Youths Forum who lampooned the northern leaders over their roles in the under-development in the region.

According to him, “the problem with this country is that people are often ready to mouth their commitment to peaceful resolution of the multi-faceted problems in the country while their actions are at variance with what they say.”

“Day in day out people blatantly tell the whole world that the crises in the North are political and economic, but the target of the violence is always the Christian folk. Can’t we co-exist in a country given to us by God Almighty? I think the elite class in that part of the nation must stand up to admit that there is the urgent need for them to honestly address these issues frontally,” he stated.

The CAN president also charged Northern leaders to embrace peace in a nation with several millions of enterprising individuals seeking peaceful atmosphere to go about their dreams which in return helps the development of the informal sector of the economy.

Oritsejafor is of the opinion that the unabated crises in the North had taken a toll on the nation’s economy, arguing that foreign embassies are currently dissuading their nationals from coming to Nigeria for security reasons.

“We must be sincere with ourselves to tackle the security challenge or else the much talked about Vision 20 2020 will just be a wishful thinking, because we cannot grow this economy under this chaotic atmosphere. I am aware that southerners and even northern Christians are daily migrating from certain parts of the North for fear that they may become victims any day,” he stated.

He therefore reiterated his call on the Federal Government to demonstrate the needed political will to deal with the growing trend of terrorism in the country by fishing out all the merchants of deadly operations in parts of the country and bring them to book to deter others.

“Except, we make scape goats of these people, we will continue to move in circles and watch our economy go down in tatters. We cannot continue like this and expect that manna will fall from Heaven; we must make deliberate effort to make Project Nigeria work,” he stated.