Jos Blast: Govt careless about tackling Boko Haram- Archbishop

From Ado Abubakar Musa, Jos

The Anglican Archbishop of Jos, Benjamin Kwashe has alleged that the incessant killings and attacks bedeviling the northern part of Nigeria was due to the nonchalant attitude of the Nigerian government to tackle insurgency in the country.

The Anglican Archbishop was lamenting over the weekend in Jos on the Hausa Service of the BBC monitored in Jos, while being interviewed on last week Thursday’s twin bomb explosions that killed about thirty two people, mostly roadside traders around popular terminus market area, in Jos, the Plateau state capital.

He said the Nigerian government was very careful about the activities of Boko Haram since from its inception, the sect wouldn’t have acquired sophisticated weapons, training camp and other war facilities utilized to fighting innocent people, stressing that the sect’s activities should have been hindered before now.

He said, “It is the nonchalant attitude of the government to tackle the dreaded Boko Haram activities that have been causing the incessant killing and destructions in the north. It is the carelessness of the government that allowed the insurgents to own sophisticated weapons and be killing people.

“Look at the victims of Thursday bomb blasts. They are poor people looking for what they would eat and suddenly for no reason they are killed”.

Asking what to be done do to stop these kind of killings and destructions, Kwashe said, “let the government provide adequate security to public places for safety of lives and property of Nigerians.”

Kwashe, however, noted that so far both Christians and Muslims have understood that the five year insurgency had nothing to do with religion and therefore called on the people to continue to be wise in their reaction to any action, nothing that if it were before people would have fought themselves in the name of religion.