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Clerics unimpressed by Umaru
Musa Yar’Adua, but his opponent was more hardline.
Christians fear that
persecution especially in predominantly Islamic northern Nigeria will increase
following the election on Saturday (21 Ap) of Muslim Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as
president.
As governor of Katsina state
in northern Nigeria, Yar’Ardua imposed sharia (Islamic law) and presided over
a
system of deliberate denial
of land for building churches, as well as government agencies that arbitrarily
closed some churches, Christian leaders told this correspondent.
Major
political parties in Nigeria nominated only Muslims from the north as part of an
unwritten agreement among leaders that the presidency would alternate between
north and south.
The
Rev. Bulus Polit of the Evangelical Church of West Africa in Jos told us that
between the two Muslim presidential candidates, Yar’Adua’s opponent was the more
hard-line Muslim who would have presented greater problems to Christians in the
country. |
