Nigerian Christians blast Borno-based Pastor over N7b bribe allegation

Some Nigerian Christians living in the United States, under the umbrella of the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans (CANAN) has called out the Borno-pastor who had accused the Christian Association of Nigeria of receiving N7 billion bribe from President Goodluck Jonathan.

Kallamu Musa-Dikwa the Executive Director of the Voice of Northern Christian Movement was challenged by  CANAN, asking him to substantiate his allegation over diversion of $50,000 meant for Boko Haram victims.

Musa was alleged to have said the money was donated to the victims of the insurgency, but was allegedly “diverted and hijacked by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

CANAN described the allegation as untrue, saying it has documents indicating that the money, which was delivered to the national secretariat of CAN “in a couple of batches between late 2013 and early 2014”, was actually received by the victims.

Daily Independent reports that CANAN, in a statement issued from New York on Wednesday by its Executive Director, Laolu Akande, entitled: ‘Our $50,000 donation to terror victims in Nigeria and other adjoining issues’, said CANAN has in its possession signed documents by the victims, local Christian leaders and pastors who played one role or the other in the disbursement of these funds.

“All these people are still alive and can be asked by whoever still has any doubts about how this fund is being spent.

“From time to time, the Secretary General of CAN, Revd. Dr. Musa Asake, (with whom our National Secretariat coordinated, himself a US trained PhD holder from the prestigious Dallas Theological Seminary, here in the US), gave us reports of how the money is being distributed to the victims.\

Pastor Akande, therefore, challenged Dikwa to “be prepared to provide solid proof of such claims, without which he should not be taken seriously both by the media and the society at large.”

Dikwa, the self-acclaimed pastor, had alleged that out of the N7 billion, which, he said, was offered by President Goodluck Jonathan to Christians to campaign for his re-election, each state chapter of CAN got N3 million, while the $50,000 released by CANAN for victims of insurgency in the North East were not disbursed to them (victims) by CAN.