The Kaduna State Chapter of the Pentecostal
Fellowship of Nigeria, on Tuesday, said the over
5,000 pastors in the PFN would rather obey God
than obey the proposed preaching bill currently
before the state House of Assembly when
passed into law.
The state PFN chairman, Prof. Femi Ehinmidu,
who spoke at a stakeholders’ roundtable
conference in Kaduna, expressed concern on the
bill being sponsored by the state government.
Ehinmidu told the state government to be ready
to jail the over 5,000 pastors in the state’s PFN if the government believed it could muzzle the
citizens to pass the bill into law.
He argued that the bill remained a recipe for
crisis in the state when passed into law.
Ehinmidu pointed out that unless the government
carried out wider consultations among critical
stakeholders, the bill, which he claimed started
on a faulty note, was bound to fail.
The Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-
Rufai, has, however, cautioned religious leaders
against politicising the bill before the Assembly.
El-Rufai told the stakeholders that the preaching
bill he sent to the state Assembly had no
intention of banning evangelism in the state but
aimed at curbing emerging religious extremism.
Speaking at the Roundtable Forum, organised by
a non-governmental organisation, Carefronting
Nigeria, with the support of the Canadian High
Commission, el-Rufai, who was represented by
his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr.
Samuel Aruwan, said the bill was informed by the government’s concern for security of lives
and property.
The forum was tagged Kaduna State Religious
Preaching Regulation Bill: Intention and
Perception.
The governor said the government had no ill
feeling towards the views of the Christian
Association of Nigeria, the Jama’atul Nasril
Islam and other critical stakeholders, who had
made genuine positions on the matter.
He added that some people had started
politicising the good intention of government to
restore peace in the state.
He explained that the bill, when passed into law,
would allow the Christian Association of Nigeria
and the Jama’atu Nasir Islam to check strange
ideological beliefs that were not in tandem with
Christianity and Islam.
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