 Well, the Cardinal State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Reverend Joseph Hayab, is joining us on the news for more on this. Good evening, Reverend Hayab. Thank you very much, and good evening to you too. We're sad we're meeting on this note again. This is the situation every time I'm on here to speak about another sad experience. Can you give us a bit of background to this, because not so long ago, over a hundred children from your church were kidnapped, and now we're looking at worshippers 66? Give us a bit of overview back then to all of us. Yeah, what happened was that on Sunday, the 31st of October, that's exactly one week ago, there is a church, Emmanuel Baptist Church in Kakaodaji, Kakaodaji is just three kilometers away from either Gonangora or Sabontecia or NNPC. So it's just a suburb behind those three communities I have mentioned. The church held what they call a sing-song service. Normally, annually, the choristers used to organize sing-song service where they would invite other guest singers to come and sing. When the service was just about ending, as we were told, they were just collecting the final terms given often. Then these government appeared in large number. First they went to the children's church, then they moved to the main church. They surrounded the church, and when people saw them, there was panicking and confusion. So they opened fire. One man was killed instantly, few sustained injuries, but one sustained critical injury. That was why last Sunday or Monday, the story out there was that two people died, but the truth is that only one person died. The other person was taken to hospital. He did not die. He is still in the hospital. And 66 of them were taken away? So then we started having confusion about the number. We were not so sure until Tuesday before we got the exact number of people that were taken away and they are 66. Those 66 include pregnant women, nursing mothers, people aged and youths and children. We are now waiting to see whether they are going to call for us to go into kind of discussions with them. Then they released a video on Wednesday night. In the video, they showed those people seated and they were molested or they were asking them to speak so that their Christian brothers were here. I remember a very famous senator in our state wrote something about that video. He said the bandits are not just kidnapping people to ask for ransom, but they are also asking them, kidnapping them to molest them and robbing their faith and their identity. Well, this is part of what we are facing. So we saw that video and we are still making effort to see what can we do? How can we get these people back? What did they want? What have they asked for? Have they asked for anything? Yeah, they did. First, they asked for foodstuffs and others where we were still working to get all those things to them. Then we got calls yesterday that they shot five of them and two died, three sustained serious injury. The fact is that they selected four young men or five young men and none of them is above 25. They are between 20 and 25. So they shot at them. You can see, I don't understand why they did that, but two died. The three that are in the hospitals are still young men. So they didn't touch the women, they didn't touch the old men, but they just go for those good-aged young men to just finish. When you said those in the hospital, which hospital and who took them to the hospital? No, no, no. Of course, when it happens, they have to call and inform the community that they should come and carry some of their men. So the community came and the security were informed when they saw dead bodies and they are in a hospital that I don't think for public consumption, I need to mention the name of the hospital, but they are in a hospital in Kaduna. The president of the Nigerian Baptist Convention yesterday had to speak with the governor. According to the president of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, he just apologized for the unfortunate thing. Personally, I have spoken with the IGD this afternoon. We've called all the relevant security agencies to talk with them. They have explained to us their situation. We have to just find a way of ensuring that we treat our members and then bury those who are dead and then we have appealing that the 61 who are still with the bandits, whatever can be done, let it be done so that this one, no one among them should die again. You know, when the children were kidnapped some time ago, you did say something. You made some very shocking statement. You said the bandits were in charge, that they were in control, they were given the terms. And then you also said that the state governor did not, have not helped in any way. Is that still the situation? You see, the bandits seems to understand the weakness of Kaduna state government. The bandit also is playing on that weakness on all of us, because if I tell you honestly, one of the claims of the bandits for shooting those people was that for the few days or five days they kidnapped those people for one week, the government didn't talk to them. You and I know that we do not want our government to speak with bandits, because for our government to speak with bandits, then we are compromising something about the security of our state. But for the bandits to not make such demand, they are just playing with the situation, and then they use it to cost us pains, they use it to kill innocent citizens, they use it to stir up sentiment. And the realities of government have really done enough, because we've never asked government to negotiate with bandits. All we want is government to secure the people. It took government two days before they even come out publicly to say that those 66 people were kidnapped. The fact is that I remember that when BBC asked me on Monday, and I shared the story, and BBC tried to reach out to the police and reach out to government, they were acting funny as if nothing has even happened in the state. So it was like a story we're saying that never happened until Tuesday before they came out to commit suicide with us for the death of those ones that died that day, and then for the taking away of the 66 people. So I sometimes don't even want to waste much of my time talking about what government can do. And just saying, look, the federal government is directly responsible for protecting lives and properties. What the federal government should act responsibly. I don't want to go to details of who do we call yesterday? What do we say yesterday to the various powers in government, from the IG, to the SSS, and to everything. I knew yesterday was a very bad night for me, because this incident actually happened yesterday, Saturday in the afternoon, where we are managing and trying to find way of securing, first, protecting the ones that are still alive with the bandits before we even make this statement outside. Until this evening, or earlier today morning, that the president of Baptists have to announce it in one of the church. Then I have to come up openly to tell the world that, yes, this has happened. We've been battling with this since 1.30 yesterday to this evening. OK, Reverend, yeah, you said the government is not securing the people, one of the major rules that any government should provide to the people. My question now is, what is, can both the state chapter and the national chapter doing to secure the people in the north, especially in Cardinal state? With all that's been happening, what steps have they made to increase the level of security they've provided? The best step we can take is what we've been doing. Number one, educating the people on taking personal responsibility for their security and security of their places of worship. Number two, crying out for government and security agencies to act responsibly. You see, if we ask the people now to go on self-defense, if we ask the people now to protect themselves, we are going into an anarchy, or a situation of anarchy, because we have said this several times, the government would just hide on us, oh, they are calling on people to fight, but they are not protecting the people. How long will the people protect their kids? But I do remember, Mr. Hayab, that I can't say specifically now, but one of the ministers had said that the people should protect themselves instead of crying out all the time. Yeah, we keep saying that, but we have to understand that we have a country. We have a country and we have a constitution. It's the constitution of Nigeria saying all of us should be protecting ourselves. If that is what they want, then everybody first, we should go, amend our laws, and also allow everybody to own a gun. At the moment, you know the laws we have do not permit me to own a gun, and the process of even getting a license gone is difficult. I'm from Kaduna State, I'm from Southern Kaduna. I remember many times when bandits come around and kill people in Southern Kaduna, when they you get angry and become agitated and go and carry dagger or carry some dame guns and knives and cutlassies, the army will just come and search their homes and not parade them that they've got gun runners. Well, in reality, these are just people trying to protect themselves. So you have a situation here that you want to help yourself, but the system could now use your help to indict you, to cause, to call you a name that Nigerians will not even ask question and assume truly that you are out holding gun and you are killing people. I have also read on pages of newspaper how someone in the farm that a bandit or a headman almost killed him and he succeeded in taking the dagger of the headman and killed the headman who was to kill him. But the court is now sentencing him to life or to death. So this is the situation of Nigeria. In Adama State, this thing just happened about two weeks ago. You could go through that story and you'll find it. So we have a situation where our laws have been manipulated to protect criminals. Our laws have been manipulated to protect those who are killing innocent citizens. And the law that demands that citizens should be protected is not being evoked. So that is the condition and that is the situation we have. The fact is that just common expressing our view that our people have been killed, our people have been abducted, our people have been kidnapped is sometimes being viewed by those in power as if we are raising or we are adding tension to the community. Rebrant Hayab. Asking or carrying weapons. It will be bad for our country. I can't say how sorry I am enough about what's happening. Unfortunately, the time is not enough. So I have to wrap this up. Just wishing you and everyone involved the best and everyone in Kaduna and indeed the whole of Nigeria. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.