 . ter kom ter kom du du fro v is plus po ler 88 fuel��� . do the state to ensure peaceful co-existence among various people in the state irrespective of the religious differences. Governor Sonny also challenged the religious leaders to put an end to the menace of bloodletting that characterized the state for decades. Cardinal state was particularly engulfed by a bloodshed during the Shabia classes of the year 2000 between the two major religions when many lives and property were lost and destroyed. Jonino's Life is Rev. Joseph John Hyatt, Chairman of the Christmas Station of Nigeria Khan Cardinal State Chapter and Country Director of Global Peace Foundation Nigeria. Rev. welcome to Plus Politics. Thank you for having me and good evening to all Nigerians. How is the security situation in Cardinal as of today sir? Well, we will say that as of today the situation in Cardinal is calm. We are looking forward with hope that we will continue to make progress in our effort for the restoration of peace, restoration of love, restoration of togetherness. Cardinal in the past decades have actually suffered so much violence as you rightly put in your story which led to the death of so many people. Innocent lives have been lost. Some of them would have been future leaders of the states. Some of them would have been future scientists of this great country and this world where they were wasted due to ignorance and due to efforts by the different groups to see that they are protecting either their fate or defending what they feel is being tempered with. But in the past few weeks so much progress has been made because the new governor in his efforts to restore peace is beginning to talk lovingly, is beginning to talk maturedly, is beginning to talk friendly, is beginning to talk in such a way that he can win many people towards unity, towards understanding. Not that much progress has been made but at least there is indication that there is a division from yesterday's approach to issues to a new approach to relationship and new approach to respect and new approach to finding solution. So few years and especially there is a change, there is an effort towards finding solution. Is that a polite, is that a polite condemnation of the attitude or mannerism or the style of the immediate past governor? Well truly speaking I don't need to say it Nigerians new and even when he was just about to retake off one of the most publicized video of his statement, his bigotry and others just tell a lot about what happened in the past. And so we have considered that it's a past we are looking forward to for something new and the governor have promised that yes I have my different approach. I took out of office and so to defend and protect every citizen in respect of his tribe in respect of his religion. So for us let's give him the benefit of the doubt to see what he will do. But when we dwell too much on the past pens, when we dwell too much of the past insult that we receive from the former governor, we may not give good attention to the new approach. So what we are trying to do and what we are pleading people is that what has happened has happened since the man in the hem of our fears now is willing to speak to people, is willing to win people. Look the fact about security is everybody's business and it takes people to show security agencies things that are happening. It takes people to inform security agencies where evil is going on. It takes people to help security agencies understand the challenge that is going on in the state. But when people don't have trust on their leadership, when people begin to feel their leadership are loading it on them and causing them more things than good, they don't speak. Even when they see something they don't say something. So I think the approach of the new governor is I want all of you to be involved in the approach trust finding solution. Since all of you need to be involved, please trust me. I'm going to listen to you. I want you to tell me. I want you all to talk together. I want you to speak to the security agencies. Let's find solution. And for us we are saying let's work with this man and see whether we can find solution. No. Welcome back. We are technical issues. We have now reconnected with our guest. Are you there? Yes, I'm there. He comes to the territory. That's what we experienced in Nigeria regularly. Drop calls and all the beats. But having said that, when we were talking before the line got disrupted, was it that those of you in leadership, especially religious leadership, and of the particular faith that you belong to, was it that at some point you detached from connecting with the former governor with the view to solving the security problem? Because the way you were speaking, it was almost designable that you people may at some point have resigned from engaging with the immediate past governor with the view to solving the security problem. Allow, allow. It is what it is. Sometimes in Nigeria you just get used to what ordinarily works mostly. Some other clients are doing what it does. Is he back now? Yeah, I'm right with you now. Okay. Okay then. Welcome back. Unfortunately, we really need to apologise. The line has been quite erratic. But we have our guest back. Reven, are you there? Yes, I'm back. I'm sorry. Not at all. Not your fault. I said, you know, when you were making your last point, I could almost, I could almost glean or design the attitude of detachment from the immediate past governor on issues of security because maybe people of your faith and people in leadership in your faith may be felt betrayed or felt disrespected. Could that perception be right or wrong? Well, so many things happened during the last administration. Some of them sometimes we don't want to talk about that but the purpose of responding to your question, the fact was that even during security council meetings there was no robust discussion between security and the service in Kaduna state and the then governor because he was a master know it all. Before they would say one, he would have answers to all. So most of them were just careful not to cut, not to step on toes, not to say anything that would cause any problem. And unfortunately, we never get good results. Now we are beginning to try something as engagement, discussion, dialogue, talking with people, listening to people, giving people opportunity to speak. And we can see the difference because as I said, there is no way you can run security by knowing it all. You run security by listening to people, you run security by hearing from people, you run security by also allowing people play certain rule and take responsibility for certain things. But if you know it all, the temptation is that everybody will just watch and look at you and just be expected to. I think that was what happened. So it's not just about one group of people feel disrespected. One group of people feel that they were not carried along. A larger section of the state were really not carried along. At that time, the kind of press statements coming out of government house was more of attacking people, attacking leaders, attacking certain groups. And I personally have to say this to the new governor when I met him few days ago. I commanded his press secretary for having a moderate way of issuing press statements. He issued a statement with maturity. He issued a press statement with understanding the sensitivity of the community. And so people now have to list. I have to now say, wait a minute, what are we hearing? Because in the past, they would just write press statements and issue them accusing people, even those who are grieved and are worried because of their pain. So if you have already been attacked, what else will you say? But it is in the past now. What we need to do is to focus on what do we do going forward so that we don't waste time talking about something that we cannot correct. Is it me who is perhaps thinking this way? There is a way, whenever I think about Cardinal, there is a way I feel that we have failed as leaders across the board now. And it's not only about your faith or the other major faith in Cardinal or the political leadership or indeed civil society leadership and the private sector leadership. We may be looking at Cardinal as the ultimate marker of our failure. The reason being that Cardinal is the security capital of Nigeria. You got NDA that was even ironically at some point attacked. You've got many, not only military formations but you've got paramilitary formations and elite institutions. And yet, Cardinal has suddenly degenerated to a point where even the iconic military institution of Nigeria was at some point attacked. Are we sitting together as leaders? And I don't want to be particular about you or your faith. Are we all sitting together as leaders and feeling ashamed that this is happening, Cardinal? Well, I have heard this but in response to your question, truly speaking, no one can insult himself or this blame. We all share one blame or the other but, you see, there must be someone who called for the sitting. There must be someone who lit the conversation. There must be someone who moderate the dialogue. There must be someone who engaged the people. If the person who supposed to moderate the dialogue to engage the people to call for those different views on the table chose to do it differently, blaming the other people may not be good enough. But I don't understand what you mean. Everybody have a role to play and we need to continue to play those roles. In one of the engagements recently we had with the governor when he called the faith leaders and pleaded and appealed to us to work together to find solution. I told him this and I am going to repeat it. I said, look, apart from being Khan chairman, I am a development practitioner. I understand some of the challenge that even NGOs, civil societies operating in Kaduna are facing. You receive grants from donors that you want to work in a particular community to promote togetherness, to promote religious freedom, to promote peace, to put together structures for peace and you keep writing fantastic reports of events that happened, the success you think that you are noticing from the conversation. Only for you the next week to find out that in the same community where you are writing reports, put reports of progress, people are being killed, people started killing one another and donors will be asking you a question. How do we marry your report and the reality of what we are reading? You say, look, there is a success story in Katia, a success story in Breeningwadi, a success story in Makarpi, a success story in Zengong Katia where people are being killed. So sometimes they will not say where they are meaning. We can continue to be putting our money when there is nothing to hope, when there is no success that we can say this is true impact. So everybody is worried and people really want a way out. So I can say God has chosen at this time to send someone who seems to have a different spirit and he has said it publicly. He said, look, I am over, I am different. I want to view things differently. I want to approach things differently. I want to attend to things differently and he said and I quote, I took out of office and I hold the Holy Quran. I swore by the Quran that I will be just everybody. I will not go, I don't want to meet God and be ashamed of myself. Neither would I want to meet God and be saying look, I am a fail or I fail as a leader. So I carry this burden and I want you to help me to do it right. If we had had such invitation, such willingness by previous leader, probably the different groups will come together and find a way out. I even said in that meeting that look, Kaduna years have had many crisis but there was a time we begin to make progress. We made progress for nine years and there was no killing. What went wrong that we had problem and they didn't take it off from where we had problem to continue. It's like someone who have journey all the way from Lagos to Kaduna and is about entering Kaduna town and had a flat tire. And you tell him that look, go back to Lagos and start the journey again since you had a flat tire when you were about entering our city. It is wrong. All we needed to do was to find out what happened that we had a flat tire, do we need a new tire, do we need to correct the wheel or certain things in our car and then move on. We didn't do that and we wasted eight years just trying to speak English, write press statements without concrete action for peace and people just became tired because every day every family is complaining that their loved ones have been kidnapped or communities are attacking each other people are being killed and the rhetoric, we are not peaceful rhetoric at all. I need to now be a bit more granular with you. We have looked at the panoramic picture we have looked at the immediate past you have touched on the positive change of attitude that you have gleaned from the new governor but at the end of the day security is a very detailed organization and what do I mean by that? Security is about piecing together information security is about making sure that those who need to be quickly abreast of the information we are all well as leaders of the Christian community in the state how well are you training or are you getting the leadership of the churches to teaching skills such as observation taking notes of unusual developments and changes in the environment having effective communication skills with security agencies and establishments because ultimately like they say in England if you see something say something so that something will be done how well is the Christian leadership community are imparting that to the value chain of the body of Christ thank you very much for asking that question you will agree if you have been following events you will know that we have been doing a lot of training recently we had a program a workshop that bring together Christian leaders and Muslim leaders we call it synergy between religious leaders and security agencies we have looked at the past religious leaders don't find it easy to reach out to security agencies nor give them information so we begin to find a platform where that will be corrected I remember in that meeting even the commander of the Naval force sent the chaplains to be there the police send their chaplains to be there the military also send their chaplains to be there and religious leaders were there and we had a robust conversation on how we can work together or we can have synergy in our airport to find peace in Kaduna state we have done trainings through my NGO Kaduna state on early warning response mechanism so religious leaders are not completely ignorant of that and then we begin to bring back those days of engagement between religious leaders and of different faith talking to one another forming a network and teaching each other non-violence communication and how we can together report events that we see I've already said in this program that you see people see something and don't see something because they don't trust leadership people see something and don't see something because they are also afraid of the leadership people see something and don't see something because in their own thinking it may backfire because there is no honesty probably from the side of the leadership I think this is the key thing that we are seeing that there is a shift in the way and approach of government we want intelligent gathering but we can't get information when we are disconnect with the people neither can we get information when the real people that the people give information also do not trust us imagine a local community person who is probably a Christian he may not have access to speak to the governor or speak to the commissioner or police but he can send or cover my attention or call the leadership of the church or leadership will do most attention that look this is what we are observing happening in our land but if the governor have already come out to rubbish the leaders and say they are this, they are that that person will not even be courageous enough to tell his leaders because he would not want to hear instead of his leaders telling what is happening and there are issues so the commissioner or police took a first step two months ago he organized a meeting between the commissioner or police and Christian leaders it was well publicized your media also publicized it it was an interactive session that we could reach out to each others and understand and have access to telling each others what we know so that the evil will not be done before we come and cry out but before it happened we have sent information and if the police respond positively or the security agencies respond positively then we will advat it and gradually you can see that few things have been advat it with time we may even get everything under control I cannot but also ask you do you especially the Christians of Southern Cardinal do you feel a bit upbeat because the chief of defense staff happens to be a son of the shawail as they call it in in Kolokwa, Yoruba English from Southern Cardinal is that also a reason to be upbeat that at least new people have somebody who can empathize and understand your situation for me as a pastor for me as a citizen for me as a leader the appointment of general Chris is a national appointment he is the chief of defense staff of the federal republic of Nigeria not of Cardinal state not of Southern Cardinal I don't want to put pressure on him by making him look like he is there for us he is there to ensure that things work well in Nigeria security is in place in Nigeria from the south-east to the south-south to the south-west to the north-west to north-east and north-central so he wasn't appointed for us he wasn't appointed for Nigeria but let me say something I have said several and I want to repeat today that when this new administration did the appointment and one of the person appointed is General Lagwaja who is the chief of army staff for me Reven Hayab and to many of us in Cardinal state it was one of the best appointment we celebrated and we are still celebrating because for one when General Lagwaja came to Cardinal some years ago as the chief as the general general officer commanding the first mechanized division he took the fight to the bandit and they started running away he is such a pragmatic and action man and you can even see up to today he is doing that we don't know what happened that the leadership at that time removed him as a GOC fortunately now he is the chief of army staff he is to send the men out there and he is not just sending the men but he is going out with the men so with Christopher with General Christopher there as someone from us which is not really the matter but with someone with a good intention and good spirit like General Lagwaja we can see who so what we just want to do is support them with the best we can support and give them all that they need to succeed because these criminals are not spirit if people wouldn't tell what they know about them the military or the security they can easily fish them out the best place a wonderful place to live in we wish you all the best we hope to hear from you soon and we should be hearing good news about Cardinal not this disturbing emotionally rocking stories that we get to hear from Cardinal thank you sir thank you for having me we go for a short break and when we are back we go in the second segment of the program