Rural Development: Kaduna Govt Pledges Partnership With Christian Group
Rural Development: Kaduna Govt Pledges Partnership With Christian Group
By ALEX UANGBAOJE
Kaduna State governments has indicated interest in partnering with Christian Urban and Rural Development Association (CRUDAN) in the development of rural areas in the state.
Addressing newsmen during a Public lecture titled “Christian Leaders and Good Governance in Nigeria” organized by CRUDAN in collaboration with Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN),
Special guest of honour at the event, Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, represented by his deputy, Banabas Bala Bantex, said it has become imperative for the government to work with CRUDAN so as to fast-track development in rural areas.
According to Bantex, CRUDAN is a church based organisation that is interested in rural development, saying “off course the government of El-Rufai is very much interested in the development of our rural areas in order to control the rural urban movement and to develop our rural areas and I am charged with that responsibility.
”I believe what we are doing is to the benefit of everyone and that being the case why not create a synergy? In areas that are dominated probably by a particular religion they may a development programme coming from a religious angle and everybody else there can subscribe to it, not for religion persay but for development.
”As a Christian I am interested in this topic because I want to understand the vision of the church on good governance and how it differs from our vision as a government and as a political party. I always thought my government and my party subscribed to some that is similar to the vision of the church.
“For example, fairness, the concept of fairness is biblical that is why recently we have to strim down government to allow a greater majority to benefit from what belongings to them instead of concentrating resources in the hands of just a few.”
Rev. Yusuf Turaki, a resource person at the public lecture, emphasized that the major challenge with leaders in Nigeria is that they practice religion without the morality and the ethics of it.
He noted that adopting western civilization and abandoning the African tradition with rich moral and strong ethical believe was a major set back in the decay in leadership and therefore recommend that its important to go back to the root.
“The problem is that the ethics and morality of our traditions before the European, Muslims and Christianity came, Africa have there own traditional morality and ethics. When they came there was a mixture between the traditional morality, traditional ethics and the new ethics of the new religions and this modern concepts of philosophies of life.” he said.
On his part, Engr. Daniel Makpu, Deputy Executive Director, CRUDAN, said governance which is synonymous with leadership should be seen vividly from the way from the relationships are maintained, adding that “as faith based organisation we are saying we have a contribution, we need to bring leaders to discuss how they can effectively carryout governance and governance have to do with administring resources.
“So from resources we produce services and facilities that will met the needs of everybody, so our leaders are saddled with the responsibility to manage these resources.
“That why we bring them together to discuss what steps critically they will take in order to make sure there is effective good governance, so we see alots of bad activities happening that we can we meet together with CAN and profer solutions to this.”
