In Kaduna, Nigeria, Muslim youths attacked Christian man over failure to fast

From Nigerian media organisation The News

Governor Nasir el Rufai of Kaduna has vowed to ensure prosecution of a gang of Muslims youths who stabbed one Francis Emmanuel, a Christian for not observing the Ramadan fast in the Kakuri area of the state on Tuesday.

Emmanuel, a carpenter told journalists on his sick bed at St. Gerald Catholic Hospital that he was eating his lunch preparatory to embarking on a job when the Muslim youths who were about six in number descended on him on because he was not fasting.

“I went to buy wood to do some work. When I came back, I bought food to eat. As I was eating, about six Hausa boys came and asked me whether I was a Muslim or a Christian. I did not answer them. They asked me why I was not fasting. I told them that I am not a Muslim.

“Before I know it, one of them slapped me. As I stood up, the rest came and surrounded me and started attacking me with knives. I didn’t know them. Nobody could come to my aid because of the type of dangerous knives they were carrying. They used cutlasses, scissors and knives. I became unconscious; I don’t even know who brought me to the hospital,” Emmanuel told journalists.

Samuel Aruwan, media aide to Governor El-Rufai said in a statement that government has directed the police to arrest the gang responsible for the attack on the carpenter, even as the governor warned that there is no room for religious violence and criminality in the state… “There is no compulsion in religion. It is a free country, and that means no imposition of faith or religious practices on anyone,” El-Rufai said.“We sympathise with our fellow citizen, Francis Emmanuel. We have assured him that we will not allow anybody to violate his right, or that of any other citizen…”