The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, has urged President Bola Tinubu to set aside the anti-preaching and hawking bill before the National Assembly.
The Pentecostal body insisted the bill was less important than the challenges the nation is currently faced with.
Briefing newsmen in Lagos after its National Executive Council meeting, PFN National Secretary, Bishop David Bakare, described the anti-preaching and hawking bill as a needless mechanism targeted at Christians.
He said, “Nigeria doesn’t have a problem with laws, it’s about enforcing them. And there are very good laws in Nigeria. There are other laws also, which if properly taken care of, could bring sanity to different aspects of our nation. But our concern in this matter stems from the fact that we think and we do know that this law is not the urgent need of Nigerians right now.
“There are several things begging for attention in Nigeria. I mean, we’re also talking about insecurity, we’re still talking about hunger in the land, we’re still talking about different aspects that are challenging both to government and the people of this nation that we are dealing with. We think that this is not the next thing that would bring comfort to the people of this nation.
“This bill is deliberately targeted at Christians.
“We actually don’t understand why legislators who never enter commercial vehicles would come to understand and believe that people who preach in commercial vehicles are distracting drivers.
“We cannot understand how this has become a traffic offence in any form.
“We know that there are certain things that can be considered traffic offences in Nigeria that have not been attended to.
“We have cases of people who block roads on prayer days. That has not been attended to. I would have thought that’s one of the areas that we can consider a traffic offence or a distraction.
“We have found that this law was passed by the Senate and we’ve not heard that the House of Representatives has sat on this law for concurrence.
“We do not know why this is so urgent that the normal process of making law cannot be followed before it is presented to the President for assent. Here is a nation where religion is a very sensitive matter. And we think that this is one of such that will cause a lot of trouble and problem in our nation and should not be toyed with at all.
“Christians in Nigeria consider that law is against the church. It’s deliberately organised to stir up the church against the state. And we’re asking that the President, in his wisdom, should please set aside that law and not assent to it.
“If anything, send it back for the public to debate it, to look at it. Invite the relevant people, you know, who are directly affected by such laws to come sit down. Let’s discuss it.
“The bill is targeted at Christians and does not in any way address core issues facing us as a nation.”
