Cardinal John Onaiyekan,
Catholic Archbishop of Abuja over the weekend at the inter-denominational
church service for the 2019 presidential inauguration ceremony at the National
Christian Center lamented that Nigerians are getting poorer and having a
feeling of hopelessness under the President Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration.
He urged the president to
change his style of leadership if Nigerians must recover from its current
social economic crisis.
Standing in for the
Archbishop Augustine Akubeze, President, Catholic Bishops Conference, Onaiyekan
made the statement as he was delivering his message in the church service.
Speaking on the theme: “Let
us chose life, not death,” Onaiyekan said it was expected that the blame game
by the administration was over, adding that, “As we embrace a new term of
government, it should be for us a new opportunity to change ways and review
habits of governance, for a better Nigeria.
‘’We can and we should do
this, God has endowed us with resources to achieve this, resources that we,
unfortunately, turn into curses.
“The blame game of pointing
accusing fingers at others will not carry us far. For a positive change to take
place, we must all be ready for a sincere change of heart, from the lowest to
highest, but especially at the highest levels. Empty boast and barefaced
denials of the realities around us cannot build the nation.
“At this moment, we should
do well to acknowledge our failure to do things the right way. Here, the words
of the Psalmist should challenge each of us.
“The truth is that our
nation is not in a state for us to rejoice. The ranks of the poor are swelling
by the day, hopeless and helpless, as they watch in frustration the affluence
of the very few cruising in a different world. Such wide social economic
disparity has led to anger, tension, violence and outright criminality in the
land. All is not well. But all is not lost either.
“Again, here we must tell
the truth. For too long, we have been seeing what seems to be a policy of
polarisation of the nation along primordial fault lines of ethnicity and
religion. The result is that we have been indulging in the risky game of
’dancing on the brink of chaos’.
“We do not know for how
long we can continue to get away with this. But the handwriting on the wall is
quite clear for all who cared to see. It is sad that no condition is permanent:
certainly not the present state of our nation.
“Our ethnic diversity is
God’s will and gift that we ought to appreciate and celebrate. We should beware
of those who seek to manipulate this in a game of divide and rule, for selfish
interests.
“In our emerging global
world, we should be building on our long experience of living together across
ethnic lines, if we are not to allow ourselves to be left behind in our fast
developing modern world.
“We are living in a world
where many are abandoning faith in God, at great cost to humanity now and in
the future. We do well to commend ourselves for our generally high level and of
religious fervor.
“But if this is to
translate into a righteous nation, we must all seek the will of God for good
human relations. This cuts across our religious differences and affiliations.
Religion is good, but not enough.
“Religion evokes a strong
emotions that ought to be deployed for solving the ills of our nation, not
compound them. Those who manipulate religion for their selfish political
interest end up destroying religion and harming the nation. Our constitution is
not perfect.
“But its basic provisions
about freedom of religion are valid and must be scrupulously respected by all,
especially by those who control state instruments of coercion,” said the
Archbishop.
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