Nigerian President Needs to “announce concrete steps beyond mere palliatives”: Onitsha Province Catholic Bishops

They call upon Nigerians to be persistent in prayers and embrace dialogue for peace and stability in their country.

The Catholic Church leaders warn that protests might not be peaceful because “very many people are angry, and rightly so,” and therefore the police would find it challenging to control large crowds of “such angry people and get them to protest peacefully”.

They also attribute the unlikelihood of peaceful protests to the security agencies in the country, who they say “have in the past not been able to provide the needed protection for protesters and often used excessive force, leading to the loss of lives.”

Such protests, the Bishops in Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province explain, “usually provide opportunity to common criminals to destroy and loot the property of innocent citizens who are their fellow victims of misrule.”

“There will only be increased hardship and suffering for the very people on account of whom the protest is being staged,” they say, questioning the safety of larger protests given that those that took place in some parts of the country were not peaceful.

More in Africa

Prolonged Legal Proceedings Compounding Trauma of Children Seized from Nigerian Orphanage: Christian Human Rights Group

Read the article

In the two-page statement that the Archbishop Valerian Okeke of Onitsha Archdiocese and Bishop Peter Nworie Chukwu of Abakaliki co-signed, the Bishops attribute the protests to the “excruciating pain caused by various forms of hardship” in the country.

They caution the Nigerian government against giving promises they do not fulfil and lament the reality of hunger, insecurity, unemployment, uncontrollable inflation, dehumanizing poverty of many in Africa’s most populous nation.

Life has become expensive in Nigeria, making the youths to flee while the political class lead a life of affluence, insensitive to the suffering of the people.

“It is, therefore, not surprising that some Nigerians have decided to mobilize the hungry, angry, and frustrated segments of the population to protest against this unbearable condition of living in a land that God has blessed so generously,” Catholic Bishops in Onitsha say. 

Silas Mwale Isenjia is a Kenyan journalist with a great zeal and interest for Catholic Church related communication. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Linguistics, Media and Communication from Moi University in Kenya. Silas has vast experience in the Media production industry. He currently works as a Journalist for ACI Africa.