Ibadan, 15 July, 2020 / 9:10 pm (ACI Africa).
Bishops in Nigeria’s Ibadan Ecclesiastical Province have expressed their concerns about the failure to deal with the challenges that have bedeviled their country over years including those related to insecurity, describing the challenges as “hydra-headed monsters, reappearing as often as they seem subdued.”
In their collective statement issued Tuesday, July 14 at the end of their two-day meeting, the Bishops call on the government and citizens to work together to reduce the “despair and tension that lead many of our people into criminality.”
“Nigeria is still plagued by a series of security challenges,” the Bishops of the six Church jurisdictions say and highlight “corruption, terrorism, kidnapping, banditry, terrorism, ethnic clashes, extra-judicial killings and more recently, rape.”
“Even as the government and the security agencies at different levels claim to grapple with these challenges, the problems all seem to be hydra-headed monsters, reappearing as often as they seem subdued,” the Bishops say.
The members of the Ecclesiastical Province that comprises the Archdiocese of Ibadan and the Dioceses of Ilorin, Ondo, Ekiti, Oyo and Osogbo add, “There is anxiety in the land. There is definitely anger, disillusionment and despondency in the land.”