Nigeria’s Christian Leaders Declare Three-day National Prayer for End to Insecurity

“Pray that the plans of the evil people in our midst to paralyze human, social and economic activities in this nation and throw the nation into chaos would be foiled by the Lord Jesus Christ,” CAN officials who include representatives from the Catholic Church say in their May 12 statement.

They urge Christians to pray that the Lord intervenes for forgiveness “wherever we as a church or Nigerians, especially our leaders, had sinned against God.”  

They encourage Christians in Africa’s most populous nation to seek divine intervention against “any religious madness or war that would not allow us to worship God in the way we are convinced to worship Him” and that the church prevails “over all threats to her existence in Nigeria.”

The officials of CAN also call on Christians to pray for all leaders to “do justice in leadership and show fairness to all ethnic and religious groups in all their actions to douse ethnic and religious tensions we have presently.”

Christians in the West African nation “should also pray that the law enforcement agents would rise to their responsibilities and provide the necessary security we need in Nigeria,” they say.

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“Pray and plant righteousness, Godliness, prosperity, peace and love in our nation. Pray for the speedy recovery of our nation from all our losses so that this nation might become very soon a nation that everyone in the world would love to be. Pray to break the yoke of the generational curse that might have been placed on Nigeria,” the leadership of CAN directs. 

Nigeria has been grappling with insecurity since 2009 when the Boko Haram insurgency began targeted attacks with the aim of turning Africa's most populous nation into an Islamic state.

Members of the Islamist group have been organizing random attacks on various targets including civilians, political and religious leaders.

Earlier this week, Catholic Bishops in Nigeria’s Ecclesiastical Provinces of Onitsha and Owerri said that the West African nation is in “great danger” and urgent action is required to address the high levels of insecurity.

“We expect a stoppage of the carnage that is taking place in farmlands and in various locations,” the Catholic Bishops said in their May 11 statement, calling on the Federal government of Nigeria to “look into security matters and restrain those who are using weapons of various sorts to intimidate the people and to create this unrest.”

The Catholic Bishops also called on Nigerians to “cherish one another, bring a spirit of respect, of mutual appreciation so as to minimize and eliminate the bad blood that is circulated in Nigeria and has created this sense of despair in our country.”

“God created us and made us to live as a great country but as it is now, this country is a source of dismay across,” said the members of the two Nigerian Ecclesiastical Provinces.

Magdalene Kahiu is a Kenyan journalist with passion in Church communication. She holds a Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Currently, she works as a journalist for ACI Africa.