By Rev Fr Benedict Agbo
Dear Bishops, Church Overseers, Imams, Priests and Pastors…
I am looking for the best way to talk hard to ourselves but I can’t readily find one. So let me resort to this one. And because I am also involved let me also talk to myself, and if I sound hurting, then know it that I am the first victim.
I don’t think we are very serious with this business of religious leadership in this Country. I don’t think we are sincere. Please don’t mind my generalization since some may also be doing their very best. But if our collective fruit is abysmally low then we will all share in a collective guilt.
One year after the elections, the sufferings of our people have quadrupled and there seems to be no hope of things getting better. Our young people are “japering” to far away countries and even those who are still in Nigeria have also gone far far away to the new world order of internet versus Yahoo business. As religious leaders in Nigeria, we are busy doing our normal business – doing our normal Church services and collecting our usual Church offerings without knowing how our young ones are faring.
Let me speak for the many voiceless hungry and jobless angry people of Nigeria. Let me speak for the traders who are closing shops because of hyperinflation and hyper taxation. Let me speak for the “anawims” of the society and all those who are suffering under terrible hardship in our various states. Let me speak for the poor and middle class who are finding it extremely difficult to put food on the table of their families.
Let me remind us what Fulton Sheen said in his wonderful book “Peace of Soul” that “Any priest who deliberately separates himself from the ‘corporate guilt’ of mankind is a theological dropout.” It is not a matter of giving beautiful sermons. Talk is cheap. The problem is walking our talk and “smelling like our sheep” as Pope Francis would say.
It is time for us to remind those who supported our current Presidents, Governors, Senators and Reps during the past election that one year after the election our people are not receiving the dividends of democracy they hoped for. Our people are hungry. Our farmers are being dislodged from their farmlands. Insecurity has become the daily monster.
Supporting politicians during election is an ecclesiastical risk. But for me, not supporting them only to keep frolicking with them and receiving financial patronage from them when they are guilty of oppressing our people is ecclesiastical hypocrisy.
🌲My advice: We must be on the side of the poor as their sufferings increase in Nigeria and not be on the side of the ruling class. Our people expect them to feel the bite from our sermons, our communiques, etc. Our people need religious leaders who will help liberate them from the current STATE CAPTURE.
What we have now, is arguably worse than a military regime. It is a dubious facade of democracy where the politicians rig elections and pretend that we voted for them. The legislators and judicial bandits are pretending to be free when they are all reeling under the quagmire of STATE CAPTURE.
It’s time for religious leaders to organise Town Hall Meetings where the elected officials are expected to come and show their account of stewardship as they go into their second year in office. It is time for constitutional renegotiations or reforms, which will enshrine the use of BIVAS and electronic transmission of results in the law. It’s time to checkmate the excesses of the INEC and ensure better electoral laws that will ensure a better constitution of INEC and ensure that all judicial processes are concluded before the handover. Let the economic reforms such as the fuel subsidy removal and implementation of Oronsaye Report not have only the poor people as victim while the rich continues to enjoy.
We must hold our religious leaders who supported our current leaders responsible when they fail in leadership unless we are convinced that they are exercising their prophetic role of calling them out and conscientizing them when they are not doing well. Let’s not wait for 2027. That would be another medicine after death! (Source: WhatsApp)
