The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) has knocked President Bola Tinubu’s government, over its policies which they claim have inflicted untold hardship on the people and stunted the growth of the business sector, describing the state of the nation as the worst of times in the areas of security and the economy.” The prelates stated that the reforms which include, the unification of the country’s currency rates and the removal of fuel subsidies have plunged the country into economic turmoil.
According to the Bishops, “No doubt, the government is trying its very best to fix our battered economy and security outfits. If we have to be very frank with ourselves and not wallow in self-delusion, we must admit that we are faced with a case where therapy is worse than the disease. The government’s reform agenda is turning out to be counterproductive. Despite the efforts of the government to boost our economy, our nation has continued to sink economically deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit.”
(Photo credit: Nigeria Catholic Network)
This information was relayed by Most Rev. Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, Archbishop of Owerri and President of the CBCN, at the Opening Session of the 2024 First Plenary Assembly of the Bishops’ Conference held at the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria Resource Centre, Abuja last Sunday. He expressed the Bishops’ discontent with President Tinubu over the hardship being faced by Nigerians, and worsening insecurity in his administration.
Archbishop Ugorji said, “The reform agenda of the present government has added to the plight of Nigerians. With the withdrawal of fuel subsidies and the unification of the foreign exchange market, there has been a sharp increase in the pump price of petroleum products and a steep decline in the value of the Naira. “Indeed, there is a free fall of the national currency. High spiralling inflation has made it difficult for the average Nigerian to access basic commodities, including food items and medication.
“As a result of the government’s reform agenda, millions of Nigerians have been reduced to a life of grinding poverty, wanton suffering, and untold hardship as never before in our national history. In a bid to survive, an increasing number of the poor have resorted to begging. With more than 80 million Nigerians living under the poverty line of less than two dollars a day, our country, according to the recent disclosure of the World Bank, is the world’s second-largest poor population after India. “While many impoverished Nigerians continue to suffer and die as a result of the hardship caused by the government’s economic reforms, the president has continued to urge the populace to make even more and more sacrifices with the assurance that brighter days lay ahead.”
(Photo credit: Nigeria Catholic Network)
CBCN bemoaned the huge sums of money appropriated monthly as security votes, while Nigerians are still being killed, villages are still being sacked by bandits, while kidnappers are still rampaging. The CBCN President said, “Despite the huge sums of money appropriated monthly as security votes, our communities have continued to experience persistent insecurity. “Recently, there has been an upsurge in kidnapping for ransom and increasing incidents of senseless bloodshed across the nation. Unarmed citizens are brutally slaughtered on our highways, in their homes and even in the sacred precincts of places of worship. Killer herdsmen, bandits and unknown gunmen seem to be on rampage.
Many communities across the nation have been taken over completely by criminals. Families have lost their ancestral lands to armed invaders and land-grabbers. “The social and economic lives of communities have been paralysed due to insecurity. Schools have been shut down, and children can no longer continue their education. Farmers are unable to access their farms out of fear of either losing their lives or being kidnapped. Businesses have closed down.
Many displaced families have no sources of livelihood and are daily afflicted by hunger and starvation.” The Catholic Bishops berated government officials for lavish spending at a time many Nigerians are struggling to make ends meet, while President Tinubu keeps asking citizens to endure the hardships. Archbishop Ugorji said, “As the government demands additional sacrifice from the struggling masses, one would expect to see a drastic cut in the cost of running the government at all levels. On the contrary, it is worrisome to watch top government functionaries living by the sweat, toil and tears of the poor. They continue spending huge public funds on ostentatious and luxurious lifestyles and seem incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor.”
(Photo credit: Nigeria Catholic Network)
According to the prelates, the ostentatious lifestyle of political office holders has made the cost of governance exorbitant, heightened the rate of corruption and compounded the economic situation of the country. Archbishop Ugorji stated further, “It is no less worrisome to note that corruption among many public servants has gone beyond scale and measure. Corruption is a complex reality involving moral rottenness, defilement and loss of integrity. In Nigeria, it spans a wide spectrum, ranging from book-cooking, foreign exchange (FX) arbitrage, over-pricing, and over-invoicing to embezzlement, money laundering, forgery, and all sorts of manipulation.
“Every day, outrageous and spine-chilling stories are told in the media about different public servants who have stolen staggering amounts of money from public coffers in a country where millions of citizens live in deep and debilitating poverty. We cannot easily overlook the sordid roles of many fraudulent politicians and Bank Executives in fleecing the whole nation and destroying our national economy through the dirty game of corruption, causing untold hardship and untimely deaths across the nation.” The Bishops went on to describe government’s effort in fighting corruption in the country as one that has “remained prostrate”.
Archbishop Ugorji’s statement read in part, “We must also be frank to admit that the government’s efforts to fight corruption in the country have remained prostrate, and as a result, Nigeria is rated as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. The prelate advised the government to be proactive in its crusade against corruption as he called for adequate checks and balances to be implemented in public financial management to prevent dishonest and greedy public servants from stealing public money with ease and impunity. “A financial management and accounting system that allows fraudulent government officials to loot huge sums of money from public coffers without detection needs total overhauling.”
“Although the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (EFCC) has been able to recover billions of Naira from corrupt government officials, it has failed to win most of its cases before the Court of Justice due to poor investigation and presentation of corruption cases. Until our anti-corruption institutions can successfully prosecute and jail corrupt government officials, corruption will continue to thrive in our country.” The CBCN President contended that the situation is worsened by the high unemployment rate in the country which has made most youths venture into drug abuse that fuels criminal activities. He said, “Many of our youths are deeply wounded and degraded by unemployment and poverty, which make them feel rejected by the very society into which they were born.
Consequently, thousands of them seek relief from drugs and alcohol, and eventually end up in violent crimes. In search of greener pastures, many others try to migrate to foreign lands, where hard times often await them. “Regrettably, an extensive brain drain continues in this way in our nation, where manpower is needed to revamp the ailing economy and foster national development. In the midst of the frenzy to “japa” abroad for better job opportunities, many young Nigerians fall easy prey to human traffickers, who traffic them abroad for sexual exploitation, cheap labour or organ harvesting.”
(Photo credit: Nigeria Catholic Network)
President Tinubu several months ago said subsidy removal was going to curtail government’s borrowing and reduce the country’s debt service burden. He promised re-channelling the funds into better investment in public infrastructure, education, health care and jobs that will materially improve the lives of millions. But in November 2023, many Nigerians were taken aback when the President sought the approval of the National Assembly for his government to access fresh external loans of $7.8 billion and €100 million as contained in the 2022 – 2024 borrowing plan of the federal government, despite having full knowledge of the country’s debt challenge.
The request for the fresh loans was contained in a letter the President sent to both chambers of the National Assembly, which was read at plenary by Senate President, Godswill Akpabio. However, the move has continuously elicited reactions from Nigerians, considering worries that the country appears to be approaching a debt trap. More so, since the President had informed Nigerians that about N1 trillion was saved from petrol subsidy removal, less than two months after the policy was scrapped, the expectation was that the savings would have increased significantly, with the funds deployed to address the issues he was seeking to borrow for. The Bishops unhappy at this development reacted.
Hear Archbishop Ugorji, “In withdrawing the “fuel subsidy”, the government assured Nigerians it would save a lot of money to be injected into other national development sectors. Rather than give evidence of money so far saved from the withdrawal of subsidies for which Nigerians are being afflicted with untold hardship, all we hear is, the government’s accumulation of more and more foreign debts to balance its budgetary deficit, thereby mortgaging the future of our nation and generations yet unborn. “This has led many Nigerians to conclude that all the extensive talks on “fuel subsidies” may be mere fairy tales.” The inability of past and current government to fix the four refineries has added to the economic woes.
CBCN President asked, “How can we explain that these four refineries have remained moribund for years despite Turn-Around-Maintenance efforts, which have continued to gulp huge sums of money? After all the pledges by successive oil ministers, including President Muhammadu Buhari, to restart, revamp and expand these refineries, it is puzzling to understand why they are not yet operational so as to end the regime of fuel importation and save scarce foreign exchange.”
(Photo credit: Nigeria Catholic Network)
Archbishop Ugorji noted that no matter how one looks at it, the government’s reform efforts to rejig the security architecture of our country have abysmally failed to plug the many loopholes in the system. “They have remained non-proactive and ineffective in checking oil theft, kidnapping, and senseless bloodshed across the country. The recent massacre of over 200 citizens in Plateau State and the rising incidents of kidnapping across the country reveal how fruitless the government’s reform efforts have been in securing its citizens.” Continuing, the Archbishop remarked that in the face of increasing violent crimes, the country stands on the brink of anarchy.
On a final noted, he urged the government to take urgent steps to rise to its primary responsibility of securing the lives and properties of its citizens. “The government does not need to reinvent the wheel since it can easily learn from what other nations do to provide adequate security for its citizens. It goes without saying that there cannot be any meaningful development in any country without adequate security. It will be belabouring the obvious to state that security in our country will remain a tall dream if mass unemployment exists among our youths,” the Archbishop of Owerri Archdiocese said.
… Says no to blessing same-sex couples
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) has made public same stance with their counterparts in Africa who had earlier unanimously maintained strong opposition to Pope Francis Fiducia Supplicans directive to bless same sex marriage. Fiducia supplicans (“Supplicating Trust”) is Vatican’s 2023 declaration on Catholic doctrine that allows Catholic priests to bless couples who are not considered to be married according to Church teaching, including same-sex couples. Subtitled “On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings”, the document dated December 18, 2023 was released on the same day.
Fiducia supplicans was issued by the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) subsequent to Pope Francis’ approval. According to CBCN, the Vatican’s directive runs contrary to the Holy Scripture and teachings of the Church. The Bishops rather charged Catholic Priests to spot God’s voice from worldly voice. The position of the Catholic Bishops in Nigeria was disclosed by Most Rev. Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, Archbishop of Owerri and President of the CBCN at the Opening Session of the 2024 First Plenary Assembly of the Bishops held recently at the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria Resource Centre, Abuja, last Sunday.
Archbishop Ugorji said, “In the midst of this confusion and pushback, we must, as pastors with the pastoral task of safeguarding the deposit of faith in its purity and integrity, uphold the teaching of the Church based on Holy Scripture and Tradition. “In the New Age, we find ourselves where the protagonists and sponsors of post-modern secularist ideologies use the powerful opinion-shaping instrument of the mass media to spread a permissive culture in the name of freedom and human rights we should be able to properly discern and differentiate between the “voice of God” and the “voice of the world”.
“In this regard, St. Paul, in his Letter to Romans 12:2, challenges us when he says: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by renewing your minds, so that you may discern what the will of God is – what is good and acceptable, and perfect”. The Bishops asserted, “In line with our earlier Clarification and the Declaration of SECAM, we must continue to teach our faithful that there is no possibility of blessing same-sex couples, or same-sex unions in the Church in Africa.” Citing Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2357, Archbishop Ugorji described homosexuality as “acts of grave depravity, which are intrinsically disordered and, above all, contrary to natural law.”
The CBCN President charged all to repent of their sins like the ‘Prodigal Son’. He added, “In furtherance of our pastoral and prophetic mission, we must also continue to stress that God loves the sinner unconditionally and calls him to repentance so that he might live. “As sinners, we are all encouraged to emulate the Prodigal Son, who abandoned his sinful past and returned to his father’s house.”
