Nigerian Cardinal Calls for National Spiritual Rebirth

Catholic News Service of Nigeria || 17 February 2016

The Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, His Eminence John Cardinal Onaiyekan has called for sincere moral national spiritual rebirth, describing it as an effective antidote for the nation’s socio-economic and moral challenges.

The Cardinal gave the admonition in his homily at the opening Mass of the first plenary meeting of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN); held recently at the Our Lady Queen of Nigeria Pro Cathedral, Garki, Abuja. The theme of the week-long plenary is: Catholic Church: Promoting Mercy, Social Justice and Peace.

According to the cardinal, the nation’s two major challenges are corruption and insecurity which have a common moral source. While appreciating the efforts of the present administration at tackling the two challenges headlong, Cardinal Onaiyekan noted that the government cannot fight the war alone and called on all Nigerians to collaborate and support the government.

His words: “We must therefore do all we can to mobilize everybody, each person with whatever available arms”. He continued: “In this regard, we must not underestimate the importance spiritual weapons since our challenges have deep moral roots.” He continued: “Our inability to deal adequately with terrorist insurgency has been closely linked with massive criminal corruption in the system.”

While agreeing that recent revelations of diverted public funds to private pockets should anger Nigerians, the cardinal stated that anger is not enough. “We must seek positive and effective way forward, which takes on board our common spiritual and religious values; he added. Cardinal Onaiyekan stated that there is no going back on the war against corruption, “a war that our Church has been wagging for many years with our own appropriate weapons of prayers, warnings, exhortations, long before any government started talking about it.”

Speaking on the efforts of the government at sanitizing the country, Cardinal Onaiyekan called for caution and adequate justice, in the spirit of the Jubilee Year of Mercy declared by the Holy Father Pope Francis. His words: “To restore the nation to decent society, we need to go beyond the legal processes; to a serious moral national spiritual rebirth. We need to explore alternative and parallel strategies based on moral principles of the three Rs namely – Repentance, Reparation and Reconciliation.

On the challenge of the war against terrorism, especially in the North Eastern part of the country, Cardinal Onaiyekan expressed hope that diversion of money meant for the purchase arms and ammunition to procure the war has stopped adding that the nation’s gallant troops must no longer be improperly equipped to prosecute the war against Boko Haram insurgency.

He however alerted that the issue cannot be solved with military action alone. He declared: “To get to the root of the insurgency, other parallel strategies are called for. In general, the Boko Haram members are not foreigners. They are our kith and kin. Does it not make more sense to win them back to our communities than to aim at killing them all off?

In the rehabilitation process of the government for victims of the insurgency, Cardinal Onaiyekan urged the government to give considerable attention to the plights of the indigenes of the area who are Christians and have been subjected to all sorts of atrocities by the insurgents.

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