The Catholic Bishops of the Ibadan Ecclesiastical Province have lamented that Nigeria’s ship is sinking under the weight of pervasive insecurity, economic hardship due to hyper-inflation and the collapse of the Naira, high food costs, lackadaisical governance, and widespread corruption.
The bishops from the Ibadan, Osogbo, Ilorin, Oyo, Ekiti, and Ondo dioceses rose after their first meeting in Ibadan. They said, “The much-vaunted renewed hope is turning to utter desperation in many places, and there is not much time left.”
They bemoaned that Nigeria is fast becoming a hostile and killing field.
Day-to-day living is fast becoming an ordeal for millions of Nigerians because pervasive poverty, driven by the hard environment, has driven many to desperation and even suicide.
“It would be nothing short of hypocritical to put all the misery being suffered by Nigerians today down to a change in the world economy. The truth is that often Nigerians are simply left to their own devices and left at the mercy of the most cruel and aggressive criminals by inept and selfish political and civil leaders. In all this, governments seem often weak or altogether absent.”
While noting that any remedy now is even too late for many Nigerians who have lost their lives to terrorists, hunger, kidnapping, and other disasters, the clerics pleaded “for urgent action from all our leaders to save the Nigeria ship from sinking.”
The Bishops also decried the killing of monarchs: the Elesun of Esun-Ekiti, Oba David Babatunde Ogunsakin, and the Olujomo of Imojo Ekiti, Oba Samuel Olusola, and the kidnapping of teachers and schoolchildren in Ekiti State, and the kidnapping of the Olukoro of Koro of Kwara State, his wife, and two others, who were later released.
“The spate of criminality is a brutal assault on our collective reverence for traditional institutions and decency. It signals society’s descent into a Rhodesian state of nature, nasty, brutish, and short, even in the South West.”
The clerics declared that the time to stop the spiralling violence and bloodshed is now “before it becomes irreversible, by repositioning our security agencies to make them more preemptive and proactive.”
They urged most Nigerian leaders “who speak and act as if everything is fine” to reconsider their stance. The rampant corruption in every sector and the government’s scant efforts to arrest and prosecute its perpetrators is alarming. Things are not under control when Nigerians get maimed, kidnapped, and killed daily on our roads and even in their homes.
The Bishops emphasised the need to restructure the Nigerian security apparatus and remove saboteurs to ensure collaboration and optimal performance. They also called for more intense prayer for Nigeria.
