Introduction
The need for all tiers of government, organisations and individuals to work towards eradicating the dreadful pandemic from Nigeria cannot be overemphasize. The religious world, which includes churches, is not spared from this duty and role. In fact, it occupies a key role in the fight to curb the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. Today, we shall continue our discourse, looking at the roles of the church so far in curbing the menace of Covid-19.
Roles of the Church so far
The impacts of COVID-19 have been made worse by systemic neglect of public health systems; lack of preparedness for the known risk of pandemics; the prevalence of greed and self-interest in exploitative economic systems; accelerating environmental destruction and ecological degradation; lack of unity among nations in facing a common threat to humanity; and political expediency and short-term interests, among others.
Churches have been called to accompany the most vulnerable people and communities, as well as to be in solidarity with each other. Our Lord Jesus Christ shows us with his life, teachings and actions that concern, care and compassion surpass all boundaries, and in this moment of crisis, fear and division, it is our calling as Christians to bring hope and healing for the transformation of society.
In this pandemic, churches and their specialized ministries have continued to serve their communities, to accompany and support those in need, and to work with their constituencies and marginalized people to overcome the challenges they face. We have experienced how partnerships between churches in different parts of the world have strengthened in the face of this crisis, and how churches are striving to support people suffering extreme hardship in these circumstances. We have been inspired by the creativity with which churches have found ways to worship and witness even when unable to gather physically. We have seen how local bonds of community and solidarity have flourished and grown.
The Church in Nigeria has also designed several plans aimed at curtailing the attacks on Christians and to curb insecurity in Nigeria. In diagnosing the remote and immediate causes of the attack on the Church, many have suggested that the church and, by extension, Christians, stand up in defense of their faith, while others highlight the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation in the restoration of peace and healing of affected communities.
Further roles of the Church to curb COVID-19
There is no doubt that the Church has played a significant role in the COVID-19 era. However, there are more roles it can play to curb COVID-19, insecurity and promote the dire current situation of Nigeria.
Traditionally, places of worship, like churches are known to be safe havens and places of peace. They are hallowed places, which are usually immune from troubles and skirmishes, this being one of the reasons their doors are always open to the general public to come in and worship peacefully. However, the recent attacks of Christians and churches in Nigeria, especially in the North, has altered the perennial peaceful atmosphere in worship places and is raising critical concerns among the religious leaders.
The Church must understand that it carries the heavy burden of ensuring the safety of its members and sanctuary, especially in the face of a nonchalant government. Earlier in 2011, when terrorism had become a disaster that stole the lives of religious leaders and their followers, churches in Nigeria were faced with threats of insecurity that did not guarantee the life and safety of its members. As a result, churches tackled the insecurity issues by adopting safety measures, which included the removal of in-building parking, putting of metallic and security checkpoints at the gates, and ensuring that everyone coming into the church was subjected to a rigorous body search. However, these measures have since been relaxed, even in the face of ever-growing insecurity problem affecting the country.
Consequently, the Church should take all necessary and appropriate measures in ensuring that worshippers are secured before, during and after services, as well as extend this duty of care to the entire community. To this end, the Church is expected to be vigilant, sensitive, inquisitive, supportive, involved in combating insecurity as it is also a security stakeholder, proactive in taking security measures, report all security breaches and threats to the Church and its members, ever prayerful; and must put in place security measures to combat crime. The church should also reduce traditional church activities and utilize the growing digital world in the use of virtual mass, so as to restrict the number of Christians who swarm to the church. This is even more supported by the notion that the Church is not the building itself, but the fellowship and its members.
In Romans 13: 1 – 5, Paul, admonished:
“(1)…(That) every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
(2) Therefore whoever resists “the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.
(3) For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authorities? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same.
(4) For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.
(5) Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake.”
From the passage above, two key roles of the church (including and especially in this COVID-19 era), which are to be subject to the governing authorities; and, to do what is good.
(To be concluded next week)
I humbly disagree with Obasanjo and his oily thesis
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has theorized that the oil and gas found in the Niger Delta region belong to the Federal Government, and not to the oil-bearing communities.
Legally speaking, Obasanjo can be said to be correct, because he was part and parcel of successive military juntas that cleverly and systematically inserted expropriatory and inhuman laws concerning ownership of oil and gas into our statute books. But does that make such laws right or justifiable? No. I think not. Ex-President Obasanjo should be told in very clear terms that there is such an overriding principle of law, which goes with the maxim of “quic quid plantatur solo solo cedit”. This literally means that whoever owns the land owns everything on top of it. Any extant constitutional or statutory provisions (such as those apparently referred to by Obasanjo) that run contrary to this commonsensical common law principle are, therefore, nothing but bad, immoral, exproriatory and exploitative laws.
Help me inform Obasanjo that Nigeria operates a federal system of government, and federalism is fiscal and plural. One of the major attributes of federalism is that it ensures that regions, sub-national or federating units develop according to their pace and needs, using the God-given resources that are available to such units. They pay tax to the central government.
Help me inform President Obasanjo that a law that literally steals the resources of a people, punishing them with destruction of their only available aquatic and agrarian life, even though in the statute books, is a bad, aberrant and obnoxious law.
Help me tell Obasanjo that, in the USA, since oil was discovered in 1859 (a country whose presidentialism and federalism we ape after), oil and gas are not owned by the American federal government, but by the surface owners; while oil and gas offshore are owned either by states or federal government. Help me remind Obasanjo that before the January 15, 1967, first military putsch led by Major Kaduna Nzeogwu Chukwuma, neither the cotton, groundnut and hides and skin obtainable in the North, the cocoa grown in the West, palm produced in the East nor the rubber and timber that existed in the then Midwest were said to belong to the Federal Government. They belonged to the regions that took a 50% lion’s share, while paying tax to the Federal Government at the centre. What has changed? Nothing, I believe.
Help me remind Obasanjo to remember history, and that the major reason his 2005 Political Reform Conference failed was because of the rancor and ruckus generated by the thorny and still-unsolved controversy of resource control. He should remember that this led the South South delegates to stage a walkout from the conference. I was not only a Civil Society delegate, I was actually the head of the Civil Society unit that drafted our final committee report and recommendations.
Obasanjo should, therefore, not have dismissed such a festering thorny issue as oil and gas and bleeding oil-bearing communities with a wave of the hand in a most provocative and cavalier manner.
The 1960 Independence Constitution and the 1963 Republican Constitution had actually activated true fiscal federalism, after the 1957-1958 Willinks Commission Report, which had identified and validated the fears of minorities within the Nigerian space.
Help me inform Obasanjo that the failure of the 1922 Hugh Clifford Constitution, 1946 Arthur Richards Constitution, 1951 Macpherson Constitution and 1954 Littleton Constitution was partly ascribed to the overbearing influence of majority tribes over the minority ones (374 ethnic groups in Nigeria, according to Prof. Onigu Otite).
Kindly emphasize to Obasanjo that, as an elder statesman, former military Head of State and former democratic President, his well-respected public statements and opinions (which he is constitutionally entitled to) should be generously garnished with unifying, healing, therapeutic and inclusive flavour, and not with the vinegar of devisive and provocative statements.
The Niger Delta region has been repressed, suppressed, marginalized and neglected. Respected Obasanjo, more than any other person, knows this very well, having had the rare privilege of governing Nigeria both in khaki and agbada. The poor people have had to pay with their sweat, sorrow, tears, blood, pains and pangs over their God-given wealth. The wealth has become a curse rather than a blessing. I wholly disagree with Obasanjo’s thesis. I rather wholly embrace Pa E.K. Clark’s antithesis, which wears a human face.
Sounds and bites
There are two sides to every coin. Life itself contains not only the good but also the bad and the ugly. Let us now explore these.
“To eat a Nigeria woman’s money comfortably, it’s either you are a man of God or a native doctor.”
– Anonymous
Thought for the week
“Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
(Marquis de Sade)