The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) have called on the Federal Government and President Muhammadu Buhari to as a matter of urgency stop discrimination against Christians in the far North as a way of uniting the country.
CBCN President and Archbishop of Jos, Ignatius Kaigama, said in an interview that such discrimination has taken a deep toll on the moral and spiritual life of Christians in the northern part of the country; creating a big gulf between Christians and other religious associations.
According to Kaigama, the federal government “in the far north do not give enough opportunity for places of worship and chaplaincies; we need that to be available especially in all federal institutions.
“In federal institutions like Bayero University in Kano State and other establishments in the core north, they don’t give chance to Christians to express their faith. The federal government should consider there should be freedom of worship in every part of the country.
“If there is no room for moral formation, we suffer more than what we are expressing now. So, we will find it difficult to unite and that is not helping the students in their moral and spiritual formation,” he added.
Kaigama said that unlike military formations such as the Army, Navy, Air Force and Police where they allowed the building of mosque for Moslems, a Chaplaincy for Catholics and a Church for Protestant Christians, most federal and state educational institutions in the North-west and some parts of the North-east have deliberately prohibited the building of churches and worship centres in such institutions.
To that effect, he said the Catholic Bishops “call on President Buhari to look into this crisis; that he should stop the narrow-minded religious behaviour and bias in federal and state institutions in the north.
“What we need is freedom of worship, freedom of expression: we are too divided in this country. For us to move forward, we have to be of the right attitude, having the right character and tolerance,” Kaigama stressed.
The CBCN clarion call on the President came on the heels of several obstacles the church has continued to encounter in securing places of worship for its faithful in the north. In most instances, Kaigama explained that even when such places of worship are allocated, locals and hoodlums often demolish such structures.
Also, in an interview with The Church in Need monitored by The Vatican Radio, Kaigama said though the church is expecting so much from President Buhari, there is still some time to see if the president would deliver.
He added that “we needed change, and this change came in the person of President Muhammadu Buhari. He has now been in office for about a year, and we want to give him a chance to implement his promises to fight corruption and terrorism.”
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