From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Bishops of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) have drawn the attention of President Ahmed Tinubu to the unprecedented hardship that has been visited on Nigerians as a result of some economic policies particularly the fuel subsidy removal.
The Bishops thus suggested an urgent review of the economic policies allowing for an input across party, religious and ethnic divides, and also called for an emergency economic summit that will bring credible Nigerians across board together to chart a new course that will put the country in a sound economic footing.
These were contained in a communique released by the Bishops under the umbrella of House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) at the end of their Episcopal Synod presided over by the Primate and Metropolitan of the Church, Archbishop Henry C. Ndukuba.
The Bishops, in the communique signed by the Episcopal Secretary, Rt Rev Williams Aladekugbe, pointed to the fact that wrong economic policies of the government might have triggered the unprecedented hardship being faced in Nigeria by majority of the people, thus asking government to spare no effort to improve the plight of the people by first ensuring food security in the country to avoid future citizens’ uprisings.
“As it is now, every Nigerian should be involved in agricultural activities in whatever scale possible. State and local governments should lead the way by encouraging farmers by providing farming materials and agro-services that would help boost yields.
“The recent #EndBadGovernance protest across the country is a clarion call to governments at all levels, especially the federal, to heed the cry of the people, and not scapegoat anyone as no government can legislate or stop people who are hungry from protesting. Hunger knows no ethnicity nor religion.
“The plea for understanding and sacrifice by those in authority while their lifestyle, actions, display of opulence in the midst of hunger, is highly insensitive. While we regret the eruption of violence in some areas that gave rise to looting and wanton destruction of private and public property, we strongly condemn the killing of some protesters by the security agents and called for the training and retraining of our security forces on the acceptable standards of engagement in such matters,” the bishops said.
They, however, applauded the recent Supreme Court judgement that granted financial autonomy to the local governments with hope that the court ruling will have multiplier effects in the education, health, food security and infrastructural developments, especially road networks across the 774 LGAs, and arrest the rural-urban migration.
They equally advocated whole society approach in monitoring the implementation of local government finances and shouldn’t be left in the hands of politicians alone. “In doing this, there is need for a robust financial security architecture to monitor allocations to the LGAs, lest they could become another layer of financial haemorrhage to the society, and thus thwart the expected gains from this experiment.”