From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
A Catholic Knight group, Ladies of St. Mulumba (LSM), an association of the wives and widows of the Knights of the Noble Order of St. Mulumba, Nigeria, has splashed N20 million on the empowerment programme for 100 indigent member-women across the country (200,000 each).
Cheques were presented to the beneficiaries at the 46th annual National Convention of the LSM, at the weekend, in Abuja, which focused on the theme, “Women Taking Responsibility for the Future: The Role of LSM as Christian Women”.
President of LSM, Ngozi Obah, in her address, said the intervention became necessary under the platform of “Touch Life One-on-One” to assist the indigent women pick up businesses or something else that could help them contribute meaningfully to their families.
She explained: “During the 2023 annual LSM National Convention in Warri, Delta State, the project “Touch Life One-on-One” was unveiled by the Supreme Knight, Sir, Charles Mbelede, as the pet project of the LSM leadership. We started with 17 persons, and in March 2024, we took up the next batch of 34 persons, totaling 52 individuals, empowered.
“In 2024, LSM convention, we empowered 100 indigent women, widows and youths from all corners of Nigeria to help them keep alive. We all must be part of it. No amount is small. Let us be our brothers’ keeper. I appreciate our brothers and sisters of KSM and friends who contributed to this project.”
She challenged the LSM members to take up responsibilities in their places of work and business, and in every space they found themselves, living exemplary lives, and working hard to arrest the future.
She added that the theme of the convention call to rise to the challenges and difficulties of life around us; and calls for a new discovery. “We must surmount hardship, hunger, poverty, ill health, unhealthy politics, dismantle schism, destroy evil at all levels and conquer backwardness in all areas of life.”
Sir. Charles Mbelede, the Worthy Supreme Knight of St Mulumba, in his speech recalled that LSM was inaugurated in 1978 at Ibadan by the Emeritus Archbishop of Ibadan, Most Rev. Alaba Job, and since then, the LSM have complemented, admirably, the Knight of St. Mulumba (KSM).
“Together both the LSM and the KSM have built an amazing sodality in the Catholic Church and have continued to contribute immensely to the growth and development of the church, laity and the country at large.
“The hardship in the country, undoubtedly, impels all well-meaning Nigerians, to be more charity conscious and in tandem with Pope Francis admonition to mankind to listen always to the cry of suffering people all over the world.
“The charity programmes of LSM had won several accolades and endorsements from several quarters including a cross-section of our Bishops. You should not to relent, and be assured that the Order is indeed very proud of you.”
Meanwhile, Rev. Fr. George Ehusani, Executive Director, Lux Terra Leadership Foundation, in a presentation, raised the alarm that the society is facing existential threats, thus charging the LSM women to rise to the rescue of the society from imminent collapse.
He said the cultural degeneration being witnessed across the world is manifested in the preponderance of novel sexual perversions, including the menace of LGBTQ++, the sharp rise in the rate of depression, alcohol and drug addiction, and a multiplicity of psychopathologies that now plague many.
He added: “True, traditional moral norms no longer hold sway in the life of many people today. The traditional agents of socialization like the family, the church and the school, have lost much of their authority and pride of place in the socialization process.
“Today the peer group, the television, and social media have snatched from the Parents, the Priests and Catechists and the School Teachers, the primary prerogative of imparting knowledge and values and building the character of the younger generation.
“With the mobile phone in the hands of our children, the television in our homes, and the billboards littering our towns, villages, and highways, the more powerful influencers of our children’s values today are often social media personalities, popular musicians, movie stars, comedians, and sundry entertainers.
“Many of these celebrities are school dropouts, products of broken homes or dysfunctional families. Many of them are drug and alcohol addicts, serial polygamists, and unrepentant sexual perverts. Some of them are known psychiatric cases. Others regularly display symptoms of one psychopathology or the other. But they are rich and famous.
“They have millions of young followers on social media. This is why they are called social influencers, and they are regularly recruited as ‘brand ambassadors’ by corporate organisations, whose primary interest is to maximise profit, and not the formation of the gullible and impressionable young people they have as audience.
“This major shift in the principal agents of socialization and the dynamics of youth formation from the parents to the television, and from the pulpit to internet platforms, which has occurred in the last two decades, has come with serious consequences for successive generations which agents of the gospel, like the KSM and LSM should be seriously concerned about.
“With the powerful means of social communication now available to everyone, including the most criminally minded, long held moral values are now being overturned; secular, neo-pagan worldviews and ideologies are now being propagated; and the culture of materialism and hedonism is now being promoted across the world.”