LAGOS— THE Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) wants the Federal Government to give its socio-political and economic reforms a human face, pointing out that any government that does not take the interest of its citizens to heart is no government.
It also wants the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to shun confrontation with government and explore every avenue for dialogue in its quest to reverse oil prices, because, according to it, it is an established fact all over the world that violence does not pay. Addressing newsmen in Lagos yesterday ahead of the first African Anglican Bishops Conference opening tomorrow, the Primate of the church, the Most Rev. Peter Jasper Akinola, said: “We will always advise the government to make sure that all its policies have human face.”
Asked to speak on the security situation in the country, especially with the threat of another oil-induced labour strike, the primate said: “Any government that fails to take the interest of its citizens to heart is not a government. Governments are in power on behalf of God to make life meaningful to all the people.”
To the NLC, he acknowledged that Labour has rights to protest any government policy that is not palatable to the citizens, but “from experience alone, confrontation doesn’t solve any problem. It is more advisable for them to sit down at a roundtable and discuss this problem together and find an amicable solution.”
Akinola, who is the president of the CAPA, denied walking out of the recent Primates’ Conference in London to consider the Windsor Report on the gay bishop issue of last year.
His words: “I did not walk out of the meeting as the reports indicated. What happened was that the whole of Africa is coming here at my invitation and I have been out of the country for three weeks and I was sending e-mails, text messages and phone calls to know what was going on at home.
“And to be away all this time only to come back on the eve of the conference will be unfair to all those I have requested to function on my behalf,” he said, adding: “I sent a message to the Archbishop of Canterbury through one of his directors, Dr. Hama Brown, to please tell him that I have had to go back home.”
He said the message did not get to Dr. Rowan Williams early enough which was why they raised an alarm that he (Akinola) had "disappeared and before any explanation could be made, the press had come up with the story."
On the conference which is expected to be declared open by President Olusegun Obasanjo tomorrow, Akinola called it a gathering of Primates and Bishops from the 12 provinces in Africa including Madagascar and Egypt. “We expect about 300 participants including some of our counterparts from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America and from the theme, “African comes of age: An Anglican self evaluation,” you can glean the focus of the conference,” he said.
He said after 160 years of existence, the Anglican Church in Africa could not claim to be an infant or an adolescent, adding: “The church must develop collaborative efforts in dealing with various problems facing Africa and must be largely self-motivated and self-reliant in order to engender sustained progress.”
According to him, some of the problems ravaging Africa which the church cannot shy away from include:
Poverty in the midst of plenty, disease (HIV/AIDS, malaria, etc) squalor, the need for self-reliance under God, partnership and sharing of resources in Africa, holistic gospel proclamation, Anglican identity/spirituality, theological education, enculturation, relationship between church and state, matters of justice and peace (war, ethnic cleansing, etc), the challenges of Episcopal Ministry in Africa, youth and women affairs and leadership crisis in church and state.
