Catholic bishops in Nigeria have raised the alarm over a looming nationwide extremity, blackmail that worsening formative years unemployment and prevailing frustration with governance may just push the rustic against chaos.
Talking on the opening of the 2025 first plenary assembly of the Catholic Bishops’ Convention of Nigeria in Abuja on Sunday, the clerics instructed political leaders to jerk decisive motion ahead of the status spirals out of regulate.
The CBCN President, Archbishop Lucius Ugorji, painted a grim image of the rustic’s financial and social demanding situations, stressing that the top fee of teenage unemployment—recently at 53 p.c—is a ticking date bomb.
Consistent with Ugorji, the surge in prison actions corresponding to kidnapping, armed theft, web fraud, drug abuse, cultism, and formality killings is without delay connected to the melancholy confronted by way of hundreds of thousands of jobless younger Nigerians.
“The situation is even worsened by mass layoffs due to the collapse of many companies under the weight of a harsh and hostile economic climate,” he mentioned.
He additional lamented that many unemployed teenagers now lodge to pagan shrines, ritual killings, and human sacrifices searching for fast wealth, era others are simple recruits for violent gangs and terror teams.
“We cannot be tired of urging the government at all levels to take youth unemployment seriously. Until there is a massive, ongoing creation of jobs, the government may continue to lose the war against insecurity and violent crime,” the CBCN President warned.
Past financial distress, the bishops additionally raised issues about Nigeria’s worsening safety status and the deplorable climate of correctional centres around the nation.
Ugorji recalled that the 2019 Nigerian Correctional Services and products Function, which aimed to become prisons into true rehabilitation centres, has didn’t yielding the required effects because of destitute implementation.
“The government must rise above these challenges and provide necessary solutions,” he instructed.
On his section, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Ignatius Kaigama, known as for a shift from mere non secular shows to authentic spirituality and nationwide transformation.
He condemned the contest for non secular manage, extravagant parks of devotion, and unoccupied symbols that experience completed negligible to deal with the rustic’s ethical and financial decay.
“As we journey towards Easter, let us pray for our country. But beyond prayers, we must lead by example in honesty, service, and love. We must demand justice, advocate for the poor, and reject all forms of oppression. A new Nigeria is possible if we, as God’s people, take responsibility for building it,” he mentioned.
Kaigama additionally described as a humiliation the terrible incident the place family had been overwhelmed to loss of life era scrambling for meals in Abuja endmost Christmas, lamenting that such occurrences must now not be taking place in a rustic blessed with ample sources.
In his remarks, the President of the Christian Affiliation of Nigeria, Archbishop Daniel Okoh, lamented that many Nigerians have reached their snapping point because of starvation, poverty, lack of confidence, and problem.
He instructed non secular leaders to re-light hope and serve brave management in addressing the rustic’s ethical and financial decay.
“As you deliberate on the way forward for the Church and our nation, I pray that the Holy Spirit grants you wisdom, strength, and renewed courage to be bearers of hope in these difficult times,” Okoh mentioned.