BARELY two days after the Rev. Samson Ayokunle-led Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) visited President Muhammadu Buhari over his re-election, the National Christian Elders Forum (NCEF) took exception to the visit and condemned the secularisation of the apex Christian body. The CAN visit took place on March 29, 2019, while the NCEF’s biting response followed on April 1, 2019. The visit has, sadly, provoked an animated cut and thrust between the two Christian associations, with CAN arguing that the visit was in line with the dictates of the Christian faith that enjoins respect for those in authority, and the NCEF suggesting that the visit was congratulatory and an endorsement of a government complicit in the persecution of Christians. The two positions may remain irreconcilable for some time to come.
It is obvious that the visit is not as popular as CAN leaders would have wanted. The leaders also probably suspected that the visit would be controversial, especially as the Catholic Church arm of the apex Christian body excused itself, according to some reports, from the visit. In fact, NCEF questions the doctrinal integrity of CAN leaders whom they accused of being indifferent to the plight of Christians under the Buhari presidency. But is NCEF itself truly representative of Nigerian Christians, at least as significantly as it tries to portray? It is hard to gauge.
Perhaps if CAN leaders had presented a powerful and urgent address to the president denouncing official connivance at the killing of Christians in some parts of the country, NCEF might have been pacified. During their visit, CAN however, advised the president to run an inclusive government in all ramifications, including in the appointment of his security team. They also put in a word for the rescue of Leah Sharibu, the Dapchi Christian schoolgirl who has obviously been forgotten in Boko Haram captivity. But overall, what probably irked NCEF was the timing of the visit, which they said was sub judice, and the tame presentation of the CAN leaders, which by modern CAN standards seemed to lack oomph.
The noisy exchange between the two Christian bodies, apart from being uncompromising and trenchant, have been unedifying of the church in Nigeria. Rev Ayokunle and his team may want to downplay the significance of the opposition constituted by NCEF, and the growing internal schism even within CAN itself, but if he does not find a way of bridging the divide between the two groups, and perhaps between it and other censorious groups that may still emerge sometime in the near future, irreparable damage may be done to the image of the body of Christ they both claim to represent.
An assessment of the exchange between CAN and NCEF indicates that the misunderstanding between the two appears anchored on their disposition towards the plight of Christians in Nigeria than on their political or secular differences. NCEF, from its statement denouncing the CAN visit, seems more keenly aware of the sufferings of Christians, particularly in the northern part of the country, while the apex Christian organisation on the other hand claims to be more doctrinal. It is hard to see reconciliation between the two positions anytime soon. Closely leashed to this major difference is the fact that the Rev. Ayokunle-led CAN appears to be less militant than his predecessor’s, the Ayo Oritsejafor-led CAN. Nostalgia may, therefore, be playing a role in the disagreement, with both parties occupying choice sections of the moral and doctrinal high ground and training their secular guns at each other’s position.
The church, through CAN and NCEF, may have to rediscover the effective methods by which they advanced their faith in the past millenniums, particularly under hostile regimes, neither by hostility towards adversarial governments, as seems justified and even sensible, nor by appeasement or superfluous friendship, as seems doctrinally sensible. Christians over the centuries have been torn between what tactics to employ in the advancement of their faith and the protection of their members. Neither CAN nor NCEF can escape censure in the current impasse. Though their misunderstanding appears unseemly, it is more a call for them to re-examine their faith and discover where their strength lies. In addition, they will also have to find ways of transcending their disagreements, along the classic leitmotifs of their faith, in order not to empower the opposition and make their members vulnerable to agnostic jokes and derision.
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