The Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, Primate of Nigeria is appealing to the government to confront the violent Muslim extremist group Boko Haram. Okoh’s rhetoric is significantly more temperate than that of his predecessor Peter Akinola, but he makes it clear that religious violence may spin out of control in his country.
The Nigerian Tribune reports:
The Archbishop Metropolitan and Primate of All Nigeria, Anglican Communion, Most Reverend Nicholas Okoh, on Thursday. said that the survival of the Nigerian nation and respect for human life were the two main factors restraining Christians from fighting Boko Haram which had thrown the country into an insecure state.
Primate Okoh also described the proposed bill for Fulani Commission in which government seeks to create permanent routes and reserves in all states for Fulani pastoralists as a recipe for endless crisis.
The cleric, who stated this in his primatial address during the official opening of the standing committee meeting of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion at the Cathedral Church of Emmanuel, Ado-Ekiti with the theme “…Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” called on President Goodluck Jonathan to act fast in tackling the prevailing insecurity in the nation before it gets out of hand.
According to him, “I want to state clearly the two considerations which have been restraining us from advocating ‘fire for fire’. The first is the weight of Christian teaching on the sanctity of human life and Christian morality. To summon the church, apart from a declared war, to slaughter human beings and destroy property presents a serious challenge to our faith and Christians’ sense of morality.The question is how long? How long can these sentiments still hold in the face of flagrant provocation?