The president of the Christian Council of Nigeria (CCN), Benebo Fubara-Manuel has ascribed recent happenings in the country to lack of political will by the government to effect change in the polity, saying government take-over of schools from the missionaries weakened the nature and concept of education in Nigeria.
“They weakened the nature and concept of education. We all know the decay in our university system; they never used to be like that. When churches were at the fore of education, somebody trained at standard six can operate like today’s graduate because the stuff you got at standard six seems to some of us as equivalent to today’s graduate,” said Fubara-Manuel at a recent meeting with members of the Association of Christian Correspondents of Nigeria (ACCoN) at the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria (PCN), Lekki parish.
According to the cleric, the decay in the country’s socio-economic life is traceable to government take over like every other thing taken over by government. However, he posits that while the Churches are taking the schools back from the government, they currently lack the ability to maintain the standard because the resources required to maintain the schools are no longer in their hands.
“The businesses of the Churches are no longer flourishing, their farms are no longer there; locals can no longer farm. If you want them to deliver quality education – they must be sustainable,” said Fubara-Manuel.
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Speaking on the role Churches are playing in nation building, the CCN president said nation building is building the minds of people to engage at the level of education to the essence that they hold members of the Churches accountable.
Accordingly, he states that people have been empowered by the Church to hold members of the political parties and politicians accountable. Fubara-Manuel said that the role of the Church extend beyond interacting with members on religious matters to freely engage on issues of public formation and decision making that take place at the legislative and other forms of government.
“If you look at all we do at CCN where we bring education to the fore; we build healthcare, we build civic education, we bring empowerment as well as HIV/AIDs war – these are the kind of things we do to support nation building,” said Fubara-Manuel.
On the issue of Afghanistan and its implication for Nigeria, the cleric calls for caution from members of the public especially Christians and Muslims, as he believes those pushing the agenda to forcefully promote one faith against the other are not true believers practising the tenet of the religion.
According to the cleric, education is the ability to think and act widely, as it broadens the individual’s horizon. Hence, those standing against a form of education do not understand the true essence of education. “Boko Haram stands for a system to opposed western education. If you make your own viable education – Islamic education, then you are opposing education,” Fubara-Manuel said.
