Sir: I wish to express my concern and displeasure as my attention was drawn to a letter published on June 8, 2016, by one Mr. Pius Abioje from University of Ilorin, wherein he confidently asserted among other things that the ‘utterances of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria betray selfish interests’.

I feel that posterity will never forgive us if we persistently act on parochial interest and worst still is the peddling of false information in a public domain.  In order to set the records straight, it is pertinent to address some of the issues, which Prof. Abioye misconstrued.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) met with President Muhammadu Buhari on May 2, 2016 and the full text of the address by the President of CBCN was published by The Guardian on May 6.

During their address to the President, the CBCN emphasised that they ‘are genuinely concerned about turning our country around and committed to helping this government make this happen’ and all through the address no words of praise were addressed to the President, rather the Bishops expressed solidarity and willingness to collaborate with the government so as to take Nigeria to a greater height.

It is then intellectually reprehensible for Abioje to base his conclusion on just what he heard on radio and present his views in public domain without adequate research as to the veracity of the information he got, thereby cooking up the circumstances to look as if the CBCN went to Aso Rock to boot-lick the President into following ‘the catholic agenda’.

Secondly, he condemned the CBCN for their partnership with the government in the education and health sector on the basis that ‘Christian missionaries recreated Africans and now very much of Africans knowledge of African Culture are lost including the beauty and glory of African Traditional Religion (ATR).

Mr. Abioye can be excused for his false argument based on the fact he never read the address of the CBCN to the President which was widely published, but the fact still remains that the Catholic Missionaries are the largest collaborators with Nigerian government in terms of educational and health services and recently that collaboration has been threatened by the government through all sorts of levies  and dues that are slammed on catholic institutions and their students. This is among the reasons the CBCN meet with the President to address these issues.

It will also be more instructive for Mr. Abioje to note that I am also a beneficiary of the so-called ‘catholic missionary education’ and while in school I learnt how to beat ‘igba’ (an Igbo drum) and different names of Igbo masquerades including what it takes to dress up such masquerades. I must say that African traditional cultures are not only preserved by these institutions but they are also enriched.

More so, denting the character of Cardinal Okogie is another error committed by Mr. Abioje. He asserted without stating his source that the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi called the cardinal ‘a military apologist’.

Such a misguided assertion is not worthy of a writer from a university community. As a matter of fact Cardinal Okogie has been an avid supporter of the cause of justice initiated by the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi. Last year he was the chairman of the occasion of the 11th edition of the Gani Fawehinmi Annual Lecture/Symposium held in Lagos.

• Chima Ikenganyia,
University of Ibadan.