Catholic Bishops meet with Tinubu (PHOTO CREDIT: @aonanuga1956)
It would have been far easier, then, for the president to have made this case to the bishops. That his government is aware of the exacerbation of both poverty and hunger as a result of its initial reforms. But that these reforms are necessary if his vision of a new Nigeria is to come to be. Necessary? Yes. But not sufficient conditions for moving the economy’s trend growth rate past 7 per cent annually over the next electoral cycle and into double digit figures after that.
The Tinubu government was incensed. By what? The meeting, two weeks ago, between the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) and his government? Or by John Cardinal Olorunfemi Onaiyekan’s subsequent briefing of the media on the meeting’s proceedings? The government’s gravamen against Cardinal Onaiyekan was more easily aired. In the reading of the president’s men, His Eminence was in breach of the clergy-penitent privilege. Honestly, there are very few charges against a Catholic priest as severe as his making public the contents of a private conversation with or confession of a parishioner. In fact, so important is this privilege that it is protected by law.
