Nigeria needs peace to make progress, says Bishop Onuoha

OndoReporter | Nigeria needs peace to make progress, says Bishop Onuoha

The Executive Director, Nigerian Inter-faith
Action Association, Bishop Sunday Onuoha
says Nigeria needs peace and harmony to be
able to achieve meaningful development.

Onuoha said this on Saturday while addressing
a large crowd of people, who participated in an
early morning walk round Umuahia tagged:
`Walk for Peace.’’

The event was organised by Vision Africa
Radio, Umuahia as part of the activities to
mark Onuoha’s 52nd birthday.
He said that Nigeria needed peace to
successfully harness its abundant natural and
material resources for progress and economic
development.

The executive director decried the spate of
insurgency and other divisive tendencies in the
country and called on Nigerians to come
together and work for the peace and unity of
the nation.

``When there is crisis and destruction of lives
and property, there will be no peace. We are
using this opportunity to ask every Nigerian to
maintain peace.

``We should all be allowed to exist, regardless
of age, religion and tribal differences," he said.
He urged President Muhammadu Buhari to do
everything at his disposal to ensure that every
Nigerian enjoyed peace, adding, ``we elected
the president primarily to protect Nigerians,
every other thing is secondary."

Onuoha, who expressed worry over the level of
youth unemployment in the country, called for
concerted government initiatives to tackle the
situation which he described as a time bomb.
The bishop urged the Federal Government to
explore all avenues to foster peace among the
various ethnic groups in the country.

He underscored the importance of a viable
opposition that would regularly offer
constructive and intelligent criticism against
unfavourable government policies and
programmes.

He urged the president to readily accept
objective views from the opposition in order
for the nation's democracy to move forward.
Onuoha, who expressed his support for the
president's war against corruption, however,
warned against selective justice, saying that
arrested corrupt public officials must face
judicial process.

Speaking on the prevailing cases of abduction
of young girls and forcing them into marriage,
Onuoha said that such societal aberrations
should be treated with the laws of the land as
provided in the constitution.

He expressed the hope that Nigeria would
come out of the current crisis threatening its
corporate existence, such as the Boko Haram
insurgency and agitation by pro-Biafran and
other general security challenges.

The walk for peace, which started from the
premises of Vision Africa along Abia House of
Assembly Road, passed through Ikot Ekpene,
Aba, Azikiwe, Macaulay, Bende and St.
Finbarr's Roads back to the radio station via
BCA Road.

Onuoha, who is a Bishop of the Methodist
Church of Nigeria and the President of Vision
Africa Radio, said that his greatest regret and
pain in life was the period of the Nigeria civil
war.

He prayed for greater unity and peace and
hoped that the nation does not go through
another war.