The appointment of Monsignor Anthony Onyewuche as Assessor of the Assessor for General Affairs in the Vatican should be a moment of genuine pride for Nigeria. It is clear recognition of Nigerian intellectual, pastoral and diplomatic capacity at the heart of the Catholic Church.
Yet it also throws into sharp relief a troubling contradiction: with such Nigerians so close to the centre of power, the impression still persists in Rome that Nigeria is guilty of genocide against Christians.
That conclusion rests on questionable foundations. The headline numbers that have shaped opinion in parts of the West are drawn largely from an unaccredited agency whose data-gathering methods are opaque, outdated and uncertified. By contrast, Nigeria has a National Bureau of Statistics, mandated by law and equipped with modern methodologies, which can provide more accurate, disaggregated data on patterns of violence across regions and communities.
Even within the Church’s footprint in Nigeria, the reality is more complex than the caricature. Professor Chukwuma Soludo, Governor of Anambra State, has publicly lamented killings in the South East where Christians are attacking Christians. These crimes are grave, but they do not meet the legal or empirical threshold for genocide. They are symptoms of a broader insecurity crisis that cuts across religious and ethnic lines, affecting Christians and Muslims alike.
While we congratulate Monsignor Anthony on this prestigious appointment, we must remind him that his patriotism to his country ought to come first. From his new vantage point, he carries a moral responsibility to ensure that Pope Leo is properly briefed on Nigeria using credible, verifiable data rather than politicised estimates. Respectfully but firmly, he should make it clear that Nigeria’s challenge is not a state-led genocide against Christians, but a multidimensional security emergency harming Nigerians of every faith.
For Nigerian Catholics, and all fair-minded observers, this is not a matter of wounded pride but of moral accuracy. A Church that speaks prophetically on justice must ground its judgments in rigorous evidence, not in the loudest or most dramatic statistics.
The National Patriots.
