By Favour Goodness
The Metropolitan Archbishop of the Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province, Most Rev Valerian Okeke, has urged politicians to enthrone the spirit of brotherliness in their electioneering.
Loading ...He spoke during the celebration of his 68th birthday and celebration of 40 years of priesthood with inmates at the Nigerian Prisons, Onitsha.
In a holy message he titled, ‘Turning your challenges into blessings and opportunities,’ Archbishop Okeke sought an end to killings and bloodshed in Anambra, end to hatred and divisive tendencies and asked politicians to work for the good of the society, especially during challenging times like now.
The Archbishop also urged the inmates to develop themselves for future productivity, just as he encouraged indigenes to remember the historic peace for which Anambra, as a pace setter, was known. He begged God to bless the inmates, Anambra State and Nigeria at large.
Okeke expressed deep passion for a new Anambra transformed into a progressive family of peoples, characterised by love, peace and harmony.
The state has been enmeshed in violence and general insecurity in the ahead of the November 6 election.
Baring his mind with deep faith, active hope and profound passion at the birthday Mass, the Archbishop, in a moving message to the political class, condemned all forms of destructive and desperate activities.
He called for the dethronement of politics of bitterness, bloodletting, division and favouritism, exclusion, excuses, back-stabbing and enmity, and appealed for the enthronement of the politics of family harmony, brotherliness, cooperation, development and peace, and indeed politics without bitterness in the electioneering campaigns.
Okeke proposed a politics of societal transformation that would accentuate the greatness of Anambra and place it as a cynosure of admiration.
According to him, a state richly blessed with human and natural resources as Anambra was positioned by God to be “primus inter pares,” the light, by performance, not merely by name.
“And this task requires the cooperation of all the stakeholders in the Anambra socio-political enterprise,” he said.
