ASUU strike may inflame insecurity, Anglicanchurch warns

The Anglican Church in Lagos has warned that the security challenges in the country may be compounded if the strike by university lecturers persists. The Bishop of Diocese of Lagos West, the Rt. Revd. James Odedeji, said this on Thursday while addressing a one-day synod of the church at Archbishop Vinning Memorial Church Cathedral in Ikeja, Lagos. The Bishop said there could be an explosion of sophisticated crimes as the students could become idle hands hired or enlisted by criminals for nefarious activities that could worsen the country’s security challenges. He wondered what had happened to the soul of the country with frequent attacks of innocent people by the Boko Haram sect in the North, the rising wave of kidnap and rape. While calling for a stiffer punishment for those involved in the crimes, Odedeji called on the politicians to be faithful to the mandates they obtained from the electorate. He said, “It is only in a country like this that teachers in our universities will embark on strike for as long as three months without a solution to the problem which led to the face-off.” The bishop berated politicians who had turned electioneering to permanent vocation, rather than service to the people who elected them. “A lot of events are now being revealed to convince Nigerians that our elected office holders have abandoned us to struggle for positions in far away 2015,” he said. Adedeji called on the Peoples Democratic Party that controls the Federal Government to shun undue bickering and face the task of developing the nation. On the Judiciary, Odedeji, who was addressing the first synod after he was enthroned in April, said the third arm of government had failed to play its part as the last hope of the common man. He hinged this on his observation that “the penalty for the big thief is light punishment, while the one for a pick-pocket is life punishment often times, depending on how the prosecutor is treated by the people concerned.”