Nigerian Christians and Muslims must look beyond religion and focus on the common good, if the country will move forward.

They must concentrate on shared values and uphold that which is capable of lifting up the nation.

Archbishop Anthony Obinna made this call while addressing communication directors at the Assumpta Pastoral Centre Owerri April.

He emphasized  that if the practitioners of both religions should work concertedly on common good issues that would benefit the nation, without forcing Islam or Christianity into dynamics, “we might end up with a humanizing Islam and a humanizing Christianity without thereby evacuating their more spiritual – doctrinal aspects.”

The Catholic Archbishop  of Owerri  explained that Muslim – Christian encounter was the most touchy and delicate encounter in the country, which had worsened since the Boko Haram insurgency in the North.

“With the continuous  killing of Christians in he North by the Boko Haram Islamic sect, a tense dialogue goes on in the hearts of otherwise peaceful Christians and Muslims. At the National Conference an incipient confrontation over prayers between Muslims  and Christians was averted by the adoption of the second stanza of Nigeria’s national anthem as the official prayer,” he observed.

“Rather than a dialogical encounter unto peace, Nigerian Muslims and Christians may only achieve a semblance of peace by avoiding a confrontation. This may have the indirect but welcome consequences of promoting more tolerance among Christians and Muslims.”

Archbishop Obinna noted that the national conference provided a rare opportunity for Nigerians to come “face to face with their loves and hates, with their strengths and biases, with their mutual experiences and grievances, with their hopes and dreams, with their constraints and pains, a lot of which have been inherited, nurtured and transmitted over the years”.

(Read full text of the key note address in our next edition)

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