The Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja has described as falsehood and fake news, a report that its Archbishop, Ignatius Kaigama, has endorsed the former governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, as the vice presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2023 presidential election.
The catholic church said the fake news followed the nationwide outrage that greeted the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC since Shettima’s announcement by the party’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
The Director of Communications in Archdiocese, Fr. Patrick Alumuku, who clarified this in a statement on Thursday, titled, “Archbishop Kaigama Endorses Shettima: A Disclaimer”, said that the general public is notified that Archbishop Kaigama has not and will not endorse any candidate as his flock cut across political parties and he would not prefer one candidate above the other.
Alumuku said that it was up to Nigerian voters to make their choice through the ballot box by electing the best candidates, adding that the loyalists of the APC have been at their wit’s end explaining to Nigerians the soundness of their choice.
The statement reads, “One of their antics to give credit to the much-criticized choice, has been to use the good names of reputable Nigerians to ‘launder’ the image of Shettima. One such futile attempt is dragging the name of Most Rev Ignatius Kaigama, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, into the fan base of APC. Recently, social media was agog with the skewed news of such spurious endorsements.
“To set the records right, at no point has the venerable archbishop either in his capacity or as the Metropolitan of Abuja Ecclesiastical Province made such comments. Those familiar with the norms of the Catholic Church understand that Canon 285 § 2 admonishes that ‘Clerics are to avoid those things which, although not unbecoming, are nevertheless foreign to the clerical state.’
“Endorsing a candidate of a particular party by any cleric as purported is certainly foreign to the clerical state and not a possible action by Catholic cleric. It is therefore unthinkable that Archbishop Kaigama who knows better the workings of the Church as a top cleric in the Nigerian sphere would make such an alleged endorsement. How could he when such posture contradicts the very essence of his episcopal ministry?
“The rumour peddlers depict that they are out of touch with ecclesiastical reality in Nigeria. Archbishop Kaigama ended his tenure as President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria since 2018. After him, there have been two successors, yet the bearers of the false news presented him now in 2022 as the President of CBCN, which he longer is.
“The bigger question to be asked is: How did we come about such a nasty insinuation? Why the futile attempt to put words in the mouth of the Archbishop?”
According to the statement, the fake news has to do with the event of 2016, as the then President of CBCN, Archbishop Kaigama along with other bishops, graced the Golden Jubilee of the Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri while Kashim Ibrahim Shettima was the Governor of Borno State.
“As it was customary, he led the bishops to pay a courtesy visit to then Governor Shettima. Archbishop Kaigama minced no words in reminding his listeners that the Catholic Bishops of Nigeria have a prophetic voice. His words: ‘We are a voice for the people. Our voice is a prophetic voice. We see things where things are good, we say it so. Where things are bad, we say it so.’
“Coming from such premise, he of course commended some virtues he found in the governor as it relates to his working relationship with peoples of other faith. Six years after however, it is surprising that his innocuous comment has been reinvented by mischievous makers to mean endorsement of Shettima as Tinubu’s vice presidential candidate, what a shame!,” he stated.
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