Cleric Urges African Church to Embrace Due Process, Reverse Irregular Consecrations to Avoid Internal Rebellion, Litigation.
A clergyman with the African Church in Akwa Ibom State, Venerable Richard Peters, has advised the factional Primate of the church, Rt Rev’d Julius Osayande Olayinka Abbe, to step aside and reverse the many irregular elevations carried out by him or, in the alternative, elevate all those due for promotion to be at par with others.
He warned that anything short of this leaves the Church open to litigation and internal rebellion, stressing that the African Church cannot survive as a body where rules are optional and ecclesiastical order is ridiculed.
“If this trend continues, we will lose the respect, discipline, and spiritual authority that made us a force in Nigeria,” he added.
Venerable Peters traced the present challenges facing the church to the complete abandonment of the norms and constitution of the church by Rev. Abbe.
According to him, in a press statement made available to journalists in Uyo on Thursday, “Since the inception of the Abbe-led crisis, order has been dismantled in plain sight. What we are witnessing is not reform. It is a deliberate departure from the constitutional process to serve personal control.
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“The provisions of the Constitution are now suspended, ignored, or sidelined at will. Processes that once took years and months of filing, deliberation, management, general committee and conference approvals are now dispensed cheaply, driven by greed and the quest to dominate the Church. The rules that created discipline have been reduced, restructured, and weakened to the point that they no longer command obedience.”
Venerable Peters further highlighted, ‘Most alarming is the mass production of bishops. This crisis alone has placed caps on well over 100 persons as bishops and archbishops. Yet many of these men, if properly tested today, do not meet the requirements befitting such an office. Some lack the theological depth, pastoral experience, and proven years of service that the Constitution demands. Others have not passed through the herculean screening in the manner the law requires.”
He recalled that the African Church was never built on noise, patronage, or political convenience. “It was built on order. For over a century, its identity, influence, and respect across Africa rested on one unshakeable foundation: the doctrine of canonical order, qualification, and due process in the creation and inauguration of Parishes, Archdeaconries, Dioceses, and Provinces.
He urges the Conference of the African Church to act now and restore the doctrine of canonical order, qualification, and merit in all elevations and appointments, stressing that haphazard creation of Dioceses and Provinces must stop until constitutional requirements are met.
“A disciplinary and constitutional review committee should be set up to audit all elevations and creations since the onset of the Abbe-led crisis, with particular attention to those over 100 new bishops whose qualifications do not match their office,” he intoned.
He further cautioned, ‘The African Church did not survive colonial pressure, internal schisms, and decades of trial to be reduced to a system where patronage replaces process. We stood for order. We stood for discipline. We stood for a church where every rank knew its place and earned its place. If we do not return to that order now, there may be nothing left to restore.”
