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The Stones We Cast Return: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and the Cost of War

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After a hiatus of more than six years, a dear friend persuaded me that it was time to step back into the darkness of a cinema. Our choice was the newly released adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey by none other than the celebrated British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan. By all accounts, it was an excellent film. As always, Nolan gives his audience a complex plot and leaves them thinking about more than a few things. As a Latin student some thirty years ago, I encountered the world of Greek epic through the classical texts and their Latin reception. Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad introduced us to Greek heroes, gods, goddesses, and wars, particularly the destruction of Troy, while Virgil gave us the memorable warning, Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes — “I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts” (Aeneid 2.49). You can then imagine how Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey became, for me, an occasion for comparative analysis. I shall mention some of these comparisons before turning to what I consider a central message of Nolan’s film: the pervasive nature of war and violence. As a caveat, I recognize the difficulty of integrating every element of Homer’s poem into a film. Nolan omits the encounter with Aeolus on the floating island of Aeolia (Book X). Aeolus’ gift of the bag of winds, which might have eased the crew’s journey, instead complicates their problems because the men do not trust Odysseus. Trust remains a motif in Nolan’s narrative, but it is developed more fully in the original text. Trust—and its absence—also appears in the encounter with Circe, who feeds Odysseus’ men and then turns them into pigs. In Homer’s text, Eurylochus suspects Circe, remains outside, and reports what has happened to Odysseus; Nolan assigns this role to Odysseus himself. Nolan also depicts a quick departure from Circe’s island, omitting the year Odysseus and his crew remained there after Circe restores the men to human form (Book X). The film also omits Circe’s four attendants and the herb moly, given to Odysseus by Hermes, to protect him from her magic. Similarly, much of the dialogue between Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyphemus in Homer’s text (Book IX) is absent. The Cyclops’ prayer to Poseidon is rather reduced to a cry, while his final outburst in Nolan’s film does not appear in the poem. On Ogygia, the island of the nymph Calypso, Homer depicts Calypso singing and weaving as she holds Odysseus there (Book V), while Nolan has her feed him lotus flowers. In both versions, Odysseus’ rejection of immortality becomes a lesson about what human ambition can cost: family, community, and a true sense of self. Despite the adaptation’s attention to family, Nolan omits Laertes and Anticleia, Odysseus’ parents, as well as Odysseus’ meeting with Achilles, the acclaimed hero of the Trojan War (Book XI). Meanwhile, Nolan adds a significant twist to the sequence of events at the return of Odysseus (Book XXII), and the movie ended quite differently from the poem. One striking element of Nolan’s The Odyssey is the ambiguity surrounding the gods and goddesses. It is never clear whether Nolan presents them as real or as psychological images haunting the human mind. In Homer’s text, the gods repeatedly obstruct or assist Odysseus on his journey home; in Nolan’s film, Odysseus often gets in his own way. The gods are far less culpable. Nolan’s narrative mentions Zeus but never shows him. Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, strategic warfare, and craft, is presented less as a divine counsellor than as an imaginative figure who appears to Odysseus in moments of confusion—a mental dialogue partner. One of those killed at Troy bears Athena’s face, suggesting a haunting image of death rather than the straightforward appearance of a goddess. \” In Homer’s text, the gods repeatedly obstruct or assist Odysseus on his journey home; in Nolan’s film, Odysseus often gets in his own way.” — Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke The theme of violence and its consequences remains central to Nolan’s The Odyssey, offering a lesson that the modern world can draw from this ancient classic. The film directs our attention to what savagery does to the identity of both its perpetrators and its victims. Having helped destroy Troy in a senseless rage, Odysseus reflects in his monologue before Penelope that the war also destroyed his native Ithaca and everything he loved. Violence has a way of returning to its source while remaining where it was planted. The wars supposedly “fought and won” in recent decades continue to fuel today’s security challenges. The war launched in Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the collapse of the Libyan state remind us that military interventions can produce consequences far beyond their original theatres. Libya’s collapse contributed to the circulation of weapons, fighters, and instability across the Sahel.[1] The devastation in Gaza, conflicts involving Iran, and Russia’s war against Ukraine likewise produce consequences beyond their immediate settings, including displacement, food insecurity, and economic pressure. [1] Cf. Adeoye O. Akinola and Naledi Ramontja, “Violent Conflict in the Sahel: Causes, Dynamics, and Actors,” 125-146. In Adeoye O. Akinola, ed., Contemporary Issues on Governance, Conflict and Security in Africa (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023). \” Violence has a way of returning to its source while remaining where it was planted.” — Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke For African societies carrying the memories of civil war, colonial violence, military intervention, and forced displacement, Nolan’s Odysseus is not merely an Ancient Greek hero. He embodies a truth many communities already know: wars do not end when weapons fall silent. They continue in damaged institutions, displaced families, traumatized soldiers, inherited grievances, and generations struggling to return to a home that violence has already changed. In truth, war changes us all. The soldier doesn’t just come home when the war ends. He rather continues to return, in bits and pieces, for years unending. For Odysseus, it took ten years to find his way to Ithaca, a theatre of chaos. Looking back, Troy was

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“And With Your Spirit”: Liturgical Translation, Ecclesial Reception, and the African Question

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In October 2011, in a small parish in Kenya, a group of priests gathered for what was expected to be a routine preparation meeting on the new English translation of the Roman Missal. The diocesan liturgy coordinator had invited priests, catechists, and pastoral leaders involved in liturgical formation to reflect on the changes before the implementation of the revised texts. We arrived from the city carrying printed booklets, explanatory notes, and official documents from Rome. The atmosphere was cordial and expectant. Most assumed that the meeting would simply clarify several textual revisions and provide pastoral guidance on how to introduce the changes to the faithful. However, as the discussion unfolded, attention quickly focused on one change that would become the most recognizable sign of the new translation: the replacement of the familiar response, “And also with you,” with the more literal and theologically precise translation, “And with your spirit.” Other revisions were also discussed, including the reaffirmation of prescribed expressions such as “The Word of the Lord,” in place of alternative formulations that had become familiar in some local communities. The explanation offered was that these changes were intended to bring the English translation into closer fidelity with the Latin original and to recover the theological richness contained within the Church’s liturgical language. At first, there was silence. Then came resistance. One elderly priest, who had served the same parish for more than thirty years, leaned back and shook his head. “We have prayed ‘And also with you’ since our people learned English,” he said slowly. “Now you want to change the faith of the people with words? Is this Vatican Council III?” His question, although expressed with some humor, revealed a serious pastoral concern. For many of the faithful, liturgical language is not merely a collection of words. It becomes part of memory, prayer, identity, and spiritual experience. The phrase “And also with you” had accompanied generations of Catholics in their celebration of the Eucharist. To change it appeared, to some, as though something familiar and sacred were being taken away. \” Liturgical language is not merely a collection of words. It becomes part of memory, prayer, identity, and spiritual experience.” — Sr. Leonida Katunge Another younger priest, formed in Rome but serving in rural Africa, responded more cautiously. “This is not a change of faith,” he explained. “It is a correction of translation. The Latin has always said et cum spiritu tuo. We are recovering a formula preserved across the Roman liturgical tradition.” Yet the room remained uncertain. Some worried that the faithful would be confused. Others questioned whether ordinary worshippers would understand the meaning of “spirit.” Some asked whether Rome fully understood the pastoral realities of African communities, where faith is often transmitted through oral tradition, repetition, communal participation, and familiar expressions. One priest asked: “Will people not feel that they were praying wrongly for many years? Will they not think that the Church is correcting them rather than accompanying them?” These concerns were not simply resistance to change. They reflected questions that African theologians and Church leaders have raised for decades: Who determines the language through which African Christians worship? How can fidelity to the Roman liturgical tradition coexist with the rhythms, symbols, and communal patterns through which African peoples encounter the sacred? When translation is directed principally from outside the worshipping community, does it communicate the faith more faithfully, or can it unintentionally distance people from the mystery being celebrated? The issue, therefore, is not whether the Church in Africa should remain faithful to the Roman liturgy, but whether African local Churches are sufficiently involved in shaping the language through which that fidelity is expressed. \” The issue is not whether the Church in Africa should remain faithful to the Roman liturgy, but whether African local Churches are sufficiently involved in shaping the language through which that fidelity is expressed.” — Sr. Leonida Katunge These questions reveal a deeper issue in liturgical renewal: the relationship between the universal character of the Roman liturgy and the concrete cultural realities of local Churches. Liturgical texts must faithfully preserve the theological tradition of the Church, but they must also be received by communities whose faith is lived within particular histories and cultures. The coordinator listened patiently. He opened the introduction to the Roman Missal and explained that the purpose of the revision was not to change the faith of the people but to recover the theological depth of the Church’s inherited tradition. Liturgical translation, he explained, is not simply a linguistic exercise; it is an act of theological interpretation. The words prayed by the Church shape the faith of the Church. \” The words prayed by the Church shape the faith of the Church.” — Sr. Leonida Katunge That evening, when Mass was celebrated, the new response was introduced. When the priest said, “The Lord be with you,” the assembly responded hesitantly: “And with your spirit.” There was a brief silence. Some voices were uncertain. Others responded confidently. A few lips still moved according to the old habit, quietly forming “and also with you,” before correcting themselves. Yet something significant had already begun. The community was learning to pray again. The same liturgical dialogue was heard in cathedrals, village chapels, and basilicas throughout the world. Yet in that small African parish, it carried a renewed theological weight. It opened a path towards rediscovering the scriptural roots of the greeting, the witness of the early Church, and the Church’s understanding of ordained ministry. After Mass, an elderly woman approached one of the priests. “Father,” she asked gently, “why did the Church change the words again?” The priest paused before answering. “Perhaps,” he said, “the Church did not simply change the words. Perhaps she helped us hear them again.” \” Perhaps the Church did not simply change the words. Perhaps she helped us hear them again.” — Sr. Leonida Katunge In that simple question, the deeper theological journey of “And with your spirit” began to unfold. The experience of

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We Are Managing\”: Why Commitment Demands Creative Fidelity, Not Just Endurance

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Several years ago, while facilitating a diocesan workshop for priests, an informal conversation with a small group of priests planted the seed for this reflection. Curious about how they were faring in their lives and ministry, I asked a simple question – “How are you?” Their responses were strikingly similar. “We are managing,” some replied. Others chuckled. One priest jokingly added, “Welcome to the club.”  Although the exchange was lighthearted, the phrases lingered in my mind. Years later, I had a similar encounter during a seminar with priests in the United States. I noticed a young priest who appeared visibly exhausted. I asked whether he was well. He responded affirmatively but admitted he was tired and merely “managing” his life. He had been ordained only five years. That was what troubled me most.    How could someone experience his life, so early in his vocation, primarily in terms of endurance?  On another occasion, I observed a husband walking several steps ahead of his wife. Hoping to draw attention to the distance between them, I jokingly suggested that they walk side by side. With a laugh, he replied that she knew the way home and that, after several years of marriage, they were simply “managing life.” These encounters are not isolated anecdotes. Rather, they reveal an existential condition that increasingly characterizes contemporary experiences of commitment. The language of “managing” has become commonplace in conversations about marriage, priestly and religious life, professional careers, and even one’s relationship with God.  Beneath its casual and humorous surface lies a deeper anthropological and spiritual crisis. To say that one is “managing” may do more than acknowledge difficulty. It can suggest that commitment has become burdensome, that vocation has lost some of its motivating power, and that life is being endured rather than lived with purpose and joy.  At first glance, such language may appear to express resilience. Human beings possess a remarkable capacity to persevere through adversity, and endurance remains indispensable to every long-lasting commitment. Marriages, vocations, friendships, and professions all demand sacrifice, discipline, and fidelity in moments of disappointment and discouragement.  But endurance should not be opposed to flourishing. In fact, flourishing often depends upon the willingness to persevere through difficulty. The real danger emerges when perseverance becomes disconnected from meaning, when commitment is sustained only by obligation and no longer accompanied by growth, love, and self-transcendence.  \” The real danger emerges when perseverance becomes disconnected from meaning.” —Fr. Cornelius Uche Okeke Margaret Farley addresses this danger in Personal Commitments: Beginning, Keeping, Changing. She acknowledges the indispensable role of obligation in sustaining human relationships and vocations. Commitment inevitably involves duty. Fidelity often requires individuals to act despite diminished enthusiasm or emotional exhaustion.  Nevertheless, Farley warns against reducing commitment to what she calls “sheer duty.” When sustained solely by obligation, commitment risks degenerating into external conformity rather than a living expression of personal growth.  \” Commitment survives, but its life-giving power diminishes.” —Fr. Cornelius Uche Okeke What initially appears as admirable perseverance can gradually deteriorate into “resentment, rancor, hypocrisy and despair” (Personal Commitments, Revised Edition, 59). Commitment survives, but its life-giving power diminishes. The psychological and spiritual consequences of such an impoverished understanding of commitment can be profound. Those who experience commitment primarily as a burden often suffer emotional exhaustion, chronic stress, and detachment. Relationships that once fostered joy and growth become sources of silent frustration.  Spiritually, commitment may deteriorate into mere conformity: prayer becomes mechanical, ministry loses its deeper meaning, and God, community, or family come to be perceived less as gifts than as demands.  If left unresolved, this inner fragmentation can eventually generate a crisis of identity. L. M. Rulla, in Anthropology of Christian Vocation, describes a phenomenon that helps illuminate this condition. He refers to certain individuals as “nesters”, persons who remain within a vocation but gradually disengage from the ongoing process of growth and self-transcendence that the vocation demands.  They settle into the security of familiar structures while abandoning the deeper journey of conversion. Though physically present and externally committed, they become psychologically and spiritually stagnant. The vocation remains, but the dynamism that once animated it begins to fade.  The tension between perseverance and flourishing finds a profound philosophical articulation in Gabriel Marcel’s distinction between constancy and creative fidelity. In his book, Creative Fidelity, Marcel recognizes constancy as an essential dimension of human life. Commitments impose obligations that transcend fluctuating emotions, passing enthusiasms, and changing circumstances.  Fidelity cannot depend solely on affective satisfaction. Thus, the weary priest must still celebrate the Eucharist. The teacher enters the classroom despite fatigue. The religious sister or brother continues to participate in community life even when interior resistance threatens their sense of belonging. Without some degree of constancy, commitments would collapse whenever enthusiasm waned. \” The person remains externally faithful but internally absent.” —Fr. Cornelius Uche Okeke The Christian spiritual tradition has long recognized such experiences. St. Ignatius of Loyola speaks of periods of desolation in which consolation disappears, and believers are called to remain faithful in prayer and apostolic service.  The prolonged spiritual darkness experienced by St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta illustrates how fidelity often requires perseverance even when emotional reassurance is absent. Endurance, therefore, remains a necessary dimension of mature commitment.  For Marcel, however, constancy becomes problematic when it hardens into routine and loses contact with the living reality that originally inspired the commitment. What remains is the external structure of fidelity without its interior dynamism. Individuals continue to fulfill their obligations, but they do so mechanically, “going through the motions,” while becoming increasingly estranged from the meaning of their vocation.  This estrangement manifests itself in multiple ways. A married couple remains legally united, yet their relationship no longer fosters intimacy or mutual growth. A priest faithfully carries out sacramental and pastoral responsibilities while privately experiencing exhaustion and resentment.  A teacher continues to perform competently in the classroom but returns home emotionally depleted and unable to sustain healthy relationships with others. In each case, commitment survives institutionally but has been hollowed out existentially.

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In Defense of Cardinal Onaiyekan: Tinubu, Ajayi, and the Sycophants who Sustain Misrule and Abuse of Power in Nigeria

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There is a curious instinct among aides in Aso Rock: whenever a moral voice tells the President something he does not want to hear, the reflex is not to examine the claim but to discredit the messenger. This is not only a malady afflicting the sycophants around President Tinubu — it is a national disease. Even the weather-beaten masses of our people, rather than rising up against their oppressors, often lack the courage and self-belief to stand up to the darkness. Thucydides, writing more than two thousand years ago, offered the grim verdict that has echoed through every age of empire since: \”the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.\” Too many of us have accepted that verdict as the final word. But we forget Hannah Arendt\’s insight that power is not a possession a ruler holds in his or her own hands — it \”springs up,\” she writes, \”whenever people get together and act in concert,\” and it survives only for as long as those people continue to obey. As she put it elsewhere, in politics \”obedience and support are the same.\” The so-called powerful of this world are, in truth, dependent on us. But the greatest challenge we face in Nigeria, and in many other societies suffering from misrule in Africa and elsewhere, is that those who surround our leaders as advisors or allies do not tell them the truth, because they, too, benefit from the system and the people to whom power belongs are too exhausted with suffering or are often too fearful or are too manipulated to take back their own country from the hand of these ‘caterpillars of our commonwealth.’ This explains what happened last week when Cardinal John Onaiyekan spoke to Arise News about the Catholic Bishops\’ Conference of Nigeria\’s meeting with President Bola Tinubu. Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, accused the Cardinal of an \”abuse of clerical privilege.\” The real abuse, however, is of a different kind — the abuse of proximity to power by aides who mistake flattery for loyalty, and objective criticism for disrespect. \” The real abuse is the abuse of proximity to power by aides who mistake flattery for loyalty and legitimate criticism for disrespect.” Stan Chu Ilo The Catholic Bishops\’ Conference of Nigeria, representing tens of millions of Nigerian Catholics and addressing conditions affecting all Nigerians, regardless of faith, requested and was granted an audience with the President. They came with a carefully prepared collective statement describing the country as \”bleeding.\” When the President rejected that assessment and insisted the economy was doing well, Cardinal Onaiyekan later recounted the exchange — and for this he has been scolded for indiscretion. But the bishops did nothing wrong by speaking, and Onaiyekan did nothing wrong by telling Nigerians what was said in their name. The question the Presidency should be asking is not why the Cardinal spoke, but why the president and his aids are so uncomfortable with the truth. The suffering the bishops described is not a matter of clerical opinion. It is in the data. Start with poverty. The World Bank\’s Nigeria Development Update found that the poverty rate climbed to 63 percent in 2025, up from 56 percent in 2023 — roughly 140 million Nigerians below the poverty line, even as headline inflation eased. Household incomes, the Bank concluded, have simply not grown fast enough to offset years of inflation. PwC\’s Nigeria Economic Outlook for 2026 projects the rate rising still further. These are not partisan numbers manufactured by a cardinal with a grudge; they are the findings of the multilateral institutions the Nigerian government itself cites when claiming progress. Then there is the bleeding the bishops spoke of literally. Nigeria Watch\’s 2025 report recorded nearly 13,000 violent deaths in a single year, with kidnapping-related fatalities almost doubling from 425 in 2024 to 747 in 2025. The Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database separately recorded over 3,100 kidnappings in more than 1,270 incidents, with banditry described as the single deadliest driver of violence. Human Rights Watch\’s 2026 world report documents a resurgence of Boko Haram\’s JAS faction in Borno and continuing farmer-herder killings in the north-central states. This is what \”the nation is bleeding\” means in practice. Many Nigerians are fleeing the country, and investors and partners are fleeing alongside them. I have met international investors, humanitarian organizations, and global agencies who would have loved to set up offices in Nigeria but for the insecurity, and for their sheer inability to obtain insurance for operations in our country. The \”japa\” phenomenon is not a mood; it is a measurable hemorrhage. Roughly 94,000 doctors and nurses have left the country since the exodus began, including some 16,000 doctors in just the last five years and 16,000 nurses to the United Kingdom in 2025 alone — leaving Nigeria with barely 55,000 practicing doctors for a population of over 220 million. Engineers and academics are thinning out in the same way, alongside more than 3.7 million Nigerians already internally displaced by conflict. People do not abandon their homes and professional standing in droves because a cardinal told them the country was in trouble. They leave because they have lived the trouble themselves. \” People do not abandon their homes and professional standing in droves because a cardinal told them the country was in trouble. They leave because they have lived the trouble themselves.” Stan Chu Ilo In the 1980s, Nigeria was a sanctuary — a home for Africans fleeing hardship elsewhere on the continent. In January 1983, at the height of that confidence, the Nigerian government ordered an estimated two million undocumented West African migrants, more than half of them Ghanaians, to leave the country within weeks — the episode that gave us the phrase \”Ghana Must Go.\” Today the direction has reversed entirely. It is Nigerians who are fleeing to Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa, and Nigerians who now find themselves threatened in some of those

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Is the Tinubu Government Covering Up Christian Genocide in Nigeria?

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President Bola Tinubu recently hailed the killing of senior Islamic State commander Abu Bilal al -Minuki in a joint Nigerian and American military operation as evidence of his government’s “pragmatic cooperation and partnerships” in securing the lives and property of Nigerians. President Donald Trump reportedly described al-Minuki as the “most active terrorist in the world,” a troubling characterization that further underscores how Nigeria and the wider West African sub-region are now perceived by the U.S government as one of the most dangerous theaters of global terrorism. According to BBC reporting and international security assessments, the Nigerian-based branch of the Islamic State remains the most active ISIS affiliate in sub-Saharan Africa, responsible for a significant percentage of attacks across the region. Al-Minuki, whose operational fortress was reportedly located in Marte in Borno State near the Lake Chad Basin, was killed alongside several of his lieutenants in an air strike targeting his compound in the vast swampland shared by Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The Lake Chad region has increasingly evolved into one of the world’s most volatile transnational insurgency corridors. “Nigeria’s crisis cannot be reduced to a single narrative of religion, ethnicity, or terrorism—it is a struggle over power, legitimacy, and state survival.” — Stan Chu Ilo Nigeria has faced Islamic insurgency, particularly since the emergence of Boko Haram in 2009, as perhaps the most organized, diffuse, and enduring threat to the Nigerian state since Independence. When Boko Haram formally pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015, it established operational and ideological links with a wider constellation of extremist movements spreading across the African Sahel. These groups seek not merely territorial disruption but the creation of a new political and religious order founded upon extremist interpretations of Sharia and the establishment of a caliphate transcending national boundaries. The Islamic supremacist agenda of some of these groups is undeniable. Yet reducing the Nigerian crisis simply to Christian persecution or Islamic jihadism is analytically inadequate. The violence consuming Nigeria and much of the Sahel emerges from a far more dangerous convergence of ideological extremism, state fragility, criminal economies, ethnic conflict, climate pressures, corruption, weak governance, porous borders, and the collapse of public trust in political institutions. Indeed, President Trump, in justifying anti-insurgent military strikes reportedly carried out in cooperation with Nigerian forces, frequently accused the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christian populations, especially in Northern Nigeria. There are many within Nigeria and abroad who are convinced that Nigerian Christians are facing systematic persecution and even genocide. Some argue that the current cooperation between the Tinubu government and the United States emerged partly from mounting pressure from Washington, including the designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern on religious freedom grounds and threats of sanctions or diplomatic consequences. A recent report by International Christian Concern titled “Nigeria’s $10 Million Genocide Cover Up” alleges that the Tinubu government invested millions of dollars in lobbying efforts in Washington to cleanse its international image. According to the report, one of the central figures in this lobbying effort is Matt Mowers, a former senior adviser in the U.S. Department of State who previously worked with the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. The report claims that Mowers registered as a foreign agent and lobbyist shortly after Nigeria’s designation as a Country of Particular Concern and that his work sought to defend the Tinubu administration against accusations that it had failed to stop mass killings of Christians. The report further alleges that these lobbying efforts are financed through Maton Engineering Nigeria Limited, a company linked to former Niger Delta militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo, whose security company received lucrative government pipeline surveillance contracts in the Niger Delta. These allegations are serious and deserve transparent public scrutiny. The International Christian Concern report advances three major claims. First, it argues that the Nigerian government seeks to repackage religiously motivated violence against Christians as mere criminality, banditry, farmer-herder clashes, or climate-induced communal conflict. According to the report, the so-called “crime-terror-nexus” language obscures the ideological motivations of extremist groups who deliberately target Christian communities in strategic regions of Northern and Middle Belt Nigeria. Second, the report argues that the Nigerian government portrays the violence as too complex and ambiguous to be classified as religious persecution. By emphasizing criminality over ideology, the report claims, the Nigerian state minimizes the role of radical Islamist movements and presents itself internationally as a secular government battling generalized insecurity rather than confronting religious extremism. Third, the report accuses the Nigerian government and its international lobbyists of carefully managing foreign visits to conflict zones in order to prevent international observers from witnessing what it calls the true scale of anti-Christian violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt and Northern regions. The report claims that international delegations are often shielded from direct contact with victims and communities most affected by the violence. The International Christian Concern report deserves careful engagement. It is notable that foreign advocacy organizations have taken up the plight of Nigerian Christians with such intensity and visibility. However, there is also a need to interrogate both the data and the assumptions underlying some of these claims. First is the question of what constitutes genocide. The term is often invoked emotionally and politically, but genocide has a precise meaning under international law. The report does not adequately define the concept or clearly demonstrate how the Nigerian situation meets the legal thresholds established by the United Nations Genocide Convention. This does not mean that the killings are insignificant or morally less horrifying. Far from it. The murder of any innocent human being, Christian or Muslim, is an abomination before God and a tragedy for humanity. But analytical precision matters, especially when dealing with terms carrying enormous moral and legal implications. Historical memory is also important here. When one reflects on the anti-Igbo pogroms before and during the Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970, difficult questions emerge about comparison, scale, intent, organization, and state complicity. Is what is happening today directly comparable to those

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Which Way Nigerian Catholics? Can the Church Lead a Nation in Crisis?

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At one of the lowest moments in Nigeria’s history in 1984, when the country faced political instability, economic hardship, and corruption under an oppressive military government, the famed Nigerian musician, Sonny Okosun, sang that iconic protest song, “Which way Nigeria?” asking us Nigerians to reflect on which way Nigeria is heading. Today, that question has become more pressing because the condition of life has become more depressing for the masses of our people. And for me, the Catholic Church in Nigeria is one institution that can help effect an urgent course correction for Nigeria. However, it must also answer the fundamental question: which way for Nigerian Catholics? In other words, are we as a Church capable of leading the country in a different direction, or are we unthinkingly following this precipitous path with the rest of the country into the valley of darkness? Is the Catholic Church in Nigeria led by Catholic doctrine, by Catholic Social Teaching, by Catholic liturgical tradition, by the Catholic intellectual tradition, and by her time-tested principles on the relationship between the Church and the state? Or are Nigerian Catholics heedlessly following the dysfunctional values of a blind and selfish political class, whose extractive appetite has stripped the nation of its material and natural resources, impoverished our citizens, and nailed God’s people to a permanent cross of pain and misery? “And for me, the Catholic Church in Nigeria is one institution that can help effect an urgent course correction for Nigeria. However, it must also answer the fundamental question: which way for Nigerian Catholics?” — Stan Chu Ilo Many Nigerians are watching helplessly as an irresponsible and insensitive political class ravages their beautiful nation. Most Nigerians have disengaged from the political process, and others have sought refuge in different forms of religiosity and religious enchantment as a coping strategy, hoping in God, who, they believe, cannot fail them when everything around them shows signs of instability and decay. Other Nigerians put their hope in a sudden emergence of a saviour, perhaps Peter Obi or any other putative messiah, to rewrite our broken history and heal our wounded land. Yet others, surprisingly, put their hope in external agents, such as Trump, for redemption and liberation. Wherever anyone stands as a Nigerian citizen today, the reality that faces us is shocking and worrisome: how do we unmake the current Nigerian state; how do we radically reform our institutions; how do we cleanse our polluting ethical and social norms, and develop the virtues and practices of an inclusive state that is governed by civic and ethical culture that are transformative and generative of life and social transformation for everyone. The current state of Nigeria continues to shock the conscience as to how a greatly blessed nation with the most extraordinarily gifted citizens can be so poor, so unsafe, and so hopeless because a few thin top layers of religious and political elites have held the country in an internal perpetual bondage for decades now. Nigeria today stands as a troubling paradox of immense potential weighed down by deep structural crises that touch nearly every dimension of our national life. With an unemployment rate hovering around 22.6% and inflation exceeding 30% in recent years, millions of our people are pushed into precarity, reflected in the reality that roughly one-third of the population survives on less than $2.15 a day. This unacceptable manufactured economic fragility is compounded by systemic corruption and patron-client relations between those in power and Nigerian citizens, through an unethical governance structure that has become a transactional cesspool of impunity operated by rogues dressed in agbada, whose extractive leadership is all about the politics of the stomach;emi lókàn—(it is my turn to chop the national cake). According to Transparency International, Nigeria scores just 26 out of 100, ranking about 140th out of 180 countries, a stark indicator of weak institutions and compromised governance. “How do we unmake the current Nigerian state; how do we radically reform our institutions; how do we cleanse our polluting ethical and social norms and develop the virtues and practices of an inclusive state that is governed by civic and ethical culture that are transformative and generative of life and social transformation for everyone.” — Stan Chu Ilo  Insecurity has further eroded public confidence and daily life; the U.S. Department of State maintains a Level 3 travel advisory for Nigeria, with several regions designated “Do Not Travel” due to terrorism, kidnapping, and armed violence, conditions that have normalized fear as part of everyday existence and weakened national and international trade and movements of peoples severely hampering productivity, social innovation, and social connectivity for business and collaborative partnerships. At the same time, Nigeria hemorrhages its most vital resource: more than 100,000 barrels of oil are stolen daily, translating into billions in annual losses in a sector that should anchor national prosperity. Even in moments of global opportunity, such as price spikes linked to conflicts in the Gulf, Nigeria struggles to benefit meaningfully because production shortfalls, subsidy burdens, and theft by conscienceless gatekeepers of our oil wealth offset potential gains. This is not new but part of a troubling continuity. The $12.4 billion Gulf War windfall of 1990, effectively embezzled under the Ibrahim Babangida regime, set a pattern of opaque management of extraordinary oil revenues. The Okigbo Panel noted that this sum alone could have provided water, electricity, and nationwide road and rail links, yet no one was held accountable. Today, a similar dynamic persists: windfall gains from global price shocks remain insufficiently accounted for, while leakages through theft and mismanagement continue, even as Nigeria accumulates rising debt at both federal and state levels despite vast oil earnings. “Nigeria hemorrhages its most vital resource: more than 100,000 barrels of oil are stolen daily, translating into billions in annual losses… Nigeria struggles to benefit meaningfully… ” — Stan Chu Ilo The human cost of this systemic dysfunction is stark. Life expectancy remains low at about 54 to 55 years. In contrast, the disease burden—measured in DALYs—remains

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Pope Leo’s African Moment: A Prophetic Political Theology— A Test for African Bishops and Theologians, Part II

2 Comments / Analysis /

Pope Leo’s African moment is an epiphany, revealing to the Church and the world the kind of Pope God has given us. We are at the early stages of a papacy rooted in our ancient tradition and bold in proclaiming the truth of the faith with humility and joy. It is a papacy marked by deep respect for the many pathways and the diversity of cultures, races, nations, and religions that flow into the vast ocean of God’s mission, within which the Catholic Church carries on her fragile yet sacred vocation. What stands out most clearly in Pope Leo’s mission to Africa, amid today’s complex socio-political and ideological divisions, is his enunciation of a prophetic political theology. In this, he not only retrieves Catholic Social Teaching but applies it with remarkable boldness to the moral and spiritual crisis of our confused world, addressing national and global politics, the dignity and rights of all peoples, the ethics of war and peace, love of neighbor especially the poor and suffering, and offering a critique of the sinful structures of domination, corruption, and manipulation in defense of the common good. What is Pope Leo’s Prophetic Political Theology? This prophetic political theology, in Leo’s emerging usage, is not partisan theory, clerical statecraft, or papal overreach, as some whose consciences have been whipped by the prophetic sting from the mouth of the Pope might claim. Rather, it is a Gospel grounded reading of political life that makes an ethical judgment of the social order according to how far it is ordered to peace, justice, social friendship, truth, human dignity, the participation of all citizens, and the common good, while calling rulers, citizens, and institutions to conversion so that the reign of God may emerge in history. “The heart of this prophetic political theology is articulated through a closer reading of Pope Leo’s speeches and in-flight interviews during his ongoing pilgrimage of peace to Africa. ” — Stan Chu Ilo This prophetic political theology could be understood, I argue, through a set of interrelated questions about the right ordering of society in light of the Gospel, namely: How is authority and power exercised as a form of service, ordered to the common good and the flourishing of all, especially the poor and most vulnerable? How are structures of governance shaped to foster certain outcomes: participation, co-responsibility, and the dignity of every person in a spirit of communion akin to the African ubuntu? How are the diverse identities, interests, and aspirations of people discerned, reconciled, and integrated within a social order that respects difference while nurturing unity, solidarity, and social friendship? By what means are collaboration, coordination, and mutual accountability cultivated among persons, communities, and institutions, so that subsidiarity and solidarity work together in advancing the common good, shared purposes, and promoting human and cosmic flourishing? And how are questions of justice, equity, and fairness discerned in light of the dignity of the human person and the demands of the Gospel, so that social, economic, and political arrangements are rightly ordered, relationships are restored, and all people participate through their assets to building a society of abundant life for all where no one is excluded from the goods of creation? All these questions, I believe, can be understood within what I see as the Church’s preference for institutionalism as a political theory. Here, to borrow an idea from Lowndes, Marsh, and Stoker in Theory and Methods in Political Science, there is a focus on the “rules, norms, and values” that govern politics and governance, and on the institutions that regulate and promote the common life and the good of order. These norms are derived from natural law, divine positive law, the Gospel message, and the living Tradition and Magisterial teaching of the Church, discerned within history, human experience, and ecclesial life. They are universally applicable because they relate to the good of all human beings, whether they are Christians or not. However, in Pope Leo’s view, these values are not arbitrarily dictated, nor should the institutions that govern our common life locally or globally be imposed on the populace or the rest of the world by a few individuals or a few nations, and sustained by a tightly knit, narrow political class. “This is the problem in a country like Cameroon or Equatorial Guinea, where a thin top layer of the political class, or a cabal of patrons who has captured the state, as it were, turns statecraft into thievery, extraction, prebendalism, and extraversion, while using the state’s monopoly of violence to maintain tight control over a restive and disinherited masses who cry daily to God.” — Stan Chu Ilo This is also the challenge the world faces in America’s unilateralism or exceptionalism, where it uses its military or economic might to advance a narrow vision of history, spiced with a warped Christian eschatology that, sadly, has the ugly face of a new form of idolatry, having nothing to do with the reign of God, and the God of peace and love revealed to the world by our Lord Jesus Christ. Pope Leo is inviting the world and Christians to take away the robe of Christianity from right-wing white Christian nationalists, who wish to resurrect the ideals and projects of a defunct Christendom. “I think Pope Leo is inviting Christians to infuse their societies with Christian values rather than to dominate them through Christian politics or a Christian theocracy.” — Stan Chu Ilo From this perspective, it seems that Pope Leo invites the world to recognize that institutions of power should be continually renewed through reflective practices. This renewal should be informed by a social imagination that connects an understanding of people\’s daily joys and sorrows with the norms and ideals of good governance. These norms should arise from, resonate with, and address the social conditions to ensure that the social order is just, equitable, and promotes human security and the common good, which everyone should be able to access like a wellspring. How has Pope

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