How Military Rule Paralyzed Development Initiative Of Nigeria – Rev. Father Anthony Akinwale
By Admin
The Former Vice Chancellor of the Dominican University, Samonda Ibadan, Reverend Father Anthony Alaba Akinwale has on Wednesday condemned the era of military rule in the country.
Naijanewshub.com.ng reports that Rev. Father Anthony Akinwale in his magistral lecture during his conferment with the academic title of Magister in Sacra Theologia by the Master of the Order of Preachers at the Dominican University Samonda Ibadan, said “Military rule paralyzed developmental initiatives in a country that ought to be on a fast track to development.”
He further said, “Every institution in the land got a hit.”
Rev. Father Alaba maintained that the Dominican Institute the embryo out of which the Dominican University was born, provided him the privilege of developing and teaching for twenty-one years an undergraduate course entitled Explorations in christian Theology, two course which turned around these two questions.
He said, “Upon completion of my doctoral studies and my return to Nigeria in 1996, my participation at the annual conferences of the Catholic Theological Association of Nigeria (CHATHAN) an association o had the privilege of serving as the president from 2001-2004, further heightened my preoccupation with these two questions.”
“I returned to Nigeria at a time our beloved country was mercilessly afflicted with and heartlessly assaulted by an extreme harsh and outstandingly pestilential military dictatorship, the worst of its kind, in an already debilitating and traumatizing history of two bouts of military rule in Nigeria.”
“Featuring alongside that dictatorship on the Nigerian landscape was a Nigerian religiosity, virulent and fissiparous in its emergence, serving as opium with little or no regard for the right doctrine, a loud and extravagant religiosity that emphasized the faith without reason, substituting reason with emotion.”
“These to issues, the repression that came with the military rule, and the extravagant religiosity of which I speak made Nigeria a veritable locus theologicus. Successful military regimes represented an upgraded continuation of the disregard for due process, repression of dissenting opinion, harassment of holders of such opinions, physical elimination of some, and all of these reflected as concerns in papers presented at the annual conferences of CATHAN.”
“That, in itself, was not a problem, Pope St. John Paul II offered a precious petrine confirmation during his visit to Nigeria in 1998.” Rev. Anthony said.
Present at the magistral lecture and conferment of academic title are His Grace, Most Rev. Gabriel Abegunrin, the Archbishop, Archdiocese of Ibadan; His Grace, Most Rev. Dr. Felix Alaba Job,
Emeritus Archbishop, Archdiocese of Ibadan; His Lordship, Most Rev. Dr. Emmanuel Badejo,
Bishop, Diocese of Oyo;His Lordship; Most Rev. Dr. Ayo-Maria Atoyebi OP,
Bishop, Diocese of Ilorin, among others.