Most Rev. Peter Odetoyinbo said the drop in moral education could be attributed to the hijack of missionary schools by state governments in Nigeria.
Bishop Odetoyinbo, who is the Chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference (CBCN), Education Committee, made this assertion at National Catholic Education Summit on Tuesday in Abuja.
The cleric was represented by Rev.Fr. Ralph Madu, at the 3rd National Catholic Education Summit with its theme: “Challenges of Child Protection and Human Sexuality.”
“If the truth must be told, the failure of moral education in Nigeria began with the hijack of missionary schools by the state.
“That development robbed the church of its wings and created nuisance out of our schools and we started graduating half baked graduates,” he said.
He appealed to the Federal and State Governments to open dialogue with Churches and missionary societies on returning their schools to them
The chairman said that one purpose of moral education is to help make children virtuous honest, responsible, and compassionate.
He said that another was to make mature students informed and reflective about important and controversial moral issues.
He, however, said that both purposes were embedded in a yet larger project making sense of life.
The cleric said the idea was to develop a system to instill these virtues into children so that they can go on to become productive members of the society and contribute toward the common good of the nation.
Speaking on the theme of the summit, he said that subjecting a child to abuses of all sort should be totally condemned because children were special gifts from God.
According to him, chastity is thus that spiritual energy capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness, which cross the thought of every child abuser and intended predator.
The chairman said that in the African communal set-up in the past, children were precious to everybody. Every member of the community cared for them.
“Even when parents were not exposed and did not teach the children about sexuality, the society took care of that because of the high regard and respect for religious and societal values.
“Today, the general rot in the entire system has robbed the children of that guidance and are ill-informed, and unable to provide any solution to these problems.
“The church then becomes a moral voice that many parents turn to for solution. This is why the welfare of the child is the first and paramount thing to be considered as derived from the gospel,” he explained.
Odetoyinbo, therefore, urged Christians to have a role to play in creating an environment in which children can develop and be safe.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the missionary started very early to invest heavily in quality education in what is now known as Nigeria.
The missionary established schools were known for their good academic and moral standards, and their non-discriminatory policies, even in the difficult terrain of rural Nigeria.
Prior to the government take-over of schools in the 1970s both the Church and the State were partners in education.
As a result of the take-over, the initiatives of voluntary agencies were stifled and the quality of education in Nigeria was said to be experiencing sharp decline.
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