Onaiyekan worries over biting hardship

A former Archbishop of the Abuja Catholic Archdiocese, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, within the week called for a policy review to minimise the current economic hardship in the country.

He said, “You can’t tell someone to be patient with poverty while we see the people who are supposed to address our poverty live flamboyantly.”

He made the call in an interview with journalists on the sideline of a Marian Concert organised to mark the 2024 feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Abuja.

Onaiyekan said, “There is a limit to what people can handle. You can’t tell someone to be patient with poverty while we see the people who are supposed to address our poverty live flamboyantly, building huge mansions and having fleets of cars without caring how they are fuelled, whereas the rest of us are queuing to get a few litres of fuel.

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“There’s need to review some of the policies that are giving rise to the kind of pain and poverty we are not familiar with. We are not used to this. The middle class is now being completely wiped out; everybody is now becoming poor.”