Just two days ago, on Saturday, April 25th, 2026, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Federal Government announced that they would be building an “Ecumenical Centre,” which will come with a guest house and a tower.
They referred to it as a place for “spiritual renewal” and “regaining calm” before a flight. But since when did airport stress become a bigger crisis than the actual Christian genocide happening in our villages?
The same CAN that took the effort to announce the multi-billion naira project has been virtually mute about the systematic killing of Christians in the Middle Belt and the North. The same Nigeria that accounts for over 70% of Christian killings worldwide. In just one year, about 3,500 of our brothers and sisters were slaughtered. Farmers in Benue, Plateau, and Kaduna are being wiped out; they are so scared to go to their farms, their lands are seized, and their families are displaced.
To date, there has been no major action or pressure from this same CAN to pressurize the Government into putting a lasting end to the wanton killings, as well as bringing the perpetrators to book: no rage, no massive protest, just condemnation and diplomacy.
So, I have to ask: how does a 450-seat chapel in a high-security airport stop a mother in a village from being killed in her sleep? How does a “sacred space” for travelers help the thousands of Christians currently languishing in IDP camps with no hope of going home?
If CAN has enough “influence” to get or partner with the Federal Government to allocate land and a whopping N25 billion for a building, they clearly have enough influence to pester that same Tinubu’s government to secure the lives of their members. But they haven’t. They’ve stayed silent, choosing to partner with the same Government for a monument instead of putting real, “uncomfortable” pressure on the FG to end the bloodshed.
A chapel is just a building, but life is sacred. When our leaders value bricks and mortar over the lives of the people they represent, they’ve lost it. We don’t need a N25 billion “divine encounter” at the airport; we need a divine encounter with the truth and decisive actions: that until CAN starts fighting for the survival of the average Christian in Northern Nigeria, these buildings are nothing more than expensive monuments to their own silence.
Also, I can’t determine the rationale in spending so much on another church building project when the country and its people are neck-deep in poverty, and the Government is still hell-bent on squeezing every naira it can, to keep its frivolous spending afloat by taxing the people.
