Dr Oohay,
No doubt, in your literary peregrinations you must have encountered Mongo Beti’s delightful The Poor Christ of Bomba. Bomba, pronounced BOMBER as in bomber warmonger Senator John McCain’s Beach Boys rendition of Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb. It’s fair to say that The Poor Christ of Bomba is one helluva a satirical novel, preceding as it does, the publication ofChinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and its own unique sections that delineate the early encounter / cultural clashes between Christian missionaries and his own indigenous pastoral Igbo people…
In Children of Gebelawi Nobel Literature Laureate Naguib Mahfouz has Moses, Jesus , and Muhammad hanging out in a Cairo Ghetto. Bearing in mind that with God all things are possible, not least of all, the science fiction mode known as “time travel”, we could award ourselves a poetic licence to " ascend the brightest heaven of invention", fasten our seat belts after we mount the time machine and fast forward with the endless possibilities of our own fertile imagination whereby to imagine if the three wise men had followed the star to Abuja for the baby Jesus to have been born in Nigeria during the reign of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, then, comrade, we would have been in a much better position to be more precise about the economic conditions and other social circumstances in which the blessed saviour was conceived and a much better understanding of this question asked back there in the Holy Land : “What good can come out of Nazareth? “ Alternatively, one of the fictional Nigerian born disciples could have asked sarcastically or despondently, “What good can come out of Abuja ?
Having said that, now, let me make thisTrue Confession : I love Pope Leo XIV .
When I made this confession to one of my Pentecostal friends the other day, the rascal retorted that HisHoliness “needs to be born again!”. I asked, Is that not blasphemy? Some miscreants think that they are free to blaspheme in the name of “Freedom of Speech” or “ Diplomatic Immunity”
Hopefully, for mere Catholics like you there's also the economic which is sometimes closely affiliated with the existential, both of which factors Jesus must have had in mind when he said “ Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”
About those motivated to seek greener pastures overseas, consider the generosity of Spirit from the Almighty ( Rabbi Jesus speaking about him poetically in
Matthew 6:25-34, Luke 12:22-32
Apart from raising Lazarus from the dead, and his own resurrection, one of Jesus’ other most moving miracles is that he fed a crowd of 5, 000 hungry people on five loaves and two fish…
Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do”
Now Dr Oohay, looka here :
"When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.” ( lamented Dom Hélder Câmara)
How does Dr Oohay relate to the following :
Liberation Theology and the Socialist Gospel of Jesus
The 1981 Papal Encyclical on The Dignity of Labour
I, even as a mere Catholic (and a one-time altar boy) regard Pope Leo XIV’s act in question as very encouraging but still somewhat a NOMINAL act (in terms of the “political” aspect).
Oohay
On Saturday, May 30, 2026, 8:45 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
“You see men sailing on their ego trips
Blast off on their spaceships
Million miles from reality
No care for you, no care for me”
Bob Marley : So Much Trouble In The World
Paul Ejime asks, Who Cares About Nigeria? The answer to that rhetorical ad misericordiam is that those who care about Nigeria and should care about Nigeria, care very deeply. It is an emotion to be seconded across Africa and the Pan Africa Diaspora. When Nigeria succeeds, we all succeed. After all, it’s said that 1 in every 7 so called Black people in this world is Nigerian or of Nigerian ancestry
Once upon a time, when Jaja Wachuku and Maitama Sule were household names, everyone at the United Nations knew that there was a great African country, Nigeria. Since Independence on 1st October 1960, the population has jumped from a mere 33 million to its current 230 Million souls, but the reputation of the country has augmented in several other adverse directions; from its first discovery it was oil and her fabled oil wealth, soon thereafter, day of infamy, the first major, heinous January 15th 1966 political assassinations, the first coup d'état in West Africa, followed by retaliatory pogroms in the North, a civil war - a divided country, and today, NIGERIA //NIGERIAWorld is closely associated with Boko Haram & terror partners as brand names, even as 419 has subsided or has been gradually displaced by e.g. more sensational latest news about joint US & Nigerian Military operations on terrorist hideouts and so called “terrorist infrastructure”
Sadly, in my opinion, due to the nonchalant “I don’t care” mindset, Nigeria will not be sending a football troop to the FIFA World Cup Jamboree…
At this very moment, the problem of over 500,000 illegal Nigerian immigrants in South Africa is now at a boiling point, and when it comes to caring, there’s the Herculean task awaiting His Excellency Femi Fani-Kayode when he finally lands at the O. R. Tambo International Airport to help quell the tide of xenophobia that is currently bedevilling post-Apartheid South Africa
I’d just like to add one last point of observation concerning the brain drain crisis - a general brain-drain crisis affecting nearly all African countries, but one in which Nigeria is somewhat overrepresented : Pope Leo XIV advises Africans to stay in their countries and help to develop them
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