AFRICA/NIGERIA - The Catholic Church in Nigeria will carry out a sensitization campaign to educate the people on how to take part in April elections

Lagos (Agenzia Fides)- The Catholic Church in Nigeria will carry out a sensitization campaign to educate the people on how to take part in the forthcoming general elections, the Archbishop of Lagos, Cardinal Anthony Okogie has said.
According to CISA news agency in Nairobi, Cardinal Okogie noted that the ‘kind of leaders people elect, determines the kind of government they get’. He warned voters against selling their voters cards, saying it would amount to putting their lives at the mercy of politicians..
Cardinal Okogie was conducting Cardinal Ivan Cardinal Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for Evangelisation of Peoples from Rome on a tour of the Archdioceses of Lagos when he said this. The visiting Cardinal Dias urged the local Church to intensify efforts for evangelisation and missionary work.
The election is seen as an important event in the history of Nigeria. After two mandates president Olesegun Obasanjo, cannot be re-elected after Parliament rejected a Bill to allow a third presidential term. The battle to succeed Obasanjo is being fought on a background of tension between the northern and southern regions of Nigeria with a manipulation of religion (the north is mainly Muslim and the south is mainly Christian), and the unsolved question of division of profit from oil resources concentrated in the Niger Delta.
Another element of tension is corruption. A report by the Economic and Finance Crime Commission EFCC said that 135 election candidates had a corruption record.
In April more than 50 million Nigerians will elect a president, a parliament and 36 state governors and municipal assemblies. Although Nigeria is the world’s 8th largest producer of oil, most of its population of 140 million (this is Africa’s most populated country) lives below the poverty line. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 14/2/2007 righe 30 parole 342)