A fresh crisis is now brewing between the Anglican Church and the Enugu State government over the withdrawal of schools initially handed back to the church by the state government.
Speaking during a joint press conference on Monday, the eight dioceses of Anglican Communion in Enugu state alleged that the state government had withdrawn 54 primary schools and 10 secondary mission schools previously handed back to the church, whereas other churches have retained theirs.
The Church accused the government of what it perceived as partiality among church denominations in the state and asked the state government to immediately resolve the impasse by returning all their original schools back to them.
The church represented by the eight Bishops of the dioceses in the state, led by the Archbishop of Enugu Province and Bishop of Oji-River diocese, His Grace, Most Rev. Amos Madu, in a press conference yesterday, asked for the immediate sack of the state Commissioner for Education, Dr. Simon Ortuanya, who they alleged was directly culpable for the “marginalization and humiliation” of the Anglican Church in the state.
However, in a reaction, the Education Commissioner, Ortuanaya, stated that it was not only the Anglican Schools that were withdrawn but every other mission schools in the state.
He said that the state government had set up a committee to look into conflicts emanating from handover of the schools back to the mission which was the reason for the withdrawals, adding that the committee was still sitting and had not submitted its report for the government to take decisive action yet.
But the Anglican clergy insisted that whereas similar missions like the Catholic Church got back their schools and gazetted with the state government, they are yet to get theirs completed and worse still, not gazetted.
“As this was going on, some communities were incited against the Anglican Church while some were being taken over by the Catholic.
Later, we got a letter from the Commissioner for Education that a school like the one at Awkunanwu was wrongly handed over to us. The Commissioner for Education is working against us.
“The Commissioner also denied us allocation of school buses. We have written to the state government, but nothing is forthcoming yet. We therefore urge Governor Sullivan Chime to intervene in the matter.
“The Commissioner’s list should be ignored and we ask for his immediate removal. We pray for the government every Sunday and we wonder why this kind of treatment should be meted to us,” the church lamented.
In his own remark, the Anglican Bishop of Enugu Diocese, Dr. Emmanuel Chukwuma asked if Enugu state had been turned to a Roman Catholic state.
“Our Catholic counterpart cannot tolerate what we are tolerating. We ask the Enugu state government to listen to us now. There is marginalization among the churches. In some mission schools, their buildings and roads are receiving attention but ours have not. We have been patient enough,” said Chukwuma.
Bishop Chukwuma who alleged that the marginalization is even manifested in appointments, warning that the Anglican Church has been pushed to the walls and will no longer hesitate to react. “For instance, 5 catholic schools in Nsukka were given school buses, but only one Anglican school in the area was given a school bus, why”?, he queried.
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