CHURCH RESPONSES TO SECURITY CHALLENGES IN AFRICA: A STUDY OF THE NIGERIAN CHURCH

Abstract

This paper examined the response of the church to security challenges in Africa with special focus on Nigerian. The perplexity of the Nigerian church as well as other African neighbouring churches over the heightened insecurity challenges is outrageous. It was discovered that, terrorism, conflicts, border closures, health challenges, economic crises, political uproar, boko haram insurgency, banditry, the alarming rate of kidnapping, Fulani herdsmen attack and so on have rendered church and national development almost unattainable. Security challenges have caused human death, economic down-turn, plaques on religious congregational meetings that led to poor church income, disrupted social life and health-insecurity and so on in Africa, especially in Nigeria. This paper therefore, investigated the causes and concomitant effects of security challenges on the church in Nigeria. The paper further recommended some ameliorative measures to curb, cushion the effects and combat security challenges in Nigeria. In addition, it examined church responses and recommended that the church and the government could organize programmes that could heal the wounds of the victims of security challenges. In the same vein, the global community with the empowerment of the United Nation Organization (U.N.O) could device advanced methods of curbing these abnormalities that are plaguing the African continent.