A DISCOURSE ON SUFFERING IN NIGERIA FROM A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This paper is a discourse on suffering in Nigeria from a Christian perspective. The curiosity of the work is heightened by the facts that Nigeria has all the fundamentals of abundant natural resources and vast human capital that make it robustly rich but contrary to expectations, it has poor citizens and adjudged the poverty capital of the world. One cannot blame God for the country's distress for he not only has blessed it so abundantly but sustains these endowments and protects same from natural disasters. The findings of this study reveal that Nigeria has anthropogenic sources of suffering; in other words, the suffering in Nigeria is man-made. Suffering has salvific value in Christian understanding but it should not be as a result of culpable factors which are at variance with the redemptive work of Christ who came that we may have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). In fact, it is critical to Christian message to remove those unjust structures that breed human suffering. Furthermore, the paper discovered that the managers of the Nation's huge resources are the architects of human suffering and that those sighs and cries, agitations and protests by more groups than one in the country are predicated on the experiences of the excruciating suffering. In this light, therefore, the work recommends the ways of removing the avoidable and unnecessary suffering in Nigeria. The methodology employed in this paper is phenomenal-descriptive which means that suffering in Nigeria was studied over time and presented in the discourse as an ugly phenomenon that should be removed from the daily experiences of Nigerians.