ABSTRACT

On 2 January 1992, a Catholic priest, Rev. Fr. Moses Adasu, became Executive Governor of Benue State, Nigeria. It was the first time a Catholic priest had held such an office in the country, and a notable event in Nigeria’s democratic history. Many people were dismayed when the Catholic Church sanctioned him for taking the office. The curiosity aroused by these events prompted this research. The Church is a major stakeholder in the spiritual, social, cultural, religious and even political goals of human life, and one would expect it to support the sincere efforts of a member to give democracy practical meaning. Facts for the study were gathered through library research, questionnaires, oral interviews and participant observation.

The study found that the Church had a difficult experience with the Roman emperors in its early years, and that pagan emperors gave politics a bad name. Fr. Adasu, however, showed that the time had come for Catholics to understand that politics can serve good ends when the light of Christ is brought to bear on it. The Church had long taught that priests should treat everyone with great kindness, unite their efforts with those of the lay faithful, and follow the example of the Master, who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Because the Church is not a perfect society, the canon law that governs its administration can prove shortsighted in the circumstances of a given time. The study therefore recommends that the Church take part in partisan politics in order to purify it. Political science studies the polity, its constitution, management and leadership, and the Church encourages science. Change is also the only permanent thing, so the canonical and ecclesiastical laws that restrict clerical participation in partisan politics should be reviewed to make them more inclusive. In this way the Church would both select and monitor its personnel in public office. It is easier for a bishop to exercise oversight over a priest who is a governor or president than over an office holder who does not belong to the Church.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The Church in Nigeria is older than the country’s political independence. Nigeria became independent in 1960, but the presence of the Church goes back to 1472 in parts of the country and to 1885 in Eastern Nigeria. Before then, the peoples of Nigeria lived by their own cultures and norms and practised forms of politics peculiar to them (Amah, 2023). Since nationhood in 1960, choosing the system of government best suited to the Nigerian polity has been a continuing struggle, and several political systems have been tried.

Democracy was adopted in 1960 in the belief that it would protect citizens from the abuse of political power, whether by a monarch, an aristocracy or any other group. It was meant to secure equitable distribution of national resources and equal representation at the centre. In practice, however, Nigerian democracy has fallen short of these hopes. Recent scholarship describes it as procedurally regular but weak in governance performance, and characterises it as shallow, elite-dominated and prone to patronage (Eze et al., 2023; Ityonzughul & Gboko, 2025). Democracy has failed to reduce the unequal distribution of power, to empower subordinate classes through the vote and representation, to dismantle social and economic barriers, or to increase participation in collective political and economic life. These failures concern every serious stakeholder in Nigeria.

The Church is such a stakeholder. It is committed to the spiritual, social, cultural, religious and political life of the human person, just as the state is committed to the person’s social and political life. The Second Vatican Council made this shared concern for human well-being explicit in the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, which holds that the person, considered whole and entire, in body and soul, heart and conscience, mind and will, is the key to the whole discussion. To rescue the democratic image of a nation’s political system, the Church is therefore committed and must be involved. Scholars of Nigerian Christianity argue that the Church and democracy are partners and not strange bedfellows, and that the Church has a significant role in governance issues (Enemali, 2022). Others observe that the Church’s traditional focus on education and service, and its reluctance to take sides in political debate beyond a narrow moral agenda, has left many African Catholics ill-prepared to act as political leaders, while the statements of the bishops’ conferences are often acknowledged politely and then ignored (Kukah, 2022).

The background to this study is therefore an investigation of the extent to which the Church has been involved in realising democratic goals in Nigeria. The study also examines the particular role of Rev. Fr. Adasu and the area of disagreement between the Church and Fr. Adasu in their shared pursuit. Fr. Adasu held that religion and politics are interwoven and integrated. In his view, to remove religion from politics is to guarantee failure, and that is why Nigeria is in its present condition. People cheat because they have no fear of God. The answer is to bring the light of Christ and the fear of God to bear on politics, so that politics is done under that guidance.

1.1 Statement of the Problem

The Church has played a pivotal role in realising democracy in Nigeria, especially in recent times. The relationship between the Church and the state is a long one, dating from the early years of the Church. It is safe to say that Nigeria has always been religious, even when viewed traditionally. Before Islam and Christianity arrived, a traditional religious structure was already in place. Despite the plurality of ethnic groups, there was a common belief in a Supreme Being, with subsidiary deities and spirits acting as messengers and intermediaries (Ekpatt, 2021). Islam and Christianity made inroads into Nigerian belief systems partly because they shared this basic conviction in one God. They introduced a change in the method of worship for many Nigerians and not in the object of belief itself. The Church preaches belief in one God, the dignity of the human person, and the invaluable gift of Church and state to the person who seeks heaven after enjoying the goods of the earth. Islam likewise teaches that people should enjoy the goods of the earth as a foretaste of the peace that Allah will give to the faithful. Traditional religion for its part directs its followers to approach the Supreme Being through intermediary divinities, out of reverence and not because it overlooks the supremacy of the Supreme Being (Ekpatt, 2021).

Pre-colonial Nigeria was both political and religious. Each ethnic group had its own well-organised way of administering itself and organising worship. The Yoruba and the Benin and Bornu kingdoms had monarchical systems of government. The Hausa-Fulani emirates were centralised, with political authority closely tied to Islamic religious authority, and the Sokoto Caliphate was the largest pre-colonial state in West Africa (Amah, 2023; Ezonbi, 2023). The Igbo had a decentralised system with no central ruler, in which decisions were reached through consensus and participation. Scholars caution that labelling this system simply as stateless or acephalous oversimplifies it (Ezonbi, 2023). The Tiv and other groups, such as the Nupe, had their own arrangements of kinship-based or kingship-based authority (Ezonbi, 2023). British colonial administrators recognised and used these systems through indirect rule, and the success of indirect rule depended on institutions that already existed (Umar, 2022).

The amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates brought the different ethnic groups, with their religious and political systems, into a single political unit. An initial crisis arose over which system to adopt, since any single choice would be foreign to the other groups. When no other system seemed able to meet the political, social and economic needs of the young country, democracy was introduced to ensure equal representation at the centre. Since then, Nigeria has struggled to meet the basic demand of democracy, which is genuine participation in the political process by most citizens. The intermittent military interventions were a result of democracy’s failures at various times, but military rule made matters worse, because it replaced democracy with dictatorship. Military democracy or dictatorial democracy is a contradiction in terms.

Rev. Fr. Moses Adasu of Benue State threw his weight into Nigeria’s political system in order to sanitise democracy. He was elected governor on 2 January 1992, after accepting suspension from the exercise of his priestly ministry, and his administration was cut short by the military coup of November 1993. He is remembered in Benue for founding Benue State University, and he was later reinstated by the Church (Burton, 2023). His efforts drew both misunderstanding and applause. Decades later the question reappeared in the same state when another Catholic priest, Fr. Hyacinth Alia, was elected governor in 2023 despite being suspended from ministry (Burton, 2023). The Catholic bishops of Nigeria have since reaffirmed that clerics are forbidden to hold public office or engage in partisan politics without ecclesiastical authorisation (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, 2024). In this thesis we study the roles of Fr. Adasu in realising practical democracy in Benue State. Why the Church did not recognise his efforts as part of its contribution to the development of democracy in Nigeria is a puzzle that this study addresses.

1.2 The Aim of the Study

The aim of this thesis is to expose the roles of the Catholic Church in democratic governance in Nigeria. It examines the specific roles played by the Church, through its different organs, in promoting or undermining democracy in Nigeria. Of particular interest are the roles of Rev. Fr. Moses Adasu of Benue State in realising democracy in the state, and the reason why his contributions are not seen as contributions of the Church. A critical delineation is therefore made between Fr. Adasu’s ideas of democracy and the Church’s ideas of democracy. This should help to strengthen the true practice of democracy in Nigeria.

1.3 The Significance of the Study

This study is intended to explain, systematically and coherently, the roles of the Church, both as custodian of democracy and as an agent in enforcing its realisation in the nation’s political programme. It investigates the authentic contributions of Rev. Fr. Adasu to realising democracy for his people, and it examines the point of disagreement between the Church and Fr. Adasu that led the Church to deny his contributions to democracy. The research aims to identify his positive achievements and his weaknesses as legacies recorded in history. The study is significant and will remain topical for as long as the Church and the government share a common boundary in providing for the spiritual and material needs of the human person.

1.4 The Scope of the Study

This study covers Nigerian politics from 1960 to 1992 and the country’s efforts to practise democracy amid divergent ethnic groups and interests, with their local political leanings and religious influences and differences. It examines the political involvement of the Catholic Church, especially in Benue State, and the particular contributions of Rev. Fr. Adasu. A work that treats the involvement of all churches in Nigerian politics would be broader. Whenever “the Church” is mentioned in this work without qualification, it therefore means the Catholic Church in relation to the realisation of democracy in Nigeria. The study also gives a general outline of the Church’s approach to politics in relation to the political developments associated with Fr. Adasu.

1.5 Methodology of the Study

The study uses library research, consulting books and other sources to establish what other authors say about Nigerian politics, the Church and democracy. It also applies field research methods, namely oral interviews and questionnaires distributed across Benue State. These methods allow the researcher to gather the views of the people on the role of the Reverend gentleman in leading his people towards the dividends of democracy.

1.6 Explication of Terms

1.6.1 The Church

The English word “church” is traditionally traced through the Germanic languages to the Greek kyriake ekklesia, meaning “the Lord’s assembly”. Ekklesia was the regularly convoked assembly of the people, and the Septuagint uses it to translate the Hebrew qahal, the assembly of God’s people. On this basis the use of the term “church” can be traced to the Old Testament, whose assembly of God’s people is the prototype of the Church of the New Testament. The people of God are constituted by the divine word that convokes them, and the word then makes its voice heard and establishes a covenant between God and the people. This assembly appears for the first time at Mount Sinai with Moses, when the law is proclaimed (Ex 20). The faithful remnant that the suffering servant of Isaiah describes, drawn from the Diaspora and from the elect of all nations (Is 49:4–6), becomes the definitive people of God of the New Testament, bound by an everlasting covenant. For St. Augustine, the Church consists of the faithful elect dispersed throughout the world, an assembly in which the Holy Spirit makes the historical Jesus present in his messianic role with a view to the eschatological future of the Church.

Modern ecclesiology builds on this idea. The Second Vatican Council placed its treatment of the People of God before its treatment of the hierarchy, and so gave priority to the dignity shared by all the baptised (Luciani, 2023). In the traditional Catholic understanding, the Church is the visible religious society founded by Jesus Christ, hierarchically ordered under one head, St. Peter and his successors. Its purpose is to preserve and proclaim his teaching and to make present his sacrifice and sacraments for the salvation of all until the end of time. It is the living out of the sacrifice and the sacraments that led the Second Vatican Council to describe the Church as made up of the hierarchy and the laity working together in a complementary way. The laity are often entrusted with political powers and functions, while the Church guides those of its members who are in politics through the administration of its hierarchy, for canonical and ecclesiastical reasons. The Church is also guided by the Holy Spirit and for that reason is not a democracy in the secular sense, although its recent emphasis on synodality, in which clergy, consecrated persons and laity walk together, invites reflection on participation within the Church itself (Oraegbunam, 2023).

1.6.2 Democracy

Etymologically, “democracy” comes from the Greek words demos, meaning people, and kratos, meaning rule. The term is ascribed to Aristotle, who used it for the rule or government of the people. Like every dynamic concept, democracy is hard to define and has no single generally accepted definition. Scholars therefore tend to describe it and not define it (Awhefeada et al., 2023). Abraham Lincoln, perhaps following the Greek coinage, defined it as government of the people, by the people and for the people, a definition that enjoyed wide acceptance for a long time.

The most commonly used procedural definition is that of Joseph Schumpeter, who described the democratic method as the institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote (Eze et al., 2023). Critics found it narrow, since it concerns only the methods and mechanisms of choosing leaders at elections. A broader definition, associated with Larry Diamond and colleagues, treats democracy as a system of government that meets three essential conditions. The first is meaningful and extensive competition among individuals and organised groups, especially political parties, for all effective positions of government power, at regular intervals and without the use of force. The second is a highly inclusive level of political participation in the selection of leaders and policies, at least through regular and fair elections, so that no major adult social group is excluded. The third is a level of civil and political liberties, including freedom to form organisations, sufficient to ensure the integrity of political competition and participation (Eze et al., 2023).

Democracy has been one of the most elastic political concepts, at least since the Second World War, so it suffices to work with these few definitions. They fall into two broad traditions of thought, namely the natural law school and democratic liberalism. The natural law school is the source of the inalienable rights of every citizen. It holds that democracy rests on God-given law, which decrees universal citizenship for all and a universal code of right and justice. By implication, everyone who has reached the age of reason is free and should participate in the government of his or her land. Cicero (106–43 B.C.), John Locke (1632–1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) are among its exponents. Democratic liberalism is of more recent origin, appearing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its argument rests on the principle of utility and on the superior results that democratic forms alone can bring. On this view, people must be free and equal not because this was pre-ordained, as the natural law school holds, but because only freedom and equality can lead to the kind of government that all consider ideal. All other definitions rest on one of these two traditions.

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