Enugu cleric charges Nigerians on protocols

The Catholic Bishop of Enugu Diocese, Most Rev Callistus Onaga, has called on Nigerians to ensure strict observance of COVID-19 protocols put in place to contain the spread of the virus as they celebrate the Christmas and New Year.

Onaga, who spoke in Enugu while presenting his Christmas message to journalists, said it would not take any extra thing to observe the protocols, “which is simply by washing our hands regularly, wear face masks and maintain physical distance whenever in public places.”

The cleric said looking at the second wave of the coronavirus with the new Covid-19 variant in United Kingdom that has been described to spread 70 per cent faster than the initial one, Nigeria maybe close to another kind of lockdown which he noted would not be good for our economy.

Onaga said, “If this is happening amidst the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ who came to redeem man, then God may probably try to call attention of humanity to himself.

“This disease has defiled human efforts and human science and continued to presume. In Europe we understand that people are told to restrict their normal family celebration to just about five members of the family. Now it is a question of don’t even visit a family.

“Unfortunately, my dear people of Nigeria, we are taking God’s grace for granted, we are taking God’s love for granted because we are not doing what we are supposed to do to help the things God has provided for us. We know how our medical outfit is here in Nigeria. We know how poor we are as a people and as a nation but God has decided not to bring full force of this pandemic on us.

“We are required to do the normal things everybody will do, take necessary precautions because prevention they say is better than cure.”

The cleric warned that, We shouldn’t take things for granted. We should help by observing the normal things that are done. If for any reason God is preventing us let us help ourselves because even the intelligence to produce and find out things disturbing us is as well the handiwork of God.

“So while I say happy Christmas to everybody, I am appealing to all those concerned that it will not cost us anything extra to observe the National Centre for Disease Control protocols – to wash your hands often, wear facemasks while in public, keep physical distance any time you are outside

“Let’s not put God into temptation, although we know He is God the Almighty but let us not try Him like the devil tried to do at the temptation 40 days and 40 nights, to say, ‘if you are God save us from coronavirus.’ Remember the reply, ‘thou shall not tempt the Lord your God’.”