Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja Archdioceses has called for the establishment of a Ministry of Family Affairs to attend to the difficulties faced by families with a view to secure the larger society.
Mr Kaigama made the call at the opening of the 4th Abuja Archdiocesan General Assembly on Thursday in Abuja.
The theme of the 3-day assembly is, “Marriage and Family in Contemporary Society.”
Mr Kaigama said that in the contemporary society, marriages and Christian families are faced with numerous challenges due to secularism, influence of the social media, materialism, consumerism, and relativism.
According to the cleric, this is resulting in an increasing number of broken homes and single parenting in our society.
Mr Kaigama said that some families struggle to rise above these challenges by remaining faithful to the traditional Christian values.
He said that some others are confused and obviously uncertain of the real meaning of that union to which they are called to share.
According to him, the family is the first and vital cell of society and a society is only as healthy, as stable, as energetic, and as imbued with moral values as its families.
“A nation can be strong so long as its families are strong. A nation can be said to be crumbling if its families are falling apart and riddled with moral decay.
“The existence of good families is essential for the existence of the society. Pope John Paul II teaches that the family is the core of all society.
“For this reason, policies must be adopted which protect and promote the family, the school of social virtues.
“While national issues of politics, governance, economy, and climate change are on the front burner, we must not forget that the family, the nucleus of the nation, is seriously in danger of breakdown.
“More than allocating grants and palliatives, families need to be empowered and supported by government to embark on sustainable entrepreneurial activities.
“In other countries I visit, they even pay you to give birth to a child, and when you have given birth to a child, your child have allowance and you too have allowance.
“There is paternity leave, there maternity leave, government encourages them so our government should borrow a leave from these countries.
“If possible, there should be a ministry of the family, a ministry dedicated to the family, when you lose a family, the society suffers,” he said.
Mr Kaigama expressed hope that the five billion Naira palliative allocated to each state and the FCT to cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy removal, and the N25,000 monthly grant, allocated to 15 million struggling Nigerian families from October – December 2023, truly get into the hands of these poor and vulnerable people.
He said that the fundamental causes of family breakdown, divorce, cases of domestic violence, lack of care for the sick and the elderly among others be investigated and remedied by government.
The cleric said that families must see to it that its members are patriotic and law abiding saying that it is disturbing to observe that the perpetrators of violence, cybercrime, kidnapping, are sometimes young people indoctrinated by criminals and enemies of the state.
NAN
