No African country is large enough to absorb Nigerians as refugees –Primate Okoh

Following the present insecurity bedeviling the nation, the Primate of the Anglican Communion, Nigeria, the Most Reverend Nicholas Okoh, has argued that no African nation would be able to accommodate the aftermath of the disintegration of Nigeria, just as he called on every Nigerian to understand that religion could only be practiced in a peaceful environment.
Okoh further argued that sincerity of purpose at all levels was key to resolving the conflicts paralyzing the nation’s economy. He made this position known while receiving the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Rt. Honourable Michael Gifford who was accompanied by the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr Andrew Pocock when they paid a visit to the country.
According to Okoh, “Every country has its own problem but this is a very strange type of problem that we are having. We think that the government ought to be allowed to face the issue of empowering the people, take to fighting poverty, unemployment, disease and so on and so forth and improving the living standard of the people but it’s been highly distracted by the security challenge and now becomes very difficult to say that government did not do this or that, because it needs a peaceful time to consider very important issues of development.
“If there is no country, there will be no room for anybody to do religion, no room for anybody to be a traditional ruler, there will be no room for anybody to practice anything. So essentially we need our country first and if people are able to understand the priority this way, I think the problem will not be there for too long.
“More so that in this West Africa, there is no country large enough to absorb Nigeria in the event of any major crisis. We can’t go to Ghana; we’ll just swamp their place, because it cannot take us.”
Earlier in his remarks, the Mayor of London stated that Nigeria would always remain crucial to the government of the United Kingdom and that it, therefore, followed that something drastic be done to arrest the lingering crisis. “Nigeria is very important to the city of London and there are so many people living there and so many British of Nigeria descent,” he said.