First Catholic Bishop In Northern Nigeria Laid To Rest

The first indigenous Catholic Bishop in Northern Nigeria died in December 2020 and he has been laid to rest at the St. Joseph Cathedral, Kaduna, Nigeria.

Many Catholic Bishops including those of the Kaduna Ecclesiastical Province which the late Archbishop led until retirement were all there.

Late Archbishop Peter Y. Jatau

In a homily at the funeral Mass at the Ahmadu Bello Stadium, Kaduna, Nigeria, John Cardinal Onaiyekan said Archbishop Jatau’s death was glorious “to God but to all of us who have known him and shared with him the inestimable gift of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He slept in the Lord at the ripe old age of one year short of ninety.”

He further said: “As we pay our last earthly homage to our brother and father, the late Archbishop Peter Jatau, we are reminded that he is one who firmly believes in the viability of the Project Nigeria. Building a one united Nigeria is for many of us a desirable enterprise. But it is an enterprise that costs a lot in terms of sincere efforts to live with one another in a spirit of mutual respect, and equal opportunity for all, in solidarity and common mind. Before we discard this as a price too high to pay for unity, we must carefully count the alternative costs of tearing ourselves apart, a cost that will surely be much higher than what it takes to stay together.”

Nurturing an Indigenous Clergy. When Archbishop Jatau started his episcopal ministry in Kaduna in 1975, there were only a handful of Nigerian priests among a presbyterium made up almost entirely of Irish SMA Fathers. This group of gallant Christian missionaries had worked with admirable zeal for God and genuine love for our people from the very beginning of the Kaduna ecclesiastical jurisdiction on 24^th August 1911, then curiously baptized the “Prefect Apostolic of Eastern Nigeria”, later re-baptised, more appropriately on July 18^th 1929 as the “Prefecture Apostolic of Northern Nigeria”. Five years later, on April 9^th, 1934, the territory was finally named the Prefecture Apostolic of Kaduna, on the same day that the new Prefecture Apostolic of Jos was created, both of which became full-fledged dioceses on June 24^th 1953. This story was concluded on July 16^th 1959, when with the formal establishment of the Nigerian hierarchy, Kaduna Province was created, along with the other two in Lagos and Onitsha, with Kaduna as the Metropolitan See.

“The project Nigeria” the Cardina Onaiyekan said “is still very much work in progress, or is it work in retrogression? It is hard not to agree with the many who are saying that in our nation, things are getting worse by the day. This is not to deny that there are indeed some people, lucky they, who have not had it so good. But even their prosperity gets lost in the wider and deeper sea of the misery that is engulfing the vast majority. Basic human needs, security of life and property, minimum level of peace and harmony in the land: these are not luxuries but the necessities of life that one should expect of any true government. Those in pain should be allowed to cry. Pointing out what is not going well with the nation should be seen as an act of patriotism which government should welcome and appreciate, not shouted down and demonized. In our present serious predicament, what is needed is to bring all hands on deck, so that we can together rescue our nation from sliding into avoidable chaos. By the nature of things, the responsibility for facilitating this joint action rests with those who have accepted the role of ruling us.”

It will be recalled that the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto had in a Christmas message titled ‘A nation in search of vindication’ identified the challenges bedevilling Nigeria that are a direct result of nepotism and bigotry by the ruling President Muhammadu’s administration and beneficiaries of the system, especially muslims of Northern Nigeria criticised him for speaking out.