N6bn bribe: Count us out –Catholic Church

The Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Lagos, Dr. Adewale Martins, has ruled out involvement of Catholic Church in the alleged N6 billion bribe given to some Christian leaders to campaign against the All Progres­sives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari.

Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, recently made the allegation at a po­litical rally that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) bribed some Christian leaders with N6 billion to campaign against the APC and its presi­dential candidate.

Amaechi said the Chritian leaders had been circulating documents to convince Nige­rians that the APC and Buhari would Islamise the country if voted into power.

Reacting to the allegation during a press conference, organised by the church to celebrate this year’s Valen­tine Day at the weekend in Lagos, the Catholic archbish­op said the church should be exonerated from the bribery allegation because it had not endorsed any political candi­date or party.

“If any Christian leader collected money to adopt, campaign for or against any political candidate, please count us out, we are not part of it.

“Catholic Church does not have any political candidate, we are apolitical. We neither endorse, campaign for nor campaign against any politi­cal candidate.

“In our church, all our campaigns have been on principle of good gover­nance. The church is part of the society and we cannot close our eyes to what is hap­pening in our society.

“People should vote ac­cording to their conscience, based on the track record, performance and achieve­ment of the contestants, and not religion or ethnicity,” he said.

He urged Nigerians to pray for the country and the success of the forthcoming polls.