05/08/2026
THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST. MULUMBA NIGERIA
Headquarters: 14A Enweonwu Street, P.M.B 1748, Onitsha, Anambra State, Nigeria
Phone: 081-62908357; 081-88166150
Email: [email protected]
A KSM RESPONSE ON THE CBCN PRESIDENTIAL VISIT AND ITS AFTERMATH
“When the shepherds are silenced, the flock is not safe.”
The Order of The Knights of Saint Mulumba Nigeria (KSM) is a Catholic fraternal Order of laymen bound by three obligations: charity to the poor, defence of the faith, and service to the common good. We are not politicians. We do not seek office, nor do we align with parties. Our business is the dignity of the human person, and our method is witness. For decades, we have been part of building the country in various fields. We have done this quietly, without cameras, because the work itself is the reward. But quiet work does not mean quiet conscience. When the moral fabric of the nation is torn, we speak. Not as partisans but rather as citizens who have seen it all about governance and can not afford to stay silent. This is why we write now.
The Visit That Would Not Be Routine
Any group, irrespective of its leanings, visiting a president is not strange in Nigeria. It happens all the time. A delegation arrives, prayers are offered, the reasons for the visit expressed, ideas exchanged, photographs are taken, and everyone returns to their corners sometimes with nothing changed. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) has made such courtesy calls before. So have the Christian Association of Nigeria, the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, and the traditional rulers who rotate through A*o Villa like seasons. Most of these visits vanish irrespective of core intents and message, into the archives of state house photography, remembered only for handshakes and homilies.
The visit of 28 July 2026 was not one of these.
Led by the CBCN President Archbishop Matthew Ndgoso and accompanied by John Cardinal Onaiyekan and other senior prelates, the CBCN delegation came to A*o Villa not to just shake hands but to pray with the President and bear witness. They came to say, in language that was measured but unmistakable, what ordinary Nigerians live every day: the crushing weight of prices, the erosion of security, the fear that votes no longer count, and the quiet drift toward one-party rule that should alarm anyone who remembers why democracy matters. Archbishop Ndgoso, with both moral courage and historical memory, reminded the President of his own exile during the struggle against military rule. He reminded him that the man now occupying that seat was once making the same demands which they now seek from his administration.
This was not just a pastoral courtesy call. This was a call for adjustment in the President’s governance strategy and a reminder that he had also made the same demands in the past.
The Aftermath: From Rejection to Attack
What turned this episode from a disappointing meeting into something alarming was what followed. On 31 July, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, speaking on Arise Television, confirmed what many had suspected: that the President had disagreed with the bishops on their concerns, and had done so with visible displeasure. The Cardinal’s disclosure was not a political attack. He simply told the public what happened in that room. It was testimony.
The Presidency’s reaction came swiftly. On 1 August, presidential aide Daniel Bwala launched a counterattack that was as revealing as it was abrasive. Cardinal Onaiyekan, Bwala declared, was “more political than spiritual.” The Catholic Church, he implied, was not a neutral moral authority but a partisan actor with a hidden agenda. The bishops’ candour was not courage but calculation. Their concern for the poor was not charity but politics dressed in vestments.
This is the old playbook of power when truth becomes inconvenient. When you can not answer the message, you attack the messenger. When you can not refute the testimony, you question the witness’s motives. When you can not defend the record, you redefine the critic as an enemy of the state. Bwala’s statement was not a rebuttal. It was a warning shot. It told every religious leader, every civil society voice, every citizen who might consider telling the truth to those in power: if you cross this line, we will not argue with you. We will unmake you.
Why Candour Still Matters
The Order of The Knights of Saint Mulumba Nigeria (KSM) views this entire sequence, the rejection, the abrasive counterattack, the attempt to recast moral witness as political subversion, with grief. We do so not as partisans of any political party but as citizens who believe that accountability is the breath of democracy, and that candour is one of its scarcest resources.
Listen to what the bishops actually said. They did not call for the President’s resignation. They did not endorse an opposition candidate. They did not question the legitimacy of the 2023 election in the terms that partisans have done. What they did was describe reality as they encounter it daily: the farmer who can not afford fertilizer, the student who can not pay fees, the family that eats once a day, the community terrorized by bandits while security forces are under-resourced and overstretched, the voter who no longer believes that the ballot box changes anything. These are not abstract grievances. They are the material of Nigerian life in 2026. And they are not invented by the bishops. They are reported by them. They are only telling the Government that even though you are making efforts to solve these problems, it is slow, people are not feeling it, can the government do more so they don’t lose hope.
The function of the church in society, any church, any faith tradition that takes its own scriptures seriously, is not to bless power but to remind power that it answers to something higher.
Cardinal Onaiyekan and his brother bishops did nothing more and nothing less than their job. They did it with civility, and with a direct appeal to the President’s own history as a pro-democracy activist. The attempt to discredit it is shameful. We believe that judging from the President’s antecedent as an activist, he could not have sent his aides on this mission and they should be called to order.
The Self-Defeating Logic of Breaking Mirrors
There is a deeper irony in the response of the President’s aides. The Tinubu administration has, since its inception, proclaimed a commitment to “citizen-centric” governance, to “renewed hope,” to an economic agenda that would lift the poorest Nigerians out of poverty. These are noble aspirations. But aspirations without honest feedback are fantasies. Honest feedback was what the Bishops offered through their visit. It was not an attack.
The bishops offered something that no focus group, no opinion poll, no presidential media team can manufacture: unfiltered testimony from the front lines of Nigerian suffering. They offered the President a mirror. And then his aides chose to blame the mirror for the reflection.
What We Say Now
We write this not in anger but in sorrow and in hope. We are sorrowful because the exchange between the CBCN and the Presidency represents a missed opportunity, a moment when a leader might have acknowledged the gap between his narrative and the lived experience of his people, might have begun the harder work of closing that gap.
But we are hopeful because the bishops have shown us that candour is still possible, that moral courage has not been extinguished, that there are still Nigerians willing to speak the truth even when the cost of speaking is high. The Knights of St. Mulumba stand with them, not as Catholics only, but as citizens who believe that the integrity of the public square depends on the integrity of public speech.
To President Tinubu, we say: the bishops are not your enemies. They are church leaders who have buried more victims of this nation’s failures than you have met. Their testimony is not an attack on your person; it is an appeal to your better angels. We suggest you take a second at their letter.
To the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, we say: thank you. Thank you for speaking as pastors rather than courtiers. Thank you for reminding this nation that the church’s place is not at the right hand of power but at the side of the powerless. You have done your duty. History will remember.
Sir Steve Adehi, SAN, CKSM, KCSS
Supreme Knight
Sir George Eze CKSM
Supreme Secretary
