Cardinal John Onaiyekan has disclosed that President Bola Tinubu appeared displeased during a closed-door Villa meeting where Catholic bishops confronted him with the harsh economic and social realities facing Nigerians.
Cardinal John Onaiyekan just gave Nigerians a peek behind the Villa’s closed doors — and it wasn’t a happy scene.
Speaking on Arise Television’s Prime Time programme on Friday, the Archbishop Emeritus of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja offered an insider’s account of a recent meeting between President Bola Tinubu and members of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN). His description: a frank, uncomfortable exchange where the bishops chose to confront the President head-on with the hard realities facing millions of Nigerians.
Asked how Tinubu reacted, Onaiyekan didn’t mince words. “I was not surprised that he was not looking very happy. Not even his colleagues who were there,” he said. “We knew that this is different from the kind of statements that our President keeps receiving from all kinds of people.”
Sahara Reoporters reports that The cardinal went further, expressing concern that Tinubu is surrounded by people painting the kind of thing that he wanted to hear.”
According to Onaiyekan, neither side backed down by the meeting’s end. “We left that hall, both sides, knowing that we said what we had to say,” he said, describing the encounter as a clear standoff between the bishops’ unvarnished assessment and the President’s reaction to it.
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