Every Life is Sacred.

The Catholic Church holds that, human life is sacred from its conception to natural death, because each person is made in the image and likeness of God. The scripture teaches in the book of Genesis that, man was created in the image and likeness of God (Cf. Gen. 1:26). This belief is a cornerstone of Catholic moral teaching about life and its sanctity. Also influencing the stand of the Church on issues such as; abortion, euthanasia, and many other bioethical concerns. From the moment of conception, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person, including the inviolable right to life. Violating this right to life at any stage, undermines the entire moral order, which exists to protect the inviolable goods of humanity, with life as the first of these goods.

In recent years, we’ve seen a host of persons in our beloved country Nigeria almost loosing the sacredness and sanctity of life, if it is not even already lost. Man’s inhumanity to man, has taken over our country, as kidnappings, jingle justice, lynching, massacres etc. have become the order of the day in our beloved country, and, it seems like there is no way forward as our leaders and countrymen seem not to be doing anything about it.

Some days back, I was on my way from a journey, and, I saw lots of men chasing after another man with sticks, clubs, iron etc. They were vigorously chasing this man and when they came in contact with this man, they gathered to beat the man and in fact, he was beaten to a pulp. We tried our best to pacify the situation, but, this is just one of the many cases of jungle justice done to many people in our beloved country.

About three years ago, exactly on the 12th of May 2022, we heard of a case of a student called, Deborah Samuel Yakubu, who was a second-year Christian college student. She was stoned to death by a mob of Muslim students in Sokoto, Nigeria, after being accused of blasphemy against Islam. What better way to call this, if not the lynching of another person, because they felt she spoke against their religion. Even if she did speak against the religion, lynching shouldn’t have been the next thing to be done. Up until this moment, nothing critical has been done about her case, as the perpetrators have not been fully brought to book. A soul was lost because of the careless and hard heartedness of some individuals, and the government seems not to be doing anything about it.

Some couple of days ago, exactly on 13th of June, 2025, more than 200 Christian villagers were allegedly slaughtered by heavily armed Fulani jihadists in Yelwata, a farming community in Guma County, Benue State. We heard of this massacre and many more going on in our beloved country, and it seems like all hope is lost. We ask ourselves this question and many more; where do we go from here? What is our government doing about it?

As Nigerians, we must go back to the drawing board, we must check ourselves again and see, where and how we have got it all wrong. A country deeply blessed by God with many rich natural and human resources, is now a country plagued heavily by incessant killings that seem not to be ending soon. As a country, we’re fast loosing the sanctity and sacredness of life and as such, we all must work for the restoration of our county back to its glory, we must go all out to protect ourselves from these so called men and women who have chosen to enslave us even in our country.

The good thing is that, all hope is not lost for us, our government officials must be ready to listen to our plea and increase security around the country. Nigeria is bleeding and it is the duty of all of us to stop this bloodshed. Every life is created by God and we can’t take it at will, since we did not create it, every life is sacred and as such, it must be treated sacred.

Nigeria needs you and I to play our part, it needs us to also be very vigilant, and, take the sanctity of life very seriously, for if you and I hold life as sacred, we all wouldn’t want to take the life of the next person. This duty is for all of us and not only for our leaders, they can’t be everywhere at every point in time, but, you and I can be there, and we can choose to keep life sacred rather than toiling with it and sniffing it out of the next person. May God help us to take life more sacred.