GRAND Knight of the Order of Knights of St. Mulumba, Lekki Sub-Council, Architect Jonny Ngonadi, in this interview with Okey Nwankwo, speaks on the Order’s activities including the release of over 600 prison inmates and other issues.
What informed your recent visit to Ikoyi Prison?
Our visit was part of the Sub-Council’s Prison Ministry project where members reach out to prisoners in the spirit of the bible. We visited the inmates to fulfil the demands of the Catholic Church’s teaching on corporal works of mercy, visiting people incarcerated in prisons. The Prison Ministry was set up about five years ago and it is charged with planning and executing our vision for those in prison. The interaction enables us find out why they are in prison, and their expectations from us.
Jonny Ngonadi
During our quarterly visits, we prepare food, buy medicine and daily essential needs that are legally permissible for the inmates. In the course of our interactions, we found out that some of the inmates are intelligent young people, who lacked relations to help them through school and to enable them realise such dreams, we arranged tutorials for them. They were registered for both GCE and JAMB with some gaining admission into the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). Today, four of them have graduated from NOUN. Others who could not go to school were encouraged to take on vocational programmes available in the Prison.
Apart from Prison Ministry, what other work of mercy is your Sub-Council engage in?
We also reach out to the poor: the homeless and motherless babies’ homes. Our Sub-Council partners Ozanam House established by the Justice Peace Development Center, Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos, to cater for pregnant young girls. When young girls mistakenly get pregnant, they lose face in the family and society and atimes, they are driven from their families or schools. They naively may resort to abortion. Ozanam House is there to give succor to such girls through counselling and others. We also partner with other Catholic organizations in supporting this initiative. Our support is part of our pro-life programme.
We have a committee that visits secondary schools and market women organizations of different categories within our Lekki axis, and organize seminars for them on pro-life. We teach them self-control and counsel them that if they make a mistake and get pregnant, while they are not married, they should not commit murder by procuring abortion.
Your group recently held a pro-life vigil. Is it one of the awareness programmes?
The vigil is part of our pro-life programme. We usually hold the vigil around September. It is to call attention to the plight of the unborn child and encourage people not to consider abortion as an option. It involves talks and teachings on the sanctity of life. We have another outreach programme called pro-life rally where we match a great distance, distributing leaflets on the sanctity of life. Apart from the two programmes, we hold seminars for members only, and another one, for the public, to tell them about advanced studies which have shown that contraceptives are injurious to the human body.
How do you find balance between the conservative stance of the Church and the free life stance of the world?
This is where you see contradictions. The world preaches free speech, freedom, free movement, and at the same time, places a burden on you. It prevents you from killing another human being. The world says ‘it is a free world’ but when people run amok and kill, they are charged for murder. Freedom should come with limits, with restraints. A good example is same sex marriage. People are promoting same sex marriage, but the Church defines marriage as a union between a male and female. Some international organizations are not happy with Nigeria’s stand and law banning same sex marriage. The Knights were part of the fight against same sex marriage.
Our Pro-life outreach programmes are designed to combat such influences. We reach out, visit various parishes and tell them what the Catholic Church teaches on life. Through this medium, we seek to counter the erroneous concept of freedom the world preaches.
Pope Francis asked Catholics to mix up and impact the society with gospel. How are the Knights responding?
You cannot evangelise or influence people, if you are segregated from the society. People must know us as knights. When they know you as a knight, they expect you to live by what you preach. If people know you as a knight, they will not come to you and start discussing kickback, when you’re handling a project for them. This is why we came out openly and said we must associate with the public—trying to live by what we preach, go everywhere and preach, spread the message and mix up with the people. Go to the Muslims. That is what Pope Francis is preaching. If you check all the religions, including paganism, the laws are the same, but the approach may be different. The level of forgiveness may be different, but the tenets are the same, love your neighbour as you love yourself. And I think it is impacting on the society. When we mix up, we will see ourselves as brothers.
What steps are the Knights taking to curb materialism in the church?
A knight should not look at vanity. He should not be interested in materialism. These are the basic tenets of a knight. When we go for meetings or events, we dress in the same attire. It is to make us equal. We try to live within our means but I am not saying that we don’t have materialistic people. A knight that joins us today has the same rights and privileges as an older knight.
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