The Catholic Church and tertiary education in South-Eastern Nigeria: Building up the temples of the Holy Spirit

Abstract

The Catholic Church is in the lead as regards the establishment
and management of private universities in South-Eastern Nigeria.
Nine out of the thirteen NUC approved private universities in the
South-east are faith-based. Five of these are affiliated to the
Catholic Church. Other catholic dioceses are gearing up with
their own university projects. Private universities are
understandably out of the reach of a vast majority of people,
especially the poor. This raises the question whether the huge
investment of funds in this project is justified in the light of the
Church’s preferential option for the poor. Above all, investing
more human and financial resources in the lower levels of
education – nursery, basic and secondary –is a more assured way
of improving the quality of education. This implies subsidizing
education by providing educational infrastructural resources way
beyond what many people, especially the poor in the rural areas,
can pay for. The challenge is how to raise the funds and change
the minds of the leadership of the Church. Using a discourse
analytical approach, I propose the metaphor of human beings as
temples of the Holy Spirit to show that such venture fits into the
mission of the Church’s ministry. The vision of building the
temple of the Holy Spirit could also unlock the traditional Igbo
sense of civic responsibility that is at the basis of the many
community projects and even the university project being
undertaken by the Catholic Church. The conclusion is a narration of the pilot project of the writer funded by the ideas outlined
above that shows the practicability and benefit of such an
engagement of the Church in the formation of temples of the Holy
Spirit.