The Igbo College of Bishops and Archbishops says it is hosting the Igbo Annual Thanksgiving and Adoration Day to express gratitude to God for sustaining Igbo people during the Nigerian Civil War.
They stated this on Monday in Enugu during a press briefing on the proposed Igbo Thanksgiving and Adoration Day scheduled to hold every last Saturday of January.
Addressing newsmen, the Anglican Archbishop of Enugu Province, Most Rev. Sosthenes Eze, said the church leaders in the South East jointly put together the thanksgiving and adoration service to thank God for delivering the people from the terrible civil war that started in 1967 and ended in 1970.
Eze, who is also the Bishop of Enugu North Anglican Diocese, described the movement as non-political but religious exercise, adding that the Igbo race globally would take part in it.
According to him, even after the war, there have been deliberate attempts in several locations at different times to deny Igbo people their rights.
“They are being oppressed and if they travel outside the country
their property will be the first to be destroyed but despite all these oppressions, destructions and denials God has kept them waxing strong.
‘It is an annual event to hold every last Saturday of every January and I call on our political, business, religious and traditional leaders to be involved in it,” he appealed.
Bishop Obi Onubogu of the Rock Family Church, Enugu, extolled God’s mercies upon his life and that of others during and after the war.
He said, “I was in my 20s when all this happened and now I am 86. If I did not survive the war, no way my biological children and my 15 grandchildren would have been born.
“It is a day of gratitude and thanksgiving. For we did not survive by our strength or by our wisdom, we survived by the mercies of God.
“We experienced hunger, displacement, loss of property and human beings but we chose thanksgiving over bitterness. We only want to thank God and we ask people to join us,” he said.
On his part, Archbishop Amos Madu, Emeritus Archbishop of the Enugu Ecclesiastical Province and first Bishop, Oji River Diocese, added that apart from gratitude, the exercise would unite Igbo nation.