Rt. Rev. Godwin Robinson, Bishop Lafia Diocese, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), made the declaration on Saturday, while delivering the Bishop’s Charge at the ongoing 3rd Session of the 8th Synod of the Diocese.

The Synod is being hosted by Mt. Zion Anglican Church Mararaba in Nasarawa State.

Robinson, who enlightened the congregation on the global matter, briefed the church on the outcome of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), held at Kigali in Rwanda from April 17 to 21.

According to him, the church of Nigeria which was part of the convention took its stand against that of Church of England and the Episcopal Church in the United States who support same sex marriage.

While Nigeria’s bloc, the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches made up of mainly churches from Africa and Asia oppose same sex marriage, other led by England and U.S.A. support it.

“We do not regard the word of God as a relative truth. We stand on Resolution 1:10 of Lambeth 1998 which affirmed marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman stating clearly that same-sex marriage is wrong.

“Homosexual practices are incompatible with scripture,” the cleric said.

He said he and other delegates from Nigeria were at the Kigali Convention which drew over 1,302 delegates from the 52 countries of the world who spoke in one voice against such evil practices in the world.

“GAFCON promised to prioritise youth and children ministry and use discipleship to equip them for a lifetime of ministry, committed to demonstrate compassion of Christ through the many GAFCON Mercy Ministries, among others.”

Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Rev. Canon Okwuchukwu, said the gathering was significant, not only for the church but to also discuss issues affecting the society and the entire nation.

Okwuchukwu, who is also the Vicar of the Mt. Zion Anglican Church, Mararaba, said from the time of old, church of God was not distant from the society.

According to him, if it is well with the society, it will also be well with church.

“As the matter of fact, we all have seen what is happening in the country, and way back even in the Bible times, the church has been playing a vital role in the moulding of nations.

“For us as a nation, we have actually gone too far away from where we should be to the point that even the little children can boldly tell you that the country has a problem.

“There is therefore, the need to seek God’s intervention in the pains Nigeria is going through,” he said.

Also speaking, Mr Isaiah Aronokhale, the Synod Local Organising Committee chairman, said the significance of the meeting was for heads of the church to come together to address challenges facing the church.

He said it also offered the church the opportunity to make its contributions towards moving the nation forward.

“This type of a gathering is important because whatever affects the society also affects the church and the church should not be left out in the nation building, ” he said.

The theme of the convention is, ‘Arise and Shine’, taken from the book of Isaiah Chapter 60:1.

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This is just as it said its current intervention in 21 out of the 33 local government areas is to be expanded to reach more council areas expanding the scope, particularly its platforms to offer other health services such as family health planning, immunisation among other aspects of general healthcare for women and young people across the state.

The Executive Director of the non-governmental organisation, Rhoda Robinson, made the disclosure while speaking after a tour of the Idi Ogungun Primary Health care facility, Agodi Gate, Ibadan to interact with healthcare workers and pregnant women at the facility.

The non-governmental organisation had in company of the Intellectual Property Research Deployment, IPRD, Solutions New York, alongside other partners and key stakeholders visited the project facility to access and see firsthand how interventions deployed are put to use especially in a bid to improve maternal health outcomes in Oyo State.

She said, “As you know, we are in the digital age and digital technology can make so much things easier and so we are planning on scaling up the intervention, not just in the 95 facilities that we are currently in, but to cover more local governments.

“The intervention is currently running in 21 out of 33 local governments in the state, so we are hoping to reach other local governments, scale up the programme and platform itself so that it can include other health services such as family health planning, immunisation and other aspects of general healthcare for women and young people especially the general community.

“This is something we are so eager to work with the government with and we are hoping that going forward, as we engage other stakeholders in talks, discussions and dialogues that we will be able to chat a better way forward, especially with improved technology, improved data collection and analysis.

“We have been working with the government and we have started working on this plan. The pre-covid, covid and post covid era and our current realities, we are committed, the government is committed and we are not in a rush to throw out a solution and walk away.

“We are in for the long haul and we understand that these things take time, and as long as we are working together, we should see great outcome coming out by the end of this year, and since it is a long term thing, we have different milestone and designated period in our timeline and our ultimate goals which is improvement of the facilities.”

Speaking on the tour with the partners, Robinson said the purpose was to seek how the effort could be improved as well as facilitate more cordiality between healthcare workers and pregnant women access Antenatal care in the facilities.

“Hacey Health Initiative and Partners, IPR Solution have been working with the Oyo State Government since 2020 to improve maternal health service provision in the state and our intervention basically including data and technology to improve maternal outcomes.

“This visit is one of our field visits to see how our interventions, called the `Impact Health Project`, a mobile and web platform designed to facilitate (for now) Antenatal care workflow and care plan for pregnant women. The visit is to see and interact with health workers, pregnant women and see how best our interventions have been progressing and how best (from their point of view) we can improve it and make it work better for the intended users, both the health workers and pregnant women.

“So, it’s more like a feedback session and an experiential learning session for both parties to understand how best to improve maternal health in the state.

“One of the main things we have learnt is that everybody is working together to make sure that mothers have premium healthcare and they are able to live healthy life especially with their children and they are able to give birth in good condition basically and with the use of mobile technology, we found out that everybody is willing and open to work with it and that there are still a lot of ways it can be applied to other areas of healthcare within the system and especially the learning about the different causes that are involved and the different people that are working in healthcare for the community.

“It is easier to see how best we can plan a scale up so that it covers more health focus areas and it is able to work with different aspect and different people within the system.”

The Chief Nursing Officer/Matron-in-charge, Idi-Ogungun PHC, Mrs. Christiana Fatumobi, while reacting to the visit and the various interventions, said the interventions have helped project the facility and upgrade it to international standard through the use of technology.

While soliciting for more support for mostly poor pregnant women accessing the facility, she pointed out network challenge by service provider as the only issue encountered once in a while when the technology is deployed.

Hacey Health Initiative is a development organisation focused on improving the health and productivity of vulnerable and underserved populations in Africa.

In the past 14 years, the organisation has worked with UNFPA, Path USA, Empower UK, Amplify UK, the Nigerian government and other private sector partners to implement various girl child and women’s rights related projects in the areas of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, SRHR, and sexual violence programmes.

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