Take advantage of pilgrimage to develop Nigeria- Monsignor Gotan 

   The Chairman, Board of Directors, National Christians Pilgrims Commission (NCPC), Monsignor Cletus Gotan, has advocated for the diversification of spiritual pilgrimage to cultural exposure that would benefits them instead of abscondment.

  He stated this recently, while in an interview with THE NIGERIA STANDARD in Jos, the Plateau State capital ahead of this year’s pilgrimage visit to the holy land soon.

    The Chairman suggested that, instead of people thinking of absconding and creating problems to both Nigeria Government and the visiting country, they should think of adopting their ways of life to improve their communities.

    He observed that there were reports of abscondment by pilgrims in the past while in the holy land, but assured that all necessary measures were already in place to arrest such attempt by any individual.

    “The arrangement we have on ground now will checkmate alot of these issues of abscondment. We have agreed at the meeting in Israel together with Chairmen and Secretaries to scrutinized all those going there.

    “Yes, pilgrimage is supposed to be a spiritual exercise, but we should also open our eyes to see how the people there live, how they enrich their environment.We should be thinking of something that will be novel and can add value to the exercise.

    “So, we should also go there to be looking at those kinds of their culture and see what we can learn from them so that, we will be building not only the spiritual side but also building on cultural things that can help to improve the lives of our people”, he suggested.

      Monsignor Gotan, however, wondered that Plateau State has almost same topographical settings that was as hilly as Israel, but have changed their environment for the good of their country even with deserted land compared to the blessed greeny endowment Nigeria has.

        He, therefore, urged Nigeria’s intending pilgrims to move from what it used to be and de-emphasise the material aspects of going for the pilgrimage that made people abscond and adopt what would be of benefit to the country.