A catholic mission school, Bishop Nwedo Memorial Boys’ High School, in Umuahia, has expelled over 20 students for practicing homosexuality. The school management dismissed these students on the day that there were to commence their first term examination. Affected students were in junior as well as senior secondary school levels.
According to a local source, the school authorities organised a prayer session following reported cases of homosexual practices in the school. During the prayer session, the school managers urged students who had indulged in homosexual acts to confess or they would suffer terrible calamities.
Some students came forward and disclosed that they had indulged in homosexual acts with junior or senior school students. Subsequently, the school authorities expelled these students without allowing them to take the first term examination. A parent expressed shock and disappointment at the harsh punishment meted out to these students by Bishop Nwedo Memorial Boys’ High School.
According to this parent, the dismissal of the students has traumatized them, and has disrupted their academic program. The decision to punish students for homosexuality does not align with the position of Pope Francis who has noted that homosexual tendencies “are not a sin”. Students who confessed to homosexuality expected love and proper guidance from the school authorities, not expulsion.
A school that has honesty as its motto should not treat students who expressed honesty this way. In fact mission schools are expected to act with compassion not cruelty towards those who confess to have behaved in a particular way whether sinful or not. He appealed to the principal of the school, Rev Fr Benjamin Onyemachi to review this decision, recall the students and allow them to continue their education at the school.
Leo Igwe (born July 26, 1970) is a Nigerian human rights advocate and humanist. Igwe is a former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and has specialized in campaigning against and documenting the impacts of child witchcraft accusations. He holds a Ph.D from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. Igwe’s human rights advocacy has brought him into conflict with high-profile witchcraft believers, such as Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, because of his criticism of what he describes as their role in the violence and child abandonment that sometimes result from accusations of witchcraft. His human rights fieldwork has led to his arrest on several occasions in Nigeria. Igwe has held leadership roles in the Nigerian Humanist Movement, Atheist Alliance International, and the Center For Inquiry—Nigeria. In 2012, Igwe was appointed as a Research Fellow of the James Randi Educational Foundation, where he continues working toward the goal of responding to what he sees as the deleterious effects of superstition, advancing skepticism throughout Africa and around the world. In 2014, Igwe was chosen as a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and in 2017 received the Distinguished Services to Humanism Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union.
Igwe was raised in southeastern Nigeria, and describes his household as being strictly Catholic in the midst of a “highly superstitious community,” according to an interview in the Gold Coast Bulletin.[1] At age twelve, Igwe entered the seminary, beginning to study for the Catholic priesthood, but later was confused by conflicting beliefs between Christian theology and the beliefs in witches and wizards that are “entrenched in Nigerian society.”[1] After a period of research and internal conflict due to doubts about the “odd blend of tribalism and fundamentalist Christianity he believes is stunting African development,” a 24-year-old Igwe resigned from the seminary and relocated to Ibadan, Nigeria
