President Uhuru Kenyatta has ordered the Ministry of Education to ensure they restore all church owned land and schools back to their rightful owners. Speaking at the funeral service of the late Archbishop John Njenga at the University of Nairobi, President Kenyatta said lots of schools have been sponsored and built by the church and said the Education Ministry should also ensure the sponsorships are restored.
The Head of State highlighted the level of influence the Church wielded and how it shaped the society and said that in the past, the church had a prominent role to play when it came to mentoring children and guiding them, even to the level of building schools, and that the target at the moment is to get back to that level of influence, “We need to be able to get to the level that church sponsored schools must be able to mentor our children,” he said. He noted that many problems in schools at the moment are caused by among others, cases of indiscipline, which shows there is something missing in the lives of students. “I want to give assurance that we’ll get back to those days. We must restore chaplaincies so that we mentor and guide our children,” said the President.
Moreover, he said the State and the church can and should work together, even though they are two separate entities. He said in the past, the late Archbishop Njenga showed it’s possible to create a working atmosphere between the state and the church and that they can remain interdependent. “We need to have a separation between the Church and the State, they must remain separate, but we must be interdependent. We must be able to walk and talk together as they did in those early days, as the Church feeds our spiritual needs, the state feeds our physical and human needs while here on earth.”
President Kenyatta eulogized the late Njenga as a servant of God who was dedicated to the service of God but also dedicated to the service of man, not just to satisfy their spiritual needs but also to satisfy their human needs. “He was a man dedicated to education, he was a man who was generous with whatever little he had. I believe this is the essence of being a human being, to be able to care, to be able to love and to be able to commit yourself and your life to the service of your fellow man.” The late Archbishop Emeritus passed away on November 4th.