The Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Mathew Kukah, on Tuesday, in Kaduna, expressed displeasure with the alleged poor management of Nigeria. The Bis
The Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Mathew Kukah, on Tuesday, in Kaduna, expressed displeasure with the alleged poor management of Nigeria. The Bishop stated this in his homily at the Good Shepherd Major Seminary, Kaukau, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State before the burial of the seminarian killed by kidnappers in the state.
He lamented that citizens of some countries were willing to risk their lives for their nations but such is not the case in Nigeria. He alleged that officeholders were loyal to their positions and not the country. He said, “Nigeria is at a point where we must call for a verdict. There must be something that a man, nay, a nation should be ready to die for.
“Sadly, or even tragically, today, Nigeria, does not possess that set of goals or values for which any sane citizen is prepared to die for her. Perhaps, I should correct myself and say that the average officeholder is ready to die to protect his office but not for the nation that has given him or her that office.”
He decried that consistent efforts to build Nigeria had failed, alleging that the President, Muhammadu Buhari, remained the only president in the history of the country that had run the most nepotistic and narcissistic government in known history.
“The Yorubas say that if it takes you 25 years to practice madness, how much time would you have to put it into real life? We have practised madness for too long.
“Our attempt to build a nation has become like the agony of Sisyphus who angered the gods and had to endure the frustration of rolling a stone up the mountain. Each time he got near the top, the gods would tip the stone back and he would go back to start all over again. What has befallen our nation?
He recalled Buhari’s promise during the 2015 electioneering. He stated that while campaigning in 2015, Buhari said if he was elected, the world would not have to worry about insecurity in Nigeria. Kukah said five years after, the President had brought nepotism and clannishness into the military and the ancillary security agencies.
He stated that the Buhari’s regime had been marked by supremacist and divisive policies that pushed the country to the brink. The cleric stated, “No one in that hall or anywhere in Nigeria doubted the President who ran his campaign on a tank supposedly full of the fuel of integrity and moral probity. No one could have imagined that in winning the Presidency, Buhari’s government would be marked by supremacist and divisive policies that would push our country to the brink.
“This President has displayed the greatest degree of insensitivity in managing our country’s rich diversity. He has subordinated the larger interests of the country to the hegemonic interests of his co-religionists and clansmen and women. The impression created now is that to hold a key and strategic position in Nigeria today, it is more important to be a northern Muslim than a Nigerian.”
He said the nation was at a crossroads and its future hung precariously in the balance.
Kukah said, “Today, in Nigeria, the noble religion of Islam has convulsed. It has become associated with some of the worst fears among our people. Muslim scholars, traditional rulers and intellectuals have continued to cry out helplessly, asking for their religion and region to be freed from this chokehold. This is because, in all of this, neither Islam nor the North can identify any real benefits from these years that have been consumed by the locusts that this government has unleashed on our country.
“The Fulani, his innocent kinsmen, have become the subject of opprobrium, ridicule, defamation, calumny and obloquy. His North has become one large graveyard, a valley of dry bones, the nastiest and the most brutish part of our dear country. Despite running the most nepotistic and narcissistic government in known history, there are no answers to the millions of young children on the streets in northern Nigeria, the north still has the worst indices of poverty, insecurity, stunting, squalor and destitution.”
Kukah said the persecution of Christians in the North was as old as the modern Nigerian state. He stated that Nigerians had been told that insecurity in the country had nothing to do with religion. He asked, “Really? It is what happens when politicians use religion to extend the frontiers of their ambition and power. Are we to believe that simply because Boko Haram kills Muslims too, they wear no religious garb? Are we to deny the evidence before us, of kidnappers separating Muslims from infidels or compelling Christians to convert or die?
“If your son steals from me, do you solve the problem by saying he also steals from you? Again, the Sultan (of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar) got it right: let the northern political elite who have surrendered the space claim it back immediately.”
