The Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah, has taken a swipe at President Muhammadu Buhari for failure to manage Nigeria’s rich diversity but subordinating the larger interests of the country to the hegemonic interests of his co-religionists and clansmen and women.
Kukah stated this yesterday in his sermon at the Good Shepherd Major Seminary, Kaukau in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State before the burial of a seminarian, Michael Nnadi, who was abducted and killed by kidnappers.
“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.
Consequently, he said Islam has been shaken adding that neither the north nor Buhari’s Fulani tribe has something to show as benefits from such hegemonic posturing.
“Today, in Nigeria, the noble religion of Islam has convulsed. It has become associated with some of 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 choke-hold. 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 grave yard, a valley of dry bones, the nastiest and the most brutish part of our dear country.
“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 bishop further stated that Buhari runs the “most nepotistic and narcissistic government in known history.”
He recalled the president’s address at the Policy Think Tank, Chatham House in London, just before the 2015 elections.
He recalled Buhari telling the audience: “I as a retired General and a former Head of State have always known about our soldiers. They are capable and they are well trained, patriotic, brave and always ready to do their duty. If am elected President, the world will have no reason to worry about Nigeria. Nigeria will return to its stabilizing role in West Africa. We will pay sufficient attention to the welfare of our soldiers in and out of service. We will develop adequate and modern arms and ammunition. We will improve intelligence gathering and border patrols to choke Boko Haram’s financial and equipment channels. We will be tough on terrorism and tough on its root causes by initiating a comprehensive economic development and promoting infrastructural development…we will always act on time and not allow problems to irresponsibly fester. And I, Muhammadu Buhari, will always lead from the front.”
He said no one in that hall or anywhere in Nigeria doubted the Buhari “who ran his campaign on a tank supposedly full of the fuel of integrity and moral probity.”
Regrettably, he said “no one could have imagined that in winning the Presidency, General Buhari would bring nepotism and clannishness into the military and the ancillary security agencies, that his government would be marked by supremacist and divisive policies that would push our country to the brink.”
He said the nation was at a crossroads, its future hanging precariously in the balance adding that no one was ready to die for the country.
“Our nation is like a ship stranded on the high seas, rudderless and with broken navigational aids. Today, our years of hypocrisy, duplicity, fabricated integrity, false piety, empty morality, fraud and Pharisaism have caught up with us. Nigeria is at a crossroads and its future hangs precariously in the balance. This is a wakeup call for us.
“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 office holder is ready to die to protect his office but not for the nation that has given him or her that office.
“The Yoruba say that if it takes you 25 years to practise madness, how much time would you have to put it into real life? We have practised madness for too long,” he added.
