The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) yesterday charged President Muhammadu Buhari and the security agencies to ensure no harm befalls the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Kukah.
It would be recalled that Kukah had in his homily on December 25, 2020 accused the president of nepotism, saying there could have been a coup if another president of a different faith acted in a similar manner.
“Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any non-Northern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has done by his nepotism and gotten away with it,” Kukah had said.
Kukah’s message has since attracted scathing criticisms from Islamic groups and enthusiasts including the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) which said in a statement that Kukah’s homily was “poisoned arrow fired at the heart of Islam and Muslims in Nigeria.”
Last Tuesday, the debate on the homily took a different dimension with the Muslim Solidarity Forum asking the bishop to apologise for his alleged attack on Islam and faithful or leave the Caliphate.
The forum, which described itself as an umbrella body for Islamic organisations, scholars and clerics, insisted that Kukah’s sermon was capable of triggering religious violence in the country.
Reacting to the threat to the bishop’s life, the CAN cautioned those threatening Kukah to put a stop to that, urging security agencies to ensure his safety.
In a statement yesterday in Abuja, CAN’s general secretary, Mr. Joseph Daramola observed that the cleric was posted by the Pope to serve in the northern state, noting that his eviction threat was a global danger to Christianity.
The association said “enough is enough” to those threatening the bishop saying it had been watching the unfolding scenario since Kukah spoke his mind on the state of the nation in his Christmas message “and how some groups of people have been threatening him with fire and brimstone, while all relevant security agencies are pretending as if nothing unusual is happening.”
In the statement entitled: ‘No harm should befall Bishop Kukah’, CAN said: “We call on President Muhammadu Buhari and all the security agencies to ensure that no harm befalls the Catholic Bishop of the Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah. As far as CAN is concerned, what he said in his Christmas message was still within the ambience of the law.
“It is high time those hiding under religious sentiments to promote violence and crises stopped doing so if we want this country to progress. We have had enough of bloodshed in the country and we call on the security agencies to rise up to their constitutional responsibilities. Nothing must happen to Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah. Enough is enough!
“We wonder if those threatening the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto are above the law or if they are sacred cows in the country. We have studied the whole Christmas message of Dr Kukah and we are yet to see any incitement against Islam or non-Christians.
“We see nothing wrong in his message to the nation that has been under the siege of terrorists, killer herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers, as if there is no government in place.
“We see nothing wrong in telling a government, whose lopsided appointments are against Christians, the whole truth. If criticism against a Muslim President today is an incitement to violence against Islam, it then means those who were criticising the duo of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan when they were in power were actually attacking Christianity.”
“When has it become an offence to speak the truth to power? When has it become a crime to criticise a government in the country? When did the lawful fundamental human rights suspended in the country? When were some sections of the Constitution suspended without the awareness of the public?
“When did the police and the Department of State Services lose their power to miscreants and lawless people, who are making a boast of their lawlessness without a challenge? We wonder if those Muslim groups, which are threatening to deal with Kukah, got equal response from their Christian counterparts, are we not setting the country on fire?
“Bishop Kukah was posted to serve in Sokoto by the Papacy and threatening him to leave is a global threat to Christianity. In this same country, we have a Catholic priest, whose name is synonymous with President Muhammadu Buhari, yet the Catholic Church has not deemed it fit to sanction him because freedom of speech and association is not only a constitutional matter, but godly.”
Meanwhile, Kukah said Nigeria was yet to recover from the wounds of the civil war, 51 years after it ended.
Speaking at the second edition of the ‘Never Again Conference: 51 years after the Nigerian-Biafran civil war,’ held on zoom, the bishop said the country failed to adopt resolutions meant to heal the wounds of citizens.
The conference is the brainchild of Nzuko Umunna, a pan-Igbo socio-cultural organisation, which organised the first edition in Lagos in 2020.
TheCable quoted Kukah as saying that some of those resolutions came from the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, popularly known as Oputa Panel, which was set up by the Obasanjo administration.
He added that while the military laid the foundation for Nigerians to begin a process of rebuilding the nation, “things somehow went wrong” along the line.
“I have met a lot of people who fought the war who are full of regrets. There is a lot of resentment, anxiety and frustration that we have not learnt any lessons.
“Fifty-one years after the war, we are still hearing the kind of agitations that ordinarily, with commitment, dedication, focus and the right leadership, we should have put a lot of the anxieties behind us. Unfortunately, they are still with us,” he said.
The bishop described the Oputa panel, of which he was a member, as “the best school I would ever hope to attend.”
“Oputa panel managed to generate quite a lot of data and information that academicians and policymakers would have used to ensure we erect the signpost saying, ‘Never Again’, because it gave us an opportunity, a mirror to look at ourselves after hearing from all sides but we didn’t have the discipline to follow through.
“We have not been able to forgive ourselves as a people. The wounds of the civil war have not been able to heal. Coups and counter-coups that followed were more or less miniature civil wars by themselves because they threw up the same contradictions, anxieties and feeling of divisiveness across the country,” he added.
