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In AbujaThe President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on Wednesday, met with executives of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria at the State House in Abuja.
One of Buhari’s critics, Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah, was one of the bishops who attended the meeting.
The All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, has said that he is only a few months older than the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Bishop Matthew Kukah who celebrated his 70th birthday on Wednesday. Disregarding speculations on his age, Tinubu reiterated that he is also 70 years and a few months older than the celebrant, Kukah, saying he understands the institution that he (Kukah) is building.
He however said they both have a bigger responsibility in building Nigeria.
This is the moment the Bishop of Sokoto diocese, Fr. Mathew Kukah, danced to Kizz Daniel’s hit single ‘Buga’ at his 70th birthday celebration in Abuja on Wednesday.
Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto State has warned that using religion to manipulate politics will have a devastating effect on the development of the country.
Bishop Kukah highlighted what happened in Germany during the reign of Adolf Hitler and added that using religion to manipulate polictics would come with a grave consequence.
He made the observation on Tuesday, August 30, in Abuja during the presentation of his new book, “Broken Truth,” as part of activities lined up for his birthday. Kukah, who turns 70 today, August 31, said that the problem is that the Nigerian political elites lacked the mental capacity to understand the consequences of the fire they were stoking.
He said:
“If you look at history, there’s a consequence for using religion to manipulate politics. We just need to look at Germany, the consequences are there to see in Hitler.
The problem is that the Nigerian political elites lack the mental capacity to understand the consequences of the fire they are stoking because there is nothing to suggest, the average person who is living in the north, who is Fulani, who is a Muslim, who is Hausa, can say that they are proud of the Nigerian political system, beyond a very tiny percentage.
“And I have said that Buhari’s recruitment process has the tendency to cause a threat because we have lost the moral right to quarrel with Boko Haram who say except you accept our way, you will die.
“If you decide that you want to give privilege to a religion or an ethnic group, what will happen is that others automatically become outsiders.”
The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah, has described Nigeria as a big emergency hospital where everything has broken down with the caregivers not knowing how to fix the problems.
The outspoken Bishop, in his Easter Message delivered at the Holy Family Cathedral, Sokoto, on Sunday, said the challenges Nigeria currently faces require dedicated leaders who love their country to fix them.
“The challenge of fixing this broken nation is enormous and, as I have said, requires dedicated leaders who love the country to fix them.
“They also require joint efforts. With everything literally broken down, our country has become one big emergency national hospital with full occupancy.
Our individual hearts are broken. Our family dreams are broken. Homes are broken. Churches, Mosques, infrastructure are broken. Our educational system is broken. Our children’s lives and future are broken. Our politics is broken. Our economy is broken. Our energy system is broken.
Our security system is broken. Our roads and rails are broken. Only corruption is alive and well. So, we ask with the Psalmist, “We look up to the hills, from where shall come our help? Our help shall come from the name of the Lord,” he lamented.
Kukah who also took time to speak about the 2023 elections, said Nigerian politicians have refused to learn past lessons from the “tragedy that has afflicted us in the last few years.”
“The Presidency of Nigeria is not a human right based on ethnic, religious or regional sentiments.
“The next President of Nigeria must be a man or woman with a heart, a sense of empathy and a soul on fire that can set limits to what human indignities visited on citizens that he or she can tolerate.
We have no need for any further empty messianic rhetoric laced with deceitful and grandiose religiosity.
“We need someone who can fix our broken nation, rid our people of the looming dangers of hunger and destitution. Our Presidential aspirants must show evidence from their legacies and antecedents that they know the country well enough and its severe wounds.
“Whoever wants to govern us must illustrate that he or she understands what has turned our nation into a national hospital and show us plans for our discharge from this horror.”
The Department of State Services (DSS) has invited the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah for questioning, days after the vocal priest criticised President Muhammadu Buhari for failing to curb nationwide insecurity, Peoples Gazette reports.
Kukah had slammed Buhari in his Christmas sermon, saying the president has failed to show competence as terrorists, bandits and other criminals embark on a coordinated and relentless rampage across the country.
“We also have lost count of hundreds of individuals and families who have been kidnapped and live below the radar of publicity. Does the President of Nigeria not owe us an explanation and answers as to when the abductions, kidnappings, brutality, senseless, and endless massacres of our citizens will end? We need urgent answers to these questions,” he had said.
The priest’s comment, which was only the latest amongst several scathing criticisms he had directed at the president in recent years, drew criticism from President Buhari’s supporters.
According to Peoples Gazette, a top source revealed that the secret police ordered Kukah to appear at its headquarters for questioning. Kukah had, however yet to honour the invitation as of Saturday afternoon.
A spokesman for The Kukah Centre did not immediately return a request seeking comments on Saturday afternoon.
DSS spokesman declined to answer questions from The Gazette about the development.
Nigeria’s foremost playwright, Professor Wole Soyinka has said the country must learn to nip extremist instigations in the bud.
The Nobel laureate, who stated this on Monday, said the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah, did not say anything denigrating to Islam as recently claimed by some Muslim groups.
Kukah has remained in the news following his Christmas message where he noted that there could have been a coup or war in Nigeria if a non-Northerner and non-Muslim president had practised a fraction of President Muhammadu Buhari’s alleged “nepotism”.
Different Muslim groups picked offence with the statement, describing it as an attack on Islam and Muslims.
One of the groups, Muslim Solidarity Forum, called on Kukah to apologise to the Muslim Ummah or leave Sokoto State.
But in his response to the vexed issue, Soyinka said the threat should not be condoned.
He said, “The timing of Rev Father Kukah’s New Year message, and the ensuing offensives could not be more fortuitous, seeing that it comes at a time when a world powerful nation, still reeling from an unprecedented assault on her corporate definition, is now poised to set, at the very least, a symbolic seal on her commitment to the democratic ideal.
“Let no one be in any doubt that some of the most extreme of the violent forces that recently assaulted her governance citadel are sprung from religious and quasi-religious affirmations, a condition that still enables many of them to be brainwashed into accepting literally, and uncritically, indeed as gospel truth, any pronouncement, however outrageous and improbable, that emerges from their leadership.
“As usual, we have not lacked, within our own distanced environment, advocates who, even till recently, claimed to have seen in their vision, the triumph of God’s own anointed in the electoral contest of that same United States.
“In this nation we have learnt the painful way what such inbred loonies are capable of. Thus, extreme care, and historic awareness, should be taken in imputing any act or pronouncement as an attack on faith.
“Again and again, we have warned against succumbing to irrational demands of religionists, yet even the brutal lessons of past surrenders appear to exercise no traction on society’s faculty of cause and effect, especially in that religious propensity for incremental demands. Surrender one inch, they demand a mile!”
He went further to say, “It should not come as a surprise that a section of our Islamic community, not only claims to have found offence in Father Kukah’s New Year address, what is bothersome, even unwholesome, is the embedded threat to storm his ‘Capitol’ and eject him, simply for ‘speaking in tongues’.
“Any pluralistic society must emphatically declare such a response unacceptable. On a personal note, I have studied the transcript as reported in the media and found nothing in it that denigrates Islam.
“The furore over Father Kukah’s statement offers us another instance of that domineering tendency, one whose consequences are guaranteed to spill over into the world of both believers and non-believers, unless checked and firmly contained.
“In this nation of religious opportunism of the most destructive kind especially, fuelled again and again by failure to learn from past experience, we must at least learn to nip extremist instigations in the bud.”
