According to Matthew Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Nigeria no longer has the moral right to combat the Boko-Haram ideology because of President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership style.
This was said by Mr. Kukah on Monday evening in Abuja during the discussion of his new book, “Broken Truth.”
The bishop criticized Mr. Buhari’s skewed leadership hiring practices as well as his backing of the APC’s (his party’s) same-faith presidential ticket for the 2023 elections.
Both Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima, the APC’s presidential candidate and running respectively, are Muslims, a development that was widely criticized across the country.
Bishop Kukah thought the Muslim-Muslim ticket was offensive, as did some other people across the nation. He claimed that using religion to influence Nigerians’ votes for the APC had repercussions.
He claimed that President Buhari’s bad appointment practices and the confirmation of some Christians’ suspicions of an Islamization agenda are to blame for the ruling party’s careless actions.
NOTABLE QUOTES
In the clergyman’s words:
“If you look at history, there is 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 tends to cause a threat because we have lost the moral right to quarrel with Boko Haram who say unless you accept our way, you will die.”
Speaking further, Bishop Kukah also said, “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.”
