We are products of our habits. Work is what we do with most of our adult lives, so it is understandable that a lot of our character is shaped by what we have to excel at to be professionally successful.
A doctor and a butcher have very different technical criteria for what they have to achieve to do their jobs successfully. So It is understandable that a person trained to take life at scale would sometimes have opinions and mindsets that are antithetical to those of a person trained to cherish, enhance, and protect human life.
When we have this in mind, it becomes easier to understand the difference in responses to the views recently expressed in reaction to the Catholic bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah’s Christmas Day sermon on the actions and policy direction of the Buhari Administration.
Under President Buhari’s expert and compassionate leadership, Nigeria has faced three recessions, food inflation spikes, and economic hardship exacerbated by an absurd land-border closure. We have faced levels of death and violence not seen since the Civil War
Bishop Kukah’s speech touched on the lack of fair treatment to all regions and ethnic groups, endless bloodletting, Nigeria’s collapsing economy, social anomie, domestic and community violence, kidnappings, armed robberies, and a host of things that have simply gone wrong. He talked about the loss of hope, trust, and goodwill. He talked about the roads to graveyards being more populated than the roads to farmlands in some areas.
These angles resonated with a lot of people especially in the light of the recent mass-kidnappings and mass-murders that have been common enough to no longer hold the attention of the country for more than a day. Unsurprisingly the Buhari Administration’s obsession with regime security made it react by ignoring almost everything pointed out and wrapping itself like a deranged pretzel around Bishop Kukah’s remark that Buhari’s blatantly sectional bias could have triggered a coup if attempted by a Nigerian President from any other region.
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Government spokespeople and their puppets went amok accusing Bishop Kukah of treason. Apparently, they believe Monsignors and Jesuits in Abuja are going to march to Aso Rock waving their rosaries like nunchucks in an attempt to overthrow the government. Some have tried to paint Bishop Kukah’s remarks as being anti-North, a position that is absurd because the bishop hails from Kaduna State where he was born and raised.
The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) went as far as insisting that Bishop Kukah had committed a treasonable felony and should be prosecuted. On their part, the Catholic Church and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria have spoken out in defence of Bishop Kukah insisting that he has spoken what is the truth and also the mind of the people. These views came from the pro-government and pro-Church spokespeople and we have to acknowledge that it is unrealistic to expect fair balanced responses from associates of those involved. However, when you filter out the responses from parties too closely linked to either Bishop Kukah or the Buhari Administration, there’s a distinct tilt in favour of the Bishop.
The North of Nigeria has been hit by an unprecedented collapse of law and order. This collapse has become more or less self-replicating and has increased the rate of poverty and accelerated the decline in the quality of life in the region.
People are fed up and united in their fear, anger, and discontent, and it is no surprise. Under President Buhari’s expert and compassionate leadership, Nigeria has faced three recessions, food inflation spikes, and economic hardship exacerbated by an absurd land-border closure. We have faced levels of death and violence not seen since the Civil War that happened largely in the South-East and the South-South.
It should not be surprising that people agree with Bishop Kukah on his assessment. Most of us know Matthew Hassan Kukah as a 69-year-old Catholic priest who is the current bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, and a respected voice in the Nigerian socio-political space. However, it helps to also factor in that Father Kukah has a postgraduate education that began with a master’s degree in Peace Studies, at the University of Bradford and continued with a PhD on Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 1990.
Peace Studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that connects insights from political science, sociology, history, anthropology, theology, psychology, philosophy, and other fields to develop ways to prevent and resolve war, genocide, terrorism, gross violations of human rights to build peaceful and just systems and societies.
A person versed in this field should have decent opinions when there is a discussion on ways to secure and improve people’s lives. A look at the training and work habits of those leading this administration should help with an idea of what their opinions would lean towards.
With that being said, there is a silver lining in this pitch-dark cloud in that uniformity is gradually building across ethnic, religious, and regional lines on the need to abandon the statist leanings of the Nigerian Government and work towards delegation of powers from Abuja to governance structures at the sub-national level. Another important gain is the slow but sure death of the idea that a Messiah-Dictator can ignore all established principles associated with nation-building and make Nigeria great just by being strong-willed and ruthless.
Self-centred politicians and civil servants who benefit from the current dysfunction are going to fight to keep things as they are but I hope and pray that Nigerians finally have enough of a memory to stay the course.
