Matthew Kukah, the Bishop of Sokoto Diocese of the Catholic Church, says the legitimacy of the current administration of President Bola Tinubu rests on his ability to solve the country’s persistent security problems.
The clergy man made the declaration on Saturday, reacting to the Christmas Eve killing in Plateau State that left about 200 people dead across three local government areas of Plateau State. According to eyewitnesses the attack spanned two days.
“President Tinubu must know that the legitimacy of his government hangs on resolving this and giving us our country back,” the Bishop said.
Kukah said the incessant attacks by terrorists in the country means the country is at war as funerals and coffins from attacks like the recent Plateau attack are now part of the daily lives of Nigerians. He called on the president to find a lasting solution fast.
“There is an urgent need to re-set the national Security architecture. Enough is enough,” he said.
“National security is a function of robust, deep intellectual analysis and mapping of the goals and even ambitions of a country, its local, regional or global place in the world.
“It thrives on creating scenarios based on a proper understanding and reading of geo-politics and locating where a country wants to be. So far, we have thrived on ad hoc and arbitrary options.”
The clergyman also rallies the intelligence community in the country to identify the attackers, their sponsors and motives behind the attacks.
“These killings are no longer acts by herders and farmers over grazing fields,” he said acknowledging the magnitude of the violence.
“It is the task of the Intelligence community to tell us who they are, where they live and what their goals are. These killers are professionals and are they Nigerians or they have just Nigerian sponsors? Their sponsors are among us. They must be in high places. They are now embedded in the architecture of the state.
“There is more and we as a nation will do well to face this threat before it is sunset. No evil lasts forever. The world defeated Slavery, Apartheid, Nazism, Racism, and forms of extremism.”
He commended the government for the way it responded to the tragedies, “unlike before when no one bothered to visit the scenes, we are seeing very rapid responses from the top.”
The Bishop said it was not sufficient as rebuilding these communities requires more than mere physical infrastructure.
“Merely awarding contracts for building of houses is not as important as building markets, rebuilding roads, providing agricultural inputs for farmers and so on,” he said.
He noted that while religious leaders have continued to use their moral authority to pacify people and encourage them not to take laws into their own hands, there is a rise in anger and frustration among people.
He added that clerics even risk being seen as accomplices to an erring state as they continuously call for calm.
“The Nigerian state itself risks becoming an undertaker in the eyes of its citizens,” he said.
“Our cups of sorrow are overflowing. We have cried enough tears. We may pretend that we are not at war, but truly, a war is being waged against the Nigerian state and its people. God forbid, but we could snap anytime, anywhere and for any reason.”
Bishop Kukah said the attackers, whoever they are, have unspoken motives in the north-central part of the country.
According to him, the method, choice of location, communities and timings of the attacks further restate the attackers’ motive.
“We may not know who they are, but someone wants something from the Middle Belt. Stretch your imagination from the emergence of the modern Nigerian state and connect the dots,” he said.
“We have questions crying for answers: Who are these killers? Where are they coming from? Who is sponsoring them? What are their grouses and against whom? What do they want? Whom do they want? Who are they working for? When will it all end? Why are they invincible and invisible? Who is offering them cover? Are we condemned to live with this and hand this broken nation to our children? Should we all just become inoculated and sedated to make all this bearable? Who will supply the opium to dull our pain? Are we sleepwalking to self-destruction?”
The clergyman said the ‘murderers’ have left their footprints of blood and tears across the length and breadth of the entire northern states, indiscriminately wreaking destruction across large swaths of land and communities.
Kukah noted that Nigerians are gradually succumbing to the fact that the killers do not respect religion, region or ethnicity.
“In all this, the Nigerian state and its security agencies are blind-sided, seemingly incapable of cleaning up this Augean stable of sorrow and pain in our land,” he said.
“We are gradually taking eerie solace in the fact that these killers do not respect the boundaries of religion, region or ethnicity. We seem to be consoled that they are destroying Churches as well as mosques, killing Christians as well as Muslims. We seem to be lulled into a feeling of collective consolation and we all believe that we are all victims of an endless orgy of violence that has taken over our land.”
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