The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Hassan Kukah, has likened the nepotistic criteria adopted by former President Muhammadu Buhari in his appointments to what the members of Islamist sect, Boko Haram apply in their insurgent operations.
He said that both the former President and the Islamist sect operated to achieve same outcomes but with different strategies.
Kukah, who drew the analogy in an interview with BusinessDay, spoke specifically on the skewed appointments in the Buhari era, saying, “for me, the skewed appointments were war against Nigeria by other means, aimed at privileging and consolidating northern hegemony. These decisions merely gave oxygen to bandits and Boko Haram with the difference being merely in strategy.”
He quoted Boko Haram as saying, “we will kill you if you do not become a Muslim,” while Buhari said, “we will not include you if you are not a Muslim from Northern Nigeria.” Many of my Muslim friends often defended this tragedy by saying, ‘oh, Muslims too are being killed.’ “My answer always is, killed by who, certainly not by anyone in the name of Christ.”
“Sadly, many prominent northern Muslims remained too silent during these days of the locusts. Even if they could tell Buhari that what he was doing was wrong and actually undermining their religion, they also failed to say that his nepotism was putting the majority of ordinary decent northern Muslims in bad light because their silence was seen as complicity,” he added.
Reacting to a question on the presumed failure of anti-graft war under Buahri despite touted efforts by the administration, the bishop, who is a member of the National Peace Accord, noted: “I do not think there is any more to be said about the Buhari era which will go down in history as the era of the greatest malfeasance in governance.”
He noted further: “We are picking up the pieces slowly and all we need to do is build on this. Happily, his foibles have had an unintended consequence: it has exposed the vacuity of the manipulation of religion, ethnicity or region.
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“Happily, there is no other northerner left who will use religion to hoodwink our people or his followers. Happily, there is no longer any northerner who will have the cult status that he had. So, there is hope that now, everyone has to answer their father’s name. I also hope that my northern Muslim brothers will wake up to the reality that we have a country to build and that hypocrisy, the false manipulation of religion is an expired yoghurt. Ordinary northern Muslims must claim their voice from the political opportunists who have used their religion to build a career.
“I am sad that we are where we are in this electoral process because the worst is behind us, we can only build on the urgency of now. I am hopeful that the pursuit of the criminals who ruined our country and who used religion to retain power but left the north a wasteland of poverty and squalor will continue till justice is done. Stolen resources and properties must be recovered no matter how long it takes. It is the way to ensure justice for perpetrator and victim, the Nigerian state.”
