Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Fr. Mathew Hassan Kukah, has expressed dismay over the spate of killings in Nigeria, saying President Muhammadu Buhari was insensitive.
“The President has displayed the greatest form of insensitivity in managing the affairs of the country,” he alleged.
Kukah, who spoke at yesterday’s burial of the seminarian killed kidnappers in Kaduna, said: ” Prior to the 2015 general election, the President had promised to rout out the dreaded Boko Haram, but regrettably, Buhari has reneged on that promise today.
“In Buhari’s speech at the prestigious Policy Think Tank, Chatham House in London, just before the elections, he said , ‘I as a retired General and a former Head of State, have always known about our soldiers.
”They are capable and they are well trained, patriotic, brave and always ready to do their duty. If am elected President, the world will have no reason to worry about Nigeria.
Nigeria will return to its stabilizing role in West Africa. We will pay sufficient attention to the welfare of our soldiers in and out of service.
”We will develop adequate and modern arms and ammunition. We will improve intelligence gathering and border patrols to choke Boko Haram’s financial and equipment channels.
We will be tough on terrorism and tough on its root causes by initiating a comprehensive economic development and promoting infrastructural development… we will always act on time and not allow problems to irresponsibly fester. And I,Muhammadu Buhari,will always lead from the front.”
Continuing, Kukah said: “But the reverse was the case as the President continued to wallow in insensitivity and despotism, leaving out good governance in the country.
“There is no need to make any further comments on this claim. No one in that hall or anywhere in Nigeria doubted the President who ran his campaign on a tank supposedly full of the fuel of integrity and moral probity.
”No one could have imagined that in winning the Presidency, General Buhari would bring nepotism and clannishness into the military and the ancillary security agencies, that his government would be marked by supremacist and divisive policies that would push our country to the brink.
“This President has displayed the greatest degree of insensitivity in managing our country’s rich diversity. He has subordinated the larger interests of the country to the hegemonic interests of his co-religionists and clansmen and women.”
Buhari, he said, had subordinated the larger interests of the country to the hegemony of his co-religionists and clansmen and women. “The impression created now is that, to hold a key and strategic position in Nigeria today, it is more important to be a northern Muslim than a Nigerian,” he said.
Kukah, who noted that the nation was currently at crossroads and its future hanging in the balance precariously, said further:
“Our nation is like a ship stranded on the high seas, rudderless and with broken navigational aids. ”Today, our years of hypocrisy, duplicity, fabricated integrity, false piety, empty morality, fraud and Pharisaism have caught up with us.
Nigeria is on the crossroads and its future hangs precariously in a balance. This is a wake up call for us,”
