Keep A Deadline On War Against Terror, Bishop Kukah Tells FG

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Across Nigeria Monday, April 1st, 2024

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Hassan Kukah, on Sunday, expressed concern concerning what he described as the “ubiquity of the military in our national life”.

Kukah stated that the presence of soldiers everywhere “it is impossible to explain how we can say we are in a civilian democracy with the military literally looking like an army of occupation with an octopussean spread across all the 36 states and Abuja”.

He stated this in his Easter message made available to journalists in Sokoto.

Kukah said: “This has very serious consequences both for its professionalism, its integrity and perceived role in protecting society. No other person than the immediate past Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, rightly observed recently that the military is facing the dilemma of what he called, ‘see finish’. It is now difficult to say whether the persistence of insecurity is a cause or a consequence of military ubiquity.”

The cleric, while applauding the recent pronouncement by Tinubu that kidnappers would now be treated as terrorists, tasked the President to go a step further by issuing a specific date to end the nation of the insurgency.

He described Nigeria’s political leadership, likening them to a drunken man “staggering, stumbling and fumbling, slurring in speech, with blurred visions searching for the way home”.
He said: “Our leaders chose the feast rather than the fast. We are today reaping what we sowed yesterday. For over 60 years, our leaders have looked like men in a drunken stupor, staggering, stumbling and fumbling, slurring in speech, with blurred visions searching for the way home.

“The corruption of the years of a life of immoral and sordid debauchery have spread like cancer destroying all our vital organs. The result is a state of a hangover that has left our nation comatose. Notwithstanding, Easter is a time to further reflect on the road not taken. It is a time to see if this Golgotha of pain can lead us to the new dawn of the resurrection. Nigeria can and Nigeria will be great again. Let us ride this tide together in hope.”

According to Kukah, despite the gloomy outlook of the situation of things in the country, better days were around the corner.

He said: “Even though it is not daybreak yet, all of us must agree that the night is far gone. The only reason why I am confident that daybreak may not be too far away is because of my faith in God and the power of the risen Christ.

“There could not be a better metaphor for addressing the situation we are in now than to turn our attention to the meaning of Easter and the promises that are contained in the meaning of Christianity. St. Paul said: The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light (Rom.13:12). With the risen Christ, we can dispel encircling clouds of doom.”

Enjoining President Tinubu to foster unity in the country, Kukah tasked the President to “come up with a robust template for how it wishes to reverse and put us on a path of national healing. This must include a deliberate policy of inclusion that will drastically end the immoral culture of nepotism”.

He said: “The government must design a more comprehensive and wide-ranging method of recruitment that is transparent as a means of generating patriotism and reversing the ugly face of feudalism and prebendalism.