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As President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure winds down, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah, has criticised the number one citizen’s level of preparedness for office.
Bishop Kukah, during a live appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday, drew parallels between the alleged culture of nepotism in the public sector and the current state of the nation.
According to him, with Nigeria reaching a threshold where integrity, competence, and capacity have been compromised, “we’re in trouble.”
“That’s why, if we don’t get to the heart of the consequences of nepotism – I’m not looking forward to a president of Nigeria who is a Christian or who is a Catholic, who will for example just turn a lot of these things upside down and begin to punish other people for the sins that they didn’t commit.
“I’m not hoping that a Christian or anybody will be president and say, ‘No, it’s now time for us to do what those who came before us did.’ When you raise these issues, these are the kinds of things you hear from people in government: ‘Jonathan did this, Jonathan did that.’
“The fact that we didn’t succeed suggests very clearly we didn’t prepare for this examination and the lesson we take aware is that – I believe Buhari is a good man. He’s done his best, but his best was not enough. His best speaks to the quality and level of his preparedness, and his ability to assemble a team,” he said.
The fiery cleric argued that the most qualified and competent individuals are not given the platform to hold office due to an alleged long-standing culture of nepotism.
“Because of this criminality in governance, we now have a situation in which for you to come with a first class degree in Petroleum Engineering from Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge or anywhere and think that you can walk into the NNPC and get a job, the gateman will tell you, ‘You are crazy. That’s not how you get a job in Nigeria.’
“If you think that because you’ve worked very hard in the military, the police, and you think because you’re so good, you deserve a promotion, even the people running the system will tell you, ‘That’s not good enough’,” he said.
‘No Political Elite’
Bishop Kukah holds the position that Nigeria neither has a political elite nor a political culture.
“Almost everybody contesting elections in Nigeria goes between two, three, and four political parties. So, what you have are just mere contraptions that people who are desperate to ascend this honeypot will climb anything to be able to get to power.
“So, we’re not even talking about a political elite that has a consistent ideological set of principles that they go by. How often have you heard politicians tell you, for example: ‘The manifesto of my party was written in my bedroom’?
“I can tell you these are the stories we’ve heard… suggesting very clearly that the kind of discipline that you require to build a political culture does not exist in Nigeria,” he said.
