Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah, has told President Muhammadu Buhari that he has pushed Nigeria to the brink with his supremacist and divisive policies.

Delivering his homily at the Funeral Mass of Seminarian Michael Nnadi at the Good Shepherd Seminary in Kaduna yesterday, Kukah said 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.”

Kukah also stated that the situation is so bad that “the average office holder is ready to die to protect his office, but not for the nation that has given him or her that office. The Yoruba say that if it takes you 25 years to practice madness, how much time would you have to put it into real life? We have practiced madness for too long.”

Addressing the large crowd that turned out at the funeral, Kukah stated that: “Our attempt to build a nation has become like the agony of Sisyphus who angered the gods and had to endure the frustration of rolling a stone up the mountain. Each time he got near the top, the gods would tip the stone back and he would go back to start all over again. What has befallen our nation?

“Nigeria needs to pause for a moment and think… 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. 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.”

On the situation in the country, the Bishop said: “Today, in Nigeria, the noble religion of Islam has convulsed. It has become associated with some of worst fears among our people. Muslim scholars, traditional rulers and intellectuals have continued to cry out helplessly, asking for their religion and region to be freed from this chokehold. This is because, in all of this, neither Islam nor the North can identify any real benefits from these years that have been consumed by the locusts that this government has unleashed on our country.

“The Fulani, his innocent kinsmen, have become the subject of opprobrium, ridicule, defamation, calumny and obloquy. His North has become one large grave yard, a valley of dry bones, the nastiest and the most brutish part of our dear country.

“Why have the gods rejected this offering? Despite running the most nepotistic and narcissistic government in known history, there are no answers to the millions of young children on the streets in northern Nigeria, the North still has the worst indices of poverty, insecurity, stunting, squalor and destitution.”

He continued: “His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto, and the Emir of Kano are the two most powerful traditional and moral leaders in Islam today. None of them is happy and they have said so loud and clear. The sultan recently lamented the tragic consequences of power being in the wrong hands. Every day, Muslim clerics are posting tales of lamentation about their fate. Now, the Northern Elders, who in 2015 believed that General Buhari had come to redeem the North, have now turned against the president.

“We are being told that this situation has nothing to do with religion. Really? It is what happens when politicians use religion to extend the frontiers of their ambition and power. Are we to believe that simply because Boko Haram kills Muslims too, they wear no religious garb? Are we to deny the evidence before us, of kidnappers separating Muslims from infidels or compelling Christians to convert or die?

“If your son steals from me, do you solve the problem by saying he also steals from you? Again, the sultan got it right: let the northern political elite who have surrendered the space claim it back immediately.”

Speaking on the death of the seminarian, the Bishop said: “We have no evidence of what transpired between Michael and his killers. However, for us Christians, this death is a metaphor for the fate of all Christians in Nigeria, but especially northern Nigeria. For us Christians, it would seem safe to say that we are all marked men and women today. Yet, we must be ready to be washed in the blood of the lamb.

“The testimony of the Dapchi girl suggests that our country has a future, a future based on the innocence of our youths who have seen beyond religion. Leah Sharibu is a martyr for the faith and so is Michael. St Paul has already said it well: We carry this treasure in vessels of clay so that all this surpassing power may not be seen as ours, but as God’s. Trials of every sort come our way, but we are not discouraged. We are left without answers, but we do not despair, persecuted but not abandoned, knocked down but not crushed.” (New Telegraph)