•Corruption is the only thing that works in Nigeria
CATHOLIC Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Kukah in this
interview expresses optimism that things will get better under
the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Beyond that hopefulness is a caveat that except the North
responds positively to some indentified challenges in the
country, the much sought national integration will remain
elusive.
By Charles Kumolu
Were you inspired by President Buhari’s inaugural speech?
Nigerian presidents are not foremost for delivering good
speeches. And I think President Buhari’s speech was quite a
bit an improvement on what we are familiar with. Happily, it
does not have a nine-point or ten-point agenda. Beyond the
speech itself, it is important to appreciate the kind of
narrative that brought him to power. A speech should set a
tone about what a nation is to expect.
In fairness, the speech dealt with some of those issues. What
has become famous is his expression that he is a president
of everyone and belongs to nobody. At least, the strength of
that statement is a great ambivalence. I think for me as a
Nigerian, I am pretty hopeful. But for me as a Christian, I am
waiting with bated breath. I live in Northern Nigeria and I
believe that 90 percent of the problems in terms of national
integration will be solved by how the north responds to some
of these issues.
How do you mean?
I made the point because a lot issues concerning national
integration whether it is in the areas of the provisions of the
constitution, are not clearly defined. And for me as a
Christian I believe that living in Northern Nigeria, I still don’t
get the sense that freedom of worship, expression that are
guaranteed in the Constitution are sufficiently protected and
taken care of.
But I am very hopeful and I am impressed that President
Buhari is the first Nigerian President to show impression that
he is prepared to wrestle with that problem. And you don’t
find that in his inaugural speech, rather you will find it in the
speech he delivered to the Catholic Bishops Conference. He
said things that had never been said before. And I hope that
he will have the ability and capacity to deal with some of
those issues.
The issues demand salient questions. For example, why is it
that churches are treated with so much contempt and
tolerated like nuisance in Northern Nigeria? Why is it they
have become subject of attacks? Why is it that despite the
provisions of the constitution, the right of worship is being
frustrated in the North? I don’t think that there is a single
governor in far Northern Nigeria that can proudly say that he
has signed a certificate of occupancy allocating land to
Christians to build churches? Most of the lands that
Christians have are lands that were given by the colonial
administrations. This is totally unacceptable. And Christians
have to buy land to build churches.
For example as I am talking to you, I am waiting for a phone
call in respect of the land we want to buy at Tsafe for the
building of a church because our church was burnt down.
This is not the first time, it was burnt down in 2011. We are
relocating the church to another site for safety reasons.
What I got from government for the burnt church cannot build
a church. Right now, if I want to negotiate to buy a land, I
cannot wear my suntan (pastoral regalia) because I will be
told that I cannot buy the land. And I cannot live in a
country like this. This is totally unacceptable.
We buy land and build a church with little resources, but
when a woman has an abortion in that locality, the first thing
Muslim youths will do is to go and burn a church even if it is
sited five kilometres away from the scene of the abortion.
There is no single governor in northern Nigeria except former
Governor Makarfi of Kaduna, who commiserated with
Christians when churches were burnt down.
For the first time in the history of our nation, President
Buhari in his address to the Catholic bishops said very
clearly that religion is not the business of government
because most of the mosques in the north are built by
government. I have heard a governor who boasted that his
administration built mosques more than any one before him.
And the money was meant for the development.
Unless we find a platform of resolving those things, whatever
Buhari may have said in his speech will not make sense. I
don’t expect him to solve the problems in three or five years
but we can at least put machinery in motion with enough
honesty and sincerity.
Buhari cannot solve the problems of Nigeria, but he can point
at the direction. I commend him and I am hopeful that we
can begin to tackle those problems. That is why I said that
unless Northern Nigeria sufficiently positions itself, we may
not solve some of the problems.
What should be the priority of the administration?
It irritates me when such questions are asked. Why asking
me what I think should be the priorities? If you are asking
such question, you are asking for a 180 million answers.
Buhari was not appointed, he was elected. If he was
appointed, there could be element of surprise. What I am
saying is that Buhari begged, cajoled and mobilised for our
votes based certain clear principles that he articulated.
The man has given me a manifesto. My business is to study
the manifesto as a means of judging whether Buhari is
faithful to his promises. If you ask me now, I will tell you that
Buhari’s priority should be to visit Sokoto. Let him come and
have dinner with me and I will tell him the things I need him
to do. But that is not the issue. Based on the commitment
he made to us, it is not fair to ask Nigerians what they
expect from this government because those issues have
been articulated.
What do you make of this perception that Buhari is a
Northern irredentist?
If the allegations against Buhari had enough bullets, he
would have been shot down and his political ambition would
have been killed. People were able to move beyond those
claims and voted for him. As far as I am concerned we need
to resolve the issue of religion. I am convinced that as things
stand now, I don’t see anybody in the horizon that has the
capacity to deal with the issue of religion as it is manifested
in Northern Nigeria than Buhari. He is best placed. He has
got the moral reflex. From the point of view of his body
language, track record and what all of us know he is the only
person that I see that the ordinary Muslim in Nigeria can
trust. I am not making an angel out of him but that is the
fact.
Also, the modesty of his personal life in the last number of
years shows that Buhari has the moral reflex to address the
question of religion in Northern Nigeria. From his speech,
we found that his love for this country has never been in
doubt. He admitted the mistakes of the past and having that
honesty is important.
With all the noise being made that he is a religious fanatic,
not one day was Buhari sited in a mosque. I am not sure he
went to the mosque like Nicodemus at midnight. Muslims
don’t pray at midnight but it is a measure of how he saw his
new role that he never went to address northern traditional
rulers or group of people.
We need to give him all the support that he requires to
achieve all the things that many of us are very passionate
about. We will never make any progress in this country as
long as we continue to deny our common citizenship. I am
seeing the prospects that things will be different in the next
four years.
Watching Osinbajo seating with sheiks in the mosque was an
indication that things will be different with time. That was
against the notion then that if anything is happening in the
mosque a Muslim political leader will represent the Federal
Government while the Christian goes to the church. That is
totally outrageous and opposed to citizenship. Again, there is
no reason why the next ambassador to Saudi Arabia should
not be a Christian and there is no reason why the next
ambassador to the Vatican should not be a Muslim or
anybody for that matter.
There is nothing to suggest that any Nigerian cannot be
anywhere without religious consideration. If we don’t send
that signal, the rest of the world will continue to treat us like
a divided nation. Any ambassador being posted to
Washington today is not a small person and the ambassador
of South Africa to Washington is a Muslim. The percentage
of Muslims in South Africa is not significant but they wanted
the best man for the job.
So, are Nigerians to demand more accountability from
elected officials?
Accountability just like everything is not something that is
given. It is not something that is on offer even between
friends and families. It is something that you need to demand
but not in a judgemental way. But it is something that you
need to demand. That is why those who are good are
crunching the numbers because when you hear about stolen
billions, many of us cannot connect with the numbers. My
late friend, Dr. Bala Usman used to tell me never to ignore
these figures whenever I see them in the budget.
Is it true you asked President Buhari to forget about chasing
the so called thieves and focus on governance, since
corruption is so endemic in the country?
The text of my convocation lecture at Abakaliki did not
contain such report. What does going after thieves in Nigeria
mean? Between 1999 and 2007 how many governors passed
the anti-corruption test? How many did we see on the EFCC
list? How many convictions have been secured? So, if
Nigerians want theatre and drama that is fine. But we are
thinking about bread on the table. I am sure the lawyers in
Nigeria will be very happy if Buhari says he is going after the
criminals.
We can appreciate the fact that the success of these
elections is not something that the lawyers like to celebrate
especially the most senior of them. If Nigerians want him to
prosecute the thieves, that is fine but Nigerians did not elect
the President to prosecute thieves.
There are different ways of doing that. We elected a
President not to look for scapegoats. We elected the
President to get a job done and I am convinced that if Buhari
wants to prosecute thieves he will do it because as the
President there is no kind of information that he cannot
access. Prosecution of corrupt people does not necessarily
have to be done through theatre and drama. Obasanjo did it
quite efficiently. He got back a lot of money without
shouting. There were a few theatricals, but Obasanjo himself
did say to my hearing that there were people who returned
money even through pastors. So what is the use of wasting
money trying to prosecute somebody? Doing that quietly
without noise will be better because the business of
governance will go on.
The institutions responsible for prosecution should be made
to do that effectively. All I am saying is that getting
information about the transactions of corrupt people is easy.
It does not have to be Buhari who will be championing it. The
institutions are there. There are various arms of government
that can point a moral gun at these people.
This is the only country where you can go to the Senate from
the EFCC and become a minister even while having a case
with the EFCC. We are on a moral free fall. It is such that
after some have been on the television their people will come
out to say that their children are being witch-hunted.
I am not against prosecution, what I am saying is that the
business of governance should not be abandoned. I said it
during Oputa Panel (hearing) that the unfortunate thing about
prosecution in Nigeria is that the criminals have the money
to get the lawyers. Since these things can be resolved
institutionally, why going on a wild goose chase? Nigerians
don’t even have to know who the criminals are. Obasanjo,
who has a very retentive memory, can tell Nigerians the
people who brought back money without making noise. He
only told them to go and sin no more.
Only a foolish man will appreciate that going after the biggest
thieves in Nigeria, is the biggest solution to our problems.
God has his way of getting things work. Given the enormity
of the issues we are dealing with, creating distraction should
not be encouraged because once that route is taken, there
would be distraction. All I am saying is that Buhari has come
to do a job and I think he was moderate about his
expectations about corruption. We should understand that
corruption is pretty well equipped in Nigeria. I am not saying
that it should not be tackled, but if it must be done it is
important to have the wisdom of David and Goliath.
Corruption is everywhere in this country, it is in the judiciary,
police, the church and everywhere. Indeed, it is the only
thing that works.
The question we will ask ourselves is how other nations
tackled corruption and I think we can actually come to a
point where unearned wealth becomes unfashionable. These
corrupt people are sick. There is nowhere in the world that
people do the kind of things they do in Nigeria. It does not
make sense that after stealing from your mother and father,
the money will be taken outside the country. The morality of
the stealing is another thing.
A lot of people who do all these don’t know anything about
modernity. What is responsible for our crisis in Nigeria is the
crisis of development. I hear some of these governors saying
that they cannot develop in an environment of insecurity
whereas it is their criminal activities that brought about
insecurity. It is their inability to govern that brought
insecurity. That is why I consider dictatorship a far worst
crime than colonialism. If Buhari is lucky it will take him six
months before they start abusing him because he has to earn
trust. I know the honeymoon is not going to last. But he
should be supported to do the job.
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