INTER-RELIGIOUS marriage can be a panacea to ethno-religious crises in the country, the Catholic bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Rev. Matthew Kukah said on Tuesday.
Kukah made the recommendation in Abuja while fielding questions from participants at a three-day colloquium on Peace and Reconciliation organised by the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria.
According to the outspoken bishop, who is also an intellectual contributor to national discourse, inter-religious marriage would complement the efforts being made by government and other stakeholders in the peace-building process in the country.
The bishop explained that inter-religious marriage would also facilitate national integration and nation-building.
“Unless we begin to inter-marry, we may not be able to build a nation. Look at what is happening to the Yoruba people, they become far more cohesive and religion is not threatening their collective existence.
“I believe that if we strongly encourage inter-marriage, we will be addressing some of the problems we are facing today; violence will give way to nation-building.
“Although you cannot compel people to fall in love, we can encourage it. For me, marriage remains a fundamental institution for national integration,’’ he remarked.
Kukah said that the present security challenge was a symptom of failure of the apparatus put in place by the state.
The bishop urged government at all levels to focus more on the real issues that were affecting the development of the country.
“It is the symptom of the intolerance and the lack of capacity to create institution of integration.
“We need to reverse a lot of the conversations we have been listening to; Boko Haram is a symptom of a range of other things that have been wrong in our society,” he said.
Earlier in his lecture, Kukah had stressed the need for the rule of law, social equity and respect for human dignity, to be strengthened in the new constitution.
He identified weak democracy and corruption as some of the factors militating against peaceful coexistence on the African continent.
“We have sunk deeper into crisis and violence, falsely pitching Christians and Muslims when in reality, what we face is the fact of a country living below the radar of constitutionalism.
“Our democracies in Africa have been weakened by the corruption in the judiciary and the lack of political will to end impunity and enthrone the rule of law rather than men.
“A robust and honest judiciary will punish criminals for their crimes no matter what they claim to be the reasons for their violence against other human beings or their properties,’’ he said.