OUTSPOKEN man of the cloth and Bishop of Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah on Tuesday excoriated northern leaders for being hypocritical about the virtues of the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, when they are in fact doing nothing to protect the late politician’s legacies.
Bishop Kukah, who spoke on the topic: Roots of ethno-religious crises in Northern Nigeria yesterday in Kaduna, asked the leaders of the north to stop praising the late Ahmadu Bello and other past leaders and pursue programs that would develop and transform the living conditions of their people.
Kukah said: Today, 99 percent of our discussions are on Sardauna and about Sardauna; but we are being hypocritical. We are seriously looking at almajiri in the North, while the Southern states have developed their educational system to the extent that, the number of one of their states is more than the ones in one of our zones.
He called on northern leaders to create a situation where people would be free to practice their religions without hindrance in the north, pointing out that equity and justice are very strong instruments of weaving purposeful national integration, which, he said, must be encouraged without recourse to selfish and sinister interests.
The government needs to have a system that ensures that people play by the rules. People obey the law and not breach the laws and people rights also not violated. For me, if Christians in Kebbi, Zamfara are complaining, let Muslims, too, in other places complain, so that we begin to have good ways of overcoming these challenges. We need a society that is struggling to ensure equality, Bishop Kukah said.