Contend with the Truth Expressed, do not Harass the Bishop

Nothing has stung the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency in recent times like the broadside it received from the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah in his Christmas Message to the Faithful.

Let us check off the main highlights of Bishop Kukah’s message.

Firstly, Bishop Kukah implied that President Muhammadu Buhari has enthroned nepotism as the cornerstone of his Presidency.

This is a factual assertion.
Secondly, Bishop Kukah implied that under President Buhari, there has been tremendous shedding of human blood through acts of violence.

This too is a factual assertion.
Thirdly, Bishop Kukah appeared to wonder why the Buhari Administration’s tenure is so symbolically coincident with the humongous spilling of blood.

This is a legitimate concern, which has been raised by many Nigerians including this writer in the past, without a credible answer.

Finally, Bishop Kukah said that if a non-Northerner, he may have meant a non-Fulani, was President and had exhibited even a modicum of the administrative lapses associated with President Buhari, that President would have been overthrown.

This assertion without a shred of doubt is a factual restatement of the fact.

Faced with such a bold statement of the facts by the Bishop in his Christmas Message, the irate Buhari Administration responded immediately through, the appropriately named Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information.

Lai Mohammed wondered why the Bishop would make such charges against the Government in the festive occasion of Christmas celebrations.

He ended his umbrage by saying such charges like the Bishop made were likely to provoke unintended consequences.

Even as I write this, news has already filtered in that the Catholic Bishop of Owerri Diocese has been kidnapped, by yet unknown persons.

One wonders if that is the sort of unintended consequences Lai Mohammed had in mind.

As if in tandem, other Muslim bodies and Northern groups have come lashing out against Bishop Kukah. One Northern group even went so far as to call for his immediate arrest.

First to Lai Mohammed. Not being a Christian, forgive him for not realizing that Christmas is the time for celebrating the birth of the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

There is no way Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, if he were a true man of God can celebrate Christmas, without acknowledging the Truth.

He has done so without fear or favor, in this instance before God and man.

I join millions of Nigerians, lovers of the Truth, in congratulating him for this fact.

Nobody, not even one of his accusers, including Lai Mohammed himself, have controverted the truth, the Bishop expressed so eloquently and fearlessly, in his Christmas message.

As I alluded to earlier, a Catholic Bishop has just been kidnapped by criminals and bandits that have overrun Nigeria.

Technically, Nigeria is now a failed state, where anything goes under the Buhari Administration.

The unvarnished truth of the matter is that President Buhari's incompetence and nepotism has endangered and is still endangering the lives of hundreds of millions of Nigerians.

Where is the Government? People rightly ask, faced with a total breakdown of security and unprecedented threat to lives and property.

Indeed, under President Muhammadu Buhari, the citizens of neighboring La Republique du Niger, and other Sahelian entities, feel more the presence of the Federal Government of Nigeria than do the people of Nigeria.

President Buhari's nepotism, his congenital inability to hire and fire, based solely on results achieved by appointees in the past, and not by their ethnic origin, has plunged Nigeria into abysmal depths of poverty unknown in three generations.

His continual fraternization with foreign Sahelian Fulani at the expense of indigenous Nigerian citizens he was elected to lead, is a treasonable betrayal of his oath of office.

His undisguised attempts to create new homelands in Nigeria for local and foreign Fulani is an egregious assault on the ethnic identities and cultural heritage of indigenous Nigerians.

Nigeria has witnessed many upheavals and experienced many setbacks in her history.

But they all pale in catastrophic significance in comparison to the devastation the emergence of Buhari as President has wrought on the fortunes of this increasingly wretched British contraption.

President Muhammadu Buhari makes no attempt at self-improvement. A change enthusiast in the penultimate election cycle, he is terrified of change himself.

In his rigid immobility and fixation, he is technically held hostage in the moment by acolytes who feed him lies and tell him day and night that he is the best thing that ever happened to mankind in Nigeria.

These fawning acolytes bear as much responsibility for the tragedy that the Buhari Administration has wrought on the psyche and well-being of Nigerians as the man himself.

It is these same acolytes, fanning the flames of hell, that are harassing Bishop Kukah for speaking the truth without telling their idol to mend his ways and do the job for which he presented himself and was duly elected.

To all of them, we say, contend with the truth expressed by His Lordship, and leave Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah alone.

May the great Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and for whom all things were made, rescue all victims of kidnapping in Nigeria, and protect Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah as well as all speakers of the Truth in Nigeria, from unwarranted persecution.