Nigerian President Irresponsible — Bishop Kukah

The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Dr. Matthew Hassan Kukah, has said that no President of any country in the world can be as irresponsible in the usage of power as a Nigerian president.

He made this known in Akure, Ondo State on Friday while delivering the annual Ulefunta/Oyemekun Festival lecture entitled “Building blocks for a good society” held at the Francis Idibiye Lecture hall of the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA).

According to Kukah, the structure of the Nigerian presidential office makes the holders of the office extremely powerful, so much that he can deploy power the way he wants.

“No president in the world has the kind of power the Nigerian president has and as such, no president in the world can be as irresponsible as the Nigerian president.

His power is so much that he can give oil bloc to his girlfriend and many others. You thus can’t be a man of honour and live in a country like Nigeria and not be angry,” he said.

Kukah said that from the first Nigerian Prime Minister, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa to President Muhammadu Buhari, virtually all of them were dragged into the presidential office, maintaining that this was unlike the presidency of the United States of America where the president does not emerge by circumstance.

“What is the problem? It is the dilemma of leadership. In America, there are basic expectations of what a president should be. For instance, he must have gone through Harvard as an institution, he must have language and track records, not even wealth. You can’t surprise the system.

Here in Nigeria, local government chairman wants to be governor; the governor wants to be president and the president doesn’t want to go! Many states have two governors representing them at the National Assembly. Governors have control and monopoly of resources of state and they use same resources to oppress them,” he said.

Kukah, who said that the Nigerian society is in ferment, maintained that the instability type that Nigeria faces as a country is inevitable in any system.

He, however, said that developing mechanisms that will confront the instability is the hallmark of great countries.

In Nigeria, it is not a question of looking for trouble because trouble is already here. The Nigerian state has no capacity to protect itself and there is no loyalty to Nigeria from its citizens but to those who help individuals to get to positions in the system,” he said.