The Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah, has passed a vote of no confidence on the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, describing the country under him as a nation like a ship, stranded on the high seas, rudderless and with broken navigational aids.
He dropped the bombshell at the funeral mass of Seminarian Michael Nnadi at Good Shepherd Seminary, Kaduna, who was abducted and later killed by the Boko Haram insurgent.
Bishop recalled that Buhari was voted for in 2015 on the grounds of his own promises to rout Boko Haram.
“No one could have imagined that in winning the Presidency, General Buhari would bring nepotism and clannishness into the military and the ancillary Security Agencies, that his government would be marked by supremacist and divisive policies that would push our country to the brink.
“This President has displayed the greatest degree of insensitivity in managing our country’s rich diversity. He has subordinated the larger interests of the country to the hegemonic interests of his co-religionists and clansmen and women. The impression created now is that, to hold a key and strategic position in Nigeria today, it is more important to be a northern Muslim than a Nigerian.”
“Today, in Nigeria, the noble religion of Islam has convulsed. It has become associated with some of worst fears among our people. Muslim scholars, traditional rulers and intellectuals have continued to cry out helplessly, asking for their religion and region to be freed from this chokehold.
He said neither Islam nor the north could identify any real benefits from last five years that have been consumed by the locusts that the administration of President Buhari has unleashed on the country.
“Despite running the most nepotistic and narcissistic government in known history, there are no answers to the millions of young children on the streets in northern Nigeria, the north still has the worst indices of poverty, insecurity, stunting, squalor and destitution.”
He recalled that His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto, and the Emir of Kano are the two most powerful traditional and moral leaders in Islam today.
“None of them is happy and they have said so loud and clear. The Sultan recently lamented the tragic consequences of power being in the wrong hands. Every day, Muslim clerics are posting tales of lamentation about their fate. Now, the Northern Elders, who in 2015 believed that General Buhari had come to redeem the north have now turned against the President,” he added.
On the persecution of Christians in the north, Bishop Kukah explained, “The persecution of Christians in northern Nigeria is as old as the modern Nigerian state. Their experiences and fears of northern, Islamic domination are documented in the Willinks Commission Report way back in 1956.