THE Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Kukah, has advised<\/p>\n
President Muhammadu Buhari to fix the wrongs of past administrations in
\nthe country and stop complaining or heaping blames.<\/p>\n
Bishop Kukah, who stated this during a dinner organised by the Ondo State
\ngovernment, after the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigerian (CBCN) 2016
\nheld in Akure, said \u201cNigerians didn\u2019t vote a government to complain about
\nyesterday, if we wanted yesterday, the new government would not be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cleric, who urged the present administration to stop the blame game,
\nsaid \u201cthe previous government did not only do bad things, but did a lot of
\ngood things.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the business of government is not our business; our business is,
\nif the previous government did bad, that is why we voted a new government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is really about taking responsibility. No matter how much you praise
\nor abuse Jonathan, he is not the president of Nigeria. I think that people
\nmust understand, you take power to solve problems not to agonise.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the head of a family, no matter how bad things are\u2014 no food in the
\nhouse, you as a father can\u2019t enter the house crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the question of developing the mechanism; you can\u2019t solve the
\nproblem. Even my best friends in the All Progressives Congress (APC) now
\nrealise that nobody can sing the song about Jonathan being responsible for
\nthe problems we are in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not asking you to change the whole world, but Jonathan created
\nproblems \u2013 we are now riding a train between Abuja and Kaduna now, the
\ntrain wasn\u2019t there before. Things that Jonathan did that can help Nigeria,
\nlet\u2019s continue with them. The bad things that Jonathan did and those who
\ndeserve to go to prison should go to prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut sending people to prison will only be useful if it puts bread on the
\ntable of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking on the anti-corruption crusade, the bishop noted that the war
\ncould only be won if the present administration applied right measures,
\nsaying \u201cI have always said, you can\u2019t cure malaria by just providing
\ntablets; you might provide tablets to cure malaria, but you have to look
\nat the cause of malaria.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as dirty waters and mosquitoes are around, there will still be
\nthe disease. My argument has always been that if we are really fighting
\ncorruption, we started off with the assumption that corruption is all
\nabout people stealing money.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut stealing money is actually the other end of corruption. The reason we
\ndon\u2019t seem to make much progress is based on the kind of diagnosis; how we
\ndiagnose the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe that unless we get to the root cause of poverty,
\ninequality, which is really the evidence and symptom of corruption; you
\ncan talk of fighting corruption all the rest of your life and very little
\nis going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that the extremes are very difficult, but Nigeria is a hell of a
\ncountry and Nigerians are a hell of a people. These are trying times and
\nthey can actually help to bring out the best in us.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think that really, it bears no repeating that I think the challenge
\ngovernment is facing this\u2014 just to be able to explain to people that this
\nsuffering has something redemptive about it, because if you know that at
\nthe end of this suffering, something good is going to happen, people will
\nbe ready to live with the consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut so far, I don\u2019t think government is communicating effectively with
\nordinary Nigerians, to know where we are and the state of things. So, this
\nis why you increasingly have a situation where people are not willing to
\nmake sacrifices because they still believe that their obligation is to
\nprotect themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think unless government openly explains and engage people very
\nconstructively, what you are going to face is a situation where ordinary
\ncitizens will keep finding the best ways to protect and defend
\nthemselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Kukah, has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to fix the wrongs of past administrations in the country and stop complaining or heaping blames.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n