The bishop of Sokoto, Nigeria, denounced the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari in his Christmas message Sunday, insisting that Buhari’s legacy of nepotism and corruption will leave the nation in far worse shape than when he took office in 2015.
“It is sad that despite your lofty promises, you are leaving us far more vulnerable than when you came, that the corruption we thought would be fought has become a leviathan and sadly, a consequence of a government marked by nepotism,” Sokoto Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah said in his Christmas message at St. Mary Catholic Church, titled “Let us turn a new leaf.”
“I speak for myself and Nigerians when I say, we thank God that He mercifully restored you to good health,” Bishop Kukah said in reference to Buhari’s multiple trips to a British hospital for medical treatment.
We know that “you are healthier now than you were before,” the bishop stated. “We can see it in the spring in your steps, the thousands of miles you have continued to cover as you travel abroad. May God give you more years of good health.”
“However, I also wish that millions of our citizens had a chance to enjoy just a fraction of your own health by a measurable improvement in the quality of health care in our country,” Kukah added.
Nepotism “is a cancer which has consumed us in the last few years,” he declared. “We have paid the price of nepotism entrusting power into the hands of mediocres who operate as a cult and see power purely as an extension of the family heirloom.”
The bishop decried “those who sit on the throne of power in arrogance and are determined to reduce our country to a jungle.”
“In my Christmas message last year, I pointed out the fact that you had breached the Constitution by your failure to honor and adhere to the federal character provisions of our Constitution,” he said. “The evidence is all before us all.’’
Following the bishop’s Easter message last April, Buhari spokesman Garba Shehu dubbed Kukah a Buhari hater who criticizes the government in “the most un-Christian terms.”
In a lengthy article, Shehu cited the Bible in accusing Bishop Kukah of “playing politics” instead of preaching on “Christ’s death and rebirth so Man might be saved.”
Kukah immediately responded by saying that Shehu, a Muslim, has no business misinterpreting Christian scriptures.
“Unless of course Garba Shehu has plans to convert to Christianity or he is a closet Christian or he is an anonymous Christian, I appreciate the fact that when it comes to talking, he has not quoted the Holy Quran,” the bishop said.
“All he does is end up with some convoluted interpretations of the Bible and embarrassing in their contexts,” he added.
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