Military rule Nigeria’s greatest tragedy – Bishop Kukah

 

• Points at systemic policy disruption and patronage system

 

BY OUR EDITOR

Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Father Mathew Hassan Kukah has blamed the pervasive poverty in the land on what he called “systemic disruption of policy.” And he believes the military is culpable.

Father Kukah said the question of Nigeria’s underdevelopment is not about any political party in power or that the government has not been doing anything.

He said the return of military after the end of the civil war was one of the greatest tragedies which confronted Nigeria, noting that they “decapitated” the political system, as political parties only became platforms “to convey an already concluded outcome.”

According to him, despite the return to civil rule, the military because of its long presence in government institutionalised the patronage system.

“The situation we find ourselves today is not about APC or PDP.  This is much more than saying 16 years of PDP.  The situation we are in is that we are dealing with problems of 40, 50 years ago,” he said.

He spoke in Lagos at the ongoing Third Annual Conference of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) with the theme, “Economy, Security and National Development: The way forward.”

The cleric who delivered the Keynote address said successive governments from independence till date had come up with programmes aimed at tackling poverty and enhancing development.

He recalled that from 1960 till date, there had been different poverty alleviation measures like the farm resettlement project, rural banking scheme; austerity measures; the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) as well as the recent programmes like SURE-P and Tradermoni.

He said all the programmes could not translate into poverty reduction not because they were “entirely useless” but it was an indication “of our inability to have some level of policy certainty.”

Father Kukah however advised every Nigerian to take part in salvaging the situation, saying, “This country belongs to us. We cannot outsource our obligations even to God.”

He regretted that development was never on the agenda of Nigeria and other African countries when they chased away the colonialists.

“The reason for our poverty is not unconnected to our decisions and the choices we made,” he reiterated. (DAILY TRUST)