The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah, stated on Monday that any presidential contender who came to meet him would need to explain how he or she planned to handle the issues facing the country.
According to the well-known Christian priest, Nigeria is no longer what it once was, thus whomever aspires to be the country’s next president must demonstrate his record of success in past positions.
Kukah pointed out that the public has many questions, and it is the duty of those in authority to address them head-on.
Bishop Kukah Attacks Nigerian Leaders Who Go On Pilgrimage
According to Anaedoonline.ng, the Catholic Bishop brought up the views during his remarks at a meeting today that was sponsored by The Kukah Center and the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies.
The purpose of the event, according to reports, was to get candidates for public office ready for the election campaigns in 2023.
Kukah contends that Nigerians ought to support political leaders who have a genuine grasp of the current circumstances rather than following those who present themselves as the messiah.
He emphasized that campaigns moving forward must be identity-based, establishing the proper identity for the nation while minimizing the importance of the important issues.
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Kukah said, “When we talk about 2023 elections, we need to talk about how we will get ourselves out of all of these.
“The questions that the ordinary Nigerians are asking are legitimate and it is the responsibility of those who govern to deal frontally with the issue. We need to re-image and re-imagine Nigeria because the Nigeria that we have today is not the Nigeria that many of us can recognize.”
Bishop Kukah expressed his concern with the recent wave of insecurity in Nigeria while speaking more at the event. The clergyman claimed to have paid a ransom of roughly N30 million to free priests from his church who had previously been abducted.
In the one-day session titled “High-level forum on political communication and issue-based campaign in the 2023 general elections,” according to Anaedoonline.ng, Kukah made the startling announcement.
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He said: “Before coming here, I was speaking with my brother, because two days ago, my nephew, his mother, and the driver were on their way to Abuja when they ran into the hands of kidnappers. My brother’s wife had an amputation some three months ago and they were bringing her to Abuja, so when the kidnappers saw the stomp on her leg, they had mercy on her and let her go.
“Right now, as we speak, my nephew and the driver of the vehicle are currently in the hands of the kidnappers, how it is going to end? I don’t know. Then they said they wanted N50m, they then said they wanted N20m, now they are staying on N30m.”
Speaking about the payment of ransom totalling N30 million to rescue the priests in his diocese from the hands of kidnappers, the cleric said he was not ashamed to share the information.
“I am the Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, I have spent about N30m the money I don’t have because my priests were kidnapped and I have nowhere to turn to.
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“I am not ashamed to say it because these are essential realities. Anyone who wants to become president of Nigeria cannot pretend to stand before me without giving me empirical evidence from his or her record about how they intend to deal with these issues because there is a collective feeling of alienation.
“Here in Abuja, just about a month or so, when the threats came that the bandits will enter into Abuja, everybody went undercover,” the Bishop said.
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