Why Nigeria is failing – Kukah

The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most Rev Matthew Hassan Kukah, said Nigeria is failing because those governing the country find it difficult to manage diversity.

Rev Kukah who stated this at the weekend while delivering PreConvocation Lecture at University of Abuja on the topic, ‘Though Tribe And Tongue May Differ: Managing Diversity’ said they lack the courage to take some of the tough decisions that would have changed the country.

The guest lecturer also said most Nigerian presidents emrged by chance and that the question that should be asked is “how we ended up with parachuted leaderships,” adding that leadership must not be by accident.

He said: “We found the discipline and demands of equality enshrined in our democracy difficult to uphold and therefore we opted to cohabit with feudalism. The result is that we have constructed rickety double- decker identity vehicles where we inhabit one section as citizens and another as subjects.”

Speaking on corruption, he said, “Technically the war against corruption is unwinnable if we imagine that one day we shall have a corrupt free society. Corruption is another word for poverty, injustice, insecurity, nepotism, a culture of might is right, a feeling of emptiness and helplessness.”

He maintained that the first mistake is to assume that ethnicity, tribe and tongue do not matter, adding that they do and have been the reality of human existence from the beginning of time.

The challenges however, according to him, is how to turn diversity into an asset, how to create a society where each citizen can have a sense of belonging and believe in fairness and justice.