THE HIGH PRIEST OF THE CALIPHATE

Emmanuel Ojeifo pays tribute to Matthew Kukah, a robust intellectual and Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, at age 63

“The heights that great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.”

– Jerry Longfellow.

In his stimulating book, Outliers (2010) a pleasure to read for its clear prose and its vigorous intelligence, Malcolm Gladwell, one of America’s leading public intellectuals, revolutionises the way the world thinks about success and successful people by turning conventional wisdom on its head. “Success” he says, “arises out of the steady accumulation of hidden advantages: when and where you were born, what your parents did for a living, and what the circumstances of your upbringing were, all make a significant difference in how you do in the world.” With the intuitiveness of this statement, Gladwell tears down the myth of individual merit to explore how culture, circumstance, timing, birth, and luck account for success – and how historical legacies can hold others back despite ample individuals’ gifts.

For Gladwell, outliers are those men and women who do things that lie out of the ordinary, through a combination of pluck and initiative, parentage and patronage, and who are often beneficiaries of hidden advantages, extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies. Using examples of many of the world’s most celebrated success stories, from software billionaires and music legends to professional athletes and exceptional intellectuals, Gladwell weaves a rich tapestry of the ecology of success around people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the society.

This is the story of Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah. Coming from a little obscure village in Zangon Kataf, a map-less location on the Nigerian universe, that Kukah himself once described as “a village in the middle of nowhere,” no one could have imagined that the boy would grow up to become a priest who will chart a better course for the Church and society, spanning into volumes of various initiatives geared towards the progress and prosperity of Nigeria. Widely held to be Nigeria’s spiritual guide and confessor on socio-political matters, Kukah’s life is a testimony in Gladwell’s outliers. For instance, fate or fortune would have turned out differently for Kukah were it not for his grandmother, a weaver of baskets, who paid the three shillings needed for him to write the entrance examination into St. Joseph Minor Seminary, Zaria, where his priestly journey began in 1964. All his grandmother needed to be sure of was whether he would, after becoming a priest, also drive a pick-up van like the White missionary priest she saw driving past her village. The rest, as they say, is history.

“We have to keep walking and talking. Welcome or unwelcome.” This was the last line of a text message that Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah sent to me two days after the controversial Channels TV interview that he had, advising the new government of President Muhammadu Buhari to focus more on governance rather than concentrate its entire energy on probing the last administration. It was this interview that brought the highly learned Bishop to the epicentre of national media attention. Overnight, commentators of all shades and colours took up Kukah’s statement and did all kinds of political gymnastics with it. The most vociferous critics accused him of attempting to derail the Buhari-led government from its determination to recover looted funds and its coveted fight against corruption. But this was not Kukah’s intention. He only advised that the fight against corruption should follow the due processes of the rule of law.

As at my last count I have made 21 newspaper cuttings of opinion articles – all on the Kukah issue. It is even more interesting on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, where hundreds of critics and defenders of Bishop Kukah seemed to fall on one another to pass a comment on his considered views. For a person intent on courting public attention, being at the heart of a media storm is a good way to make a name. But for a man of towering intellectual and public pedigree that Bishop Kukah is, such an idea cannot pass the litmus test of truth. Here is a man who rose to national prominence in the 1980s and 1990s for his fiery columns and articles in several national dailies. This was a critical period in our nation’s political history when many Nigerians shied away from freely expressing their views on politics and governance because of the brutality of military dictatorship. Bishop Kukah was one of the not many Nigerians who stood up and fought on the side of the oppressed masses. He earned the privileged status of a thorough-bred public intellectual not only because he is a man of broad cultivation, having studied at Bradford, London, Oxford and Harvard, but also on account of the robust intellectual aptitude and brilliance that he brings to the exchange of ideas in the public square. However, I think that what the responses to the controversial interview brought to the fore is the growing intolerance of opposing views that has become a signature of our evolving democratic culture. Fortunately, this attitude is not surprising or new to Kukah. Some years ago, a respected Nigerian professor in the U.S. canonised Bishop Kukah (then a Reverend Father) as “Nigeria’s spiritual guide and confessor” for his active role in promoting good governance and political participation. That commendation resonated highly in the intellectual community where Kukah was, and still is, a well-respected fellow. Barely a year later, another highly revered Nigerian professor fiercely berated Kukah for allegedly meddling into partisan politics to the detriment of his priestly calling. What this professor meant by meddling into partisan politics was Kukah’s fiery criticism of the government of the day. Some people joined this professor’s wagon.

When he had the opportunity to make a response, precisely in an essay published in The Guardian in June 2011, Kukah did not mince words in educating his traducers: “I consider myself a public intellectual with a duty to interrogate politics and political behaviour as part of the process of nation building. I am political because I am human, but not a politician because I am a Catholic priest!” Earlier in 2010, in his 18-minute speech at TED x Euston London, Kukah spoke about his convictions in these words: “My definition of a priest is that it is impossible to be a priest and not be concerned about the social issues of the moment.”

Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that it is well within the constitutional right of every Nigerian to make his or her unique contributions to nation-building. Freedom of thought, opinion, speech and expression is a cardinal principle of democracy; and one of the parameters for judging the level of freedom enjoyed by citizens in a democratic society is respect – not tolerance or suppression– for opposing views. At the height of the Enlightenment Age, 18th Century French philosopher Voltaire volunteered a powerful statement which fundamentally changed the landscape of public perception of freedom of expression. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it.” We must therefore cherish the ideal of a free democratic society – a marketplace of ideas and opinions – where the best solutions to problems are freely discussed and respectfully argued out.

For those who shape and mould public opinion, whether they are journalists, writers, or intellectuals, it is important to realise that they bear a sacred responsibility of trust on behalf of society. Ojeifo is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Abuja