Dubious Constitutional Provisions Responsible for Nigeria’s Woes-Kukah.

Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop ( Dr.) Mathew Hassan Kukah has attributed faulty and dubious  constitutional provisions such as  the federal character  as responsible  for most of Nigeria’s woes  resulting most times in its citizens  living in a thoroughly dysfunctional society.

Bishop Kukah made this  assertion while delivering a lecture on the state of the nation and governance at the formal launch of The New Narrative Newspaper in Lagos recently.

The highly vocal and cerebral Bishop of the Sokoto Diocese in his assessment of the state of the nation  and governance was  of the opinion that the country is enmeshed in the ugly situation it finds itself because there exist all kinds of constitutional provisions that promotes mediocrity over merit like  federal character which he says  does not have any direct impact on quality of governance. “But how does the provision of federal character necessarily undermine or improvethe quality of governance” he queried.

While acknowledging the need for provisions of constitutions to manage the  differences and diversities  that exist in the country, the catholic priest also heaped blames on some of the elites whom he accused of not pointing the country to the right direction.

According to him “we must have a provision to manage our differences but the most dangerous thing in our conversation  is that intellectuals  , very gifted highly educated people, professors , bishops etc, who should be pointing the way are often the most guilty” he quipped.

Driving his point home, Kukah noted that as Nigerians, we have literarily become hostages to our environment. “ I stand to be corrected, but 90% chances are that I am correct. I have not met, though they may exist having met quite some few, a professor, who is Yoruba that I can say can eloquently talk about Northern Nigeria or about eastern Nigeria , or a professor, who is from eastern Nigeria who can eloquently speak about Yoruba land or a professor Abdulahi who can speak eloquently about Yoruba land, all of us have become hostages,”.

In his assessment of Nigeria’s diversity which to many is responsible for the non-cohesion in the country, Bishop Kukah noted that contrary to what people say and contrary to what has become popular, diversity is an asset to Nigeria regretting that our inability to design a mechanism to manage our diversity is where the problem lies.

Using the United States of America ( USA) as a case in point where diversity  has become their strength because it is well managed,  Bishop Kukah  has this to say,

“ Today in the United States of America, almost every language is speakable including my own little language, my people are in America, everybody is  in America, so there is no country in the world that is as ethnically diverse as America really is, so how does it happen that it is the most powerful nation in the world” he also queried.

He admonished the media to be responsible and exhibit high sense of professionalism in the discharge of their duty. Kukah noted that the media is critical not only for shaping society but also informing society,  but regretted that like other segments of Nigeria’s life, the media is in crisis.

He said that Nigerians most times deceive themselves  with high tendency for outsourcing responsibilities and blaming others for their woes and failures. “ One of the saddest part of it is that we like to deceive ourselves in Nigeria. We think it is people in government who are damaging our country, we have a way of outsourcing responsibilities”, he said.

He said that our inability to recognize and admit those realities has made a constant change in our vocabulary .