Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, and Convener of the National Peace Committee, has said that democracy in Nigeria is far from where it ought to be.
Speaking as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Friday, Kukah said that there is no limit to the ambitions of many Nigerian politicians, who, according to him, are only passionate about their personal accomplishments.
He added that time had come for the country to follow the right democratic path. Kukah stressed that Nigerians are quick to score themselves, but that “Nigeria is far away from where she ought to be in terms of democracy.
“You see people saying that the North would have their turn or this group will have their turn. The Nigerian political environment is peculiar; it’s not like any other place.
“This is not Kenya or Senegal, this is Nigeria, where stealing of resources and thieves are common, where people think you are not expected to enter this political room and come out empty handed.
“Corruption has assumed such magnitude that it is not about one political actor saying that he would fight corruption as we have seen, and you see people promising what they cannot do.
“We just have to continue to use our energy on this process, and I pray that Nigerian politicians would come close to half of where the Nigerian masses are in terms of their commitment to democracy.
“We are saying that there are not enough resources in Nigeria, but there are still enough to be stolen, because if it is not so, all these people that are running around that they want to govern us would not be doing so.
“It is not too much to ask what have they been doing with their lives, it is like this is politics of access, and when it comes to Nigeria, it is completely different.
“The Nigerian President, on a good day, has the power that no president in the world has. I don’t know if the man in charge has so much power.
“But our system is such that you can assign so much to a man by just a stroke of the pen and it’s as if he is answerable to nobody.
“You can understand why the Nigerian system is so convoluted and we will not admit to this kind of thing,” he said.
