Nigerian Bishop Faults Country’s Leadership for Lack of National Vision, Direction

Creating a conducive environment through a national vision “is the responsibility of those who create and manage the State because not everybody is going to be a civil servant, not everybody is looking for a job from the government,” Bishop Kukah said, adding, “People just want to be able to do the things they need to do.”

“You don’t need to incite anybody in Nigeria. You can only incite the government to take its responsibility to secure our country. It is not too much to ask,” the 68-year-old Nigerian said during the virtual conference held under the theme, “Cast without a plot.”

In his address during the interviews that hosted Nigerian historian and Professor of African Studies, Toyin Falola, Bishop Kukah further said that the people of God in Africa’s most populous country are “angry” about the state of affairs in their nation.

“All of us are angry about this country but we trace our steps back and realize that we made mistakes. We should find new ways,” he said, adding, “It is not going to remain like this.”

The Bishop called on Nigerians to unite amid the challenges saying, “Let none of us be under any illusion that anybody stands to gain anything if this country breaks up.”

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He also cautioned Nigerians against “being prisoners of ethnicity, regionalism, or religious extremism.”

The negative effect that comes from “the false assumption that if I surround myself with people who talk, think, pray like me then I am secure” is that a person forms “a false sense of security and the other becomes an enemy,” Bishop Kukah said.

He added, “This is why we are increasingly having the kind of wars that are being fought in Africa with no agenda, no direction and with no vision”.

Embracing diversity is important because “there is no group that cannot produce any kind of manpower we are looking for,” Bishop Kukah emphasized.

“When you manage diversity properly you build confidence, you inspire confidence,” he further said, adding, “When people do not feel that they are part of the team, they have the tendency to have nothing to do with the system. That is what creates alienation.”

“Focus on our common humanity as children created in the image and likeness of God,” Bishop Kukah said during the March 7 virtual conference.

Magdalene Kahiu is a Kenyan journalist with passion in Church communication. She holds a Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Currently, she works as a journalist for ACI Africa.