THE Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Mathew Kukah, has said that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has to sit up and hold Nigeria together.

Kukah, who made this remarks on Wednesday while speaking on ‘Politics Today’, a Channels Television programme, said it was the President’s responsibility to keep the country as one.

He (Kukah) was responding to questions bordering on the shooting by soldiers at the Lekki Tollgate and the ongoing #EndSARS protests in some parts of the country.

The cleric specifically said that President Buhari could lose the legitimacy of being the President of Nigeria if he (Buhari) was unable and unwilling to embrace the responsibility of holding Nigeria as one.

“The leader is the father of the nation, and where he goes is where the nation goes. If he remains static, the nation remains in jeopardy. President Muhammadu Buhari has to sit up and wake up and decide that holding Nigeria together is his primary responsibility while he is sitting where he is sitting.

“If he is unable or unwilling to undertake that responsibility, he has lost the legitimacy of being the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We have a President who seems to be almost unwilling to respond to the kind of reflexes that is required in a democracy; a requirement that shows that the President is listening.

“People cannot be killed on the streets of Nigeria and 24 hours later, the President has still not spoken. This culture of ‘I don’t care’ has mature to a point that we keep seeing corpses on our roads and nothing has changed,” Kukah added.

He described as troubling a situation where the President seemed to be given the impression that he (Buhari) was unshaken amidst the loss of lives.

According to Kukah, “Ordinarily, it is not possible that we have this blood on the streets of Nigeria; we have had the loss of lives, there is no national broadcast, there is no show of empathy and nobody has lost his job.

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“So far, it is quite troubling that amidst all these, the President just seems to be sending an image of being unshaken, untouched and largely unconcerned. There is no evidence that the President is calling anybody to question.

“There is no reason why by now, (some) people should not have been held accountable and responsible for the lives that have been lost on the streets of Nigeria. What we owe those who have died is to do things completely different.”

By Chukwudi Akasike