The Presidency, on Sunday, lambasted the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah over his 2021 Easter homily, saying it is an ungodly attempt to politicise the nation’s security.
Kukah, in his Easter message, had said the greatest tragedy of Buhari’s government is the death of empathy, adding that the government’s clay-footed fight against corruption had not moved the needle of transparency forward.
He said Nigeria, being the poverty capital of the world came with its rewards such as banditry, violence, death, sorrow, blood, poverty, misery, and tears.
Kukah also said they would manufacture consent by creating imaginary enemies, setting citizens against one another by deploying religion, ethnicity, region, and other platforms while appealing to the base emotions of patriotism.
However, a statement by the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu noted that Kukah, the Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto Diocese, had said things that were inexplicable in his Easter message.
According to the presidential aide, it is wrong for Kukah to have stated that ”the Boko Haram terrorism is worse than it was in 2015.”
Shehu expressed the belief that Kukah did not speak like a man of God.
He, therefore, urged well-meaning citizens to continue to support the ongoing efforts by the Buhari administration to secure the country and move it forward.
The statement read in part: “But if you profess to being a man of God, as Father Mathew Hassan Kukah does, ideology should not stand in the way of facts and fairness.
“Father Kukah has said some things that are inexplicable in his Easter message.
“But, in saying that the Boko Haram terrorism is worse than it was in 2015, he did not speak like a man of God.
“Kukah should go to Borno or Adamawa to ask the citizens there the difference between 2014 and 2021, Shehu said.
On the hijab controversy in Kwara, which Kukah also touched on, Shehu pointed out that it was “a state matter which the courts of the land had adjudicated on.”
“They are matters that have appeared in several states as far back as the Obasanjo administration. In all of that, when and where did the name of President Buhari feature?
“He (Kukah) is playing partisan politics by dragging the President (Buhari) into it.
“An administration that has created a whole ministry, for the first time in the country’s history, appropriating enormous resources to it, to deal with issues of internally displaced persons cannot, in all rightfulness be accused of not caring for them.
“Some of the comments are no more than a sample of the unrestrained rhetoric Fr. Kukah trades in, which he often does in the guise of a homily,’’ Shehu said.

By Taiwo Okanlawon