Kukah Blasts Northern Muslim Elite, Says They Use Religion to Hold onto Power

The Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah, has accused the Northern Muslim elite of using religion to hold onto power to the detriment of their people and the larger society.

Speaking in Kafanchan at the burial Sunday of Joseph Bagobiri, the late Catholic Bishop of the Kafanchan Diocese, Kukah maintained that despite its access to power for years, the North still remained backward and the poorest part of the country.
Kukah said: “It is sad that the Northern Muslim elite has used religion to hold onto power to the detriment of even their own people and the larger society.

“For despite holding onto power for all these years, the North is still the poorest part of the country, nearly 15 million Muslim children are on the streets with no future in sight. We are, as the governor of Borno would say, the poster child of poverty.”
He said Nigeria was facing a very serious crisis more than ever before.
According to Kukah, “Death, destruction and destitution have become our lot and nowhere is this more expressed than in Northern Nigeria.”
He noted that “today, Boko Haram and the herdsmen and farmers’ clashes are phenomena that are peculiar to the North and Islam”, adding: “We cannot run away from this.”

He warned that the world was changing and Nigerians have a country to build, observing: “Even Usman Dan Fodio (Islamic preacher and founder of the Sokoto Caliphate) said that a society can live with unbelief, but no nation can survive with injustice.”
Kukah said the late Bagobiri had lived at a time when clearly the foundation of unity and justice in Kaduna, in particular and Nigeria in general, seemed threatened, stressing that he fought against the marginalisation of the Southern Kaduna people.
He declared that no religious leader worth his salt can stand by in the face of visible injustice, stressing that “it will be a mortal sin” to remain aloof to the glaring injustice.