Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah, said all Nigerian presidents since independence were accidental, except President Bola Tinubu
Tracing the history of Nigeria’s leadership, Kukah observed that none of the country’s past leaders, including former presidents Muhammadu Buhari, Goodluck Jonathan, Umaru Yar’adua, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ernest Shonekan, and Sani Abacha, came to power prepared.
He, however, lamented that the citizens were still suffering despite Tinubu’s preparedness to govern.
Kukuh spoke in his keynote address at the fourth Amaka Ndoma-Egba Memorial Lecture, with the theme, “Leaders of Tomorrow: Creating Lasting Change in A Complex World,” held weekend in Abuja.
Amaka, the late wife of former Senate Leader, Senator Ndoma Egba, died in an auto crash in Ondo State in 2020.
The event, which was held at Start-Rite Schools, Abuja, saw the commissioning of a legacy building in honour of the deceased by the governor of Cross River State, Senator Bassey Otu.
Kukah lamented that Nigeria’s leadership crisis was due to the lack of knowledge, capacity, and preparedness of its leaders, who simply wanted to govern and enrich themselves and their cronies.
He stated, “I don’t want to bore you, but run through, from the beginning, you’ll find that almost everybody who came to power in Nigeria was as the result of one accident or the other.
“President Tinubu, well, he prepared for it… However, we’re still trying to get off the ground. But he took over from Buhari, who had already given up.
“Buhari took over from Jonathan, who was thinking that after finishing being deputy governor, he would go somewhere else and then something happened. Jonathan took over from Yar’adua, who had actually said he was going to teach at Ahmadu Bello University as he was finishing his term as governor.
“Yar’adua took over from Obasanjo, who was in prison, and was not expecting to come out but he somehow found himself out of prison.
“Obasanjo took over from Abacha, who, sadly, even though the five political parties had said he would rule forever, nature took him.
“Abacha took over from Ernest Shonekan, who was busy at the United African Company of Nigeria, and then they told him to come and be head of state. We can go all the way down but fundamental to governance is knowledge.”
The bishop also argued that the benefits of democracy went beyond physical infrastructure.
According to him, if democracy were solely about infrastructure, people would still be praising authoritarian regimes, like Adolf Hitler and apartheid South Africa, which he said built impressive infrastructure during their reigns.
“Democracy’s benefits are often not necessarily measurable. They are largely intangible. It is understanding how to expand the frontiers of human imagination,” he stated.
Kukah decried the culture of nepotism in the country, saying ministerial and other appointments are often based on personal relationships rather than merit.
He observed that Nigerians were impatient with the current state of democracy in the country, which he said was hardly working.
Kukah stated that despite the country’s little progress, Nigerians were never satisfied, adding that the country will never be in a perfect place because such places do not exist.
He said, “We have made a choice to live with democracy as it is, we know that our democracy is hardly working, hardly functioning, although I’d make quick to say that we are very impatient with ourselves, very, very impatient.
“Nigerians are surprised when I say we have done pretty well. We are absolutely not happy and we will probably never be happy, because that’s not how the world is. You’ve got this, you want this, you want that. We are insatiable.”
He added, “Now, we are not in a perfect place, because perfect places don’t exist, and we shouldn’t be looking for leaders who will take us to a place of perfection, because nobody has found that kind of place.
“However, there are minimum conditions that we require in a leader, and I think we need to use them to measure the whole concept of leadership.”
The bishop stressed the need for leaders to have set goals, boldness, courage, and patriotism, adding that true leadership is about influencing citizens, not just holding office.
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