Bishop of Sokoto Archdiocese, Matthew Kukah on a live TV’s programme, “Hardcopy”, spoke on the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, (CBCN), the 2023 general election among others.

It must have been an intense number of days for you and your colleagues, at the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria; for you what was the strongest most important issue of discussion at your conference?

It’s difficult to say. But first of all, the only thing I can say is we were shielded away from the humdrum of looking for Naira for at least five days, so you had a bit of reprieve. But on a more serious note, it’s the State of the Nation, you know, where we hope to be, the whole culture of anxiety about the elections, and then the entire climate of uncertainty. And when you consider all these factors, you know, just ahead of an election, it doesn’t augur well. But I’m happy that more or less, the government is trying to build confidence in ordinary people. Because if these things don’t fall in place, it’s enough indicator of voter suppression, because nobody is going to start looking for money, just to go and cast a vote. And if people have a choice between going to find money and going to cast their vote, they will choose going to find money. So, I’m prayerfully hoping that the government can very, very quickly resolve some of these issues. And these were the sentiments that we try to express in our communique.

You might have been shielded from looking for Naira notes, but you were not shielded from the news of violence in some states. And also the fact that the President made a broadcast yesterday morning (Thursday morning), the same day you concluded your conference. What effect do you think that the President’s broadcasts have on the mood of the nation?

Look, you know, there’s just been a triangle of uncertainty, the Supreme Court saying one thing, the Central Bank Governor saying once the President said one thing, either way, whatever anybody may have to say in terms of long process, people are looking for Naira. Can they find it? It really should not be the business of Nigerians wondering, did the President think through all of these things? I mean when you’re dealing with over 200 million people, every policy decision that the government must take, will have to deal with the fact that there are, first of all, millions and millions of people that you can reach. This is a country where over 60-70 percent of the population are in rural areas, will you call them living where there’s really hardly any government presence. So if you’re going to take such a very serious decision, you must factor all these things in. And as I said, given the factors, the environment we are in now. And given the fact that fake news uncertainty can trigger anything and everything, you saw people posting all kinds of things, pictures of an imaginary Central Bank office burning somewhere, which really was not the case.

So, I think the government just purely and simply has to get its acts together and give an impression that you know where we’re taking our people to, because for me, these are the issues.

This is what the President was trying to achieve with his speech, when he said, look, Nigerians, I understand what it is that you’re going through. But these are the measures that we’re putting in place. Was that message passed strong enough?

But what I’m saying, quite simply, is if you’re going to take a decision, at that level, you would have had to create scenarios; what will happen, this is a country where we have severely limited access to some of the normal fields, whether it’s that means of communication, means of reaching people, you know, 60-70 percentage of Nigerians have no access to television or radio. So, when you take a policy decision of that nature, I think the government would have sat down together and created scenarios when these things started; you remember, the Honourable Minister of Finance said she was not carried along. So it’s quite untidy. Really, that’s all anybody can say; whatever the President may say, and we appreciate his intervention.

Are you optimistic about things coming together, especially before the elections; you have made reference to anxiety. And from your analysis, it is like it is customary, anytime elections are approaching, there’s always a bit of anxiety, which ought not to be but do you think that is something that we could overcome for this election?

Because you see, look, this is not how public policy works. Public policy cannot be subjected to caprice, or prejudice, you can take a decision simply because you want to hurt somebody, you have to have an idea about what is the common good of everybody. Because at the beginning of this policy, you had even the conversation within the APC itself, its presidential candidate, the President himself, and then the whole rumour out there that the decision had been taken to punish one person. Now, I’m simply saying policy processes are pretty stiff. Because you have to factor in what people will get. There are a range of people, whether they’re a woman, whether they’re workers, whether they’re just other groups of people, how will this have an impact on them.

As I said, this is a country where the percentage of Nigerians who are bankable, we’re talking about barely 50 million Nigerians who have bank accounts, and then you now have on a normal day, the amount of time and energy that it takes you to get services in a bank. And then we have problems with people not having access, we can’t buy petrol at easy prices, and all kinds of other factors. So, I’m simply saying that if you don’t understand the environment in which you’re operating, and this is one of the most difficult things that this government has not been able to deal with the environmental issue; I’m saying we have barely a few days to our elections, everything needed to have been done to ensure that nothing disturbs our attention from getting past these elections.

Do you think our attention has been sufficiently disturbed from getting the elections done?

I think so. Because, look, I mean, we are who we are, as Nigerians, you know, we just can’t thank God enough that we are the kind of people that we are with the ability to suck in everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the very ugly, that we still hold together. Even in an African country, that would have been chaos all over the place. As I said, we are who we are as Nigerians. Like somebody said, if you’ve made Naira so scare, you’ve tried to shut the door so that we will not have enough money to run around. Now, people are saying that it’s actually much easier because the Naira is so difficult to get down. Anybody who offers you N500 is a big deal. That’s what I’ve said we didn’t need to come to this point.

You’ve spoken about voter suppression, which is a very interesting angle. But there have been questions as to whether the 25th of February remains sacrosanct. What do you think should happen in your opinion, considering the reassurances that INEC has given over and over again?

I would listen to it back. Because that is really what we ought to do. And if INEC says it is ready, INEC is ready. And INEC has already in this election, perhaps more than any other elections attended to a lot of these things even well ahead of time, and they have literally time to play around with; they’ve created all kinds of scenarios. And if INEC tells you it is ready, I do not see anybody else who can say elections will not hold unless something dramatic happens. But you know, this is Nigeria. It’s not everybody who wants an election. It’s not everybody who wants the situation we’re in now, but it is the business of the government to create that territorial integrity by which you can ensure that the bad guys who want to spoil the game don’t get to do that but to stop them from planning. No, you can’t. So for me, I don’t think we need this distraction, we should just work towards and with the firm belief that elections are going to hold on the 25th; if I don’t wake up on the 25th, that’s a different thing altogether. But if we start introducing these variables, will it or will it not? I don’t think it does well for the process itself. And we are at a point where the President himself has already told everybody he wants to go as quickly as possible. We can’t wait. So I think that we must do everything possible to make sure that these elections hold.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, usually speaks up, when things get a bit heated. They have been quite active, especially since the military era. Now that we are in a democracy, some people are thinking that perhaps the role of the religious bodies in general should be a little stronger in a democracy. Would you say that the church, and by the church, I don’t just mean the Catholic Church? I mean, the Christian community in general, would you say that it’s pull its full weight in ensuring that we have a very vibrant democracy?

I think we’ve done the job we ought to do. And frankly, as far as I’m concerned, we in the church are midwives, a midwife doesn’t keep the baby. I’m mightily pleased with the role that the Catholic Church played. I was in the Catholic secretariat during some of these very difficult moments. And I am happy that we did some of the things that we had to do. And one of the big mistakes that when we talked with my friends, Olisah Agbakoba, Femi Falana, Clement Nwankwo, all of us who were “in the trenches”, as we say, that the tragedy was that we assumed that the end of military rule was going to be the beginning of democracy. It hasn’t worked out that way. And it means Nigeria didn’t have a transition, the very fact that we still have a general as president, suggests that the military has not gone away. And we’re really nowhere near having the goalpost that we set for ourselves. Having said that we had hoped, you know, that this system would throw up very serious democrats, as you can see, the system has not. The carpet baggers are still very much around. Politics is still a transaction. Only the contractors can participate in this process. If you are not a contractor, you can find somebody to pay the bills. That’s what the President did. He didn’t have money at least so we heard, people kept buying the tickets for him, and they paid the money. And he’s where he is. We’ve not even come anywhere close to dealing with what we call the fine principles of democracy in which the Constitution anticipated the fact that anybody could be free to aspire to any position. But where we are in Nigeria now is pretty clear that what we have is a platform of transaction.

You can see there’s no point, there’s nobody running for public office now, that has not changed party. And very few parties have survived one election and another election. So all these mutations suggest very clearly that we don’t have Democrats who believe in the principles of democracy, we just have people who are looking for a position. Look, this is Nigeria. Being president of Nigeria is far more important than perhaps being President of the United States of America.

Why do you say so?

Yeah. Because look, Joe Biden cannot just put his hand in his pocket and give you $500,000. He can’t do that. So when people complain that Nigeria politics are violent, it is about accessing a vault. Okay. So it takes no prisoners, because you know what you can do with that power. Our hope and our prayer is from listening to some of the political actors. At least, we are now beginning to hear certain people who are saying certain things that they might do things differently. But I think that one of the signs of hope, for me, is the very fact that in these elections, even the best of us can say who will win. That’s a little bit of evidence that we’re getting somewhere.

The introduction of Peter Obi has completely changed the dynamics in the sense that at least people are now beginning to wonder; otherwise it was the old order, they will do what they normally do, which is that we will win whether you like it or not; they’ll still go ahead and win because INEC will be under their control, the police, the military and everybody would be under their control. So we are making a bit of progress but I think we still have a little bit of you know, journey to make.

So when you hear the Catholic Bishops intervene, it is just to say look, the way we are going is not going to get… this is what we should do. So we have no aspiration or intention to replace the politician.

With the evolution of INEC over the years, are you confident that perhaps more and more people will continue to have faith in our democracy, regardless of the fact that as you’ve noted, even in your communique as Catholic bishops, that it doesn’t seem to be delivering yet what some people will call the dividends of democracy

The governors will disagree with you because they think the dividends of democracy are all evident. After all, we see the roads that they are constructing, we see all the things that they’re doing. But in reality, for me, I’ve always argued that these are not the dividends of democracy, because some of the major dividends of democracy are largely intangible. They’re intangible in the sense that critical to democracy is the whole question of freedom. Freedom to do what? Freedom to be able to dream. You know, Americans like to say that America is a country where you can be anything you want to be. That’s imaginary, it’s an illusion, but it works. The sense that at least the ball has been pushed back to you, that look, the doors are open, if you’re not able to get through, it is your fault.

We need that kind of an environment, but so far, what we have in Nigeria, is a combination of feudalism, as you can see, political actors are more interested in going to the palaces of traditional rulers, than they are interested in talking to the people. You can see that this democracy is averse to, it’s almost like…okay, you see all these crowds in the stadium but nobody gets a chance to say what, everybody stands there and speaks for 10 minutes, two minutes or three minutes, and everybody goes back home; they collect their transportation, and they go back to where they came from.

Now, the theme of our conference was political participation. And the whole idea was for us to help our citizens understand not that we are experts, but to call attention to the fact that political participation as Nigerians understand it now is simply going out to vote; the structural capacity for a state to engage people it has elected alright, we have not developed that reflex yet. So that is why I take myself as an example, people say to me, why are you always attacking the government? No! I’m performing my duty and my responsibility, because I didn’t vote for somebody just hoping, which is what Nigerians will do here. Because, you know, we hope that we vote for the right candidate. There is nothing like the right candidate in a democracy, because it’s almost like I hope you’re married to the right husband, or you marry the right wife. There’s nothing like a right husband or the right wife, okay, life is about engagement. You will stumble, you will fall, but you have a sense of a higher vision.

So when we elect people, we have to develop the institutional capacity. This is what civil society is all about. This is what the church is all about, is what all kinds of other groups are all about, that we have a responsibility to continue to bang at the door. There’s nothing I have said with this government that is not taken from their own textbook. Okay, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing I have said. So it’s not about me, and President Buhari. So, politicians will get away with everything. If they make all these promises, we cast our vote, then we go back, and people think, oh, no, you are a bishop. You shouldn’t be talking. You’re a priest, you shouldn’t be talking. No, they knew I was a bishop before they gave me a voter’s card. So for me, the critical thing is that democracy is not going to grow as a result of goodwill and good intention; it is not about good people being, you know, coming to power. A lot of these people who are in power, they’re very good people. But they allowed a lot of horrible things to happen.

How do you intend to push for this review of chapter two of 1999 constitution which you say needs a review?

I mean, I have paid a bit of attention to the civil rights movement in America, I also followed the struggle in South Africa. But I also realise that judicial processes, judicial activism is fundamental to how democracies grow. You know, because you have a constitution, the constitution could never have foreseen tomorrow. I mean, it’s like us now, maybe 20 years ago, nobody expected to see a mobile phone. We didn’t know about social media. 10 years from now, things are going to be completely different. So, there are things the Constitution and the framers could never have foreseen.

In the American Constitution, for example, women were not allowed to vote neither were black people. But constitutional amendments, and judicial activism helped to trigger the kind of process that can allow a country and the government to deal with the things that the framers of the Constitution intended. Because if that doesn’t happen, then nothing is going to change.

Right now Catholic bishops are calling for a review of the constitution; under which administration, is it this one that is about to leave or the incoming one?

Let me give you an example. Education in America now has changed. And without it, Obama would probably never have been President. My favourite Supreme Court justice in America is Thurgood Marshall, the first black man to enter the Supreme Court. But Thurgood Marshall, along with the NACCP, that is the National Association for Coloured People. Their intention was to improve the condition of black people. That’s what the struggle of Martin Luther King was all about. But it was not just a moral issue. Then after Martin Luther King, we didn’t need anybody. But people realised that you have to give teeth to this wonderful aspiration. And if you read the Martin Luther King’s book, one of the things Martin Luther King said, we have come here to dramatize our condition. That’s why he delivered his speech. If you are familiar with Washington, the statue of Abraham Lincoln, was right there. He said, we’ve come to dramatize the proposition that all of us are created equal. But we realise that you’ve given us a check. Because in 1770, since you said all people are created equal, but we realise we can’t see ourselves in this mirror. Now people like Thurgood Marshall decided because at that time, education was of such quality that under a supreme court judgment that came up with the concept of “We are Separate but We Are Equal”, it meant that America dubiously accepted that, okay, the Supreme Court was all white. So they said, Okay, we are separate, but we are equal. That means we will build schools for black people. We build law schools. And Thurgood Marshall went to a law school. But you also realise that the books in the law school were of such poor quality, that they don’t prepare you for a roll that is higher. So in 1954, the Supreme Court judgement of America, Brown versus Board of Education. That was what changed the face of education and it now made the point that every child in America should be able to go to a school of their choice. It was a big battle.

Is the Catholic Church supporting any presidential candidate?

Look, don’t confuse the Catholic Church with the bishops. I am a Bishop of the Catholic Church. Every priest in the Catholic Church is guided by the code of Canon law. The law is there. And it says that I am Matthew Kukah, I cannot take part in partisan politics. I’ve said it publicly. I am political, but I’m not a politician. I can sing but I’m not a musician. I can play football, but I’m not a footballer. Now, going forward, the ordinary people who are citizens who come to church, we encourage them, and we have a corpus of teaching about what they should do. For example, literally in the whole of Europe, it is the teachings of the Catholic Church based on an 1891 document by the Pope, Rerom, Navarro. That’s what laid the foundation for the Christian Democrats right across Europe. So we’re no strangers to democracy. But we cannot support any candidate. If I have a candidate, I will vote for? Absolutely. That’s a personal choice. If I decide today that I want to become the governor of Sokoto State or the president of Nigeria, nobody can take me to court. I’m free. I can you know, register in a political party, hopefully get nominated. And then that is it. The only thing is that after I’ve come back from Abuja from collecting my paper, they find people waiting for me to say, Oga, give us the key to the Bishops house. Okay, you can no longer enter the cathedral as bishop because you are done. As a citizen of Nigeria, but as a citizen of the church, priests are not allowed to become partisan in politics. Not because we don’t have partisan interest in terms of we know whom we are going to vote for. (Daily Sun)

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