Nigeria Yet To Fully Embrace Democracy – Bishop Matthew Kukah

Bishop Kukah
Catholic Bishop Matthew Kukah of the Sokoto Diocese, has state that Nigeria is yet to fully embrace Democracy due to it military background and it has continued to affect the effective governance of the country in a proper democratic dispensation.  Bishop Matthew Kukah

Bishop Matthew Kukah was speaking as a panellist during a citizen’s town hall meeting on electoral reforms at a programme organised by YIAGA Africa on Tuesday, June 30. Bishop pointed to the greed and individual interest overrides that of the public interest when politicians make decisions in Nigeria.

He also pointed to the current political party structure in the country calling a mere contraption just meant to be a boat to ferry individuals with political ambitions and not a proper democratic institution where political culture and ideologies are breed, cultivated and later translated into public policies used to run the affairs of the country at large.

Bishop Matthew Kukah added that the quarrelsome nature of the politics and the way the judiciary has now come to undermine the wishes of the people, suggests very clearly that we have very serious issues. Bishop Kukah

Bishop Kukah said;

“We are mistaken in assuming that we have had a transition from dictatorship to democracy. We still haven’t. This is why we are showing all kinds of systemic malfunctioning.
“When we talk about political parties, we have assumptions. But the truth of the matter is that in our own case in Nigeria, we have the greed and the political interest.
“Clearly what we have in Nigeria, as we have seen with the occasional malfunctioning of the system midway through the journey, manifested in the quarrelsome nature of the politics and the way the judiciary has now come to undermine the wishes of the people, suggests very clearly that we have very serious issues with party discipline largely because what we call political parties in Nigeria are mere contraptions purely constructed to help to ferry the ambitions of people — a good number of who are really and truly ill-prepared for the discipline that politics and political party formations require.”

The Catholic Bishop went on to suggest two ways the country’s political challenges can be addressed.

Bishop Matthew Kukah said;

“The first is for us to pay attention to the future. That is why this conversation is very important; that a new generation of Nigerians with a different view about our country, with a different set of skills and discipline, must begin to see politics in a much more noble form,” he said.
“The second point is for the judiciary itself to begin to think more in focusing on compelling politics and politicians to fine-tune their articles of discipline internally.”

Photo Credit: Getty

Leave a Reply