Tag: Kukah

  • Muslim-Muslim Ticket: Bishop Kukah reacts to Tinubu’s choice of Running Mate

    Muslim-Muslim Ticket: Bishop Kukah reacts to Tinubu’s choice of Running Mate

    Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese has said the decision by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, to present Muslim-Muslim ticket for the 2023 presidential election was a teamwork based on calculation of what would work for the party.

    In a statement he personally signed on Monday, Kuka said the decision by the APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu to pick Senator Kashim Shettima as his running mate should not be a thing to worry about.

    Recall that Asiwaju on Sunday, announced the former Borno State Governor as his running mate for the 2023 presidential election.

    The development has continued to generate reactions from concerned Nigerians who argued that a Christian Northerner should have been picked in place of Shettima.

    But Kuka, while reacting to the controversy, said those angered by the development should support other candidates they feel are better.

    The statement reads, “This is what you call team selection and everybody will choose depending on what they think will give them a fair chance. So people will take responsibility for the choices they have made. For me, it is not something to lose sleep over.

    “If people feel unhappy with the kind of choices that have been made, that is why we are democrats, you can’t force it. We outsiders cannot force a choice of any candidate.

    “It is now left for you to look at the choices that have been made. And there is no guarantee that all Christians will vote for Christians and all Muslims will vote for Muslims.”

  • Wole Soyinka backs Kukah, says religionists twisted cleric’s Christmas speech

    Wole Soyinka backs Kukah, says religionists twisted cleric’s Christmas speech

    Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has lashed out at those who criticised the Christmas Day speech of the Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Rev. Fr. Matthew Kukah.

    The playwright said he had studied the transcript as reported in the media and found nothing in it that denigrated Islam. He, however, noted he was not among the most religion besotted inhabitants of the globe.

    Kukah in the speech summed up the country’s challenges ranging from insecurity, poverty to frustration under the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd).

    Soyinka spoke in a statement on Monday titled, “The Kukah offence and ongoing offensives.”

    He said, “One of the ironic features of religionists is, one is forced to conclude, a need to be offended. It is as if religion cannot exist unless it is nourished with the broth of offence. This may be due to inbuilt insecurity, a fear that even the ascribed absolutes of faith may be founded on nothing more than idealistic human projections, not grounded in anything durable or immutable. Hence the over prickliness, aggressiveness, sometimes even bullying tendencies and imperious posturing. This leads to finding enemies where there are none. In certain social climates, it degenerates into inventing enmities in order to entrench theocratic power.

    “In its own peculiar way, this is actually a rational proceeding. A perceived threat to a collectivity tends to rally even waverers round the flag. The core mission of faith custodians then becomes presenting religion as being constantly under siege. It all contributes to interpreting even utterances of no hostile intent as “enemy action.”

    “There is a deliberate, emotive displacement of central concern. It is calculated avoidance, diversionary, and thus, nationally unhealthy. Humans should not attempt to play the ostrich.

    He noted that Kukah’s Christmas message, and the ensuing offensives, could not be more fortuitous, coming at a time “when a world powerful nation, still reeling from an unprecedented assault on her corporate definition, is now poised to set, at the very least, a symbolic seal on her commitment to the democratic ideal.”

    According to Soyinka, some of the most extreme of the violent forces that recently assaulted the governance citadel of the world’s powerful nation sprung from religious and quasi-religious affirmations.

    He added that the condition still enabled many of them to be brainwashed into accepting literally, and uncritically, indeed as gospel truth, any pronouncement, however outrageous and improbable, that emerged from their leadership.

    He added, “It should not come as a surprise that a section of our Islamic community, not only claims to have found offence in Bishop Kukah’s New Year address, what is bothersome, even unwholesome, is the embedded threat to storm his ‘Capitol’ and eject him, simply for ‘speaking in tongues.’ Any pluralistic society must emphatically declare such a response unacceptable.

    “On a personal note, I have studied the transcript as reported in the media and found nothing in it that denigrates Islam but then, I must confess, I am not among the most religion besotted inhabitants of the globe. That, I have been told, disqualifies me from even commenting on the subject and, quite frankly, I wish that was indeed the case. Life would far less be complicated. However, the reverse position does not seem to be adopted by such religionists in a spirit of equity. They do not hesitate to intervene; indeed, some consider themselves divinely empowered to intervene, even dictate in secular life.”

    Soyinka stressed that everyone should be reminded that religion was upheld, and practised, not by robots, not by creatures from outer space, not by abstract precepts, but by human beings, full of quirks, frailties and conceits, filled with their own individual and collective worth, and operate in the here and now of this earth.

    “That makes religion the business of everyone, especially when it is manipulated to instil fear, discord and separatism in social consciousness. The furore over Bishop Kukah’s statement offers us another instance of that domineering tendency, one whose consequences are guaranteed to spill over into the world of both believers and non-believers, unless checked and firmly contained. In this nation of religious opportunism of the most destructive kind especially, fuelled again and again by failure to learn from past experience, we must at least learn to nip extremist instigations in the bud,” he said.

  • Kukah Spearhead Antagonizing Shari’a Law – Forum

    Kukah Spearhead Antagonizing Shari’a Law – Forum

    By Muhammad Goronyo, Sokoto

    “For those who are familiar with Kukah’s antics, this is not the first of its kind, as he utilizes every available opportunity during public lectures, homilies, media interviews to pour his spurious and venomous attack on Islam and Muslims, especially those of Northern Nigerian extraction,” confirmed the Acting Chairman of Sokoto Muslim Solidarity Forum, Professor Isah Muhammad Maishanu at a Press briefing at the Press Centre.

    He said it was on record that he was at the forefront of ‘antagonizing Shari’a Law implementation in some States of Northern Nigeria’, even though, it is a constitutional right of the Muslims and is not applicable to Christians.

    “Bishop Kukah who lives happily and peacefully at the centre of the seat of the Caliphate for almost a decade now, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of the city that is founded on the teachings of Islam, and benefitting from the goodwill of northern leaders right from childhood and up to this moment, could not see anything good to appreciate in his Muslim hosts or their religion, to disparage them. Rather he is always using provocative and uncouthly language that signifies a deeply rooted and blind pathological hatred for anything Islamic”, averred the Professor.

    He further said the callous statements are unbecoming of someone who parades himself as Secretary to National Peace Committee and a member of Inter-religious Council (NEREC).