Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has on Saturday handed out a stern warning to
the Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Mathew Kukah, to stop stigmatising President Muhammadu Buhari.
The Minister reaction through a statement titled: ‘FG Urges Religious Leaders To Eschew Message of Disharmony’, exonerated Buhari from any acts of nepotism, asking religious leaders in the country to desist from planting seeds of discord.
He said if they don’t refrain from stoking the embers of hatred and disunity, it could unintended consequences in Nigeria.
The Minister’s warning was occasioned by
Kukah’s 2020 Christmas message titled, ‘A nation in search of vindication’, on Friday, where he accused Buhari of nepotism.
Kukah in the message asserted that no Northern Muslim President could be this nepotic in handling affairs of the country and get away with it, except President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said: “There would have been a military coup a long time ago or we would have been at war. The President may have concluded that Christians will do nothing and will live with these actions.
“He may be right and we Christians cannot feel sorry that we have no pool of violence to draw from or threaten our country. However, God does not sleep. We can see from the inexplicable dilemma of his North.”
Speaking further, Mohammed maintained that religious leaders have responsibility of speaking truth to power in a manner that unites the nation rather those words being placed with hatred, disunity and religious disharmony”.
According to him, it was “graceless and impious for any religious leader to use the period of Christmas, which is a season of peace, to stoke the embers of hatred, sectarian strife and national disunity”.
Making an apparent reference to Kukah’s statement that there could have been a coup or war in the country should any other leader exhibit Buhari’s “nepotistic behaviour”, the minister warned.
“Calling for a violent overthrow of a democratically-elected government, no matter how disguised such a call is, and casting a particular religion as violent is not what any religious leader should engage in, and certainly not in a season of peace.”
