The Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah, has said there must be an order to hold governors accountable to find criminals defiling religion in Nigeria.
Kukah made this assertion at the 60-year celebrations of call to bar of Afe Babalola, SAN, on Monday.
The Bishop said for ver 40years now we have been going back to rebuild our churches whenever they are burnt, the Nigerian state doesn’t care; there must be an order that holds a governor accountable, to finding criminals who are defiling religion, who are accusing people in the name of religion, they have no right to kill even their own people.
“A woman cannot say that I gave birth to this child, I carried her in my womb then I am going to kill her, even if she does, because she is exercising what she thinks is a right, the system may tell her, you may have carried her in your womb but you have no right over her life.
“A country where anybody can just wake up and say you are accused of blasphemy, we are not in a theocracy, we are in a democracy, there must be therefore sanctions and punishment because if somebody goes and burn a church or mosque, what are the consequences?
“So for me, these are some of the fundamental issues, the constitution is very clear about the boundaries of religion.
“But we have a country where, right now as I am talking to you, there are many federal universities where there are no churches, there are no mosques, what are the reasons?
“Many universities, land has been provided for the building of churches but vice chancellors, chairman of governing councils, are turning a blind eye.
“I therefore demand that the president of Nigeria by executive order must say that every federal institutions, whether it is medical, whether it is educational, must reflect what Nigeria reflects.
“The fact that Afe Babalola who has sold everything to build a university, to make him vice chancellor of either Usman Danfodio or University of Nigeria Nsukka, it is unthinkable because like joke, like joke, we have come to a point in Nigeria where the federal government is spending money on some universities, prejudices, ethnicity and deepening the cleavages of local class.
“We cannot be a people, so when Nigeria talk about ethnicity and so on, it is because the government has not done enough to enforce that because if you insist that the vice chancellor, because the impression that government create is that we built this university for this community.
“So you go to many universities as I said, even in state universities, the governor now take pride in ensuring that only our son and that is why the universities have become so convoluted in Nigeria, every day strike because people who are holding the reins of power, most of them are not eminently qualified, they are just qualified by virtue of religion or they are qualified by ethnicity.
“So I close by saying Nigeria needs to grow, Nigeria needs to develop, Nigeria needs to be democratized but that it is important that to make Nigerians to treasure democracy, to make Nigerians feel comfortable democracy, we must appreciate the democratization of development.
“That is that the federal government must make sure that it says, it has earmarked that tells where citizens are because if you don’t democratized development, you cannot develop democracy.
“So my conclusion is that, the democratization of development leads to the development of democracy.
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