Kukah, Ali decry misuse of religion, ethnicity for selfish agenda

The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah has blamed the insurgency in the North Eastern part of the country on hypocrisy by northern Muslim elite and politicians.

Speaking yesterday in Osogbo, Osun State at the opening of the National Conference of the Islamic Welfare Foundation, he lamented that in Nigeria, politicians use their religions to divide the people to achieve selfish agenda.

He said, “We must locate the current crisis of Boko Haram within the context of the inability of the northern Muslim elite to live by their own dubious creed. They preached Sharia Law, but only for the poor.

“They (northern Muslim elites) preach a religion that encourages education, yet their own people are held in the bondage of ignorance. They came to power on the basis of a democratic society, but they turned around and declared Sharia to generate a false consciousness among the poor.”
“They did not wish to live by the same standards, so they decided to live their own Islam in the capitals of the world away from the prying eyes of their own people. Boko Haram began as a revolt against this hypocrisy,” he added.

Delivering a paper entitled, “Thoughts on the Future of Religion in Nigeria’s Politics”, the notable cleric said Nigerian politicians had failed to use religion to manage its plural identities by seeing themselves as Christians and Muslims.

According to him, “Rather than focusing on our common citizenship, religious identities have become tools for war and death. They have become tools for access to political and economic power.”

Also speaking on the theme: “Islam: Administration of Justice and Nigeria’s Development”, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Alhaji Yusuf Ali asked President Muhammadu Buhari to find the reasons for the agitation of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).