At First News 3rd Annual Lecture, Bishop Kukah Warns Those Responsible for Nigeria’s Woes

Bishop of Sokoto Diocese of Catholic Church, Bishop Matthew Kukah, says those who masterminded Nigeria’s woes are unsafe as the suffering masses.

Kukah also noted that every country of the world had their own problems, stressing however that it takes the citizens and purposeful leaders to address such problems.

The fiery cleric said this on Friday in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, while delivering a keynote address at the 3rd Annual National Public Lecture of the First News with the theme, “The Nigerian Question: Survival of the Federation in The Throes of Increasing Economic Challenges.”

According to him, “The good thing about Nigeria is that everybody knows what the problems are and the people who are responsible for the problems are not also safe, they too do not know peace.

“Nigerians talk about other countries, I feel sorry for many Nigerians who because of many troubles hardly travel out of their immediate environments, not to talk about traveling to other parts of Africa or other parts of the world.

“Though, every country has it own problems, but the challenge before us in Nigeria is that, what do we want, obviously, can we democratise and develop our nation? It is a very difficult question to answer, because what we called the civilized world today is the last 200 years of exploitation of Africa that helped to build these nations.

“So we are imagining it ourselves, why are we not like other people, we are not like others because every nation has to find it own navigational truth for development. It is not as if we cannot use democracy to develop Nigeria, but there are certain fundamental things that must be on ground before people can appreciate democracy.

“Unless Nigeria settle the issue of ‘bread and butter mentality’ the democracy can actually look like lottery.”

Earlier, Publisher of the First News newspaper, Mr Daniel Iworiso-Markson, explained that the essence of the lecture was to brainstorm on Nigeria’s challenging economy and proffer possible solutions.

Iworiso-Markson added that the nation’s economic problems were very glaring.

He noted that Nigeria’s situation had defied known solutions. He said that was why the public lecture was organised to proffer solutions to the economic challenges.

Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri, who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Mr Gideon Ekeuwei, urged Bayelsa people to take steps to develop themselves so as to surmount the current economic crunch.