Adesina to Kukah: “Who listens to that Bishop again? He’s still pained that he got no under-the-cassock patronage from Buhari, unlike in the past. As e dey pain them, e dey sweet us.”
By Emma Ogbuehi
In apparent riposte to damning criticism that his administration took corruption to the next level, former President Muhammadu Buhari has reacted to an allegation by the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah, of his administration nurturing corruption.
Buhari, who said the allegation was in bad faith, insisted that the cleric is still pained that he (Buhari) did not patronise him (Kukah) as Nigeria’s President.
Buhari spoke through his former spokesman, Femi Adesina, in a tweet on Tuesday hours after Kukah said Nigerians witnessed the worst phase of corruption under his administration.
Kukah spoke on Monday while delivering a keynote speech at the 60th call-to-bar anniversary of legal luminary, Aare Afe Babalola, in Ado Ekiti, the capital of Ekiti State.
The cleric said though corruption did not start under the last administration, the Buhari government amplified it in the last eight years.
READ ALSO:What Femi Adesina told me in the Villa, says Bishop Kukah
“We have seen the worst phase of corruption in Nigeria, Femi Falana, my friend here will speak about that because he has published a series of articles talking about what happened under the Buhari administration.
“They were not the ones who caused corruption but I think in the last administration, we saw the ugliest phase of corruption whether in moral terms, financial terms and other terms,” Kukah said.
But reacting on Tuesday, Adesina said, “Who listens to that Bishop again? He’s still pained that he got no under-the-cassock patronage from Buhari, unlike in the past. As e dey pain them, e dey sweet us.”
Bishop Kukah had been trenchant in drawing the attention of the former President to the dangers his opaque style of leadership posed to the corporate existence of the country.
On occasions, he had blamed the former President for contributing to the problems confronting the country by allowing petty considerations affect his criteria for selecting people for national offices. He wondered how Buhari who ran his campaign on the wings of integrity and moral probity, would on coming to office, bring nepotism and clannishness into strategic sectors of the national being, including the military and the ancillary security agencies, to the point of his government being marked by supremacist and divisive policies that pushed the country to the brink.
