Kukah added that Yar’Adua’s predecessor, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, also came unprepared for the job of the leader of Nigeria.
By Jeffrey Agbo
Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan-Kukah, has said that Nigeria, in her history, has never had a president who came prepared for the position.
In a broadcast aired on Sunday on Channels Television, the cleric said a lot of the political changes experienced in Nigeria were largely “unprogrammed.”
“You can go all the way down in Nigeria, you’re not going to find one single person who has been president or head of state in Nigeria that came prepared for the job,” Kukah said.
Using the analogy of a bad marriage to explain the relationship between Nigeria and its political leaders, the cleric said, “I always say to people as a priest that the solution to a bad marriage is not a new marriage. It’s often an attempt to look at what has gone wrong. And if you jump into a new marriage very quickly, after some time, you become nostalgic about the first marriage.
The cleric further said, “Military coups by themselves that stretched over 20 years, were just glorified banditry and armed robbery because you pull the gun and became a head of state.”
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Going down memory lane, he said, “If I take you back, we have President Muhammadu Buhari who already in 2011 had said, ‘I don’t want to be president again, I’m tired.’ He was literally pulled out screaming to be president in 2015.
“He took over from (Goodluck) Jonathan. Jonathan himself, you know the circumstances that brought him to power. (Umaru) Yar’Adua before him; Yar’Adua was already saying, ‘I’m done, I want to go back to teach in the university.”
Kukah added that Yar’Adua’s predecessor, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, also came unprepared for the job of the leader of Nigeria.
“Obasanjo was in prison hoping that one day, he would walk out of prison, and if he’s strong enough, he’d go back to his farm. You can go on and on,” he said.
