Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, has warned President Muhammadu Buhari to adjust his style of leadership.
Kukah said this in his Easter message titled: ‘Easter Message to Mr. President And All Nigerians’.
“Mr. President, you are too distant from your people.
“There is a sad feeling that you do not share in the pain and suffering of your people. You must very quickly find a way of connecting with your people before the devil takes over the space,” the cleric said in the letter.
The Bishop reminded Buhari: “This is no ordinary Easter, because these are no ordinary times for our country, Nigeria, over which you preside.”
He noted that the country “is so split both vertically and horizontally today that all of us must honestly identify our many sins of omission and commission, so that we can honestly seek a solution.”
According to him, “This is a time for us to genuinely face what looks to me like an impending calamity. The gathering clouds are clear for us to see. And even those who cannot see can hear the rumbling and rolling sound of thunder. We ignore them at our own risk.”
Kukah regretted that although Buhari “rode into town like a knight in shining armour…the bogeyman of religion, region and ethnicity, which we thought we had overcome by the sheer nature of your support base, have come back with a vengeance to haunt and threaten the very foundation of our existence.”
He told the President: “You have a date with history and divine judgment.”
The bishop criticised religious leaders for being “as divided as the people” they lead, saying: “We have been seduced by powerful politicians and have allowed politics to corrupt the sacred spaces of religion.
“Thus we have lost our voices and no longer seem to have the capacity to interrogate power, as we are called to do.”
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