Bishop of the Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Kukah, has blamed the government at the centre for the heightened agitations for the balkanisation of the country along ethnic lines coming from various quarters.
Kukah said the Buhari government, elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is making people alienated and disenchanted with Nigeria as it is currently constituted through inequality in power distribution.
The cleric, however, warned proponents of secession that as appealing as it appears the cost of staying together as a nation is cheaper than the cost of dividing Nigeria.
Kukah spoke virtually at the 2021 edition of The Platform, an annual conference organised by Pastor Poju Oyemade of the Covenant Christian Centre, Lagos.
The programme was themed, ‘Is Devolution of Powers The Solution To Nigeria’s Problems’.
He said, “The challenge now is how do we connect back because all the things we are hearing now, nobody would have expected to hear them and now everybody wants to go home.
“Yes, it may be right for everybody to want to go. Yes, it may be right for people to want to feel so dissatisfied that they want an end to what we have today. But the cost of staying together is far cheaper than the cost than the cost of everybody going his way.
“The most important thing here is that the government must give us a reason – the body language – we need to be inspired as a country to inspire ourselves that this country is worth the psychological, the spiritual and the cultural engagements.”
Those demanding that the constituent parts making up the geographical entity called Nigeria should go their separate ways have become more vociferous in their agitations recently.
From the Indigenous People of Biafra to Ilana Omo Oodua amongst others, the calls for separation and self-determination have increased, fuelled by the unprecedented insecurity in the country as well as the supposed nepotism and unequal distribution of economic resources by the Buhari government.
“Anybody who loves this country would have to accept the fact that the APC as a government and the President must take responsibility for the fact that the way power has been distributed in Nigeria has created a sense of alienation and it is the underlining factor why people feel the way they feel, why people feel so disenchanted, why people don’t feel a sense of psychological, emotional, cultural or even economical involvement in their country and there is the need to reclaim all of those things back,” Kukah added.
