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Bishop MATTHEW HASSAN-KUKAH
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, a prominent Catholic cleric, social commentator, former Chairman of the Kaduna State Peace Commission, and the Archbishop of Sokoto Diocese, spoke at length about the urgent need to confront Nigeria’a challenges as the keynote speaker at the 60th birthday and book launch of renowned journalist Ruben Abati a few days ago.
He began by reflecting on a philosophy adopted by the Chinese, which emphasizes moderation. They have chosen a philosophy of the N-E-A-N, which stands for “Not Extremes, Always Neutral,” the mean, that is the meaning, against extremes.
“The foundation of Chinese life is moderation. Using the pendulum as a model, they say that this teaching assumes that there should be no extremes, and there must be a deliberate effort to find an equilibrium. In a sense of virtue, not necessarily the kind of virtue, virtue is what makes us human, so it’s not about which religion you worship; it’s a fundamental issue. So if you find us being such a chaotic, quarrelsome, angry, whatever, as we are in Nigeria, we lack a mean, we lack a culture, we lack the institutional or the moral inspiration to establish that kind of an equilibrium.”
He then posed a critical question about Nigeria’s leadership: “So we ask ourselves, who are our founding fathers? Because strange as it may sound, when you talk to the Chinese and how they see themselves, many of us think that the Chinese are running a dictatorship. Actually, the Chinese are running a multi-party system, where there are political parties in China other than the Communist Party. The only right that these other parties have is the right to agree with the Communist Party. But there are eight parties that also posture, and posture, and posture. You know the story of the tortoise? They say that the tortoise was carried. The tortoise said, ‘What about it?’ They said, ‘We are taking you on exile.’ The tortoise said, ‘What about it?’ They said, ‘No, we are taking you on exile.’ Then said, ‘Okay, please put me down.’ So they put the tortoise down. The tortoise scratched the ground, scratched the ground more, and then he got on. He said, ‘Okay, carry me.’ And they said, ‘What have you done?’ He said, ‘Look, this scratching of the ground that I have done, I want my people coming after me to know that I resisted, only that I was overpowered.’ So the Chinese allow eight parties to pretend that they are also contesting for the election, and they do contest for election. The challenge in my view is, what can we say about Nigeria? Who can we say are our founding fathers?”
Bishop Kukah acknowledged the historical literature on Nigeria, saying: “Now, there is, I’m told, quite a lot of literature around, and many of you are better informed than myself, and I won’t go into it. But we all have a bit of familiarity with the story of how we got to be where we are today. My friend Azu is here. Just two weeks ago, he gave me a copy of the book called The Harold Smith Story, Esqually End to Empire. He talks about all the shenanigans that are not in the text, what happened when the British left us this place called Nigeria.
But there’s also a very interesting book, titled A Fatherless People. The author, Dele Ogun, to my greatest surprise, sent me a copy, but it talks eloquently about where things began to go wrong for us in Nigeria. And it eloquently makes the point very clearly about what the British did, and how they surreptitiously kept Awolowo away, because they realized that Awolowo himself, his problem was that while in the United Kingdom as a student, he had imbibed the philosophy of Fabianism. Fabianism was the foundation of the Labour Party, and the Fabian movement in England. It’s a very respectable movement.
Now, the Fabian Society is a very prestigious institution. I mean, sorry, they were responsible for founding what is now the London School of Economics. I’m sure there are people here who went to LSE. And for those of you who are in LSE, LSE has produced 50 former heads of state. It has produced 20 Nobel laureates, but they were founded by the Fabian Society.
But because Harold Wilson, who was president then, was a conservative, they were naturally afraid that Awolowo might introduce radical principles of Fabianism into Nigeria. The result was a deliberate effort to keep him away from circulation.”
He continued: “What happened to Nnamdi Azikiwe? Nnamdi Azikiwe comes from the United States of America. They know who deals with these issues and speaks about the frustration that led him to end up in Ghana. But they also didn’t want Nigeria to be diluted by the radical politics of America and the Fabian movement in the United Kingdom. If you bring all this to our situation, it means that we are acting a play we didn’t write, but a play that is also full of plots that we’re not prepared to deal with.
So, we now ask ourselves, in our own case, who do we say are our founding fathers? Many of you remember the anecdote about Nnamdi Azikiwe and Sadona, saying, Nnamdi Azikiwe said, ‘Sadona, for us to build a great nation, let’s forget our differences.’ And Sadona said, ‘No, let’s not forget. Let us remember them.’ The implications and the distinction between forgetting and remembering is what has brought us to where we are today. So, if you find yourself moving without motion, there is a reason.”
He examined the historical tensions that shaped Nigeria: “In 1957, there were debates. There were all kinds of problems as to what this country would look like. The minorities in the South were afraid of domination by the Igbos. The minorities in the North were afraid of domination by the Hausa Fulani. But the British had given the North three quarters of the land. And instead, in response to the Minority Commission’s report, we were told, ‘No, don’t worry, you Christian minority, don’t worry, the North will look after you.’ Looking after us for this number of years, now Trump has come knocking. So, this is not where we ought to be, but this is where we found ourselves. So, I want to make the point that we must go back in reloading to ask ourselves, what is happening? What are we doing? What can we do differently?”
Bishop Kukah then referred to President Jonathan’s proactive initiatives: “His foundation was rather prophetic. Because in September last year, he invited me to Ghana, a conference on how democracies die. Only about a few days ago, the Pew Foundation in America conducted research to find out the level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with democracy across the whole world. Listen carefully: their findings say that Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States all registered 64% of adults saying they are dissatisfied with democracy, and only 33% said they are satisfied with democracy.
Only two African countries were surveyed, Kenya and South Africa. Kenya registered 58% dissatisfaction and 42% satisfaction. South Africa registered 63% dissatisfaction and 33% satisfaction. Our dissatisfaction with democracy is interesting because India, in the findings, is the only country that registered 23% of disapproval, meaning 77% of Indians are satisfied with democracy.”
He analyzed the reasons behind these statistics: “Perhaps the nature of the non-universal aspects of Asian religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and so on. Because the reason why Nigerians are having problems with Islam and Christianity is their universal claims. Some of these religions are used to define people’s cultural identities, so they are not necessarily conflictual. People are not struggling for space. So the point is that in our own case here in Nigeria, we’ve had a lot of debate about what we need to do. I think most of the scholars, everybody seems to agree that if we can get our elections right, everything in Nigeria will be okay.
But I say to priests, ordination is a ceremony, it’s not the priesthood. A wedding is not a marriage, it’s just a ceremony. What happens after wedding is different, because it’s after the wedding that the marriage, the real marriage, starts. Nobody could have imagined, for example, that when this beautiful historic wedding on the 29th of July 1981, when Prince Charles married Princess Diana, was a ceremony that the world stood still for. But nobody could have imagined what happened on August 28, 1966, when the marriage crashed.”
He emphasized the importance of laws over personalities: “The point I’m making is that free, fair, credible elections are necessary, but they are not a sufficient condition for the institutionalization of democracy because there is still a lot of hard work. On this argument, President Jonathan will remember, my suggestion is that we need to target certain areas. What do you want to remedy when you are making a law?
For example, we are witnessing a flood of defections now across the entire country. These defections cannot happen in Ghana. They can’t happen in Ghana. You know why? Not because Ghanaians are not hungry, not because they are not angry, not because they don’t feel betrayed, but because they have a law that says that if you defect, you have 42 days for a new election to be conducted, an election in which you cannot participate.
Many of us think, sometimes people think that all we are looking for in a democracy is good men to govern us. Absolute nonsense. I tell people, if I went to my parish, if I say, ‘Go to your wife now, Madam, you know, this is your husband, what a wonderful human being. I want to make him chairman of the parish council. I want him to be responsible because he’s such a wonderful human being.’ A poor woman would look at me and say, ‘Poor man, he doesn’t know what I’m going through.’ So we are not looking for good people, we are looking for good laws to restrain even the best from trying to break those laws.”
He continued drawing lessons from China and other nations: “The Chinese, drawing from the teachings of Confucius, which is like their bible, the Analects, for example, one quotation in the Analects says, ‘Never impose on others what you will not choose for yourself.’ In the Ghanaian system, they have amended their laws. They went through worse things than us, but right now to be a speaker of the Ghanaian parliament, the speaker is selected by the president, and it is possible for Bishop Kukah to be, who is a Ghanaian, to become speaker of the parliament. Once you become speaker, you are no longer in a position to hold loyalty to your party.
President Jonathan will probably tell his own story about his experience, I think he told it in Ghana, when the speaker defected with five members. Our law says that if you defect, you have to write a letter to the speaker, who will announce that you have defected. Now the speaker has defected, who is going to write a letter to whom? These are the kind of constraints we need to remove from our system.”
He concluded with a moral appeal and warning: “Finally, I wanted to make reference to something that Olisa Agbakoba wrote as his remedy for the review of our constitution. There’s also something about the judiciary, which I wanted to talk about, but let me end by saying an appeal of force. Men and women have made tremendous sacrifices to get us to where we are, and we are very lucky. This gentleman that is sitting here, we are very lucky because the world is looking for him. Very often people ask if you have people like the president, why are you still having problems?
Well, we are running on half time already. It is time for us to begin to think a bit more clearly about the kind of values that can hold our society together. Finally, just a word on the Trump thing. All of us are confusing Trump for his sickness. It’s a symptom, not a disease. Trump is a symptom of the disease that is in our country. I think it’s Yoruba people who say that it doesn’t matter if a snake is dead, whether a woman kills it or whether the snake is dead. So whether it is Trump or whoever that has given us this job, it is time for Nigeria to wake up. Thank you very much.”
By Benprince Ezeh
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