The Presidency has declared as ungodly, the attack launched on it by the Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Father Mathew Kukah, over the state of insecurity in the country among other issues.
Kukah, in his Easter message on Sunday, had criticized the Presidency for running a system which had made the government and Nigerians helpless in the hand of criminals.
“The nation has since become a massive killing field, as both government and the governed look on helplessly. A thick and suffocating cloud of desperation, despondency, desolation, gloom, and misery hangs in the hot air. We have no message and have no idea how long this will last,” Kukah lamented.
However, in a statement issued on Sunday by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Malla Garba Shehu, the Presidency accused Kukah of allowing his ideology to stand in the way of facts and fairness.
The Presidency said some of the statements by Kukah in his Easter message were simply inexplicable.
The statement reads in full:
Kukah’s Buhari bashing is ungodly
All citizens have their individual ideologies, even their own versions of truth.
But if you profess to being a man of God, as Father Mathew Hassan Kukah does, ideology should not stand in the way of facts and fairness.
Father Kukah has said some things that are inexplicable in his Easter massage.
But, in saying that the Boko Haram terrorism is worse than it was in 2015, he did not speak like a man of God. Kukah should go to Borno or Adamawa to ask the citizens there the difference between 2014 and 2021. Furthermore, the Hijab issue in Kwara State on which he dwelt is a state matter which the courts of the land have adjudicated. They are matters that have appeared in several states as far back as the Obasanjo administration. In all of that, when and where did the name of President Buhari feature?
He is playing partisan politics by dragging the President into it.
An administration that has created a whole Ministry, for the first time in the country’s history, appropriating enormous resources to it, to deal with issues of internally displaced persons cannot, in all rightfulness be accused of not caring for them.
Some of the comments are no more than a sample of the unrestrained rhetoric Fr. Kukah trades in, which he often does in the guise of a homily.
We urge well-meaning citizens to continue to support the ongoing efforts by the administration to secure the country and move it forward.
Garba Shehu.
Senior Special Assistant to the President
(Media & Publicity)
April 4, 2021
