It’s Graceless, Impious For Religious Leaders To Use The Christmas Season To Stoke Embers Of Hatred – Lai Mohammed Fires Back At Bishop Kukah

Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, has hit back at Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, for criticising the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration on the worsening level of insecurity in the country.

MERIDIAN SPY reported earlier Bishop Kukah, in his Christmas message titled, ‘A Nation in Search of Vindication,’ said the President owes Nigerians an explanation as to where the nation is headed given the growing rate of killings in the country, noting that it appears the nation is “heading for darkness under his administration”.

The Catholic clergy also accused President Buhari of nepotism, favouring people from the North and “reducing others in public life to second-class status”.

“Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any non-Northern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has done by his nepotism and gotten away with it,” he noted.

But responding in a statement on Saturday, Mohammed said it was “graceless and impious for any religious leader to use the period of Christmas, which is a season of peace, to stoke the embers of hatred, sectarian strife and national disunity”.

He added that religious leaders have a responsibility to speak truth to power and such truth must not come “wrapped in anger, hatred, disunity and religious disharmony”.

“The Federal Government has urged religious leaders in the country to refrain from stoking the embers of hatred and disunity, warning that resorting to scorched-earth rhetoric at this time could trigger unintended consequences,” the statement reads.

“It is particularly graceless and impious for any religious leader to use the period of Christmas, which is a season of peace, to stoke the embers of hatred, sectarian strife and national disunity.

”Calling for a violent overthrow of a democratically-elected government, no matter how disguised such a call is, and casting a particular religion as violent is not what any religious leader should engage in, and certainly not in a season of peace.

“Instigating regime change outside the ballot box is not only unconstitutional but also an open call to anarchy.

“While some religious leaders, being human, may not be able to disguise their national leadership preference, they should refrain from stigmatizing the leader they have never supported anyway, using well-worn and disproved allegations of nepotism or whatever.”

The Minister further noted that whatever challenges Nigeria may be going through at this moment can only be tackled when all leaders and indeed all Nigerians come together, not when some people “arrogantly” engage in name-calling and finger-pointing.