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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA Father Kukah, Third Term and the Media
Over two years ago my good friend, Reverend Father Mathew Hassan Kukah, one of the country’s most outspoken clerics, presented a powerful lecture at a conference on peace in the country organized by the Northern Governors’ Forum in Kaduna on December 1, 2004. On that occasion, the reverend father spoke on the role of religious leaders in bringing about peace in society.
This role, he said, is to tell truth to power. This was the short but clear answer he gave to a series of rhetorical questions he raised in his paper. “What” he asked among other things, “should be the role of religious leaders in an environment where people are poor in the midst of plenty? What should religious leaders say when those who govern live in a different world from those whom they govern? … What is the role of religious leaders in a society where the majority of the people are homeless and hungry and unemployed and destitute? … What is the role of religious leaders who believe that their role is to pray for government at all cost even in the face of glaring injustice?…”
A close reading of Father Kukah’s paper reveals that it was a swipe at the Muslim leadership in the country. This leadership, he insinuated, have generally not told truth to power because, in sharp contrast to the Christian religious leadership, at least the more authoritative section of the Muslim religious leadership - i.e. the emirs, as traditional-religious leaders - have been “under the pay and support of federal and state governments.” A second reason why the Muslim religious leadership has been less critical of the powers-that-be than their Christian counterparts, he said, was the kith-and-kin-and-same-faith syndrome. This, he said, is the thing that makes you took the other way when your leader does wrong because he is your kith and kin and of the same faith. And there is no doubt that since independence in 1960 the country’s secular leadership has been dominated by Muslims.
Father Kukah’s implicit conclusions about the Muslim religious leadership being less critical of the authorities than its Christian counterpart, is highly debatable. For one thing, emirs are a minority group among Muslim religious leaders and are a lot less influential than people think compared to the more independent Imams and preachers as we saw vividly in the recent polio controversy. For another, unofficial government patronage can be more effective in compromising critics of government than official patronage. And the Muslim religious leadership, as Father Kukah knows all too well, is hardly the exclusive beneficiary of such unofficial patronage.
But I digress somewhat. My main concern this morning is not to debate the reverend father’s insinuations about a relative lack of commitment of the Muslim religious leadership to the poor and oppressed. My main concern is with how, as arguably the closest approximation to a liberation theologian that Nigeria has produced, he seems of recent to have moved away from practicing what he preaches.
Only late last year I had occasion to defend him, unsolicited – the reverend father is of course more than capable of defending himself – from a vicious attack by erstwhile national president of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Mr. Smart Adeyemi, over the reverend father’s role as the Secretary-General of the National Political Reform Conference.
On that occasion, Adeyemi had attacked Father Kukah for saying the mass media’s coverage of the conference was far from accurate and far less wholesome than it should have been. .Adeyemi had also blamed Father Kukah, unfairly in my view, for the boycott of the conference by the South-South delegates, a boycott which led to its near-collapse.
However, even as I defended the reverend father, I had this sneaky feeling that he was getting too close to the powers that be, President Obasanjo in particular, for the good of his own reputation as a religious leader the public could rely on to tell truth to power.
His extensive interview with the Weekly Trust, published over the weekend, seems to have confirmed my worst fears. As an apologia for President Obasanjo’s third term agenda, that interview is hard to beat. And probably because it was an apologia, the reverend father’s usual eloquence and consistency seemed to have deserted him in the course of the interview.
Father Kukah says in effect that media fuss about the president’s third term agenda is merely a storm in a tea-cup. The third term, he said, is “a useless conversation, a waste of energies and I think it is nothing other than that. And it does not merit the attention.”
He simply cannot, he says, understand why “President Obasanjo should suddenly become so important in this matter. He is an ordinary citizen of Nigeria who happens to be holding a position.”
Few remarks can be more ineloquent and inconsistent and it typified much of the interview. The fact is that Obasanjo has not just become “suddenly” important; he has been important long before the debate over his third term agenda surfaced. And the reason is pretty obvious; far from being an “ordinary citizen of Nigeria,” he is the president of the most populous and, potentially, the richest country in Africa. Not only that, he was, until recently, chairman of the African Union and is still the chairman of the Commonwealth. The list goes on, but these three alone make him a Very Very Important Person.
As for the inconsistency in this remark, it is surely self-contradictory to say someone is an ordinary person and at the same time acknowledge that the person holds an important position, especially when that position happens to be the No. 1 in the land.
It is indeed truly amazing that the reverend father, who has said, quite rightly, that the role of religious leaders in society is to tell truth to power, would bury his head in sand and deny that there is a dubious third term agenda afoot in the country. “Quite frankly,” he said in the Weekly Trust interview, “apart from the grammatical problem I have with the third term, I don’t know what the legal basis is. But since it has got into the local vocabulary, we can’t throw it out, but the grammatical sequence is what I don’t get.”
Father Kukah can’t “get it”, because he has, it seems to me, chosen to confuse himself. The fact is there is nothing ungrammatical about the terminology. It simply means someone has served two terms and wants to get one more.
As for the legal basis of the terminology, this is really beside the point. Right now the constitution imposes a limit of two terms on the executive offices of the president and governors. So anyone who wants more than those two terms would have to get the rules changed. What those opposed to the third term agenda are saying is that it is immoral to change the rules of the game while it is still on. And no one can deny that the presidency has been doing everything to see that the rules of the game are changed to allow for a third term.
As a religious leader, Father Kukah should be concerned more about the moral basis of the third term agenda than about its legal basis. Instead, he seems to take great offense at the media and the public simply because they have chosen to make the president’s third term agenda a central issue of governance. Said Father Kukah, “All these political eunuchs who were not able to do anything when General Abacha was around; suddenly everyone has cleaned his mouth and returned as a politician. Fine, but for God’s sake, after all was said and done, lets not forget where General Obasanjo was when he was picked up to become president. Nigerians don’t learn a lesson.”
Perhaps it is the apparent incoherence of this remark and the reverend father’s gratuitous resort to name-calling, but I find it had to understand what lesson Father Kukah wants us to learn from Obasanjo’s fortuitous escape from death at Abacha’s hands. Is it that the wishes of a man so lucky should not be questioned because he is God’s anointed and infallible? In any case why call those opposed to the third term agenda political eunuchs? Since when has it become an offense to express one’s opinion in a democratic setting?
Father Kukah says he cannot see why President Obasanjo’s aspiration for a third term, which he insists the president is entitled to, should worry anyone. “Aspirations are not human rights and one is free to dream. So I don’t see why anyone should worry about another person’s dream. The real issue is how does it concern me?”
The answer is simple. Wishes may not be horses. but those of the president of a nation cannot but be a matter of concern to all its citizens for the simple reason that he has enormous resources of state at his disposal and it is tempting to use those resources to realize those wishes whether they are in the public interest or not.
Of the many inexplicable things Father Kukah said in our interview in question, however, the one I found most shocking was his assertion that under President Obasanjo things have gotten better, not worse, than when he returned to power in 1999. “People”, he said, “keep saying to me people are dying and things are getting worse. And I say it is not true … Things are getting better and it could get even better than they are.” Presumably if Obasanjo gets his third term wish?
Presently Father Kukah is the Vicar-General of the Arch-diocese of Kaduna with headquarters in Kaduna South, home to the largest textile industry in Nigeria. More than anyone the reverend father knows that the industry, located almost literally at his doorstep, has virtually collapsed, thanks in part to the economic policies of President Obasanjo. The implications of this collapse for the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians are pretty obvious.
Hundreds of these jobless Nigerians live in the reverend father’s backyard. How, in the light of this, he can assert unequivocally that things have gotten better and not worse since 1999 truly beggars belief.
Over two years ago the reverend father preached about the necessity for religious leaders to tell truth to power even on pain of losing their status in society if they wish to bring about justice in society as the only basis for peace. In his interview with the Weekly Trust he did everything but tell truth to power.
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