Lasun Alagbe
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has warned the Bishop of Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Mathew Kukah, for allegedly indirectly calling for a coup against the Buhari government.
According to Mohammed, the Christmas season is that of peace, when no one should in any way call for violence.
He was reacting to Kukah’s Christmas message in which he lambasted President Mohammadu Buhari as a nepotism-promoting leader.
According to Kukah, if Buhari was not a Northern Muslim, and he was demonstrating nepotism as being allegedly experienced, a coup would have been staged.
But Mohammed, in a statement on Saturday, said such expressions should not be coming from a religious leader.
He said:
“t is “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.
“While some religious leaders, being human, may not be able to disguise their national leadership preference, they should refrain from stigmatising the leader they have never supported anyway, using well-worn and disproved allegations of nepotism or whatever,” Mohammed further stated.
“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.”
Kukah had insisted that Buhari was trampling on the entitlement of other peoples of Nigeria.
“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.
“There would have been a military coup a long time ago or we would have been at war. The President may have concluded that Christians will do nothing and will live with these actions.
“He may be right and we Christians cannot feel sorry that we have no pool of violence to draw from or threaten ourcountry. However, God does not sleep. We can see from the inexplicable dilemma of his North,” he said.
