Rev. Fr. Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Vicar General of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kaduna, needs no introduction. A former Secretary-General of the Catholic Secretariat in Nigeria, Fr. Kukah as he is popularly call, is a renown scholar, prolific writer, social critic and commentator, especially on such issues as religion, ethnicity, human rights and politics.

He was the secretary of the Oputa Panel on (Human Rights Violation Commission) set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999.

He served in similar capacity at Political Reform Conference in 2005, the Uwais committee on electoral reforms in 2009 as well as the Facilitator for Ogoni/Shell Reconciliation in the Niger Delta region.

Kuka , in the interview with  Correspondent RANA BAYOK maintained that even if the report of the Uwais electoral reforms committee is implemented, it will not bring about any much changes if Nigerians don’t change their attitude. He also spoke on the frequent religious violence in the north and the challenges before Acting President Goodluck Jonathan. Excerpts.

Nigeria is approaching 50 as an independent nation and there are preparation to celebrate this golden age, what should we be celebrating?

We should be celebrating the fact that there is a Nigeria. Yugoslavia for example, wouldn’t have had anything to celebrate. We should be celebrating Nigeria as a country, at least only living people celebrate. So let’s first celebrate the fact that we are still together as a country.

Nigeria is still back ward at 50 and Nigerians attributes bad leadership and corruption as impediment to development and progress. What can you say about this?

Leaders don’t drop from the sky, they a product of an environment and the society to that extend, you can trace the poor quality of what we call leaders, you call them leaders but I will call them office holders, we can trace this to the disruptive nature of our political system. First of all, you look at the last 40 years and you see what we have had. We never had what you may call a successful peaceful transition from one government to the other. The military came to power by shooting themselves. The civilians come to power by stealing elections. So these kind of conditions don’t learnt themselves to what you may call an environment that can produce the quality of leadership that Nigeria requires.

The second point is, because of the circumstances surrounding the intervention, people who impose themselves on us come to power with very, very limited or no idea about the complex issues required building the nation. This is why presidents or Head of State of Nigeria merely presided over the corruption of the distribution of resources, not for development but purely and simply for self aggrandizement.

The truth of the matter is that the citizens of this country have never had an opportunity to defend kind of leader they have always wanted. They have never wanted soldiers; the soldiers imposed themselves on us for either 27 or 28 years. When we had politicians, it is not the ones we had wanted to elect that ended up being presidents, including the governors.

Former military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida recently claimed in an interview with a foreign medium that the present administration is more corrupt than his own. Do you agree with him?

I don’t know the measuring rod Babangida is using. Probably he is better informed about the issue than myself. Since he has presided over the affairs of this country for 8 years he is in a better position to say what yard stick he is using in comparing corruption, so it is not something I want to comment on.

He has declared his intention to come back again as president by contesting the 2011 presidential election. What do you say about that?

This country should be big enough to take anybody’s ambition and anybody’s ego. I don’t think that anybody should worry himself about who wants to become the president of Nigeria. The largeness of this country depends on people who want to compete and anybody who wants to compete should compete. So I don’t think our worry now not be because Babangida wants to come as president. That should not create unnecessary anxiety.

The toast of the World Cup is that everybody can aspire to win. So I think it is good for everybody. Let everybody who wants to be president declared his intention and let the ordinary people of Nigeria decide.

Up til now the true condition of President Umaru Musa Yar’adua is still shrouded in secrecy. Even the recent visits of both Muslim and Christian clerics have not really clear the cloud surrounding the health condition of the president. Why do you think they are hiding things from Nigerians?

I have no idea, but I don’t think that is necessarily important for how Nigeria moves. Nigeria has a structure in place that can deliver on the essentials that we required. If the family of Yar’adua decided that his ailment is a family matter, the country is moving ahead. We can only pray that God brings him back to health.

You were a member of the Uwais electoral reform committee. Nigerians are insisting that the only way of ensuring free, fair and transparent elections is the implementation of that report of your committee. Do you really think that the implementation of the report will ensure credible elections in Nigeria?

It is important to know that the same Nigerians, who want free and fair elections, must realize that these free and fair elections would not be brought about by angels. The same Nigerians are the ones who connive with the bad people. So the fact of the matter is that as far as the text of the report is concerned, it reproduced what Nigerians wants. So frankly, there are two issues involved; the first is the commitment of Nigerians to make a turn for the better and secondly to design the necessary mechanism that can actually make electoral reforms effective.

Some of these include the application of the relevant technology that made the very basic thing that has characterized Nigeria’s election impossible. From 1932 up till date we have been complaining about the same thing. Fake ballot papers, thumb printing etc, etc. Today you can get money from your account without writing a cheque, you can go to ATM and get money. Why are Nigerian politicians afraid of technology? So for, unless we begin to apply the basic technological machinery that eliminates our dependants on moral exaltations, people are not going to stop doing bad things during elections because there is a provision that they shouldn’t do that. The major antidote to electoral reforms is that these things have to move peri persu with technology.

Religious and ethnic clashes have continued to ravage this country, particularly the north where Muslims and Christians engaged in bloody clashes. Look at what is happening in Jos. What is the permanent solution to religious violence in the north?

I think leaders in Northern Nigeria must ask themselves why their area has become combustible. What is it about northern Muslims that do not happen to Muslims elsewhere? I think there are two issues. The Muslims from the South West of Nigeria are reading from the same Quran. Along with religion they have also manage to acquire education. A lot of these characters who are causing this problem in the north have no any basic education. We have a resevour of almost 12 to 15 million young people in northern Nigeria are members of the Almajiri and who have nothing to do.. This is why when people talk about trying those who are responsible for all these burnings and so on, have you ever find somebody who is working in a bank going to burn a church or going to burn a mosque? Have you found anybody who has a job and is educated, going to burn a church or mosque? Let me tell you, these are street urchins who don’t know what life is and who don’t have value for their lives. Those people, unfortunately exists only in northern Nigeria, so the question the north must ask itself is how is it that it has managed to end up with this kind of nonsense. ….The population of the Almajiri in northern Nigeria is more than the population of many African countries. In an environment where there are no industries, nothing is happening except that this country is producing Almajiri and an endless number of stealing elites who don’t even know how to steal and apply the proceeds of their theft to some meaningful development .

The Yorubas, the Igbo, I mean the elites across this country are stealing the country blind, but at least if you go to some parts of the country, you see people who are either involved in large scale or large scale manufacturing. They are producing and they are providing some kind of elements of jobs. But you know the characters we have here in northern Nigeria, all they do is politics. Whether soldiers come today, they couldn’t be bothered. All they want is access to the treasury… So unless the north decides what is going to do with this sea of humanity that is emerging… All the nonsense people are talking about trying, who are you going to try? How many Almajiri can you try and put in prison? What we have here is chaos! It is not as if it is any organized crime, you have a bunch of illiterate young people who have been taught that somebody other than them should be killed. Unfortunately some of them are being thought by Imams and Mallams that are equally as illiterate as they are. So for me these are some of the issues, that is why is good to hear that some of the governors are beginning to sit up in terms of dealing what quality and calibre of people that are free to preach.

Do you think some of the steps taken by the acting president have restored some confidence in Nigerians, especially his recent visit to the United States of America (USA).

Thank God he had the chance to step out of the shores of this country but he has accepted to take up the ministry of power. We also know that Obasanjo decided to corner the ministry of Petroleum (when he was president). We know what became of it. I think that it is a big challenge that he is giving himself a great assignment. If he can move this country in a particular direction and create and impression that we have an idea about where we are going. The man has a doctorate degree; he doesn’t have any reason to fail. The best he can do is to try and understand the texture.

Even though he has a very short time.

For goodness sake one year is a long time! You don’t need 20 years to change. Nobody is expecting miracles. At least even if it is within a period of 2 or 3 months, let Nigerians have an idea about where we are heading. Murtala didn’t do it for one year, but we had an idea about where we are going! So for me, I think the biggest challenge that Goodluck faces is to propely come to grips with what a proper diagnosis of what the problems of this country are, what we require to fix the problem, who we require to fix the problem, not all these carpet baggers that are running around they want power without having an idea about what they want to do with the power.

All these characters running around saying they want to be governors, they want to be president, most of them simply don’t have the faintest idea about what they want to do when they get that power. Their records are there for us to see, so I think that the best that we can say is that he should spend the next few months thinking about the problems. But you what? The problems of this country are littering the street; we don’t need anybody to tell us. We don’t need anybody to tell us why Nigerians are flooding to India. We don’t need anybody to tell us that Nigerians are jobless, in this office we are sitting; there is no electricity since morning. So if Jonathan has the courage and the confidence to cut through all these nonsense in the bureaucracy, the power industry is very lucrative, he is going to have quite a lot of money. A lot of money that thieves put their fingers on. He has an opportunity to at least show us that this is where we could be headed for. This is what will determine who the next president of Nigeria ought to be and what type of character we would want as president.

The Middle Belt Dialogue Forum (MBDF) has urged President Goodluck Jonathan to correct the deliberate exclusion of the Middle Belt from the political arrangement of the Nigerian nation.

The forum, in a statement signed by its spokesman Mr. Rima Shawulu Kwewum and made available to journalists in Kaduna at the weekend, noted that apart from Gen. Yakubu Gowon (rtd) who had leadership thrust upon him and worked laboriously to keep Nigeria one, the people of the Middle Belt have been neglected, and glossed over when it comes to the sharing of political positions.

“The irony of our time” the statement reads “is that the Middle Belters are often included in the definition of northern Nigeria when population figures are compiled and when they are negotiating for political consideration, but at no time are Middle Belters considered fit to occupy plum on behalf of the North.

“This point is driven home by the fact that the position of the Vice president in 1999, 2003 went to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. When the presidency was zoned to the North in 2007, the late Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar Adua took the slot; it makes sense therefore that at this point of our history, the North should concede this position to the ethnic nationalities of the Middle Belt.

“Time has now come for the country to correct this ill of ignoring ethnic nationalities of the Middle Belt. There are within the area professionals and astute politicians who are eminently qualified to be Vice President - and it would be tragic, if the President would ignore these people and go back to pick from the far north which has had more than its fair share of senior political positions, including the position of President and Vice President”.

The MBDF pointed out that when power moves to the West, it is presumed to have gone to the Yorubas, the South -South refers to the ethnic nationalities of the Niger Delta while South East refers to the Igbo, stressing that the impression should not be created that there are no people in the Middle Belt.

“Some people may argue that the Presidency needs to be balanced by a Hausa Fulani Muslim Vice President. That argument ignores the fact that the Middle Belt needs to be balanced too. It has been left in the cold for too long.

“It will be recalled that between 1984 and 1985 the head of state, General Mohammadu Buhari and his deputy General Tunde Idiagbon were both of the Hausa Fulani and were accepted by Nigerians. In 1993 a Muslim southerner, M.K.O Abiola picked a northern Muslim, Babagana Kingibe as his running mate. Religion should therefore not be used to discriminate against the Middle Belt” the forum argued.

It therefore, urged that in order to balance the distorted federal system, the Vice President should be a Christian Middle Belter, stressing that these are unusual times and there is the need to seize the occasion to stabilize Nigeria.

The Forum further expressed its condolence to the family of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Nigerians, describing his death as an irreparable and irreplaceable loss to the nation.

“We are particularly saddened because the late president had his secondary education (at Government College, Keffi) within the Middle Belt and had imbibed our well known principles of fairness which is why he chose electoral reforms as his key programme, and we had hoped that as a president who committed himself to electoral reform, Nigeria would have advanced under his rule were it not for his ill health which hampered his efforts.

While praying God to give the Yar’adua family the courage and strength to bear the loss, the MBDF also pray God to guide and strengthen President Goodluck Jonathan and give him the courage and wisdom to lead the country aright, especially by “rectifying the historical wrong, particularly the glaring injustice and marginalization of the people of the Middle Belt.

ENDS