Kukah: There’s consequence for using religion to manipulate politics

Matthew Kukah, Catholic bishop of Sokoto, says there are consequences for using religion to manipulate politics.

Kukah said this on Monday at a discussion of his new book, “Broken Truth” at Rovingheights Bookstore, Abuja.

The book is a collection of key convocation lectures delivered at several universities in Nigeria. It covers several topics such as education, democracy and leadership as it relates to Nigeria.

Kukah, while recalling the issue of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Muslim-Muslim ticket, said using religion to control politics has consequences that Nigerian politicians do not understand.

“If you look at history, there’s a consequence for using religion to manipulate politics. We just need to look at Germany, the consequences are there to see in Hitler,” he said.

“The problem is that the Nigerian political elites lack the mental capacity to understand the consequences of the fire they are stoking because there is nothing to suggest, the average person who is living in the north, who is Fulani, who is a Muslim, who is Hausa, can say that they are proud of the Nigerian political system, beyond a very tiny percentage.

“And I have said that Buhari’s recruitment process has the tendency to cause a threat because we have lost the moral right to quarrel with Boko Haram who say except you accept our way, you will die.

“If you decide that you want to give privilege to a religion or an ethnic group, what will happen is that others automatically become outsiders.”