The Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Bishop Hassan Kukah, has called on Christians to rise up and defend their faith with all the moral weapons they have, become more politically alert, wise as the serpent and humble as the dove.
Bishop Kukah stated this on Tuesday, in his homily at the funeral mass of seminarian Michael Nnadi, at Good Shepherd Seminary, Kaduna.
Michael was killed by unknown gunmen, who abducted him alongside three others in their hostel.
To the body of Christ, he defined the sad moment as a wakeup call and a metaphor for the fate of all Christians in Nigeria, especially, where it seems all Christian men and women are marked in northern Nigeria.
Reacting to Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) address at Chatham House in London prior to the 2015 general elections on his promise to place the country on an even keel, Bishop Kukah said, “No one could have imagined that in winning the Presidency, General Buhari would bring nepotism and clannishness into the military and the ancillary Security Agencies, that his government would be marked by supremacist and divisive policies that would push our country to the brink.
“This President has displayed the greatest degree of insensitivity in managing our country’s rich diversity. He has subordinated the larger interests of the country to the hegemonic interests of his co-religionists and clansmen and women. The impression created now is that, to hold a key and strategic position in Nigeria today, it is more important to be a northern Muslim than a Nigerian.
“Today, in Nigeria, the noble religion of Islam has convulsed. It has become associated with some of worst fears among our people. Muslim scholars, traditional rulers and intellectuals have continued to cry out helplessly, asking for their religion and region to be freed from this choke-hold.
“This is because, in all of this, neither Islam nor the north can identify any real benefits from these years that have been consumed by the locusts that this government has unleashed on our country.
“The Fulani, his innocent kinsmen, have become the subject of opprobrium, ridicule, defamation, calumny and obloquy. His north has become one large grave yard, a valley of dry bones, the nastiest and the most brutish part of our dear country.
“Nigeria is at a point where we must call for a verdict. There must be something that a man, nay, a nation should be ready to die for. Sadly, or even tragically, today, Nigeria, does not possess that set of goals or values for which any sane citizen is prepared to die for her. Perhaps, I should correct myself and say that the average office holder is ready to die to protect his office but not for the nation that has given him or her that office.”
“The Yorubas say that if it takes you 25 years to practice madness, how much time would you have to put it into real life? We have practiced madness for too long. Our attempt to build a nation has become like the agony of Sisyphus who angered the gods and had to endure the frustration of rolling a stone up the mountain. Each time he got near the top, the gods would tip the stone back and he would go back to start all over again. What has befallen our nation?”
Bishop Kukah said the entire Catholic community shared in the burden of late Michael, the first seminarian to carry the mark of this brutality and wickedness.
Through Maria Lozano, a staff of the Aid to the Church In Need, an organisation dedicated to the cause of the persecution of Christians around the world, 2, 436 persons from Afghanistan, Pakistan, United States of America, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Madagascar, South Africa, Congo, Mali, Spain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia lighted a candle for Michael on the day of his burial. Germany alone had a total of 3,305 persons in a matter of hours.
