By Anthony Adetayo

The Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah said in an interview with Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television on Thursday evening 12th July 2022, that Presidential aspirants should be prepare for intellectual conversation with the people on what they are to do to make Nigeria better.

In answer to some of the questions raised by Seun, the Bishop said “as citizens, we must sharpen our intellectual tools in order to drill the people who have made themselves available as aspirants to become our president.

The Bishop said “the promise of the a presidential aspirant is not the same as that of a President. Those who are contesting now, especially the prominent ones have had opportunities to govern in the past. What do they see as structural deficiencies in our governance? We should check their track records when they governed. We have seen promises and failures; we must be prepared to interrogate their assumptions through their track records.”

Discussing on the situation of governance, he said “it is unfortunate that we are running a system that is prone to corruption and our democracy has been bastardized in Africa”. According to the Bishop, we must ignore characters that are running around condemning others without telling us intellectually and morally what they want to do for us.

The Bishop reinterated that our mistake is that we are looking for ‘good’ people whereas democracy is about engagement. We must ask questions and they must answer. We are not in an authoritarian setup
Concerning the participation of the youths, the Bishop said “this election will be determined by young people. This is your moment and the challenge is to move beyond ethnicity and religion.

Commenting on the Muslim-Muslim ticket the APC settled for, the Bishop said “the party has made another foundation that can make us take some steps backward from our progress. This decision is reprehensible and unacceptable by me.”