The Catholic Secretariat in Nigeria (CSN) has replied a statement by the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) calling for the removal of Bishop Matthew Hasan Kukah as Convener of the National Peace Committee over his attendance of the reconciliation of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
In a Wednesday statement by Director of Church and Society, Rev. Fr. Evaristus Bassey, the CSN described the call as “mischievous”, saying that Kukah was merely doing his job.
However, the CSN lamented that Kukah’s attendance of the reconciliation meeting was hijacked and politicised.
The statement read in part, “The animosity between President Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar, his erstwhile deputy, has long remained a national embarrassment and Bishop Kukah and the National Peace Committee have been making efforts behind the scenes for their reconciliation.
“These attempts have been on long before Atiku Abubakar became the presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party. If the members of the BMO read Bishop Kukah’s explanatory notes at all, they would not come up with the misleading call for Bishop Kukah’s withdrawal from the National Peace Committee, whereas the reconciliation between the two leaders has been part of the agenda.
“That the move was eventually hijacked and politicised is not Bishop Kukah’s fault at all. If the Presidency could deny that they had nothing to do with the proposed recall of Senator (Shehu) Sani even when (Mallam Ahmed Nasir) el-Rufai offered this information unsolicited and we are expected to believe this, why would a simple, straightforward explanation that Bishop Kukah has laboured to make not suffice?”
The CSN also recalled when the Buhari administration recently invited some Muslim clerics to the State House to solicit their support ahead of 2019 and some of the clerics openly pledged their support.
“How does the President meet with Muslim clerics to endorse him on the one hand and goes to an interfaith conference to berate clerics for being partisan just because some notable clerics were involved in a reconciliation move that had opposition elements as the object?
“What we want to let the BMO know is that a Catholic Bishop is ordinarily so well trained and experienced and so full of the sense of the common good, that the only partisanship he may have is what promotes the good of the poor,” the statement further read.
According to the statement, “In 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari was contesting the Presidency, he visited the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria and he was granted an audience. Why has it suddenly become a crime for a National Peace Committee convener to do his job of facilitating peace between two national figures?
“If it is the fear of losing elections that is the main concern here, the BMO should rest assured that the election outcome would depend mostly on how voters assess this government and not whether Bishop Kukah reconciled Obasanjo with Atiku Abubakar; that is if the election would be free and fair.”
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