I watched The Platform, October 1st 2015 as aired by Channels TV. Many speakers touched very important points on Nigeria but one speaker who i found very interesting was Mathew kukah, Bishop of Sokoto diocese of the catholic church. I decided to take my time and make excerpts of his presentation which he titled Nigeria:Euphoria, Hysteria & Dementia, still a long walk to freedom. Other Notable speakers were Prof. Pat Utomi, Vice President Osinbajo, Prof Pius Adesanmi and Olusegun Adeniyi. Here is Bishop Mathew Kukah's

...We are looking for facilitators, we are not looking for leaders and most of us are better educated than those who have been our leaders. The consequences are enormous because part of the problem of Nigeria is that we have not placed enough premium on the calibre and quality of people that need to lead us, their sheer capacity...

The business of govt is to create an environment where everyone can compete according to their ability in peace and security.

I want to make the case therefore, that when we look back at the past, every govt in Nigeria has promised to fight corruption but they almost
consistently left us worse than where we started out... and for me this is why i think our collective amnessia... We must not be mistaken, every govt requires an opposition of sort and we think that opposition simply means politics and political parties. We need to set minimum standard of behaviour that are acceptable to us as individuals and are also acceptable to our leaders.

You know corrupt people are not necessarily bad people, they are extremely good people and they do alot of good things. but we live in a country where too many good people are doing alot of bad things. and i think Pat(Utomi) made the point, what is the relationship between culture and development? Africa is involved in what i call the politics and economy of affection, everybody who steals, steals for a righteous cause.


when people say for example why did Obasanjo not do like Mandela, namely serve one term. Unfortunately we have not subjected this to some level of intellectual interrogation and i think we ought to have.. obasanjo from bama prison, on the road to damascus came back.. I think he is genuinely serious about his religion, i have read the books he have written. From beginning to end Mandela never mentioned church one day. People say well they both went to prison, ah! everybody knows that if mandela had gone to prison in Nigeria, he wouldn't have survived. but the truth of the matter, i think despite that, we must raise the question of the methodoly of ascent to power...people ask why am i radical? my becoming a priest coincided with one of the most convulated faces against apartheid and that was what shaped my thinking, namely the killing of steve biko, then as now it affected me tremendously.

but we know that the circumstances that led to mandela becoming president are completely different. he inherited a political party which was
virtually a secular church by virtue of its doctrine,what it taught, the discipline...it was already a party with over 70-80yrs of strict discipline. that is what brought mandela to power. now when you expect the same thing from president obasanjo who came to power through pdp and
pdp the circumstances of the formation of the party are better know to you cos you know better than myself. it therefore suggest the expectations are different, culturally, politically and otherwise.

of course mandela inherited an economic system, a bearucratic system, black blood may have paid for it but not withstanding that...however obasanjo inherited a system that was severely weakened and this is why uptil today every nigerian president is at liberty to make and break whatever he likes and doesn't like. if you take a nigerina president even the worst one and i wont tell you which one, to the USA, they can govern america for 20yrs, they wouldnt be able to steal 50,000dollars but if you take an american president or british prime minister and you bring him to nigeria... well you want to set up an anti corruption angency, you have to bribe the National assembly. [but] we are not looking for mere good men, i want to say this without being immodest since i met shagari in 1982, except for two i have met every other nigerian president. there is hardly anybody i can say didnt have the passion to do good for Nigeria, wether they had the ability or capacity is a different matter. it is not as if we are being governed by murderers or people who just want to destroy this country, it is that you have a severely weakened structure of governance and you also have a culture that predisposes the best leaders to corruption.

...corruption is driven by greed, we are all in agreement that we require internal mechanism to restrain our personal greed...

..we christains must wake up to the reality of our challenge as christains. It is inconceivable, that the word of God can live side by side, very
comfortably with the decadence that we live with in our society... I am only saying the fight against corruption is beyond mere verbal, moral exhualtation. we are faced with a choice between david and goliath and the choice of weapons is ours and we must choose as the business men say 'areas of our competitive advantage' and for me as a priest the best we can do is prayer but I am not fooled, prayer in the way and manner it is in Nigeria has become a substitute for us not doing anything.

Now we have come to a point in our life that we are all convinced that somehow we can tell the mind of God, that we can measure God's approval of us by the size of our prosperity and this is why corruption can live side by side with us.

..we can fix this country but fixing this country must just not be about us hoping, praying and wailing.
I believe that buhari is not a new kid on the block, he has been there before, he also fought corruption and in the process lost his job, oh yes he lost his job [as a result of it] but what is also very interesting and am sure buhari must know, is that when he lost his job not a single nigerian went out on the streets (in protest) because this is a country where hypocrisy is worn as a garment of honour.

We must understand that this is a journey that is a long walk to freedom, it is a long walk to freedom because we have collectively lost our innocence.