Nigeria Yet To Produce A President Ready For The Office – Bishop Kukah Spills

The Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, has said Nigeria is yet to produce a president ready for the task ahead.

According to him, in the history of the country since independence on October 1, 1960, Nigeria had never gotten a leader who was prepared for the job when they took over office.

Naija News reports that Kukuh, who made this submission when he was featured on Channels Television’s Roadmap 2023, likened Nigeria and its political leaders to a bad marriage.

He said “You can go all the way down in Nigeria, you’re not going to find one single person who has been president or head of state in Nigeria that came prepared for the job.

“I always say to people as a priest that the solution to a bad marriage is not a new marriage. It’s often an attempt to look at what has gone wrong. And if you jump into a new marriage very quickly, after some time, you become nostalgic about the first marriage.

“Metaphorically, you can say the same thing about Nigeria. A lot of these changes that we have seen in Nigeria are largely unprogrammed.”

The clergyman explained further that the parallel of unpreparedness was evident in Yar’Adua’s predecessor, former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

He added that “Obasanjo was in prison hoping that one day, he would walk out of prison, and if he’s strong enough, he’d go back to his farm. You can go on and on.

“Abdulsalami was about to be retired from the military when Abacha died and he became head of state. If we’re to return to the crime scene, that’s where you have to go back to.”

Kukah further stated that “There’s been nothing linear,” he explained. “In the sense that military coups by themselves that stretch over a 20-year period were just glorified banditry and armed robbery because you pull the gun and became a head of state.

“If I take you back, we have President Buhari now. President Buhari already in 2011 had said, ‘I don’t want to be president again, I’m tired.’ He was literally pulled out screaming to be president in 2015.

“He took over from Jonathan. Jonathan himself, you know the circumstances that brought him to power. Yar’Adua before him; Yar’Adua was already saying, ‘I’m done, I want to go back to teach in the university.’”

This platform gathered that Nigeria had had 16 leaders – eight civilian presidents/prime ministers and eight military heads of state since her independence on October 1, 1960.

The civilian leaders include late Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1960-1966), and presidents Nnamdi Azikiwe (1963-1966), Shehu Shagari (1979-1983), Ernest Shonekan (Aug.-Nov. 1993), Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007), Umaru Yar’Adua (2007-2010), Goodluck Jonathan (2010-2015), and Muhammadu Buhari (2015-date).

While previous military heads of state include Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi (Jan.-Jul. 1966), General Yakubu Gowon (1966-1975), General Murtala Muhammed (1975-1976), and General Olusegun Obasanjo (1976-1979), Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (1983-1985), General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993), General Sani Abacha (1993-1998), and General Abdulsalami Abubakar (1998-1999).