President Muhammadu Buhari has come under another round of attack as the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah, said that the greatest tragedy of his government is the death of empathy.
In his Easter message, Kukah said that Buhari’s government clay-footed fight against corruption had not moved the needle of transparency forward.
According to him, Nigeria, being the poverty capital of the world, came with its rewards such as banditry, violence, death, sorrow, blood, poverty, misery, and tears.
The Catholic Bishop added that the nation’s cup of sorrow is permanently full; hence the exponential rise in the frustration curve across the country.
Kukah stated:
Sadly, human life is haemorrhaging so badly in Nigeria, but the greatest tragedy is the death of empathy from those in power.
Mysteriously, the government is investing billions of naira in rehabilitating so-called Boko Haram repentant members and their other partners in crime in the belief that they want to turn a new leaf.
According to Kukah, these criminals have waged war against their country, murdered thousands of citizens, destroyed infrastructure and rendered entire families permanently displaced and dislocated.
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He asked:
Why should rehabilitating the perpetrators be more important than bringing succour to the victims? When kidnapped or killed, victims and their families are left to their wits. They cry alone, bury their loved ones alone.
And our government expects us to be patriotic? The victims of violence need empathy, which the dictionary defines as the ability to understand and share the feelings of the other.
Kukah decried that a critical deficit of empathy on the side of the government made healing almost impossible for the victims, saying that the nation has not heard anything about a rehabilitation programme for the thousands of schoolchildren who had been victims of abduction.
He added:
We seem to assume that their return to their schools is sufficient. Left unaddressed, the traumatic effect of their horrors will haunt them for a long time. Tomorrow’s parents, military generals, top security men and women, governors, senators, and ministers will come from today’s pool of traumatised children.
He stated that the security quandary was the greatest indictment of this government, stressing that when governments faced legitimacy crises, they fell back on serving the sour broth of propaganda, half-truths, and outright lies.
Kukah said they would manufacture consent by creating imaginary enemies, setting citizens against one another by deploying religion, ethnicity, region, and other platforms while appealing to the base emotions of patriotism.
