Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Father Mathew Hassan Kukah
has blamed the pervasive poverty in the land on what he called
“systemic disruption of policy”.
According to him, the question of Nigeria’s underdevelopment is
not about any political party in power or that the government has
not been doing anything.
He said successive governments from independence till date had
come up with programmes aimed at tackling poverty and enhancing
development.
He spoke in Lagos at the ongoing Third Annual Conference of the
Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) with the theme,
“Economy, Security and National Development: The way forward.”
Father Kukah however advised every Nigerian to take part in
salvaging the situation, saying, “This country belongs to us. We
cannot outsource our obligations even to God.”
“The situation we find ourselves today is not about APC or PDP.
This is much more than saying 16 years of PDP. The situation we are
in is that we are dealing with problems of 40, 50 years ago,” he
said.
The cleric who delivered the Keynote address, recalled that from
1960 till date, there were different poverty alleviation measures
like the farm resettlement project, rural banking scheme; austerity
measures; the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) as well as
the recent programmes like SURE-P and Tradermoni.
He said all the programmes could not translate into poverty
reduction not because they were “entirely useless” but it was an
indication “of our inability to have some level of policy
certainty.”
He said the return of military after the end of the civil was
one of the greatest tragedies which confronted Nigeria, noting that
they “decapitated” the political system.
According to him, despite the return to civil rule, the military
because of their long presence in government institutionalized the
patronage system.
He said political parties then became platforms “to convey an
already concluded outcome.”
The cleric regretted that development was never on the agenda of
Nigeria and other African countries when they chased away the
colonialists.
“The reason for our poverty is not unconnected to our decisions
and the choices we made,” he reiterated.
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