Sunday Joseph |
Bishop Catholic of Sokoto Diocese, Father Matthew Kukah has urged that Nigeria’s political elites to make politics noble for young people to allow them to sail the affairs of the country.
Kukah said during a citizens’ townhall on electoral reforms, a programme organised by YIAGA Africa on Channels Television that attention must be paid to the future of the country and not all the political imbroglio ravaging the country.
“The first is for us to pay attention to the future. That is why this conversation is very important; that a new generation of Nigerians with a different view about our country, with a different set of skills and discipline, must begin to see politics in a much more noble form,” he said.
Catch all the important points from the #FixElectionsNG Citizens Townhall on electoral reforms on YIAGA Africa TV on YouTube. youtu.be/0k2UuEpSDmA
He also called for the judiciary to begin to think more in focusing on compelling politics and politicians to fine-tune their articles of discipline internally.
Kukah further stated that Nigeria’s military background has continued to affect effective governance in the democratic dispensation.
“We are mistaken in assuming that we have had a transition from dictatorship to democracy. We still haven’t. This is why we are showing all kinds of systemic malfunctioning,” he said.
“When we talk about political parties, we have assumptions. But the truth of the matter is that in our own case in Nigeria, we have the greed and the political interest.
“Clearly what we have in Nigeria, as we have seen with the occasional malfunctioning of the system midway through the journey, manifested in the quarrelsome nature of the politics and the way the judiciary has now come to undermine the wishes of the people — its intrusive occupation of the public space, — suggests very clearly that we have very serious issues with party discipline largely because what we call political parties in Nigeria are mere contraptions purely constructed to help to ferry the ambitions of people — a good number of who are really and truly ill-prepared for the discipline that politics and political party formations require.”
He called for consistency in maintaining the governance structure, and also proffered two measures to address challenges affecting the country’s political process.
