According to the Most Rev. Mathew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, democracy in Nigeria is not progressing at the right pace because those who make the laws benefit from the system.
Kukah, the National Peace Committee’s Convener, made this statement while appearing on Channels Tv’s Sunrise Daily.
He bemoaned the fact that the task of developing policies to drive democracy in the country had been delegated to politicians, who, he claimed, benefit greatly from such policies.
The clergy said: “The problem with Nigeria’s situation is that the sinners are the ones trying to make the law. These are the consequences of where we find ourselves now.
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“I speak to the fact that as long as the universities are the way they are, as long as we do not have privileged intellect and the diagnostic tools required to refine processes, as long as we are hoping that politicians are the ones to set their own rules, as long as we expect that almost all of these are politics, there would not be an improvement in the country.
“In my view, had it been we have a country that is working, a country that takes research seriously, it is the business of political scientists to equip the people in power with the required tools for analysis, to the options that are available to ensure things go the way they should go.
“But unfortunately, if you have a situation where the universities are not funded, the country itself behaves as if it wants to close the universities, what else do you expect?
“Unless and until this government and other government in Nigeria takes academic exercise very seriously, we can not expect the person who is sick to be the one to provide the medicine for his cure,” he stressed.
