Kukah who said this
while speaking as a panellist during a citizens’ townhall on electoral reforms,
a programme organised by YIAGA Africa on Tuesday June 30, averred that there is
greed and the political interest in the country.
He added that the
quarrelsome nature of the politics and the way the judiciary has now come to
undermine the wishes of the people, suggests very clearly that we have very
serious issues.
Kukah said;
“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.
“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, 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.”
The Catholic Bishop
went on to suggest two ways the country's political challenges can be
addressed.
Kukah said;
“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.
“The second point is
for the judiciary itself to begin to think more in focusing on compelling
politics and politicians to fine-tune their articles of discipline internally.”
0 Comments