By Marcus Ikechukwu
The verbal war between the Catholic bishop of Sokoto, Revd. Matthew Kukah and President Muhammadu Buhari’s media aides, Garba Shehu and Femi Adesina, including the Minister of Information and Culture, Lia Mohammed may have heightened as the latter has challenged them to a public debate to discuss issues around Nigeria in general.
Kukah who described Buhari’s media handlers as poor writers, wondered where they were when he was brokering a peace accord between their current principal and Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.
Recall that on Monday, Shehu had taken up Kukah in his Easter message, where he lamented the worsening security challenges in the country and President Muhammadu Buhari’s poor performance.
Shehu asked the Catholic bishop to join politics and see whether he would do better than Buhari.
The presidential spokesperson further accused the clergyman of consistently spreading hate for decades.
On his part, Adesina had lashed out at Kukah, saying, “those who divided Nigeria are now the ones pointing accusing fingers at the President”.
But reacting to Shehu’s statement when he featured as a guest on a breakfast show on ARISE TV, Kukah said he remains passionate on the problems faced by Nigeria because he had paid his dues on finding solutions to the numerous challenges facing Nigerians.
So, the first thing is to show you their inefficiency; it is that they are used to writing statements as opposed to talking to Nigerians about policies.
“What this tells you is that 99.99 percent of what they write implies second-guessing what the president’s mind is. They have no contact with the president, they have no contact with government policies and all they are doing is writing on behalf of the president. There is nowhere in the world where the job of this nature is being done and has been done so poorly,” he lamented.
Picking on each of the actors, Bishop Kukah said, “While we’re doing all these things, Femi Adesina was being paid salary by Orji Kalu and he was doing a good job in the Sun as a journalist. Garba Shehu was working for Atiku. Lai Mohammed was working for Tinubu. So, I think everybody should be able to answer his father’s name.”
