Sokoto, 29 March, 2025 / 6:19 pm (ACI Africa).

There is need for politicians in Africa to go beyond the ethnicities they identify with and facilitate the realization of development projects across distinctive affiliations, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah of Nigeria’s Sokoto Catholic Diocese has said.

In his keynote address on the topic, “Is democracy failing in Africa?” delivered at the 60th birthday celebration of Emeka Ihedioha, former Governor of Nigeria’s Imo State, Bishop Kukah emphasized the connection between democracy and development.

“The democratization of development leads to the development of democracy if you decide to equitably democratize development and not take every institution, university, medical school, and other institutions to your village,” he said during the March 24 event held at Cilantro Event Hall in Abuja, Nigeria.

Bishop Kukah highlighted honesty as vitally important in the practice of democracy, and added, “Democracy is about equity; it is about justice.”

The Local Ordinary of Sokoto Diocese since his Episcopal Ordination in September 2011 underscored the need for political leaders to go beyond “preaching” democracy and focus more on making the political system of governance successful.

“We don’t need to preach about democracy. The question people should ask is, why should we allow our people to be nostalgic about the military or about the colonial rule?” he posed.

Bishop Kuka noted that “there are times Nigerians have said openly, ‘We wish the white people would come back. We wish the military would come back. We wish this person would come back.’”

The 72-year-old Catholic Church leader also emphasized the need of assigning responsibilities and monitoring with accountability. 

He said, “The inability of a system to deliver on the principles of democracy is not out of bad will; it is largely because we have not dealt with the question of who and who are delivering on the services.”

The Nigerian Catholic Bishop also linked democracy and freedoms, saying that a country’s democratization can be measured by how well it upholds the principles of democracy such as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.

“You cannot claim to be in a democracy if the media does not have the opportunity to do its job,” Bishop Kukah said during the 60th birthday of Mr. Ihedioha, who served as Governor of Imo State from 2019-2020, when Nigeria’s Supreme declared the All Progressives Congress (APC) party candidate the authentic winner of the 2019 gubernatorial poll. 

The Local Ordinary of Sokoto emphasized, “The essence of democracy is the defence of human rights anchored on the principles of equity and fairness.”