Kukah advised President Buhari to concentrate his efforts on providing good governance, rather than expending his energies on probing deeds of past government office holders. He said it was better for the government of the day to avoid getting distracted from the core business of governance on account of too much talk about probe.
Kukah’s statement followed an earlier call to President Buhari on Tuesday after the National Peace Committee met with him at the Presidential Villa, Abuja where it advised him against heating up the polity in a bid to tackle the cases of abuse of office and corruption that had characterised the country since the past administrations.
He said that, although, official corruption had set the nation backward, it was also necessary that Nigerians, including those in power, do not get distracted from the core mandate of governance. Bishop Kukah also noted that the contribution of former President Jonathan should not be discountenanced, even as he expressed belief that the probe agenda of the Buhari government was not targeted at any individual or specific group of persons.
The cleric said he has never believed that the way forward for Nigeria is an all-out probe and prosecution of former public officials.According to him, previous experiences have shown that taking such route had yielded little or nothing while distracting the government from facing its core duty of providing good governance for the country.
Bishop Kukah had at various forums before and after the March 28, 2015 Presidential election stated that the way forward in the new dispensation is to pay little attention to the ills of the past and concentrate more energies on putting Nigeria back on track.
While Kukah related that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo had during interactions with the peace committee at the villa cleared the air on government’s direction on the probe, adding that the exercise would not be done in a manner that could bring the country down.
His words: “There is no such thing as probe in a democratic setting like ours. What obtains is investigation, and once people lead and things are not right, investigation becomes necessary.
However, in doing that we must never be distracted from the spectacular actions undertaken by former President Jonathan. He is an individual. I think this whole thing about probe can be ascertained once investigations are concluded. But we are saying that a lot of talks and speculation about this probe are distractions nobody need.
“So the most important thing is that we need a stable country first before we can talk about these things. And they will have happened down the line”, he said.
