Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah, has made a passionate Easter appeal to President Bola Tinubu, urging him to rescue Nigerians from what he described as a “cross of evil” marked by escalating insecurity and deepening hardship.
In his 2025 Easter message titled “Mr President: Please bring us down from this cross”, Kukah painted a grim picture of a nation “bleeding from savagery and brutality never witnessed in the history of our dear country.”
“Every day, innocent citizens are kidnapped and held under the most inhuman conditions,” he lamented.
“A dark pall of death hangs languidly from north to south. It is impossible to find a home, a family, or a community that has not been caught in the cusp of this savagery,” he added.
Kukah warned that Nigeria is “reaching a breaking point,” likening the nation to a “huge national morgue.”
He said: “Mr President, with a greater sense of urgency, hasten to bring us down from this cross of evil.”
While acknowledging that Tinubu did not create the current crises, the cleric stressed the weight of presidential responsibility.
“Nigerians have been dangling and bleeding on this cross of pain and mindless suffering for too long,” he said.
“Mr President, immediately rid our dear country of these forces of darkness and bring us down from this cross of cynicism.”
The bishop also voiced concern over the erosion of public trust in government due to worsening insecurity and economic hardship.
“Frustration has penetrated every spectrum of our society,” he said. “Government and its security agencies seem to have largely become spectators in the dance of death that has overtaken our country.”
Kukah questioned whether the persistence of insecurity was due to lack of capacity or a more sinister motive.
“Are Nigerians lambs being sacrificed to an unknown god?” he asked. “Is the persistence of the insecurity a statement of the lack of capacity of our men and women in uniform, or is it evidence that those at the top are reaping the fruits of funding their own war machine?”
On the economic front, Kukah decried the effects of fuel subsidy removal, saying hunger and sickness now “stalk the land.”
While he acknowledged the policy shift, he warned that temporary relief measures are insufficient. “Mere palliative distribution diminishes the dignity of citizens,” he said. “Make food security a fundamental human right to all citizens.”
He also recalled how some politicians admitted to importing armed groups to secure political power — a move that now threatens the country’s foundation.
“The bandits have not only become embedded in every sphere of our lives, they threaten to destroy all that holds our communities together,” he said.
