Popular cleric, Reverend Mathew Hassan Kukah who is the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, has cried about how some kidnappers reached out to him while demanding for ₦200 million for a Catholic priest and reverend sister who were abducted over three weeks ago.
Kukah made this statement on Sunday at the flag-off of the 70th Anniversary Lecture of the Order of the Knight of Saint Mulumba, at the St. Leo’s Catholic Church, Ikeja, Lagos.
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“As I speak, for the past three weeks my priest, a young man and a sister are still in captivity even though the Nigerian state wishes to pretend that we are not negotiating with the kidnappers.
“As I speak, for the past three weeks my priest, a young man and a sister are still in captivity even though the Nigerian state wishes to pretend that we are not negotiating with the kidnappers.
“We are negotiating with the kidnappers as I’m talking because I don’t know how else to get back my priest.
“It is a very painful experience. My blood relations have been kidnapped. Last year, I lost a priest to kidnappers. I have lost a seminarian to kidnappers and somehow we like to pretend we have a government.
“Of course, we have the apparatus of government, we have the scaffolding, but this scaffolding is important because people can see access to and appropriate resources of the state.
“As to what the state needs to do, they are still far away from that reality. It is a very painful and sad reality that as at the last conversation with the kidnappers, we have negotiated up to N20 million, which I do not have” he added.
Kukah, therefore, urged members of the Catholic Church and Christians, in general, to play active roles in politics.
This, according to him, will influence the authorities to create a better society.