Bishop Kukah’s visit to his detained PDP friends

By the time the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) releases him from detention, Femi Fani-Kayode’s idol and favourite presidential candidate in the United States election, Donald J Trump, will have been defeated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Fani-Kayode is enamoured with the 70-year old Trump because of his garrulity and susceptibility to conspiracy theories. More […]

By the time the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) releases him from detention, Femi Fani-Kayode’s idol and favourite presidential candidate in the United States election, Donald J Trump, will have been defeated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Fani-Kayode is enamoured with the 70-year old Trump because of his garrulity and susceptibility to conspiracy theories. More importantly, Fani-Kayode loves Trump for his anti-Islam and anti-Muslim rhetoric and his vow that if he wins, he will shut out Muslims from America.
On Monday, 31st October, 2016, Femi Fani-Kayode benefitted from a visit by the controversial Bishop of the so called Sokoto Diocese of the Catholic Church, Bishop Hassan Mathew Kukah. (There is no indication yet how many souls Kukah has won for Jesus in Sokoto!)
According to reports, Bishop Kukah was conducted round the EFCC Abuja detention facility by no less than its acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu. Kukah was said to have conferred with the former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro; former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode and Reuben Abati, the former spokesman of former President Goodluck Jonathan. At the end of his business, the Bishop reportedly said he had met them in cheerful condition and that he prayed for them. He also lauded the commission for taking good care of the inmates. 
From the beginning of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, Bishop Kukah had expressed misgivings about the war on corruption. After the members of the National Peace Committee chaired by former Head of State, General AbdulSalaam Abubakar, had visited the new President at the Presidential Villa last year, Kukah unreasonably advised that “President Buhari has to start governing and leave his anti-graft war on the back burner.” Apparently, in the reckoning of the Bishop’s school of thought, fighting corruption is not part of governance. He even added an element of blackmail “if Buhari insists on his probes, who is to say he won’t be the victim of a probe himself when he leaves office?” I don’t know who told Kukah that Buhari is afraid of being probed by his successor!
However, following the huge storm conveyed by his ‘don’t fight corruption’ statement, the Bishop had to return to the Presidential Villa to clarify his position.
Now, he has gone to the EFCC to see his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) detainee friends as well as the conditions in which they are being held. This visit feeds well into the narrative that a certain group of people are being persecuted. The good thing is that none of these people is denying that he has actually received the money he has been accused of receiving, allegedly from Sambo Dasuki.
Bishop Kukah likes to minister to the needs of the PDP big shots, they are his friends and they are cosy with him. He misses their profligate administration. It is only a matter of time before his episcopal visit takes a religious slant, what with a desperate, hysterical and hypocritical evangelist Fani-Kayode involved! The loudmouth Fani-Kayode has already put out a statement disputing the account of the visit and the things Bishop Kukah said during his visit to the EFCC detention centre. According to Fani-Kayode “even if we decide to agree that Kukah said the clinic and detention area of the commission was ‘clean and orderly’, we reject the notion that Kukah said the trio were ‘cheerful.’….What is there in EFCC for anyone to be cheerful about…..”? We don’t know too, except that millions of us not accused of fraud are sitting here on this side pretty cheerful!
Be that as it may, Fani-Kayode is responsible for his own happiness and it is what he says or does that puts or frees him from EFCC detention. No amount of theatrics and playing the victim can garner sympathy for him. According to EFCC, Fani-Kayode benefitted from millions of Naira paid to him in his capacity as the spokesman of Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 presidential campaign. He has not denied receiving this money. Obanikoro has reportedly confessed to passing billions of Naira to Governor Ayodele Fayose and Senator Iyiola Omisore; looking back now, I can imagine why Omisore was so confident that he was going to beat AbdulRauf Aregbesola and become the governor of Osun state.
Earlier in 2011, Bishop Kukah had expressed the opinion that the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency was an earth shaking episode; explaining that it was a miracle from God that a minority from the Niger Delta region had succeeded to Nigerian Presidency. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of Jonathan’s misadventure, millions of our citizens had a serious reason to regret. Cheating, lying, ethnic and religious bigotry, sleaze and political desperation were the hallmarks of that era and Bishop Kukah does still not see any reason for inquiry. All through the Jonathan presidency, Bishop Kukah turned a blind eye to the huge swamp of corruption that enveloped the country; now that the monkey business is being tackled and some people are being called to account, the man of God is inserting himself into the fray, trying to find himself a role. Well, the least the accused can do is to return the money they had received and misapplied. 
It is unclear how many times Bishop Kukah has visited the prisons in Sokoto or the number of times he prayed for the ordinary inmates there, what is clear is that he undertook a high profile visit to people detained in faraway Abuja who have been accused of scamming the country.  Whatever Bishop Kukah’s reservations are, it is doubtful if President Buhari will abandon his resolve to kill corruption before corruption kills Nigeria.