The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah, has said that the reward system of Nigeria’s political system encourages violence.
Guardian News reports that Kukah explained that the country’s politics are lucrative, which is why many candidates want to win elections at all costs.
Kukah had this to say during a show on Channels Television on Wednesday.
El Clérigo said that the violence associated with elections is not unrelated to the reward system associated with politics.
Kukah said: “It is the reward system in the political system that encourages violence because if you see the almost automatic change in the quality of life and the opportunities that come to people who hold public office or win elections, you realize that rewards are a zero sum game. To be out, as someone said, you lose the election, you could actually lose your life.
“So to the extent that we have a political system that rewards you directly, for example, if you voted for the wrong candidate, you may not have a path to your town; you may not have electricity in your village; you may not have drinking water.
“So the consequences of this create despair among Nigerians that ‘our man or our woman must win at all costs’.”
He noted that “Otherwise, if politics were just about service, we wouldn’t have needed to fight about service. So all these people telling you ‘vote for us, we’ll work for you’, history suggests something different.”
