Lagos, Nigeria, Jan 11, 2018 / 19:00 pm
Bishop Matthew Kukah has decried "cries of shrill Islamization across the land," enabled by government corruption, according to a Jan. 8 report from the Catholic News Service of Nigeria.
"These cries arise when those in power use religious affiliation and blatant nepotism as means of access to power," the Bishop of Sokoto continued in a Dec. 8 homily for the ordination of three priests on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception at Sokoto's Holy Family Cathedral.
The remarks likely alluded the Boko Haram, a militant Islamic group in Nigeria responsible for the deaths of an estimated 53,870 people since May 2011, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
"The grounds (Boko Haram) have against the Nigerian state are basically the same as ordinary Nigerians have about the persistence of corruption, the growing inequalities, the fact that the political system is not working and that poverty is increasing," Bishop Kukah told CNA in a previous interview in 2014.