Dr. Matthew Kukah while being interviewed on Channels Television’s News Night had dissected what happened to the Oputa Panel report and what should be done before Nigeria develop. Kukah said,
“People foolishly think that things self activate or self-propelled themselves. There has to be a primary mover, that is what moves it.
How did you get here? You had to have set out from your house to start a journey, you got into a car! you got into a plane and so on.
“So there is no correlation between the electoral outcomes and the things that follow. So when we finished the Oputa Panel, it had all the ingredients that scholars and activists needed to begin to build a robust conversation. When I go to Oxford.
I ended up doing three different seminars for the African Studies program. Universities were calling me here up there in Europe, and there’s not a single Nigeria University, not a single seminary group.
“The report was laid out on the internet. If you read my book, witness to justice, in the last section, I had an appendix which was a letter I wrote to President Obasanjo, and that letter you can read the text.
I was visibly, viscerally angry. But what I’m saying is what will happen, the way these things work, and the way politics works. You take the promises that the state has made and confirmed the state.
“So unless there is and I’ve said it, Nigerians can elect an Angel to come and govern Nigeria, nothing is going to happen until we colonize the streets and can agitate and bang on doors. And say to people, we don’t want this, even if it goes to the length that it will take our life.
But you know, the leader just sitting there drinking cheap brandy and watching golf and expecting things to change, and then when they have a new government precedent, they all rush there.”