Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Bishop Matthew Kukah, during a recent visit to the United States, spoke with The Christian Science Monitor about the progress Nigeria has made in its fight against Boko Haram, some of the nation’s challenges, and what needs to be done to solve them. Excerpts:

 Majority of the news the West receives on Nigeria is about Boko Haram. How important is the insurgency in the broader context of what Nigeria is facing?

Everywhere you turn everybody is talking about Boko Haram, which is important, but I think it is only important in relation to a long history of activities. The unfortunate thing is that people are not asking the question, where did Boko Haram come from? What really created the conditions for it? I think it is important to understand that in relation to the larger issues that have brought us to where we are today.

Boko Haram is often translated as ‘Western education is forbidden.’ What are some of the factors that have contributed to its rise?

You have the suspicion within the Muslim community that has always tried to equate Western education with Christianity, which is what Boko Haram has capitalised on. So, you have some of that subtext. But if you look at Boko Haram, it is also based on the fact that the way the state has treated Christianity predisposed Boko Haram to exploit that narrative.

If you are refusing to give Christians land to build churches; if you are refusing to give Christians land to build schools; if you are refusing to allow Christian religious education to be taught in schools; if you are denying Christians access to the media commensurate to what you are giving Muslims, what you’re really saying is that these people are second-class citizens and that their religion is merely being tolerated.

While Boko Haram is not yet defeated, the Nigerian military has taken back a lot of territory in the last year. Do you see this as progress and what comes next?

Their ability to control Nigerian territory has been severely constrained, but as you know the end of the war is the easy part. It is what happens the day after that becomes very difficult to deal with. The next thing now is the millions of people who have been displaced in the last four years or so.

Now, it requires more than just goodwill to take people back. These guys are spread across the length and breadth of northern Nigeria. They need to bring these people back to their homes, to bring them back to their farms, because 95 per cent of these people are farmers.

It is most likely that Boko Haram has planted landmines and all kinds of things, so getting people back to work and so on is difficult.

You have emphasised education as an important means of preventing the kind of conditions that harbour extremism and for unifying the nation. Can you expand on that?

I am explaining to the governors that we have about 10 to 15 million young kids who are out of school or on the streets across the 11 or 12 states in northern Nigeria. This is a time bomb. The government doesn’t have the quality of schools that guarantee these children become functional citizens.

The truth of the matter is that the Christians have a great advantage because you can say that 60 to 70 percent of the literate people in Nigeria are Christians. Now the percentage of Muslims in northern Nigeria who are educated: You are probably looking at 10 percent or less.

In a country that is developing, such a huge number of uneducated and unskilled people will mean a combustible environment from where Boko Haram and all these agents of violence will continue to feed. So, the real challenge for me is how the Muslim community will have to come to terms with the reality that there’s no substitute to education. In Sokoto Diocese, which includes the states of Katsina, Kebbi, Zamfara, and Sokoto; we have 22 nursery, primary and secondary schools.

Part of the problem is that they are all on church premises because the government has almost blatantly refused to allocate land to Christians.They are Christian schools to the extent that they are built by Christians, but if you go to any of my schools that has 100 children, it is likely that 60 percent of those are going to be Muslims. Even if we have five Muslim children, in our school, we try to provide to have someone teach them Islamic education.

The problem with the Koranic education in northern Nigeria is that it was never designed to manage pluralism. It is the responsibility of the state government to design a curriculum that takes cognisance of these realities and almost deliberately work out how you manage those differences.

One year ago, the peaceful handover to the new Muhammadu Buhari government was considered a milestone, but Nigeria still faces challenges on many fronts. What does his government need most to focus on to move the country forward?

I think the greatest problem the government has is in its inability to effectively communicate with citizens. For me, it would be to say: ‘Look, first of all we are happy we are in a democracy, we will make mistakes. We are not going to work miracles.

This is how we hope to get to where we want to get to.’ My view is that the next thing would have been to have a correct narrative to summon Nigerians to say look: ‘Now Boko Haram is behind us, can we now rebuild our country?’

There were those who were very skeptical about [Buhari’s] ability to develop an integral programme that would hold Christians and Muslims together. The problem with Nigeria is we desire that, but we have not thought through how that could happen.

The beauty of Nigeria is that in 1990 there was a coup attempt, and the only reason the coup did not succeed was because those who organised the coup said they were going to cut off the 12 states of the North and suspend them from Nigeria.

The Nigerian people said ‘no, we don’t want to be separated.’ This was 20 years after we had fought a civil war to keep our country one. So, there is absolutely no doubt that everyone in Nigeria wants a united Nigeria. You have to pull down certain laws and cultural practices.

Shouldn’t every Nigerian citizen be free to marry whom they want? Marriage is one of the fundamental institutions for welding nations together. If it is against your religion, we have a constitution that is supreme and it is more important than any religious constitution.