The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most. Rev. Matthew Kukah has launched a bursary scheme and distributed 40 tricycles to empower youths as part of his 70th birthday anniversary.
Kuka launched the exercise at a dinner and special mass service organised in his honour in Sokoto.
He said that a scholarship bursary scheme, along with other empowerments, were also designed to support people, especially the less privileged.
He explained that the efforts were aimed at facilitating human empowerment and encouraging self-reliance, especially among youths in recognition of the challenges bedevilling the nation.
He expressed thanks for the purposeful life, adding that the gesture was part of the fulfilment of his desire to empower youths and contribute to the development of society.
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According to him, the scholarship bursaries were to promote sanity and inculcate the right education in people, lamenting that ignorance had taken over some important segments of daily lives in society.
He stressed that proper education of citizens would surely go a long way to promoting the right developments, preventing of restiveness and ensuring constructive direction on shaping people’s lives and facilitating growth in all sectors.
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He described the Kukah Centre as an apolitical and not religious centre as it helped to promote virtues and dialogue, to ensure right understanding, strengthen harmonious relationships and other efforts in the country.
In his sermon, Most Rev. John Oyejola said Kukah’s blissful, a man of brave heart, and defender of just social order.
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” In a world where ingratitude and ungratefulness tend to dominate human lives and as a consequence, ruin genuine charity, we are gathered today to render thanks to the author of all we are and have.
” We need the wisdom of the elders and the strength of the youth to lead our nation from the precipice of political disaster, economic strangulation and looming disintegration to better transformations,” he added.
Earlier, the Chairman of the anniversary’s organizing committee, Rev. Nuhu Iliya, described the celebrator as an epitome of good leadership and an inspirer of virtues.
Iliya said he learnt a lot from Kukah and enjoined incoming leaders to emulate his qualities.
According to him, the present empowerment scheme is the beginning and 40 tricycles would be distributed to youths to engage in productive commercial activities.