Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah [PHOTO CREDIT: The Kukah Centre]
The powerful message Bishop Kukah gave fresh graduates of Augustine University at the university's 2026 convocation ceremony.
Convocation Lecture delivered at Augustine University, Epe, By Bishop Matthew Hassan KUKAH, CON, Bishop, Catholic Diocese of Sokoto on October 29, 2026.
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Your Grace, Archbishop Adewale Martins, Archbishop of Lagos, Vice President of the CBCN and Visitor of the University, Distinguished Pro Chancellor, Dame Winifred Akpani, an outstanding amazon in the private sector, other Members of the Governing Council, the Vice Chancellor, Rev. Professor Anthony Akinwale, OP, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Deans of Faculties, Registrar, other Principal officers and key members of staff, please do accept my hearty congratulations on this august occasion. Thank you for the honour of your kind invitation. Parents, Guardians, family Members, friends of the university and all the students of the university.
1: People of my generation grew up with what in those days was called, The Penny Catechism, a little booklet that covered the basic doctrine of the Catholic Church. A good memory of its contents was a condition for getting baptized. We didn’t quite understand the deeper theological issues but we repeated the answers with gusto. The first question in that little book asked: Who made you? The answer, God made me. The second question, Why did God make you? The answer, God made me to love him, to serve him and to be happy with him in heaven.
2: Heaven has been projected as a place of ultimate happiness, rest, bliss, and peace in the presence of God forever. This is on condition of course that we keep His commandments and do His will. Hence, when people die, we often say and pray that they have gone to be at peace with the Lord. St. Paul says that with thoughts such as these, we should console one another [1 Thes.4:18]. However, we are still here on earth, children of two cities. A musician once warned that: You make your heaven or hell here on earth. In moments of happiness, some people often say, they felt as if they were in heaven on their wedding day. Caught in the web of suffering, some people say they feel like they are living in hell! Yet, on the final judgment day, Jesus says that getting to heaven or hell is tied to our actions here on earth [Matt. 25:31ff].
3: Between life here on earth and heaven or death, so much happens and a lot of it is based on the personal choices we make. A good life here on earth or in getting to heaven all depend on obedience to both the laws of God and civil laws. Many would argue that keeping the laws of God already makes living under civil authorities easier. This is why St. Augustine is credited with a most radical statement which says, Love God and do whatever you will. This is not a license to be irresponsible. Rather, it simply amplifies John when he says, if we are of God, we cannot sin [1 Jn 3:9]. My interest in the next few minutes is to try and call your attention to the challenges of what, to borrow the words from the famous American Declaration of Independence, they refer to as, the pursuit of happiness. Graduating from a prestigious Catholic university such as yours, named after the greatest theologian ever to come out of Africa, we would hope that you have been equipped with the most sound moral tools to navigate through life. As I have grown older, I have come to see that how we define happiness eventually determines what we pursue, what we love and what we build.
4: Therefore, Augustine University Class of 2026, let me add my voice to the voices of your parents and family, your teachers, and all those whose hard work has brought you to this day. Many of you arrived at this institution much younger and largely inexperienced and strangers to one another. It is my hope that all of you are now better human beings, more mature, have made more friends and are prepared to face the next phase of your life which starts right now. Today, you will party, believing you are now free from examinations. In many prestigious universities around the world, students have often suffered self-inflicted physical harm or even lost their lives in the course of these post graduate orgies. I enjoin you to calm down, listen to your senior brother, Kiss Daniel. If you plan to be rich till you die, please wear face mask! The real battle of your life is just about to start.
5: Some years back, in an address such as this to students in an American university, the then first lady, Michelle Obama told the graduands a story about her children. She said she often asks her children what sports they like or dislike. She said she would often ask them to go and learn how to play the game they didn’t like. The lesson for the children is: Life is never going to give you only the things you want. You will meet people you don’t like in school or one place of work or the other. The world will not shift its furniture to accommodate your needs. So, while you have the chance, make new friends, learn a new language, taste new food, in short, try different things. Do not despise the food, language, or culture of your new hosts. Life will embrace you if you open up to new ideas.
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6: Until I came to Lagos, the idea people ate snail was revolting to me. Time passed, a series of visits to families and friends, offers here and there. I finally succumbed. The late Archbishops Ganaka, Jatau, Bishops Aje and Abba used to make fun of me, saying that I have come to disgrace the north in Lagos. They would say I have been contaminated by the Yorubas. Today, I have successfully converted a few of our bishops from the north to the delicacy of snails! I am counting on Archbishop Martins to help me convert his two friends, President of Conference, Archbishop Ndagoso and Archbishop Kaigama, former President of Conference. Snail may be a matter of taste. There are other choices in life that cannot simply be reduced to taste.
7: The pursuit of happiness is a personal enterprise, but lived fully in relation to others, most of them complete strangers to you. I have seen young men and women who found themselves in different parts of Nigeria among different people, forced to eat foods they had never imagined, forced to drink water from streams away from the comfort of their silver faucets at home. I have seen people who held others outside their ethnicity in contempt turn around to settle among these people. Today, through university life, away from the womb of family and ethnic comfort, many have ended up falling in love and marrying women and men of ethnic or religious groups they held in contempt. I am hopeful that many of you have made friends from other parts of Nigeria from different social strata other than yours. Please keep these friendships and expand your social networks. You never know where you will end up and whom you will encounter tomorrow. For your teachers, it is important that you know that one of these young men or women could be your President, Senator or Governor tomorrow. He or she could be your son or daughter in law.
8: As young people, it is easy to become frustrated and dejected in Nigeria because of the moral chaos around us. We now live in a society that is on a moral free fall. From top to bottom, we are a nation averse to obeying laws. Those we relied on for leadership and example are doing far worse. If you ask an average Nigerian how to secure admission into a university, how to get a first class, how to secure a job after you have graduated with a first class, you are more likely to be told, it all depends. A young generation of Nigerians and their parents are convinced that nothing can come to you because of merit and that every opportunity depends on whom you know not what you know. From breaking the law without consequences to living out a prison sentence, everything can be negotiated. Enter a culture of moral relativism. A compass whose north changes according to who is holding it cannot guide anyone home.
9: It is against this background that the japa syndrome came in as a solution. It became a rave and a deluge. Young people were sold the story of an El Dorado abroad, everywhere was paradise except Nigeria. For the better part of the last ten or so years, both the Atlantic Ocean and the Sahara Desert opened up as graveyards that swallowed the bodies and dreams of thousands of our young people. In truth, over the years, many young people have found a new life abroad and we thank God for that. Migration is a human event and is part of our civilization. I was therefore interested when Pope Leo, speaking to university students in Cameroon, acknowledged the understandable desire of young Africans to migrate in search of a better future. Yet he asked them to have “an ardent desire to serve your country” and to use what they had learnt for the benefit of their fellow citizens. Some of you will leave Nigeria. Some will stay. Wherever you go, remain builders. But do not conclude too quickly that nothing can be built here.
10: Class of 2026, this is a time for you to make the most important decisions in your life. The consequences of some of the choices you make now will live with you forever. Now is the time to reflect on the kind of life you wish to live, single or married, the children you may have, the career you will embrace, the dreams you will have. Pack the tool kit for your pursuit of happiness well. So, think well, pray well and choose well. Your pursuit of happiness is a legitimate enterprise that you cannot outsource to someone else because it is the basis for human flourishing and part of taking responsibility for your life.
11: The conditions under which we take that responsibility are also shaped by the society in which we live. When the Americans wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they stated that: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The document went on to say that governments are set up precisely to enhance the prospects of the pursuit of happiness by citizens. The legitimacy of every government is based on its ability to create suitable conditions for the pursuit of happiness of all citizens. Exactly what constitutes happiness, who sacrifices what for the attainment of someone else’s happiness, these are the issues around which governance revolves. Here, constitutions and other state laws are often made to ensure that there is a level playing field for the attainment of these rights which are defined as being inalienable. They are inalienable because they are not the free gift of some benevolent dictator no matter the size of his army or source of power. This is why elections when well conducted, allow citizens to decide who can best help secure their happiness.