By Stephanie Shaakaa.

For more than three decades, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah has stood at the centre of Nigeria’s public life part priest, part intellectual, part civic conscience. He has spoken truth to power, comforted victims, challenged governments, and offered commentary that has shaped national conversations. Yet it is precisely this long-standing proximity to the political elite that now raises a pressing question. Can any cleric engage this deeply with Nigeria’s ruling class and remain untouched by the weight of that association?

Could Matthew Hassan Kukah have remained the same after decades of unchecked frolic with Nigeria’s political class and the fiercely loyal faithful who worship every syllable he utters? How does a man wade through the murky waters of power for over thirty years and come out smelling like baptismal water? Nigeria is not that kind. Power is not that generous. And the Nigerian political space is not a place you stroll through without catching a fever of compromise.

When you have spent half your life at symposia with political heavyweights smiling, nodding, clinking glasses with the very machinery that engineers our national heartbreaks something shifts. When you attend every conference where the same politicians you criticise sit in the first row, applauding your “courage,” isn’t there a contradiction begging for attention? When every book launch, keynote speech, breakfast meeting, panel discussion, and “national dialogue” has your name stamped on the program, how long before your calling begins to take the shape of the company you keep?

When a clergy becomes the serial bride of every nation building event paid for, sponsored, or powered by the very same establishment he claims to challenge tell me, how does neutrality survive? How does purity stay intact? Even salt melts when it bathes too long in water.

And when a priest is so familiar with the corridors of power that he can walk through Aso Rock without looking for directions, how do you expect him to speak like John the Baptist in the wilderness? When proximity becomes routine, prophecy loses its edge. A man cannot spend his days dining with Herod and hope to thunder from the pulpit without trembling inside.

When a cleric begins to sound more like a keynote speaker than a shepherd of souls, we must ask uncomfortable questions. When his critiques feel more like carefully negotiated essays sharp enough to trend but soft enough to maintain invitations something is wrong. When the fire in a priest’s voice gradually becomes academic, polished, diplomatic, and balanced, it is not always maturity. Sometimes, it is influence. Sometimes, it is exposure. Sometimes, it is survival.

When you are on first-name basis with men who weaponized religion to win elections, men who drained this nation dry, men who shook hands with the devil and then sanitized their fingers with holy water tell me, what exactly do you become? A referee? A bridge? Or a participant?

When a priest crosses the line from pastoral duty to political consultancy, even if done unconsciously, the robes begin to lose their innocence. When a cleric speaks too frequently at events sponsored by the elite, when he gets too comfortable giving homilies at state functions, when he becomes the intellectual ornament of government gatherings, you cannot pretend not to see the evolution.

And when your presence becomes indispensable to politicians when they quote you, flatter you, use you, display you like a trophy of moral approval something has changed. A priest is a guide, not a guest of the powerful. A shepherd belongs among sheep, not among wolves who learned to clap at sermons.

The truth is simple: Nigeria has a way of reshaping anyone who gets too close. Even good men. Even brilliant men. Even men with the best of intentions.

No one dances around fire with the hopes of remaining unsinged.

And so, the question is not whether Kukah is intelligent, patriotic, articulate, or passionate about Nigeria because he absolutely is. The real question is how long a cleric can drink from the same cup as the political class without absorbing the taste of their wine. How long before a man begins to speak the language of those he constantly sits with? How long before his tone, his caution, his metaphors, his diplomacy all begin to resemble the very system he critiques?

Nigeria changes people. Even priests.
Especially priests who get too close to power.

Because when the walls of influence close in, when the applause becomes addictive, when the invitations never stop coming, when politicians begin to call you “our father,” when your critique must be measured so your access is preserved, what remains of the prophetic voice?

We don’t lose our heroes in one day.
We lose them slowly, speech after speech, meeting after meeting, handshake after handshake until the line between the altar and the podium becomes too thin to see.

And maybe, just maybe, that is what has happened here.

Stephanie Shaakaa, a Public affairs Commentator  can be reached at shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com.