The pursuit of happiness in a world of moral relativism, By Mathew Hassan Kukah

Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah

Convocation Lecture delivered at Augustine University, Epe, By Bishop Matthew Hassan KUKAH, CON, Bishop, Catholic Diocese of Sokoto on October 29, 2026.

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.

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.

12: When Rev. Martin Luther King delivered his famous, I Have a Dream Speech on August 28, 1963, he called attention to the contradiction between these promises of equality in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and how they related to the conditions of black people in America. He employed searing metaphors to make his case. He said that black people had gathered to dramatize a shameful condition to which America had subjected them and that they had come to the nation’s capital to cash a cheque. He said both documents were promissory notes that would guarantee the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all citizens. However, he said, black people went to cash this cheque and it was returned to them on grounds that the banks had insufficient funds! He categorically said: We refuse to accept that the bank can have insufficient funds and, he stated three times, We cannot be satisfied. Government can build the road, but the citizen must still walk it. Of course, we cannot blame people for failing to arrive where no road was built.

13: What does this say to us? It is that the fight for our dignity, the pursuit of happiness, is a moral call. It is not a duty that can be outsourced to government or other generations. The struggle for attainment of the conditions for the pursuit of happiness must be based on first, a proper understanding that the pursuit of happiness is a call to reclaim our dignity and self-worth. This is where faith, understanding the mind and the will of God comes in. It is here that, in our case here, the Church steps in. In other words, what does the Church teach us about happiness? How does it regulate its pursuit? How does it arm us to successfully make the right choices that can guarantee us happiness? Here, the Church offers us the moral tools with which to make those choices.

14: If we return to our penny catechism referred to above, we recall that God created us to love and serve him. To this end, He has given us sacred Scripture, his word to guide the choices that we make. Often, in real life we tend to focus on the superficial and ephemeral definitions of happiness. The human pursuit of happiness in a human sense, often leads us on an exhausting chase of will-o’-the-wisp. No sooner do we think we have found it than it slips through and we want something else. Thus, so far, the best definition of this frustrating but elusive pursuit of happiness has been offered to us by your patron saint, St. Augustine who spent the better part of his life in its hopeless search in the wrong places. When he finally found what real happiness was, he said: You have made us for yourself O Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. There is another saying of St. Augustine that I have grown fond of: Pondus meum amor meus. My weight is my love. What we love gives direction to our lives. What we love shapes our choices and, over time, those choices become what we build. In other words, for the Christian believer, there is no true happiness outside God. This is why Jesus said at the beginning of his ministry: I have come to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind [Lk. 4:18]. In explaining the real meaning of life, he says; My kingdom is not of this world [Jn. 18:36]. I am the bread of life, he who comes to me will never be hungry [Jn. 6:35].

15: The Catholic church has given us a rich corpus of teachings that should serve as an aid. From the sacred scriptures, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the Corporal Works of Mercy, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Conciliar documents, Papal encyclicals, Apostolic and Episcopal exhortations among so many other means of catechesis. These constant reflections are meant to provide us with answers to the endless questions that challenge our lives. Building a good society is a precondition for helping citizens pursue happiness by making the right moral choices. St. Augustine expresses this beautifully in another phrase: Pax omnium rerum tranquillitas ordinis. A good society according to St. Augustine is based on peace which he says is the tranquility of order. This tranquility creates the right conditions for our relationships and helps us manage tensions arising from conflicts. As such, peace is not seen as just the absence of war.

16: St Paul warned of those times when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear [ 2 Tim:4:3]. These are the times they will say the church is conservative, it is ancient, they will accuse the church leaders of not living in the real world, inability to appreciate that times are changing and that to them, the only permanent reality is change. Enter the echo chamber of moral relativism. In the course of our pursuit of happiness, our vision is often blurred by the lack of the proper knowledge that we require to create the just order St. Augustine envisages. In this echo chamber of ignorance and lack of a moral vision, the options of moral relativism come in to blur and colour our vision. Pope St. John Paul laid the foundation for what Pope Benedict XVI later referred to as the dictatorship of relativism which only values one’s ego and desires, a kind of pay-as-you-go morality that sees moral choices as a menu from which we choose what suits our taste. Pope Francis and Leo have continued with these same themes arguing that moral relativism is dangerous because it denies natural law, confuses good with evil and denies objective truth. To deal with these challenges, it is important that young people open themselves up to new ideas while also deepening their knowledge of the faith. Pope Francis encouraged us in Fratelli Tutti to develop new friendships. Now Pope Leo has placed this responsibility directly before your generation. In Magnifica Humanitas, he says: “Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era.” Class of 2026, this is now your era.

17: The era you are being asked to shape is changing with extraordinary speed because of artificial intelligence. I have tried to understand what AI means for your generation. Education, medicine, banking, agriculture, law, engineering, business and government are all being reshaped. It reminds me of cement while it is still being mixed. While it is wet, you can still help determine what will be built with it. Your generation has arrived while the cement is still being mixed. The IMF estimates that AI will affect about four out of every ten jobs in the world. Some of those jobs are the professions you are preparing to enter.

18: These changes are also putting new tools in your hands. The distance between an idea and what can be built from it has shortened dramatically. One person can now do work that once required an office, staff and large amounts of capital. Human beings have been given extraordinary new powers of knowledge, production and organization. When I compare the tools available to you with those available to my generation at your age, the difference is staggering. Scripture reminds us that to whom much is given, much is expected. What is technology for, and what kind of human society are we building with it?

19: The Church’s understanding of development helps us answer this. I have had the privilege of serving in the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. The Church uses that expression to remind us that development must reach the whole person and every person. This conviction is also one of the reasons I accepted to be one of the leaders of Veritas Enterprise, where we are bringing universities, technology, enterprise and capital together around practical problems of poverty and development. At the heart of this work is the ambition to eradicate extreme poverty using AI and enterprise. Augustine University has a natural place in work of this kind, and some of you sitting before me may yet become part of what we build.

20: This concern for the whole person also helps us understand the place of material things in our pursuit of happiness. Material and temporal things which we can see and feel often can give us happiness, but in the end, happiness is not the same as joy. The rich young man who ran and knelt before Jesus asking what he needed to inherit eternal life was genuine in his request. Yet, three contradictions emerge in the text. First, he is young and rich and he ought not to be either running or kneeling in public. He betrays himself by seeking the kingdom as an inheritance, perhaps the same way he has acquired his wealth! Not all things can be inherited. A good life still has to be lived. His riches were a guarantee of his happiness. When Jesus made the ultimate demand of him, to sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor, he turned his back. Misused, riches can be an obstacle to the pursuit of real happiness.