•Biafra still decades away
Rev. Isaac Ugboaja is the Founder and General Overseer of Christian Life Gospel Assembly in Oke-afa, Isolo, Lagos. The cleric in this interview with MOSES AKAIGWE spoke on issues of national interest, advising President Muhammadu Buhari to go for re-election in 2019 only if he considers himself fit enough to continue with the enormous demands of his office, and not to satisfy the selfish interests of those around him. The clergy, who in 2012 prophesied that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan would not be re-elected president in 2015, also spoke on the agitation for the state of Biafra and the problem of insecurity in the country.
Before the 2015 general elections, you said that Dr. Goodluck Jonatahan would not be re-elected and that Buhari would be president. Would you say that God chose Buhari for Nigeria at that time?
Yes, I said so, and it was published by Saturday Sun of December 29, 2012. God is a revealer of hidden truths and He ruleth over the affairs of men. He said He would not do anything unless He reveals it to his servants, the prophets. As at that time, it was still very early in the life of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. It was barely over a year after he was sworn in, yet God proved that He doesn’t see as men see. God revealed that President Jonathan would have to reconcile with those power brokers that brought him to office, notably ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo. God told me emphatically that if he didn’t reconcile with Obasanjo and the influential people that wooed the power brokers in the north to vote for him in 2011, he should forget his re-election bid.
It was published in your paper about three years before the 2015 election. God said President Obasanjo and the influential northerners who backed him in the 2011 election were vehemently angry with him, and would do all they could to prove their superior political might over a man they considered a political neophyte.
To deal with your question head-on, Nigerians truly yearned for a change, and hearing their cry, God provided the alternative. Did God choose President Buhari for Nigeria in 2015? The answer will be yes, because he was the answer to the prayers of Nigerians. Moreover, we must remember that the bible says “ let every soul be subject to the governing authority. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God “. This clearly shows that every man in authority, whether he is considered good or bad, is appointed by God, because promotion neither comes from the east nor the west.
Nigeria recently celebrated the 57th independence anniversary. How would you say the country has fared under President Buhari? Since you foresaw his victory, after more than two years in Aso rock, would you describe him as a hero, or has he disappointed you?
The government is just two years into a four-year tenure, and we have been told many times that they met a lot of mess left by the former administration. To be fair to them, two years is not enough to undo the actions of the preceding 16 years under the People’s Democratic Party {PDP} government that led to the suffering Nigerians have been experiencing.
But two years is also not too short to assess the performance of a purposeful government. This administration will be assessed based on their electoral promises to Nigerians. The question which should be asked is, two years into their four-year tenure, have they been able to fulfil some of their promises? The government should not wait till the end of their tenure to start implementing their policies and programmes, because their re-election will be hinged on what extent they have delivered on their promises.
I will say so far, so good. The government has done well in some areas, like fighting corruption, tackling insecurity, including Book Haram, and eradicating the perennial fuel scarcity we used to witness by stabilising fuel supply. But, there are some promises, like allowances to unemployed youths and improvement in power supply, which are yet to be fulfilled.
Now that you have mentioned it, how would you rate the war against corruption?
The government has succeeded in exposing the corruption that was deep-rooted in the last administration. We are now fully aware of huge amounts of money that went into private pockets, which are money meant for public good. Billions of money and assets have been reportedly recovered and confiscated, and we have many ongoing court cases against corrupt public officials.
Under this regime, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission {EFCC} has been very busy prosecuting perceived looters in many parts of the country. But, like many have been saying, the war seems selective, because it appears that it is mainly PDP members that were in government that are being prosecuted. Many have asked the President to also prosecute members of his ruling party who have also occupied positions of authority in former administrations, and I think it is an issue he has to address.
Considering the President’s state of health, do you think he is fit enough to run for another term?
The health of a man is in the hands of God. Only him gives life and takes it. Anyone can fall sick at any point in time. This goes for all mortal beings and should not be attributed to some sort of misfortune.
But ill-health becomes an issue when someone is appointed or elected into a position and he becomes unable to perform the functions of his office. His health condition has naturally slowed down the pace of governance and his achievements. There is no doubt he would have done more if not for his frequent medical trips abroad.
As for going for a second term, I will say it is only the President that can determine if he is fit enough to run or not. It is not for anyone to decide for him. The President should be very careful and wary of political associates and appointees who would urge him to re-contest due to their own selfish interest. The President of a nation needs to be physically fit and mentally alert to direct the affairs of state, because the responsibilities assigned to the office is enormous and too daunting to be performed by an ailing person.
We can all recall how President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died in office due to his deteriorating health that began in his days as the governor of Kastina State. I pray President Buhari’s case doesn’t end like Musa Yar’Adua’s. I pray that God will disappoint those wishing him dead.
Do you think Buhari has managed the economy well? Though the government said it inherited a lot of liabilities, the good news is that the economy is said to be out of recession.
The economy of a nation is assessed using some variables and indices, such as the rate of inflation, the value of the local currency, the cost of living, the cash flow in the economy, the gross domestic product ( GDP ), and the gross national product (GNP), among others. Based on these economic parameters, the last two years has been tough in the country.
But I want to be fair in assessing the government, because most of the economic problems they are battling with today were not created by them. They inherited some economic misfortunes that have to do primarily with the prices of crude oil in the international market, which is the main source of revenue for government. This decline in revenue affected the economy of the federating states many of which were not able to pay workers’ salaries.
Though the experts have reported that we are out of recession, Nigerians are waiting to see how that translates to an improvement in their standards of living. Nigerians or citizens of any nation are not interested in rhetorics. They want to feel the effects of government’s economic policies. They want to hear that the prices of goods and services that went up, have come down. Is there 24-hour power supply in the country? Are our refineries working? Many businesses have closed down and many companies are relocating to other countries due to the high cost of doing business here. These are the real problems.
There is so much tension in the land, there is Boko Haram, there is IPOB and the call for the state of Biafra, as well as the menace of herdsmen. What would you advise the government to do to arrest the situation?
I will speak as a mouthpiece of God on the issue of Nigerian unity. I say it emphatically to all past leaders, who have at one time or the other participated in coups and counter-coups in Nigeria, starting from the first one in1966, that they owe this nation an apology for polarising this nation using ethnicity and religion. Special apology should be rendered to the Igbo nation, which was made to suffer many casualties during the civil war that the Nigerian state waged on them.
Our past military rulers and their civilian collaborators, have between now and 10 years time to make up for their miss-governance of this nation. I advise that a national interdenominational reconciliation prayer meeting be convened in Abuja, where the component ethnic groups and dominant religious denominations should gather to pray for the unity of the nation and reconcile people who are aggrieved with one another due to differences in political, religious and ethnic leanings. If our past and present leaders fail to adhere to this, posterity will judge them as those who had opportunity to reconcile the various components of the nation, but squandered it.
Very instructive is the fact that 10 years from now, most of these leaders won’t be around anymore, so while they are still around, let them rewrite their names in the good books of our nationhood
The origin of Boko Haram is well known in this nation, but it was allowed to grow into a notorious terrorist monster that it is today. When Goodluck Jonathan assumed power, Boko Haram was used as a political tool to destabilise his government. Soon after assuming office, this present government said they had succeeded in decimating the strength of the Boko Haram group.
This government has been able to successfully negotiate with the group’s leaders for the release of over 100 of the abducted Chibok girls in exchange for the release of some of the captured terrorists. But, the question is: Why was this not achieved in the last administration? Is there something this government knows that the last didn’t? Or is it that this government is more skilful in dealing with the situation than the previous government?
I strongly believe that Nigeria must overcome religious and ethnic politics, because that is the bane of our present democratic practice. Anytime a President is not from a particular region, people from the other side begin to sponsor agitations that always cause political unrest and insecurity. During the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Niger Delta youths agitated for resource control, which eventually led to the government conceding13 percent derivation to the oil producing states in our revenue sharing formula.
President Yar’adua came onboard, and went a step further by granting amnesty to the militants, paying them salaries as employment allowances every month and some were even sent abroad to school or learn vocations.
President Jonathan came onboard, and the northern youths in the name of Boko Haram went on rampage, this time not directly demanding anything from government, but unleashing mayhem on innocent citizens and making the north-eastern part of the country very ungovernable.
Few months into the Buhari administration, we are confronted with the menace of Fulani herdsmen in all parts of the country. The root cause of the herdsmen brutality remains a mystery of sorts, because one cannot understand why the herdsmen should be so heavily armed, and freely killing and maiming people in many parts of the country.
President Buhari has been accused of having kept mum for too long over the rampage of the Fulani herdsmen. His body language seems to support what they are doing. If that is not the case, the President owes Nigerians a duty to condemn their activities in the strongest terms and ensure that there is severe punishment that will serve as a deterrent to other people who may wish to unleash violence on any part of the country.
Buhari is in power now, and IPOB has sprung up with its own agitation, which I believe is part of the emerging tradition of fighting the government when the President is not from a particular region. As an Igbo man, I have no apology to give to anyone for my views on the actualisation of Biafra. As a clergy man and as someone who witnessed the civil war, I can say authoritatively that the Igbo land is not yet ripe for Biafra. The state of Biafra cannot be achieved now due to so many obvious factors. For instance, the Igbo as a whole are divided.
The agitators for the state of Biafra, including those led by Nnmadi Kanu, cannot achieve anything with their present modulus operandi. They are alleged to be extorting money from traders, mobilising young men for military training, and disrupting vehicular movement on the streets of major cities. They are simply inviting anarchy in the south east. You cannot say you want to liberate your people, yet you are exploiting them. The best way to gain autonomy or independence is never the use of force, but rather through sound intellectual activities. Nigeria never fired a shot to gain independence from Britain.
Nnamdi Kanu is not the Biafran hero. Before him, there were people like the much respected father of the movement, late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, as well as Ralph Uwazuruike of MASSOB (Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra) . The leader that will lead Ndigbo out of the Nigerian state is not yet born; meaning that Biafra is still a process, and that its actualisation will be in decades to come.
The actualisation of the republic of Biafra will be determined by how the Buhari administration and subsequent governments handle the cases of injustice that give rise to the cry of marginalisation by the Igbo. I advise the Nigerian government to tread cautiously and re-think the use of military force against the Biafran agitators.
Rather than military invasion, government should address the genuine grievances of the south easterners, just as has been done for the Niger Delta region. The cry of marginalisation by the Igbo states should be looked into. Why would the south east have only five states, while the other geopolitical zones have six each, and northwest seven? Why has it been impossible for an Igbo man to be elected President? Why does the Nigerian state make the Igbo man feel he is a second-class citizen in his own country?
In the previous administration, religious leaders were always flocking around the corridors of power. Why are men of God no longer hobnobbing with people in government these days?
Many things have changed. Ex-President Jonathan is a Christian, while President Buhari is a Muslim. Because of the different religious backgrounds, their approach to seeking spiritual guidance will normally differ. It is up to the President in power at any given time to decide how religious leaders come to advise him or pray for him, and every President decides the way he wants to go about his religious activities.
We had in President Jonathan an unassuming man that recognised the fact that it was God that decreed his rise to the Presidency. From a humble background as a university lecturer, he rose to Deputy Governor, Governor, and Vice President, to become the President, when his boss, Yar’Adua, died in office. For such a man, it was not surprising to see him associating with men of God.
What I commented on as reported by Saturday Sun was the visits of some particular religious leaders who frequented the seat of power as if it was an extension of their churches. One wonders why their visits did not positively influence government policies or lead to the government of the day solving the problems of the masses. Some of them lost their credibility, by chasing government contracts, and by so doing, lost their moral rights as the mouthpiece of God, to rebuke the leaders on their negligence of the masses or their excesses generally.