By Christy Anyanwu

Bishop Kayode Fanilola is one of the few African members of White House Prayer for our Nation Initiative and a member of the 17th Annual White House Prayer Initiative Planning Committee Meeting of March 23, 2015 in White House, United States of America.

Prayer for our Nation Initiative is an creation of American Christian leaders that have been praying for the government and the nation of America for more than 20 years.

Fanilola started his teaching career at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria before moving to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland where he pioneered the teaching of Yoruba Language.

 In 2,000, he yielded to the call of God. He is the founding pastor of the Throne of Grace and Miracle Ministries with headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland and the president of Mission and Crusade International. 

He was consecrated as a Bishop in 2016 by the Kingdomway College of Bishops and Ministerial Alliance in the United States.

Fanilola is a prolific writer and a man of prayer. He has authored many life transforming books, including ‘Fighting your Case in the Spiritual Court of Appeals’, ‘The Volcanic Anointing’, ‘The Pregnancy of God’ among other many other.

In this interview with Sunday Sun in Lagos,  he spoke on the state of the nation.

University students have been at home for months now due to Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike. As a former Nigerian lecturer, what is your take on that and what should be the solutions?

Concerning the ASUU strike, there are two consequences that I can point out right away. Number one is, there is this adage that says an idle hand is the devil’s workshop. All those university students who are supposed to be on campus receiving educational instructions and for more than three months now, have been at home doing nothing. You will find out that the majority of them will normally easily embrace crime. This country is building an army of unemployed youths that many of them will eventually turn into hard criminals. And the government is not paying attention to this, only because the children of most of our politicians and government officials do not attend public universities. They are either in private universities in Nigeria or in universities overseas. That is why they are not concerned, every politician now is concerned about the next election. How to win the next election. That is why nobody is paying attention to the ASUU strike.

Politicians always think about the next election, whereas genuine statesmen  think about the next generation, what they would do that will better the next generation but the politicians, especially the politicians in Nigeria, only think about the next election. Another consequence of this ASSU strike is that, it is gradually destroying the reputation of Nigeria educational system. Most places abroad, the educational system of Nigeria is no longer valued. They see it as substandard because of the quality of the time the children spend in school. The standard in Nigeria educational system is going down and down and I don’t know how it can be revived. The way government is treating the issue of education is very bad. Another major negative effect is that, gradually most of our best brains in the universities, it has been happening for more than 10 years ago, even more than 20 years ago that most of our best brains are abroad in all the fields, in terms of science, medicine, technology, engineering, arts, literature, including Yoruba. Our best brains are relocating abroad in way we call brain drain. I’m sure most of the universities now are substandard because they don’t have adequate lecturers to teach most of those programmes in private universities. Most of the ASSU lecturers are not feeling the pains of this strike because many of them are teaching one or two courses in all the private universities. A colleague was telling me that apart from his regular job in the public university, he’s teaching in two other private universities. It is my wish that we would have a government that will value education.

What’s your reaction to the present state of insecurity across the country?

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Where there is no social security, there will be insecurity to life and property. Regardless of the military weapons being procured, regardless of how many people are being trained in modern day insurgency, there will never be a permanent solution to insecurity in Nigeria until the country begins to pay attention to social security. And what do I mean by social security? When there is job for people. When you go to college you graduate, there is job for you, or you take care of the unemployed. In most civilised countries, they take care of the unemployed. If you lose your job, there’s office of unemployment that would take care of them, at least, for the next six months. After the six months, if you still didn’t get a job, they can extend it. I am not sure that kind of provision is there in Nigeria. If you lose your job in Nigeria, you must pray and fast to get another job. There is provision for elderly, provision for children. When there is no social security, there will always be crime, and insecurity. The insecurity is affecting the lifestyle of ordinary Nigerians. Before I relocated to US, I always like to drive in the night. Can anyone now say they enjoy driving in the night in Nigeria now. Even travelling in the day now is a serious problem. Insecurity is affecting every strata of our life in this country. It’s affecting religion, businesses, education, schools and we are expecting to see development and progress? There can never be any development if there is no security. The children that are not trained today, they’re the ones that will become bandits and Boko Haram tomorrow. Most of these Boko Haram are the neglected children in the North. They neglected the children of the poor. What we are seeing now is what operated in the North in the 80s where the Almajiris were neglected. They are the ones causing problems for all the country now. Assuming all the children nationwide in the Southwest, Southeast were neglected, you can imagine what our tomorrow, in 20 years’ time will become. There are about 14 million children-out-of-school daily. That is the largest in the world. All those children out of school are potential army of bandits of tomorrow unless that situation is redress quickly. My relocation to America was not intentional. I only came for a conference hoping to come back to Nigeria after the conference that was in 1996 during the regime of the late General Sani Abacha as military head of state. ASUU was on strike for nine months. After the conference, I wanted to come back home but my wife said why are you in a hurry to come back, the ASUU is still on strike, take your time there. Two to five months, they are still on strike. It was the 7th month I took the decision to see what I can do there. The Lord facilitated my staying there; I got all my papers and relocated with all my family.

What sort of president do you wish for Nigeria in 2023?

I don’t really care for the type of president that emerges in 2023. If this country is not restructured. If it’s allowed to continue like this, even the most honest and transparent and brilliant president takes over in 2023, he will still fail because the system cannot allow him to succeed. The current system is not federalism, we are just deceiving ourselves. If you want to see true federalism, see what operated in the United States, see what operates in Canada or Germany.

Every state, every component units are free of what they can do. There’s no imposition, there’s no the most almighty president sitting in Abuja giving directives. That is not federalism. Until this country is restructured to the way it used to be, I’m not advocating that we go back to the four regions we had before, but, at least, the present six geo political zones can be adopted and every zone will be independent. The only thing that will bind us together is our currency, the military, the customs and foreign affairs. What is the business of the Federal Government dealing with primary health care? That is not federalism. No matter who wins this presidency, he will still fail with this unitary system because it is a system that has inadvertently made it easy for certain part of the country to lord it over the rest. That is the consequence of what you are seeing now.

 

Any word of advice for the electorate as regard the 2023 elections?

We have been complaining about bad leadership, we are not honest to ourselves even the followers, the electorate are not good too. Most of the things that our leaders are doing we encourage them. We are the ones encouraging bad governance.

For example, in this  country, you will see a politician that stole money and they are about to prosecute that politician and people in his village will be protesting that he is being humiliated, you will see people in his village carrying placards that their man is being witch-hunted. Is that how to build a society?  The electorate are the architects of our problems. You are going to cast your vote, they will give you rice, N5,000 and they will force you to go and vote. Until the next four years, you will not see them again. You know that somebody is a thief but because he has come to bribe you, then you give him your vote. What do you expect?

Our politicians are very wise. They make sure that people are so much hungry before the elections. They make sure the economy situation is very battered and by the time they throw a bait of N5,000, you jump at it. This is wickedness. Our deliverance is in our own hands. This is not the question of prayers, if the electorate keep taking money, bags of rice for elections they keep getting bad leaders. My appeal to the electorate is to shine their eyes if anybody is bringing bags of rice, disgrace them with their bags of rice, open the bags of rice and throw them on the streets. Don’t take their rice, don’t take their money. When they know that the electorate are not ready to be bribed, they would do what they are supposed to do. We have uninformed electorate, we have illiterate electorate. Most of our electoral acts are not being implemented because it gives room for the type of things they are doing.

Do you think things would get better in this country?

We should not lose hope. With God, all things are possible. The things on our hand now are not right. Now it’s not just about prayers. We have our own role to play. God has given us the wisdom to choose what we want. So, I believe with God all things are possible, Nigeria will still be good, it’s going to be a better place but it will be with effort of serious, honest politicians to achieve better country. Not with the present crop of politicians, we have around. With the present crop of politicians we have around now, there’s no hope. I know the case of Nigeria is not beyond deliverance, God is on the throne, this same God will arise and it will be a place of joy for all of us. It will be the joy of all Nigerians abroad who really want to be back home but cannot come; it will be our joy that we all are going to come back home and contribute to our quota to building this nation. Nigeria has potential; Nigerian has the human capacity resources to build this country. It is time that Nigeria move from being a potential great country to the real great country that it’s supposed to be.