GOD CAN SAVE NIGERIA

The Nigerian finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was the guest of Christian Amanpour

Iweala on Amanpour

of the CNN, yesterday, 3rd July 2014. My personal evaluation of the interview was that it was below par. If the President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, had not fared well in similar interviews in the past, one would have expected that the one whom Amanpour introduced as a “leading” minister in Jonathan’s government would do better and help cover her principal’s inadequacies. Unfortunately she did not do this. Amanpour asked the Finance Minister, among other things, what the Jonathan government was doing to curb corruption in the land. Rather than answer directly, Okonjo-Iweala went on the defensive and tried to dis-abuse her interviewer's mind of the reason why corruption should not always be linked to the name “Nigeria”. She said that when the western media mentions Nigeria, the word “corruption” is the very next thing they tag the nation along with. She felt this was not supposed to be. I thought Amanpour was simply being too civil and kind to the Minister because, although she mentioned the issue of Sanusi’s whistle blowing on the missing $20 billion at the NNPC, Amanpour did not talk about the sitting minister who is also alleged to have squandered billions of naira to chatter private jets for her numerous trips around the world. If Amanpour had mentioned that, Okonjo-Iweala would have been thoroughly embarrassed. 

What I gleaned from that interview was that the Jonathan government has run out of options on proffering solutions to solve the nation’s myriad of problems. And that even the best brains in his cabinet also do not know what to do. It seems to me that the country has been set on auto-pilot, being propelled through space by Providence. I shall be showing in this article that prayers to God does work and a nation whose leaders have lost the capability to lead can still rely on God to save them. As we explore this thesis we shall also consider some scenarios on ground in the country at the moment. 

Ekiti: unprecedented in Nigeria

One would think that when an election year is fast approaching, and the ruling party has been found deficient in moving the country forward, that the opposition would take advantage of these lapses and proffer better alternatives to solving the nation’s problems. The All Progrssive Congress (APC), the country’s leading opposition party, seem to be lacking in this. Following its defeat at the just concluded Ekiti state gubernatorial elections, the party also seems to be loosing ground in the South-West were it is initially supposed to possess a strong hold. The elections, which was widely reported to have been free and fair, with the incumbent governor, Kayode Fayemi of the APC, congratulating the winner, Ayodele Fayose, in an unprecedented manner, reveals something more. Which is why the electorate, even though deeply unhappy with the ruling party and its performance at the Federal level, are not willing to trade the devil for the deep blue sea. The onus is on the APC today to prove to Nigerians that it can do a better job than the PDP at the federal level. That they are a worthy alternative. Already, events playing out within the party are not encouraging at all. I am at a loss as to why the APC cannot put its head together and produce a presidential candidate other than the person of General Mohammadu Buhari. While Buhari is a fine gentleman and his antecedent as a crusader against corruption along with his perfectly untainted career in public office will serve him well, his age is a terrible set back for him. But even if the APC will field Buhari for presidency, the idea of fielding Bola Ahmed Tinubu as his running mate is down right preposterous. 

If the APC does this, it will be fielding a Muslim-Muslim ticket and that is just plain political suicide. I do not have any problem with a Muslim-Muslim ticket but a lot of Nigerians, whose votes will make the ultimate decision of who becomes president of Nigeria, do have a problem with it. At the moment in the political life of our country, two primary things determine who people vote for: it is where they come from (tribal) and what religion they profess. In a country that is predominantly Muslim and Christian, a Muslim-Muslim ticket is certain to discourage the Christian populace, and the ruling party, the PDP, will simply play on this political error and field a Christian-Muslim ticket. They will split the votes that would originally have gone to the APC and then garner the votes of those who would naturally have voted for them. The result will be the greatest defeat that General Buhari has ever witnessed in his political career and no one would be blamed for this than himself and his political associates. It is simply not done. If indeed the reports going around about the APC desiring to field a Buhari-Tinubu ticket is true, it is my candid plea with them to shelve it. A Muslim-Muslim ticket could have been permissible for the ACN in 2011

Buhari, Tinubu, Fayemi

but even the result of that election, with Ribadu as presidential candidate, coming a distant third in the election, actually proves that no one will vote a party that is considered to be mono-religious. Already the security situation in the country is not helpful for this kind of political permutation. The dreaded sect, Boko Haram, that continues to wreck havoc in the northern part of the country, is generally seen as Muslim. Those who are enlightened know that Boko Haram are only Muslim in name and do not espouse true Islamic beliefs but some extreme, perverted and violent version; the ordinary Nigerian does not see it that way. 

If on one hand, the ruling party has run out of ideas on how to solve the nation’s troubles and the leading opposition party will allow ambition and personal political agendas to colour its decisions, then the country is left at the mercy of the situations on ground and therefore the need for all Nigerians to pray hard to God to save the nation. While discussing this dilemma with a friend, he suggested the option of a military take over. I reminded him that a military rule will come with too many uncertainties. The whole country will then be at the mercy of the whims and caprices of one man or a group of men. As wobbling as our democracy is, we can still debate issues and still sway our leaders through popular public opinion. In a military rule, such cannot happen. Then we considered the outcome of the Nation Conference and how it could help solve some of the trouble with the nation. But even that one has its challenges because the outcome of that conference will still be vetted by the present national assembly that many Nigerians do not trust. When we had gone through all the options, and the situation looked bleak in every direction, we resorted to the God option. 

Some people frown at the God option because they feel that it encourages lethargy, discourages people from taking responsibility for their actions and encourages resignation to fate. This is not exactly true. A true believer in God knows that God holds human beings responsible for their actions. So that nations that refused to learn from history and chose certain paths, along with their leaders, are today in prolonged war situations. It’s a simple principle of sowing and reaping. Nevertheless, those of us who believe in God understand that regardless of our efforts and even decisions, there is a God who chooses to show mercy on all of his creation and ensures that

things work out for them. This is the reason Nigerians must turn to God to save this country from imminent collapse. God can do all things. He may give to our present leaders such wisdom and ability to be able to solve the problems of this country, so that by 2015 when Nigerians go to the poles, they would have no qualms re-electing the present government into power. God can choose to ensure that the process of choosing a presidential candidate within the APC is so well organized that, far beyond our ability to reason it out, God can raise up such pristine, sound and visionary individuals within that party who will sell such an agenda to the Nigerian people such that they would not find it difficult to elect him to office. And lastly, God can go beyond the incumbent and the opposition, and bring for this country a redemption that only God can bring. When in the summer of 1998 the maximum ruler of this country, Sanni Abacha, suddenly died and in a space of weeks the leadership of this nation was changed, those of us who were praying were not surprised at all. That same God is alive and well, and can turn situation around as abruptly as he did in 1998.

At the moment, Nigeria is on auto-pilot. The blessing of such a situation for a plane is that the plane will continue to move, without any input from its pilot. The pilot may choose to go to sleep; the plane will continue to move. The problem with auto-pilot, however, is that if the plane continues in this state for too long a time and it runs out of gas, rather than continue in its flight, it would simply nose dive and crash. The trouble with a Nigeria on auto-pilot is that our situation has a time span. It is my prayer that we find solutions to our problems as a nation before our time elapses and the country self destructs.