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By Christy Anyanwu
Bishop Abraham Olaleye is leader of Abraham’s Evangelistic Ministry and General Overseer, Pentecostal Congregation.
In this interview with Sunday Sun, he discusses religious and socio-political matters concerning Nigeria and the church. He also proffers solutions to a number of problems in the nation today.
How would you assess the state of Nigeria today?
Honestly speaking, frankly speaking, I think we are making progress. Maybe sometimes slowly. A lot of people have asked me the same question, especially young people. They don’t see any difference. Maybe because of my age bracket and I know what Nigeria used to be in the 1960s. It puts me in a position to compare.
I remember when the population of Lagos used to be four million. I know what it looked
like when bridges were being built under General Yakubu Gowon, the Head of State then. I saw the transitions that happened afterwards, from one administration to the other, when we eventually returned to the Second Republic in a democratic government, change of power, but the military came back again. And then democratic regime began again in 1999. Ever since, there has not been an interruption by the juntas.
By virtue of being a travelling missionary and evangelist, you go to London, to New York, and come back home, and you are wondering why Nigeria is not like New York. When I began to travel to other parts of Africa, I noticed that the difference was very, very, very wide (Nigeria is better). But, definitely, you want to compare yourself with what is good.
From an elder’s point of view, when we say, oh, we ought to have been like America, it’s good, it’s motivating and ambitious. But you want to say, what about other nations that are not where we are? You have to balance the two and say, O Lord, I wish to be like Europe, the West, but thank you for where you have brought us so far.
So, like I said, growing up in Lagos and having seen what has happened over time, going to
many states of the federation, you see flyovers here and there, and the rate of development, which didn’t even happen under the military, you conclude that democratic administration is still the best. So, from that perspective, I know that we are not there, but we are moving towards it.
And, by the way, when you look at other countries, especially the Global North, you will discover that before they too came to where they are right now a lot of water passed under the bridge. America will be 250 years old this year. They fought a civil war and had different challenges to even come to where they are now.
We are just 66 this year. I’m two years older than Nigeria. So, I know that Nigeria can be far better.
Usually, I’m not excited. A part of me feels that we should have done better. But another part of me says, be grateful to God.
So far, we are making progress, the best is yet to come. That is on one side.
On the other side, I see that God is the ruler over the nations. Psalm 22 says: All the kingdoms of the world belong to God, and He rules. The Old King James Version says: He’s the governor among the nations. The New King James Version says: He rules in the midst of the nations.
And when Jesus came, the Bible says of Him in Revelation 1: 5, that He is the ruler over all the kings of the earth. Proverbs says the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord like rivers of water. He turns it wherever He wishes. Again, when you study the Book of Daniel, you see
government. You see powerful kingdoms, powerful nations who didn’t even buy into religion or God. For instance, the kingdom of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar had 128 provinces. It was the only empire at that time in the world that crossed the ocean to the other side; the kingdom of Babylon was a whole continent at that time.
Can you imagine somebody ruling over a whole continent? And this man went to the woods. God allowed things to pass on him. So he came back and said, Ah, actually, we had always believed wrongly. We think we are so powerful. He said, now I know that God rules the nations. And rules whoever He wants or wishes at any time.
I have a philosophy that I used to tell them in church. We owe a duty to those in authority. According to 1 Timothy, chapter 2, from verse 1. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, supplication, giving of thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and rulers and those in authority. That we may live a peaceful and quiet life in all holiness. For this is good and willing in the sight of the Lord our God, Who wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Meanwhile, at the time that Paul wrote that letter to Timothy, the church was going through the toughest persecution under Emperor Nero, who was the emperor of the Roman Empire at that time.
He was killing Christians. But Paul wrote that and said, pray for those in authority. I said to them in the church: Our position in this church is that we pray for everyone. Whoever is President or governor or local government chairman, we pray for them. We don’t support anyone. We are men of God. We are not supposed to be biased or sentimental, because we are leaders of the people.
Our duty is to be faithful to God who says, pray for them. Was it Shagari that was the first civilian President in the Second Republic? We prayed for him. Then the military came and took over. And I was like, why should this happen? I said, okay. Let’s pray for them also. Remember Gen. Abacha?
Eventually, we returned to the democratic rule. And Obasanjo became President. And we prayed for him, that he should succeed. Because praying for him is not just for us or individuals but for the benefit of the nation. He came and left. We moved to Yar’Adua. Again, we prayed for him.
Yar’Adua died in office. Jonathan took over and I was so excited about it.
Excited because I thought, Nigeria belongs to all of us and this presidential thing should not be about whose region is (entitled to power). And I felt that Nigerians, everybody from different ethnic groups, should take a shot. Because we are all Nigerians. And, you know, those are the values that hold America together.
That philosophy by Martin Luther King Jr., “We hold this value that all men are born equal.”
So, there should be no colour discrimination. We are all created by God. This skin is just the colour of the covering.
Research was done on that. Two people in the theatre. You know they would close them
to carry out surgery. So, without seeing their body. They said, Can you identify the inner part of the black and the white? They couldn’t tell the difference. So, it’s just the colour of the skin. What is that value that was then propounded in America?
That a man should not be judged by the colour of his skin but by the content of his character.
And it’s one of the things that ended up playing a role in the emergence of President Barack Obama. That somebody could come up like Kamala Harris, the lady who was Vice to President Biden.
For the first time, you had a lady, a woman of colour running for President of the United States.
So, I was happy that Jonathan came in. And we put in our best, not because we were going to Aso Rock. We were just praying.
When Buhari came in, we prayed for him also. Now Tinubu has come. We are praying for him too. Whoever comes after him, we will take the same position, for the good of Nigeria.
Most of the time, your choice, your preference, may not win the election. It takes maturity to just hold the Bible and pray for those in authority.
That’s my belief. That is what I think and I tell people to just pray for them. For whatever reason, at the end of the day, God knows everything. He knows why certain things happen. And he knows what those certain things can eventually lead to – a more balanced, robust atmosphere that gives everyone a voice. Especially those who really love the country.
To be in authority at whatever level, these things don’t just start out there from the
Presidency. Somebody who wants to be a good leader must show himself at the lowest level. You see somebody like an office manager, in Nigeria we say messenger, Americans call them office managers. You see one that is so dutiful. Oh, this person is so dutiful. It seems he is beyond being an office manager. Can’t we make him a clerk? So, you are seeing some things.
This person has good leadership qualities. And that’s how, when they reinvent themselves, they go to school further, enhancing their ability. You know, innate ability. Given ability, they can ascend to any level and become a wonder not only to themselves but to the entire world. At the end of the day, God uses the weak things of this world to confound the things that are strong.
So that’s my thought about the state of the nation. I believe that we can do much better. But for my age, knowing where we used to be, I know that we are no longer there.
With the 2027 elections around the corner, what is your advice for the Independent National Electoral Commission and the electorate?
My advice to the INEC is to be honest. To be sincere. To allow their conscience and the fear of God to make them good servants to the public, to the masses, to deliver a free, fair and credible election. To do everything in their power to deliver a free and fair and credible election.
Nothing else can one ever wish for from the electoral umpire than to deliver a credible
election. And they need the cooperation of Nigerians also.
What about the electorate?
To discourage vote-buying. Nigeria is a very interesting place. When somebody gives me a bag of rice to vote for him, I just ask myself, how many days before we finish the bag of rice, especially in a large family? And then you say that to people, no, no, don’t take anything. Just vote for somebody you know. You know, the Chinese proverb says, if you give a man a
piece of fish, you feed him for a day, but if you train him how to fish, you feed him for life.
I think it’s the poverty mentality in Nigeria. Poverty is not necessarily the absence of money. I think it’s a mentality.
That’s why some people are rich but they are still stealing. Some people are rich and they
cannot be satisfied. They have what we call this insatiable appetite, and they cannot be satisfied.
They keep looking for more. And that is greed, when somebody is rich enough, comfortable enough, but he’s still looking for more money.
Sometimes, when you see somebody who is poor, when you say somebody is poor, yet he is content, meanwhile, somebody who is in a better position is still looking for money to steal, then you know that this thing is not just about the absence or lack of money. They say a hungry man is an angry man. When people are impoverished, you give them something, they easily fall for it. But, honestly, I’m just praying that God will chart a better course for us in this country. God will chart a better course for us.
Yeah, the government is doing fine, but we can do better. I know that it doesn’t stop at the President’s desk alone. It comes to all Nigerians, and all the political office holders, especially the National Assembly, the upper and the lower arms, which are houses where they represent Nigerians, if you understand what I mean.
What is your response concerning the prevailing insecurity in the country?
It’s very challenging that this thing began like child’s play during the Obasanjo administration.
We thought it was child’s play, until it has come to where it is today. One of my deep concerns about the state of the nation is when religion divides us so sharply, and we blatantly refuse to let the voice of reason and education make a difference. We have an adage in our culture that, “If you can’t make me better, then leave me the way I am.”
Yes, leave me the way I am. If a religion that should make me understand life better and love my neighbour as myself is now turning me into an enemy to my neighbour, then I need to think well about that religion. I like the American dimension, nobody does anything for the love of it without an interest.
How would you rate three years of the Tinubu administration? How would you assess it?
I would say, honestly speaking, it started with difficulties. The pain was much. Prices of things have been skyrocketing.
But, recently, things are looking better. The economy is looking up. Our foreign reserve is going higher and the naira-dollar exchange rate that was hitting the roof is now coming down. I think one of the best decisions the man made, which other presidential aspirants also made, was that this subsidy thing was a fraud. It was a fraud. The so-called subsidy that they were subsidising petrol for us was a fraud.
What I mean is, when people manipulated the process of subsidy, people were even carrying water tankers and carrying papers to NNPC to say, we have supplied petrol. You get your 33,000 tankers of crude oil to go and deliver to the states.
To make payments available, he has collected the subsidy. He now takes it across the border to different countries, our neighbours, and sells it. You know, for them, it’s very expensive. So he makes twice the profit.
Who does not know the fraud that was perpetrated in the subsidy regime? It’s not hidden. Everybody knows it. So, Tinubu came and said, this is not feasible.
Obi said he would have done the same thing. Atiku said he would have done the same thing.
Because the bad thing about petrol subsidy was fraud.
Now states that were getting N2 billion allocation from the federation account are getting more billions. That’s why you see the governors are happy. Whatever political party they come from, they are happy that they now have money like they have never had before.
Let me use this analogy. In those days, when we went out to play football, we used to sustain injuries but we didn’t want our parents to notice it so that they would not forbid us from playing football the following day. So we would stand up, we would be limping, but once we saw our parents, we would try to make it look like nothing. But mothers, especially, would say, Ah, that boy, come, come, come, come here. What’s wrong with you? You would say, nothing. By the time they press the leg, hey, hey, hey, they would know there’s something.
So if you say, oh, this treatment is painful. Let’s just not treat it. That child will never get well.
So that’s what I feel has been happening for the past three years. And, gradually, I believe Nigeria is coming out of the woods. Those who travel and know how much they buy their tickets to travel overseas, they can tell the difference right now.
Meanwhile, this one will challenge you. Imagine somebody, those of us, those who live abroad. When one pound was equal to N2,100. With little pounds, you have a lot of naira. But the effect is that things were very expensive. To them, it’s like, you should continue like that. And the other thing, the money you send to your sister or your brother or to your relatives to buy tickets is now more. You have to look for more naira to get a little amount of the hard currency. Of course, when you want to buy, the airlines charge you based on the dollar rate.
The dollar that exists at that time. So, if I want to buy a ticket to London, especially at peak periods, summer or Christmas time, N3 million for economy. As 30 years ago when we travelled to the UK we bought it at N22,000. I remember a particular airline, when things started becoming expensive, their club class was N330,000, the economy was N150,000; that economy ticket of N150,000 is like N3 million today. That club class of N330,000 is up to N8 million today, depending on the season of the year. Because the naira has lost value but things are a bit better than before. From N1,700 to a dollar, the thing is coming down, water is finding its level. The law of gravity says whatever goes up must come down. I believe that things are getting better gradually.
The governors are in the best position to explain it to people, that money now comes to them to fund projects, infrastructure and even to pay civil servants. When was the last time you heard that in the states things were not going fine? Or they were not able to pay their civil servants?
I believe that Nigeria is moving forward. I pray that after President Tinubu, the next President will even take it further to make it better. It should be getting better, that’s what I believe. It took a lot of courage for this administration to stop the fraudulent subsidy regime.
After the stoppage of the subsidy, prices of things skyrocketed; fuel went from about N200 per litre, it now goes for over N1, 000 per litre.
We have all had to feel the pain.
What’s your take on the state police proposal? Are you in support of state policing?
I support it, if truly we want to defeat terror. Take America, for example, we have the federal troops, we call them the federal police, we have state police, we have county police, like local government police. They have airport police, they have armed track police, police for their railway lines. So that we are not short of relevant personnel to provide necessary security in a country with a rising population. Already, Nigeria is underpoliced according to the United Nations recommendation and the statistics they issue. In Nigeria, we have a deficit of personnel. And most.of these police are working with the politicians. We say the police are not enough for the masses but the rich man who has money has arranged for his personal security, he’s taken the list of police from the government.
