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By Enyeribe Ejiogu
Every day, more economic pressure is being piled on ordinary Nigerians through a rash of policies as well as crippling taxation, levies and charges, which daily worsen the already parlous condition of the citizenry. Even more disturbing for senior citizens like Archbishop Joseph Ojo, Presiding Archbishop and General Overseer of Calvary Kingdom Church International, is the penchant of tax officers of some state and local government revenue services, who deliberately ignore globally accepted conventions, to impose a variety of taxes and levies on senior and elderly citizens, who ordinarily should be enjoying care under the social security system as it obtains in organised societies, which the country’s ruling elite frequent but simply refuse to replicate such good things here in the country. However, in the face of the hardship unleashed on Nigerians by the Bola Tinubu administration over the past two months it has been in office, Archbishop Ojo firmly believes that the earnest desire of the citizenry for a better Nigeria will still materialise, saying that God is working it out, assuring that it would happen in a way that is unexpected. He speaks on this and other issues in this interview.
During the campaigns for the 2023 general elections, the All Progressives Congress (APC) ran on the promise of renewed hope for Nigerians. In an interview with a national newspaper, before May 29, you charged the new administration to renew the hopes of Nigerians and meet their expectations. How do you feel about the policy pronouncements made so far by the APC-led federal administration?
Honestly, the things of the Spirit of God, at times, are not easily decoded by the natural mind of man, or how it comes to you and how you interpret it. After that interview, I was addressing a group of pastors that I mentor, on the topic, Renewed Hope To Move Forward. Somehow, it was as if I was preaching on the party’s campaign slogan. That was not the case at all. Rather, it was the Holy Spirit that inspired that message because the Bible talks about hope deferred in the book of Proverbs. We don’t discard the voice of hope. Irrespective of what we are seeing now, I still see that there is hope for this country. That hope may not necessarily be the one that we are going to get from the present political leadership (it could be, it may not be) but definitely there is hope for a new Nigeria. There is hope for a new visitation. How that will happen, no man can tell. God’s word came to Prophet Elisha when everything was dry and they had a battle to fight. The prophet told the people to dig trenches. You may not see rain or wind, but the ditches will be filled with water. That word was to give them hope. When you see cloud gather, you will know that there is hope that rain will fall.
At another time, Elijah said to his servant to go and check by the seaside if there was ay sign of a cloud gathering. The servant went the first time, came back and reported that there was no cloud. Elijah to him to go seven times. At the servant time, he returned and told Elijah that he saw a cloud about the size of man’s fist – he said so to avoid the prophet sending him out for the eight time. Being a spiritual person made a declaration, saying, “I hear a sound of the abundance of rain.” He also told Ahab to race down to Jezreel to avoid being beaten by rain.
Personally, as a servant of God, I have hope that thing will turnaround. How God will do it I don’t know. This hope is not built on government on policies that we have heard several from administrations that came to nothing. There is this thing inside me that tells me that there is hope for this country. How it come to fulfilment will be determined by the Almighty God.
My advice is that Nigerians should not be quick to give up believing that God will bring about the fulfilment of their earnest hope. They should not lose hope, even in the face of the downturn in the economy, fall of the Naira, rising price of fuel, cost of living, etc. Somehow, one person or one policy will come out and begin to settle everything. God will use somebody to turn the tide in this country. People have suffered enough. There will be a wind of change, because enough is enough.
What is your take on the issue of taxation?
The government has exhausted all thoughts of how to get money, and all the avenues they think they can get money legally from us. That is why they are trying to dig up all kinds of things from the law books and then turn them into means of generating revenue. They should ready to face the repercussion. Nigerians will resist most of these initiatives. The government that failed to provide pipe-borne water to all residential areas turns around to demand that you pay a levy for the borehole you sank in your compound. Is that not ridiculous?
Let me give you one example with my own house. When I moved into the place, the perimeter fence was not quite high. So, thieves frequently came to steal things from the compound at night. So, I decided to raise the height of the fence. I was in the church office when my security man called to tell me that officials from the local government came to stop the work. So I asked him to give the person who led them the phone. When he confirmed that the team came from the local government, I told them to wait for me, and then added that perhaps, they were among the thieves that had been coming to steal from the compound, and were annoyed that I was raising the height of the fence to stop the theft. I told him I was coming over to meet them. He immediately dropped the phone and ran away with his team. How could the local government send its officials to demand that I pay money for raising the height of my fence, to prevent theft of my property? What kind of satanic policy is that?
Again last year, a team from the inland revenue came to ask me for tax clearance. I told the leader of the team that I had stopped paying tax. He said how could that be? I said, ‘At 73 do you still expect me to pay tax? In other countries, the government takes care of the senior citizens (who are 70 above). Do you want me to pay tax till I die? Walk out of my house.’ He went out. You are asking an old man like me to pay tax, when I don’t have benefit from the government. I think they are bereft of wisdom. These people in governance should be thinking of how to help the elderly, not how to milk them again. That is the same wickedness you see across the states whereby the pensions and gratuities of old, weak, vulnerable retirees are embezzled by government officials charged with responsibility of managing the funds deducted from the salaries of these retirees while they were still strong and working. The money was set aside for their pensions and gratuities.
I believe that when they begin to see that power is transient, and that they cannot be there forever, when they leave office, they will be regretting the wrong decisions they took when they had the opportunity to better the life of a lot of people. I still believe very strongly that there is still hope for a better Nigeria.
Some people have been advocating that Christian leaders and other notable personalities in the Southeast should mobilise the people to rise up and resist the insecurity in the region. If you were to address Christian leaders from that area, what would you tell them?
The situation in the southeast is unbelievable. Let me begin from the sit-at-home and the violent way it is being enforced. I don’t think that it is reasonable. When you are asking a man that is married with wife and children to be idle for 24 hours, you are training on how to be hungry and angry. I think the leaders in the region should put their act together and come up with a plan to act together to flush out the bad elements that are sustaining the insecurity. I must also state that insecurity is everywhere in the country – South South, South West and in the North. The way it is manifesting in the southeast may be slightly different from what we have in the north. It is almost becoming too late, such that if insecurity situation is not arrested and brought under control now, and guns get into the hands of many more people, there will be a killing spree in the country some day, because the person you think is not armed may have been secretly armed and keeping a low profile. When arm meets arm, there will be bloodshed. What the government should do is to see how it can regulate firearms. The politicians are the major problem of the country. During the elections they acquire arms for their thugs, but the elections end they are simply unable to recover the arms from them. The armed thugs of course turn the guns on the hapless citizens. They begin to rob and kidnap people. I am afraid that when a majority of the citizens have guns, there will be big problem. Even in United States, the free access to guns is disturbing them now. Acquiring guns in some US states is as simple as walking into a gun-shop to buy automatic weapons, the same way you can buy Coke or bread in a grocery store. No questions are asked, no documentation necessary.
In essence, I believe it is not only the Southeast that is threatened by insecurity. My counsel is that the leaders of the Southeast should get out their slumber and do the needful to resolve the issues and chart a way forward. The release of Nnamdi can be sorted out by negotiation. The governors of the Southeast states have the key to solve the problem and even drastically reduce it. They have have to work together and pursue a single agenda to deal with insecurity in the zone.
