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•Let’s give Tinubu a chance, our problems predate him
The General Overseer of Divine Appointment Ministry, Lagos, Rev. Ben Eragbai, has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to drop party considerations in his appointments and go for technocrats if he wants to rebuild the country.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Eragbai, who is popularly known as Jesus Soldier, noted that politicians, when they get in to office, recoup the money they shared to the electorate during electioneering.
What is your view on the state of the nation?
It is biting; it is biting everybody. However, whatever you are seeing now didn’t start today; it is the foundation or the structure it was built upon. When has Nigeria ever been good? Are we going to say that it is this bad because of President Bola Tinubu? Let us get it clear, when has Nigeria ever been good? In the 70s and 80s, Fela sang about the situation and got tired. Many other musicians, Sony Okosun, Ras Kimono and others came up and they continued singing about the situation in Nigerian.
Nigeria is not bad because of Tinubu. What is bad is the structure on which the country has been standing. The structure has always been against the nation, which is the continuation of colonialism. That colonial structure is what is still in place. Somebody said when the enrolment of the West African School Certificate Examination was N550, that his sister could not enroll because there was no money. Nigeria didn’t go bad today, it has always been bad. Electricity issue didn’t start with Tinubu, it has always been there, bad roads have always been there, and food inflation has always been there, oppression of the poor has always been there. If these things were not there, go and ask Fela, Sonny Okosun and other musicians what they were singing and complaining about.
Nigeria is going down and down and it is only God who can help her. It is not even the president, who is a human being. You heard the president’s wife said that her husband is not a magician, and I agree with her. Tinubu is not a magician. How can you singlehandedly think you can transform things overnight when the structure has always been there even before the 60s? Where we not assembling cars in this country- Peugeot, Ben, Leyland, Volkswagen, etc? But, some people wrecked them. Was it Tinubu? No; was it Buhari? No. the structure is bad.
What is the way out?
What we need to do is to cooperate with the current president because he is already there. If we keeping shouting Tinubu is bad and refuse to cooperate with him, it will not make things better. Don’t forget, God will always use people – Cyrus was not a believer, but God used him mightily. Sometimes, these criticisms won’t take us anywhere. He is already there; all of us should throw our weight behind him; pray for him and just thrust God because no man can save this nation if God doesn’t help the man.
The structure is bad. You cannot put a ten-storey building on the foundation for a bungalow. Nigeria is the big brother of Africa; so large, but what is the structure. How are we being governed and from where are we being governed; who are the people governing us? We only see Tinubu there, how about the hands we don’t see, how about the movers and shakers; how about the stakeholders? Think of others that are yet to be revealed, and we are talking of naira, inflation and all. The way out is to support the president and throw our strength behind him. We should speak out what ought to be done.
You have told Nigerians to support the president, and he has asked the citizens to make sacrifices for better days, but Nigerians believe members of the National Assembly and other government appointees are living in luxury. How do you reconcile this?
Let me take you back to the structure I have been talking about. When this man was coming, he spent money and poor people collected the money. If you do business, won’t you make profit? These people you are talking about spent money to be elected. If the masses had told them to keep their money that they didn’t need it, the situation would have been different.
They invested money and so are entitled to profit. It still boils down to structure, gullibility and selfishness. The average Nigerian is selfish. Example: If you going now, you witness vehicular traffic. It is not caused by the government, it is caused by a particular individual (to borrow the language, Emilokan – it is my turn). The bus driver stops at the bus stop to load passengers, another one instead of queuing behind him, stops by his side, the same with another one and they block the road because it is the turn of each of them to carry passengers at the same time. They want it to be their turn at the same time. None of them would allow the other to load; they block the road and cause traffic. It is not the president or the politicians that caused it. The same bus driver if he goes to the National Assembly, he would exhibit the same selfishness. Even when you don’t want to, your family would mount pressure on you that it is their turn to come out of poverty; they would tell you to put that Christianity aside, and join in the looting.
The average Black man is selfish. I was in Canada; I saw how Indians were networking. Go to America and see how Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese are working. Chinese would come; others would throw their weight behind him to help him build a company. When he is through, he would also help others to set up other industries and they continue. It is the same structure that Indians are using, but when you bring your brother from Nigeria to the US, any little issue he would go and report you to the police. It is the same in Germany, things were working well, but when Nigerians moved in things started taking a new twist.
Here, our system is let the rich be super rich to dominate the poor. This is the system the elected and appointed political office holders are playing. There is nothing you can do until the system changes. In some countries, you don’t own property. This is their structure. We had a structure that was working for Africa, but they came to scatter it. In those days, you dare not steal a fowl. If you did, they had a way of dealing with you. We had a structure that if we had built on it, it would have helped us. For example, in Libya, their system was working until democracy came in. Ditto Iraq. For emphasis, I’m not against democracy, but democracy has made a lot of people go crazy.
In Nigeria, if you think that corruption is with the politicians alone, go to the civil service office for one documentation or the other, then you know that it is a cesspit of corruption. There is one internet provider company that I wanted to subscribe to. After payment, they said they were coming; the cable passes in front of my house. It is just to run it into my house, it took them one month, and just to bring the router took another month, making two months. I was calling repeatedly and told them that they wanted to ruin the business for the owner who had a very good vision. Until today, they are yet to come after almost three months. What I’m trying to say is that the structure is faulty.
You expected me to say that the politicians are bad, which is the usual word all of us use. I do not doubt that they are, but the structure that is in place is such that if you get there and you want to change it you will not be able to survive there. If you go there and you try to act differently, you will be an enemy.
Should the nation continue in this way? And what should the president do?
The president should bring in some technocrats, even though he may want to appease some people. Let us put the party aside and think of how to rebuild the nation. Some of his cabinet members were governors, but they didn’t perform. He could have judged them based on their past performances. I don’t have problem with someone like Ribadu, he has done well before when he was the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairman. There are many who have no reason being there. There is nowhere a bad tree can bear a good fruit.
What do we do? Until you bring the right mechanic to work on the knocked engine of your car, the vehicle won’t start working. You cannot pick a Volkswagen mechanic to come and fix the latest model of Mercedes Benz. How would he do it; how do we make it? That is the point. In as much as we are bringing the same recycled people, there isn’t much hope. If he is interested in fixing the country, let him bring seasoned technocrats, people who are afraid to fall; who value their names more than anything.
