By
Sam Eyoboka
AHEAD
of the all-important 2019 general elections, Trinity House which announced its
entry into the Nigerian spiritual firmament on Sunday, July 18, 2010 is
re-enacting its vision for a better Nigeria for future generations, is
packaging a debate to create a path-way for the nation. Trinity House, a church
with a mission to transform the society and the future generations, a place
where children of God from all denominations can gather in fellowship for the
propagation and advancement of God’s kingdom here on earth has made giant
strides in its short eight years of existence through its yearly Honour Nigeria
Service. Founder/Senior Pastor of Trinity House, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo told our
correspondent in an interview that, beyond its annual Honour Nigeria programme
designed to recognise persons who had distinguished them-selves in the service
of the country, the church is adding a debate on how to assist the electorate
find worthy political leaders next year and beyond. Asked to speak on the
progress of his eight-year old church, Pastor Ituah said there is every reason
to thank God, saying the church now has eight parishes all over the world
including one in South Africa, a small fellowship in Los Angeles, United
States, a parish in London and five parishes in Lagos.
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| Pastor Ituah |
Giving reason for the
bent this year, he maintained its an extension of the Honour Nigeria Service
where “we honour Nigerians who have contributed their quota; who have very good
character worthy of emulation as role models for others to look at; the prong
is firstly to reward them, to thank them and to appreciate them. “A lot of them
have not been recognized appropriately and therefore to encourage them that
even if other parts of the nation do not see them, we see them. The second
thing is to celebrate Nigeria and find an opportunity to pray for Nigeria and
ask for God’s intervention in Nigeria. “The third reason is to show the people
up as role models worthy of emulation to our congregants and also to Nigeria in
a nutshell. We are not saying they are all saints or perfect people, at least
within the context of human ability and character, they did very well,” he
noted. On Saturday, October 6, 2018, Trinity House Zion Centre in Victoria
Island will play host to a cross section of season-ed Nigerians including
erstwhile Anambra State governor, Peter Obi, Nigerian activist and Managing
Director, Nigeria Ports Authority, Bala Usman Hadiza, actress Kate Henshaw,
public speaker, Leke Alder, founder/chairman of FATE Foundation, Fola Adeola,
Tunji Odewunmi, social entrepreneur and human development expert, Toyosi
Akerele-Ogunsiji and managing partner, SIAO Chartered Accountants and Auditors,
Pastor Ituah Ighodalo to a debate on: “2019: The yearnings of a nation”. The
programme which begins at 9.00 a.m. is expected find answers to the myriad of
questions: “what are Nigerians yearning for; what are they looking for, almost
60 years after independence, where are we and what have we achieved? According
to the upwardly mobile pastor, “We are having leadership issues. Who should
lead us as a nation, what should be the character of the person, the ability of
the person, the skill of the person. Every time people show themselves up that
they want to be president, on what basis do you want to be president, how do we
evaluate you? “Do we have a proper candidate? And if we don’t have the right
candidate, what do we do as a nation? We don’t just accept anybody as though we
have no choice. And then if we get in our leaders, which direction do we want
them to take us? Which direction do we want to go as a nation? “From where I
stand, Nigeria should be one of the leading industrialized nations in the world
but we are not there. Our poverty index is the highest in the world, our
corruption index is one of the highest in the world, our infrastructure index
is one of the poorest in the world, our literacy index is one of the lowest in
the world, and that is not what it’s supposed to be,” Pastor Ighodalo popularly
called Pastor Ituah posited. According to him, “we need to focus, first of all,
on education. Every single Nigerian must be literate and skillful so that they
can be employable and also employ themselves. Number two, agriculture,
sustainable agriculture. There’s no reason why we should be importing any kind
of food into Nigeria. We should grow, develop and add value to our agricultural
produce. Number three is power, as a fundamental basis for industrialization.
There should be 24/7 power and Nigeria has the potential to export power and
use it to generate foreign exchange even in this country to neighboring West
African countries. Power is very important. “Then we look at infrastructure,
rail roads, inter-connected roads so we can easily get to our areas of economic
potential. Number five for me, will be developing every area of economic potential
and stop playing politics with resource allocation. Every single re-source that
are of economic viability must be developed one way or the other, so if we have
to address resource control and let people with their resources take their
resources, others can develop their own. “Right now, we are totally dependent
on oil and others are not able to develop their own because they are playing
politics with this issue of oil and resource control. These are the things that
I will address,” he stated. Pastor Ituah also lent his voice to the clamour for
restructuring of the nation. “That question also now speaks to the issue of the
structure of the nation and restructuring the nation. What people are really
saying is let each region control its resources and determine its own economic
direction and political direction. I’m in total agreement with that. “Just
leave some essential things to the federal government; like Armed Forces, a bit
of policing, maybe Immigration and so on and so forth. The Federal Government
should not be in charge of resources and in charge of economic things,” he
argued, stressing that the regions should be in charge of their resources and
they donate to the federal purse. That’s what a federation is all about, he
opined. “You don’t tie full development of one area waiting for another area.
New York never waits for California, California doesn’t wait for Washington,
Washington is moving ahead of Nebraska. Each state is doing its own thing and
there’s uniformity in terms of national infrastructure,” he stated. Continuing,
Pastor Ituah, a renowned accountant and a social reformer, believes that
Nigerians are cheating themselves, wasting time, and stiffing the nation’s
development by this kind of “federal structure that we have that there must be
representation every-where which encourages inefficiency and nepotism here and
there. “So when we deal with development of our resources then we look at the
health of the people which can run pari-pasu. By this time, all these things
will take care of employment, economy, well-being, area boys menace and so on
and so forth. This is the direction Nigeria should go: then we can start
looking at foreign policy which is not an issue now. Our issue is to develop
our nation,” he stressed. Is Nigeria worth celebrating, he was asked, and his
response was: “There are things to thank God for, but it is not yet eldorado.
Why are we thanking God? Number one, things would have been much worse, to be
honest. Two, we fought a civil war and we didn’t disintegrate. Three, there’s
potential, opportunity, a thriving population, vast resources. Four, in some places
there’s relative peace. We are still dealing with militant herdsmen, Boko Haram
and a huge number of IDPs all over the place. But in some areas there’s
relative peace and some form of freedom of expression. These things we need to
thank God for, but what God has done is that God has done His best. He has
given us the fundamentals, the raw materials to make something out-standing out
of it. So, we have not yet gotten there, we are far behind. Sir, you once said
that Nigeria needs a president who is prepared to sacrifice his life for this
nation. Do we have such a person now? Not yet, and that’s part of the problem.
Anybody who wants to rule Nigeria must be ready to serve and that service might
cost that person his or her life. I said Nigeria is worth dying for because of
the potential and from my own spiritual perspective, the love of God for this
nation. But if you are still not ready to go the whole hug…yes in politics
there will be compromises here and there…at the end of the day, some-body has
to put down his foot, and so there must be equity, fairness, rule of law and
consequences for inappropriate behaviour. If you don’t have that boldness,
courage and determination to be fair even against your own self, then you will
not be able to rule Nigeria effectively. How will you appraise the current
administration after three years? I would say that they have not done as we
thought they would. They have definitely not met the expectations of the
masses. There have been areas where they have dropped the ball significantly
and they could have done much better. So the economy is hurt-ing, the direction
which the country is going is not very clear and I know there’s a lot of
tension amongst them even in leadership and therefore it’s cascading down to
the rest of us. But on the plus side, there was a peaceful transition of one
party to another. I think our president is a sincere man to some extent. He’s
not too flamboyant and not a terribly corrupt person. He’s a simple, nice,
genial and sincere man but we need a bit more than that to drive Nigeria. We
need more passion, purpose, direction in the way things are going. And we need
a bit more firmness in dealing with some issues, and that’s what’s bothering
the people. They shouldn’t lose the potential and opportunity they have. There
are quite a few good people in government with ability to drive this government
for-ward. They should put it in and let’s get some more energy from the
gover-nment, and then we can take it from there. Has this government met your
expectation on corruption? Not as well as they could have. There have been some
attempts at bringing some people to book but I think they would have done quite
more than that. There are lots of people out there who-se source of income is
very question-able, and I think some of these things they have sacrificed at
the altar of politics which usually happen. So there are one or two people they
won’t touch be-cause they are beneficial to them and that puts a dent in the
anti-corruption fight. Secondly, they are not addressing systemic issues: why
are people corrupt? What are the penalties of being corrupt? How do you
evaluate corrupt-ion? How do you ensure that people are not corrupt in the
future? So there are systemic things that we need to look at and have a real
debate and discourse on. People are poorly paid. When you are paying people
poorly, it is unlikely that they will be saints. Two, the structure of the
civil service itself allows for all these kind of shenanigans. There’s poor
performance evaluation even among civil service. The govern-ment is also not
providing enough infrastructure and support for a society. When you are paying
a man, he can’t build a house, he can’t pay his rent, he can’t send his
children to school, he has to provide his own borehole, he has to do his own
sewage and you think he’s not going to look for other means of survival? We
should do a systemic evaluation of the government, looking at people who are
truly corrupt, analyzing how they’ve attained their resources. We should find a
way of taking the resource from them, giving them the appropriate penalty,
discouraging others from doing it, and let it be nationwide. Let people be
rewarded for the works of their hands and then we know we are fighting
corruption.
Source:
Vanguard
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