CAMA:
STOP COMPARING NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT WITH AMERICAN OR BRITISH GOVERNMENT!

*If Government Cannot Achieve Electricity, Water and Housing in 2 Years, We Should Set up a Board of Trustees To Run the Country not the Church

• An Interview With Dele Momodu

*Don’t Compare Nigeria to London and America. What is going on in Southern Kaduna Can’t Happen in London or America.

Nobody doesn’t pray to own a jet if he can afford it. Why are we complaining about Pastors? If you give your money to a Pastor, it is your business. Another thing I remember, this issue of private jet or no private jet, someone had a blitzing attack against Daddy G.O (Pastor Adeboye) and I wrote an article in THISDAY; I said whosoever says, “Pastor Adeboye doesn’t need a jet” is ignorant because even me one day I was going to Seychelles:

I left Ghana in the morning to come and take my flight. We were going for a wedding of a family friend, by the time I got to Lagos they said I just missed my Kenya Airways flight. I went to Kenya Airways office, they said oh, “sorry sir, you missed our flight but there’s a flight in the evening from Ghana that can still get you to Kenya tomorrow morning”. I went back to Ghana, by the time I got to Ghana we were supposed to fly maybe at about 9 or 10pm the flight didn’t arrive until 4am.
At 5am, we boarded the flight. They said, “oh, there’s no aviation fuel in Ghana.” Then they brought us to Nigeria, from Nigeria we left eventually. By the time I got to Kenya I missed my connecting flight to Seychelles. That is what people face when boarding commercial flights.

Anybody who understands flying will know that a Pastor who is ministering to virtually over 100 Churches, in fact over thousands of Churches in over 100 Countries needs a jet to perform his duty.

Interviewer: Mr Dele Momodu, I’m sure the people who wants to argue with you, will still argue with you over this, but let’s look at other issues that the author mentioned for now he’s still an anonymous author except you’re able to help us with the name.

Another thing you said:
When you talk about stable electricity in Canaan land, when you talk about water supply for 15,000 residents and they’re also planning ways to increase electricity supply. These are the language we hear from people from time to time, that Nigeria is working towards this and Nigeria is working towards that. Another argument from this side is that don’t compare that small hectares of land with the large span Nigeria of two hundred million people. Is there a justification so to say?

Dele Momodu: I personally will never compare a small Church to a Country, just like I will not compare Rwanda to Nigeria, but I still have the right to say Rwanda has electricity, it doesn’t mean I am comparing. I still have the right to say Ghana lost their electricity and in two years they were able to have 24 Megawatts added to it.
Nigerians are so sensitive sometimes that once you say something now: if I say Jonathan is a good man, then somebody says, “I am fighting Buhari.”
No! Saying somebody is good doesn’t mean the other person is bad. I’m saying what I know about you personally.

I can tell you that Bishop Oyedepo’s Church today has a University that is rated among the best in our Country. So what is wrong with that, how does that mean that I am comparing him to someone else?
I went last year to deliver a lecture at Mountain Top University. So does that mean that I am saying the Church or the Pastor is better than others? I gave a lecture also in Iwo at the Baptist University in Iwo, you know, does that mean I am saying the Pastor is better?

So, the truth is, (even a lot of us), I went to a Catholic school as a young boy in Ile-Ife, St John Grammar School. I can tell you that St John Grammar School was far better than what we have today when it was under the Catholic missionaries.
So, why can’t we try and appreciate these people, why can’t we encourage more of such. In fact, maybe Nigeria would have collapsed but for the private sector.
If we run Nigeria the way we all run our homes and businesses substantially, things will be cool. But everybody gets power and then begin to run it anyhow because it is not their own business.

So, I will rather encourage more Oyedepo’s in Nigeria, I will definitely encourage more Olukoya’s in Nigeria, I will encourage more Iyadura’s in Nigeria who are doing charity work: Esther Ajayi foundation and all that. I will encourage G.O’s, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Interviewer: Mr Momodu, still on the school of thought, I’m happy there is a small kind of departure from your stand and the author’s stand. Another thing the author did say is that he mentioned things like, okay, I think you talked about that the 25 Megawatts to when Nigeria is still struggling with 7,000 Megawatts.
But still on these schools, the argument again is how many? People will remind us when the Missionaries came and how they gave free education and how government is struggling to give free education compared to this Covenant University, compared to some of these private Universities that the good number of people cannot afford.
So, what exactly are you calling for, in clear terms, are you calling for real capitalism or welfarism as it mean?

Dele Momodu: I remember Chief Moshood Abiola saying that nobody should glamorize poverty. WHAT WE’RE ENCOURAGING IS POVERTY MENTALITY.
Everywhere in the world there are private schools, some call it public schools like in England and you have to pay. It doesn’t matter if whether you’re poor or not, if that’s your dream or you get a scholarship.
In Nigeria today, it will be the duty of government to at least provide free quality education because I don’t believe that it should just be free, they should be quality education: Primary, Secondary so that we can catch them young. The Universities, of course nobody has flogged anybody to go to Babcock or any of the Missionary Universities. There are other Universities: Ife is there, UNILAG, Nsukka is there, A.B.U is there, they are all there. So, It’s a matter of choice, PLEASE LET’S STOP ALL THIS WITCH HUNT.

If you run a private organisation, I do not want to call it company because you cannot describe a Church as a company. But if you run a private organisation and if it’s a Church or a Mosque please, for God sake, let’s allow those who want to go to go, and those who don’t want to go not to go.
Because, what will happen when you say you’re going to appoint trustees for a Church. I know Nigerians, we make law sometimes with pre-determined motive. There’s a proverb in Yoruba that, “a woman whose child has been killed before by a witch will always suspect every woman.” So, the suspicion, what is leading to all this! When they say, “ehn, in Europe we regulate them”, but do we have this kind of religious conflagration?

In London you have a Mayor who is a Muslim it has never happen, do you understand, so people are able to resolve their situation.
WHAT IS GOING ON IN KADUNA NOW, IS IT GOING ON IN LONDON OR IN AMERICA?
Let’s begin to tolerate ourselves; when that happens, nobody will suspect. When you appoint judges and then overnight, in the middle of the night you can remove them and find enough laws for justification to justify the removal without going through what all reasonable people will consider as due process then, don’t be surprised if people are saying tomorrow they might mistakenly just the same way we’ve seen even dead people appointed in Nigeria tomorrow you may find a Muslim coming to regulate a Church or a Christian coming to regulate a Mosque and then, what will happen? Breakdown of law and order!

Let us do laws that:

• If we don’t have electricity in the next 2 years, we’re going to appoint a board of trustees for the government to take over the running of the affairs of Nigeria.
• Let us make laws that will say in the next few years if there is no water or housing in Nigeria the government will abdicate from the throne and then we will have board of trustees to manage Nigeria.
  When you do that, you’ll see that a lot of people will support it.

Interviewer: Mr Momodu, let’s go home with some clear messages especially for those who are watching, because we don’t want to leave them hanging. How in practical terms can the government which is actually the crux of the article by this anonymous author, how can the government learn from this religious leaders? I agree that it is from the macrocosm that you’ll have a bigger picture. So, how do we learn. Because when we say it’s easy to tell your followers what to do but we have this kind of…

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