There is no real men of God in Nigeria: By Olusegun Oyegbami

Olusegun Oyegbami, an economist, oil industry player and author of ‘Reversing the Rot in Nigeria’, in this interview, analyzes how Nigeria slipped into economic collapse, the involvement of some men of God, the anti-corruption war of this administration among other national issues. Excerpt. What do you think actually went wrong that led us to where we are today? The over dependence on oil has actually led us into the situation we are in. Before the discovery of oil, agriculture happened to be the mainstay of the Nigerian economy, and it was providing employment for the teeming population. But when oil was discovered, we forgot about agriculture. We have also been running the oil industry in a fraudulent manner, manipulating everything. For now, we are just deceiving ourselves on the fight against corruption. The malaise is still very much ongoing in all spheres of the economy. That is part of the inspiration for writing a book on ‘Reversing the Rot in Nigeria’ to return us to rationality and sanity. It is only when we do that, that we can improve the economy. What are your suggestions to right the wrongs? Oyegbami Only if we run the economy on the template of honesty. What has been happening all along is that we claim to be marketing petroleum products but allocating the products to different sections of the country. That should not have happened. We should have allowed market forces to let the products flow round the country. If that had happened, we will not be in the current state. We don’t even know how much petrol we are really using as a country, because when you use the country’s money to send petrol to every part of the country, so as to maintain equal price, you are encouraging smuggling out of Nigeria and that will not allow you to know how much of fuel the country really needs to run the economy. In the book, you hit hard on some men of God for shielding politicians. Could you throw more light on this? When life has become hopeless for people, they want to take any chance at all costs to get their bearings right. It is this kind of hopelessness that the so-called men of God exploit to even render them more prostrate, and that’s why I said that politicians have destroyed people’s lives, they have made them to become hopeless and now, in “going to God”, they have ended up being deceived further and their situation is exploited and the society becomes even worse. So, my postulation in the book is that there are really no men of God anywhere, anybody who is talking of God is doing it for his own personal benefits, that is why we now have the so-called men of God competing with politicians in the material acquisition of wealth, such that we now have men of God in Nigeria acquiring aeroplanes and building estates, amassing material properties, which is actually in contrast to what the Bible and the Quran teach, that we should build our treasures in heaven and we should help one another to make life better for everybody. But the men of God in Nigeria do not pull punches a bit. They are running universities where the tuition fees are very high, because the sector is not put in proper shape by government. These “men of God” take advantage of the situation just to make money. That is why we now have so many churches having universities. The money paid by people through their noses should have been enough to provide standard facilities and quality education if government were sincerely running the sector. But because successive government have failed, because politicians are just after what they can make for themselves, w have been brought to this unfortunate situation. Religion has been a key factor in politics, and that is why people think a Muslim/Christian ticket will fly in the country than a single religion domination. Can we separate religion from politics? In the first place, religion is divisive. Religion is not actually helping society to get it right. The problem we have in Nigeria is that we are almost 50:50 Muslims to Christians in our religious orientation. This is a big negative influence in our developmental process. In any society where everybody is looking towards a direction, they tend to make more progress, than when you now have religious dichotomy. These religious men especially the pastors are not supposed to be in charge of our political space. Imagine if a pastor is a politician, obviously he would think more of the Christians in terms of orientation, therefore the support from Muslims will be limited or they may even be antagonistic to him. So, it will not help the corporate political progress.

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