An accomplished sportsman and administrator, labour and social activist, Rev. Moses IIoh is the General Overseer of Soul Winning Chapel, Ebutte-Metta. He is an ardent believer in the president-elect Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. He spoke with Sunday Sun during the week in his office about the steps President Buhari should take when he assumes office.
Excerpts:
You support Buhari with all you can muster. Why?
Science tells us that with what you know you prove what you do not know. From his antecedents as the Head of State, what was his main target? To fight corruption and as far as I am concerned, Nigeria is an over blessed nation. It’s endowed with so many natural resources but the biggest problem Nigeria has today is corruption.
The youths of Nigeria are so smart but they can’t use their intelligence for positive things because of the atmosphere in which we operate. This is a country that has been inundated in corruption. And the only man that has the courage to tackle it is Buhari. Corruption is demonic. It is not ordinary. So why don’t we give him a chance? Right now, he is there as president but I want to tell you that he is on a tiger’s back. So, he has to be very careful.
What do you mean by that?
What I mean by this is that, Buhari as president-elect of Nigeria means so many things to so many people. Let him not make any mistake of thinking that he can survive on popularity. I must explain it because this is very important. Nigeria is a very, very, complicated country now. Buhari is courageous and has integrity. He’s honest and humble. He did very well as a military head of state. Today’s Nigeria is different. We are in a country that is so complex. Today, Nigeria is riddled with corruption, stealing, fraud, dishonesty and hypocrisy. Everything bad is in Nigeria and the danger is that if you look at every big thing that seems good, it’s owned by the corrupt. That is the danger.
So, Buhari should understand clearly that he should not rush to tackle corruption. He means so much to so many people. Some think he’s dangerous, some regard him as a friend, some think they can manipulate him. They have different impressions of Buhari. He needs more than ordinary wisdom.
Look , Nigeria does not have democracy. Nigeria is practicing corruptocracy, which is a corruption of democracy. You do everything corrupt to survive, to make it, to oppress people under the guise of democracy.
The president sacked the IG like sacking a houseboy. Is that democratic? The courts are playing tricks too. I want you to understand corruption not to mean just stealing money. Corruption means spoiling.
Government officials are the people who spoil Nigeria. You rape a woman they fine you N5,000 . That woman has been spoilt for life. All kinds of evil happen in Nigeria. And don’t forget the danger for Buhari is that he’s now the president of the largest black nation in the world and unfortunately that nation is inundated in corruption. It’s a serious matter. Whatever he does to Nigeria will affect the other parts of the world where there are black people. So, he needs wisdom because right now everybody is running for Buhari. He should be careful, they will mislead him because he cannot dictate like a military man. He has to consult the House of Representatives and the Senate that can tomorrow impeach him so he needs wisdom.
What he needs to do is that he should be careful about those he appoints around him. Those he appoints around him should be courageous enough to look at him in the eyes and say “Mr. President, this thing you are trying to do is not right.” Right now, all around him are sycophants. They are going to praise him, tell him everything. How many people in his party really like him? How many people in his party really trust that he will not turn the barrel of the gun of anti corruption on them? How many? So he must be very careful. He needs to get his priorities right.
Nigeria is a country where you have very intelligent people and most of the intelligence is used negatively. Most educated Nigerians are not civilized and highly educated people use their education for mischief. He should be very careful. Look at all the funny things happening even before May 29th. If I were him, I will attend no dinner for the handing over. What’s he going to dinner for? Even if the federal government intends to honour him, I recommend he accepts no honour and during his four years or eight years, he shouldn’t give national honours to anybody until they have performed. Jonathan was just made president. He has not done anything and he was bestowed with the highest honour. The Senate President was also bestowed with the highest honour as well as the Vice President. It’s wrong. They have so much cheapened the thing.
He should wait till they have performed and are retiring and when the country sees what they have done before giving them national honours. Now they are naming streets in Abuja after government officials who are leaving. Is that what we should be doing in Nigeria? Nobody should be given any national honour just because they are in government. Right now, they want to honour him and I want to recommend to him that he should not accept it. He should go in and work and at the end of the day, Nigeria will say “that is our man.”
Today, we have distinguished senators and distinguished criminals. He should try as much as possible, not to let his government honour anybody until they have performed.
So, Buhari should pretend to ignore corruption.It should not be his priority. He should pretend to ignore it but set up a very efficient machinery that will now begin to do what he wants them to do to be able to prove when someone is corrupt.
He should disband EFCC. EFCC is nothing. We need a virile body with young men who have proven integrity, let them go round, keep a dossier on corrupt people in Nigeria. Those who have corrupt businesses, let them keep a brilliant dossier on them and when he has finished organizing Nigeria, maybe in the next two years, he should turn his barrel on corruption. But if right now, he’s fighting corruption, they’ll push him and tell him “say this one, say this one” and by the time he’s concentrating on corruption he won’t have time for anything else. He should organize a group of young people of integrity who on seeing a house should find out who has the house, his income, how much tax he pays and how he built the house. Quietly, they should look at his businesses. They must be intelligent young men and women.
In the next one year, when they give a report on corruption, he must put in place action and things that will make it impossible for corruption to thrive. But he should not waste his time initially chasing around thieves. People are talking about NNPC, who doesn’t know NNPC stinks? They should set up a machinery to look into that but not at the expense of what is necessary in Nigeria. The only way Buhari can be successful is what I am telling you now. When an old woman gets up in the morning and she can drink water from the tap and there is electricity, this old woman will come out and say she won’t buy sachet water. She will lift her hands up and say, ‘thank you’ to this government.
This is not about building airports that a poor fellow will not use. It’s about an old woman being able to pay her bills and the children being able to pay their electricity bills and petrol is not so expensive. She will say, ‘thank God’ for this government. Then he needs to do something about the youths.
Youth development is important. Majority of people in Nigeria are youths. Now, there is a formula which he must adopt. Nigerian youths have so much talent. Haven’t you seen a Nigerian youth who didn’t go to school but can repair GSM phones now? When he has so much time and he’s doing nothing, he thinks of crime. If you bring the youth with his talent and his time, put them together, they will make great impact. That’s where youth development through sports is apposite. Government has no business in sports, but to make sure sports is in the curriculum i.e running, jumping, football, table tennis and then every local government should have a sporting facility of their own choice. You know how many jobs you will give to coaches? Every facility must have a coach, every facility must have attendants and then the youths will go there and be trained. If what the local government decides to have is a boxing gym, people who like boxing would go there.
If the next local government likes table tennis and I don’t have boxing in my place, I go to the next local government, pay my dues and be trained. When a youth is interested in sports, he won’t smoke because he wants to have energy for sports, he will not drink , he will not run after women, he takes no drugs because of competition. Then let every state government have Olympic standard facility they can afford and employ coaches . Youths will peruse them.Do you know how many millions a footballer makes in England? These youths have talents, people will buy them, and they will not be looking for crime to commit. So, let the government develop the youths through sports. Not every youth can go to the university but every youth has talent. So, develop the youths. Disband the National Sports Commission. Disband those nonsense. This is the first step to fight corruption . Let every group have their clubs, in the local government, in the states, then let these clubs pick people who will represent them at the national level. They form national associations, not government. They elect their chairmen or presidents or secretaries. They are groups but government should make sure that they have facilities to train. If you want to have a national sports anything, it’s to make sure that the facilities are there because government must provide money to develop the youths through sports. That is their job but not to say “I’m director of sports, I want to go to the Olympics.” What’s their business? The associations and companies should be encouraged to have clubs. They can have cycling club, they have the money. Then they will develop and support those who go out and practice. The companies want a good platform to advertise their products and services.
Government should be careful with the judiciary. The Judiciary in Nigeria has no reputation. We are told and people have gossiped about it that you go to court and a governor tells the judge what decision to take against his opponent. They should now keep an eye on the Judiciary. . If the judiciary is clean you are already fighting corruption. But the Judiciary in Nigeria today has no reputation. Try to look at the police. Why must you employ a policeman who stays on the road to ask for N20 what country is he representing? Nigeria? There are so many graduates in Nigeria today who have no jobs. The ones who read Law, send some of them to America or to Britain to go and be policemen. Let them be trained over there. Let them come and run the Police College in Nigeria. If a policeman arrests you in America the way he talks to you is so polite, but they know where they are going . They incapacitate criminals. Let’s engage graduates who have no jobs. When a few go and come back and run the college, train them well, pay them and when the policeman is going to confront you, you know he is a brilliant fellow, not a nincompoop. We need to look at that.
When you do that, indirectly, you are fighting corruption without naming it. The youth now is busy, because he wants to be selected to a local government in his state. Everybody is working without you telling them you are fighting corruption. You need also to have a plan for the elderly people. Elderly people are very badly treated in Nigeria and they are placing curses on Nigeria. Any facility you are going to build, Gen. Buhari please think, will the old people use it? Let the old men begin to bless Nigeria.
I’m a Christian. The bible tells me that if you honour your father and your mother your days will be long. Here in Nigeria, nobody honors the elderly. They push them down. Any facility you know the elders will use, provide for it. At 70, they go to General Hospital, give them priority attention, give them free medical attention, they deserve it and make a law that anybody who delays the money of the pensioners should go to jail for life. A man works for how many years, pension is N10,000 or N7,000 and he has to queue. You owe him pension for three years. Then he dies without that pension. God will punish such a country. He should also look at this ridiculous thing, look at how much they pay members of the House of Representatives and Senators? Millions.
Then an educated young Nigerian, you pay him N18,000. From that money, he feeds himself, pays his fares and he has a mother. They should do something quickly about the minimum wage in Nigeria. I heard people who sweep the streets earn N6,000 or N7,000 and then a person who stays in Parliament and only goes there occasionally earns millions every month. Just to go there sit down and say ‘Ayes have it’. If you want to fight corruption you start from those places and let the people see that you are doing something. Buhari should ensure that no worker is owed salaries in the civil service .
What kind of country is this where you have so much natural resources? Are we not ashamed? Leave the corrupt people ,what will catch them will catch them but these small things that will help that is where he should start from.
He should avoid corrupt people, people who are known to be corrupt when giving appointments, because he can do nothing to them since he is not a military man now. They will go to court, saying they are challenging him because of democracy. He should avoid them from day one. He should try to do something about education. A lot of public schools nobody goes there. People have to struggle to take their children to private schools. Can you imagine Nigerians sending their children to Ghana to go to school? Are we not ashamed? They should look at education. Invest our money in standard primary and secondary as well as tertiary education. In those days you talk of Queens College, Kings College, St Gregory’s , St John’s College, Kaduna, CKC etc. He should encourage the churches to run their secondary schools if he likes, but education must be a priority and those who run private schools properly, if government feels like supporting them it should support them. The people they are training are Nigerians. He should take education as a matter of priority.
In our time, our parents knew that once you graduate you take a job, you take a car, they give you a loan. It’s either in the Railways or the P&T, Ports Authority etc. Your family will struggle hard to train you , knowing that the moment you qualify and you are in a job, respect comes to a poor family. He should make employment good. These are so many things he has to do. All these people misleading him talking of corruption, corruption, they will mislead him until he spends the next two years talking of NNPC and nothing is going to come out of it.
Let him have a bureau where people can stand for good people who don’t know anybody that can lobby for them. You know there are good people in this country who can never get a job because they don’t know anybody. And when a woman is so good and she doesn’t know anybody, she is compelled to give her body to get a job. That should not be the case. They should be able to get a job, it’s their country. They are not aliens. I think he should also do something about housing. Why should five or six Nigerians live in one room in a country that is so rich? You build a house for poor people and you sell it at N5m or N10m.
The same rich people buy them and rent them out. So, build the houses but there must be proof that they are ordinary people, who want to buy them. It’s enough for them so that their children can pay the mortgage. These are things that will make the ordinary Nigerian begin to know that there is a government in place. Give nobody any honours.
When appointing his ministers or advisers, he should appoint those that can look at him and say “Sir you are not doing what you promised them.” The bible calls them the Prophet Nathan. Nathan, the prophet looks at the king in the eye and says, “Sir, you are the one.” Buhari should avoid sycophants who are telling him “Even the air you breathe has no carbon dioxide in it.” He needs to get one or two advisers who should look him in the eyes and say “Sir, you are not doing what you promised them oo, and you are changing.?
Sir, why do you want Buhari to scrap EFCC?
EFCC is useless, if he has a good police force and that team I recommended . Don’t you see EFCC and the funny government we have in Nigeria? They have what they call plea bargaining. If I steal N28 billion and I can give the government N5 billion then they let me keep the rest. What stupid nonsense that could be. A thief is a thief, you stole it, it’s not your own, you bring it back. Retrain the judges and jail corrupt ones among them. A judge has 10 houses how did he acquire them? How much is his salary? That is what the group I told you will do. It’s a quiet group, their job is to go all out and have a dossier of all the people that are corrupt. The time to deal with them will come but it’s not the priority. It will distract him, he has enemies. Let him pick a team. There are good Nigerians who are waiting to be given a chance to correct this country.
You have so much confidence in the president-elect.Why?
In my understanding of the name Buhari, B stands for Bold, U stands for Uncompromising, H stands for Honesty, A stands for Ardent, R stands for Reformer and I stands for Indomitable. So, he’s bold, he’s uncompromising, he’s honest, he’s an ardent fighter for the best, he is a reformer and he’s not tired. That’s what Buhari means to me. I like him because he fights corruption. Listen, I’m over 85 years old and I can tell you about Nigeria. I want Nigeria where things are done right. O my God, this is not the Nigeria where I was brought up. Do you know that the number one religion in Nigeria is corruption? You know how it’s contrived? On Sunday, the Bishop, Archbishop, reverend and pastor are very holy. On Friday, the Imam is very holy. On Monday they meet to steal Nigeria’s money, on Tuesday they meet to defraud Nigeria, on Wednesday they meet to defraud Nigeria. In that terrible mindset, they do not ask for your religion, they don’t ask whether you are male or female. What they ask is “Can you bring government money? Nobody can steal alone in Nigeria. If a governor gets there and he is not a thief the permanent secretaries and the directors teach him. They don’t teach him because he is Muslim or Christian. On Friday, the Muslim is so holy. He dons all his toga and goes to the mosque. On Sunday, the Christian has his bible, he’s so dressed up as he goes to church but during the week they no longer talk about their religion they have one religion.Corruption. They have come to steal, to kill and to destroy the economy of Nigeria. So Nigeria’s number one religion is corruption. Christianity is not a religion; the first religion in Nigeria today is corruption. In corruption there is no discrimination. You see the danger there, no male, no female, no tribalism, no race ,once you come in here and you can help to steal you are welcome. It is in the mosque, it is in the church.That’s the number one religion.
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