Buhari/Osinbajo ticket brings ray of hope –Ladi Thompson

Rev. Oladimeji P. Thompson, Founder & Senior Pastor of
Lagos-based Living Waters Unlimited Church, is one man that
would not stop talking on the threat posed by the Boko
Haram Islamist sect to the unity of the country. For the
umpteenth time, he has cautioned that the leadership must
make conscious effort to stop the cancer, ravaging the nation.
In this interview, he speaks on a wide range of issues,
including what he describes as the ray of hope in the Buhari/
Osinbajo ticket. Excerpts:
What are your reflections ahead of February 14 presidential
elections?
For me, the Nigerian presidential election is a digression. This
is, perhaps, the most dangerous election that this country has
ever had since the early sixties. This is because the coming
election is a digression from the most important thing that is
happening in this country right now. The greatest force that
would determine the future of this country at the moment is
not the presidential election but the Boko Haram narratives.
What can make this election useful is if it becomes a tool that
would make the elections become the greatest force that
would determine the future of the country.
But if it is normal elections that would be business as usual,
then it will be partly responsible for burying Nigeria. As I am
speaking to you right now, you know that, at least, 22 local
government areas are under heavy Boko Haram influence.
Recall that I told you in January of last year that by the end of
2014, at least, three states would be under the thumb of Boko
Haram narratives. As things are going right now, nobody
wants us to get the truth. You know apart from being a
security consultant, I am also a pastor and we are the ones
that young soldiers are reaching out to for prayers.
These young Nigerians are dying everyday and many of them
are deserting the warfront. These young Nigerians have not
much faith in the war that they are being forced to fight. Now,
this is where the leadership matters a lot in a country in times
of war. You remember that three years ago, I had declared
that the current president was a war time president. As long
as we don’t accept that and continue to do as if he is not a
war time president, the future of the country is in jeopardy.
The Boko Haram narrative is a documented global problem
with its own local version in Nigeria. What makes the Nigerian
version very dangerous is that it is a mixture of an ancient
hybrid with the global one. It makes it more lethal, brutal and
dangerous than the Alqaeda, ISIS, etc. Right now, the Nigerian
version is very brutal and the second most dangerous in the
entire world. Now, there is a court martial going on and
involving many young Nigerian officers. The President and
Commander in-Chief should be held responsible if those boys
are killed.
This is because if a patient goes to the hospital and he has a
typhoid fever, the doctor who says they should be treating him
with drugs for malaria fever is the one that should be held
responsible and not the nurses that are fixing the doses for
the fever. One of the modus operandi of the Boko Haram
narratives all over the world is what we call infiltration. You
infiltrate the rank and file of the Nigerian Army, people in high
places. A lot of these young soldiers and junior officers in the
war front are aware and many of these officers’ confessions to
their priests and pastors are pointing out that there is a
division even in the Army.
Now, while the division is still small, it has to be checked
quickly. What makes the division worse is this: there had been
incidents where obviously senior Army officers have practically
been fingered helping the Boko Haram. In those incidents,
there had not been any case of court martial that resulted in
death sentence. In the case of the young boys in the Army,
you want to demoralize them further with the so-called court
martial. We understand that in martial law, we must be very
careful because there must be a chain of command.
But the break of the chain of command did not start with
these junior officers but at the top.
If the Commander in-Chief is not smart enough to know that
this will guarantee that we lose the war, we should not blame
anybody in the chain of command. Why are we definitely going
to lose the war and why is there going to be more bloodshed?
These young Army officers are dying every day. In fact, one
comment that one of the boys made to me is that many of his
mates who hit the warfront did not live to collect their first
pay. What are they getting that they are fighting for Nigeria?
They are paying them a pittance to go and take a bullet. Now
when they die, the signal being passed within the rank and file
of the Army is that it is more convenient for these young
officers to die than for them to be wounded.
I have followed a few of the wounded ones and I have noticed
that even in the so-called system, if they go to the hospital to
be treated, the insurance for them does not even cover the
treatment of soldiers. Go and confirm that many of the
wounded soldiers may have to spend their own money to take
care of themselves after they have been wounded at the war
front to defend you and I in this country.
I want to let you know that in many cases where they have to
go for x-rays and all that, they may not wait for the official
bottlenecks that have been erected. If you are a wounded
soldier, would you wait for these bottlenecks to be cleared
before you sort yourself out medically? Corruption that is
everywhere in the nation has entered the Army. Without
removing the scourge of corruption, we cannot win the war
against Boko Haram and which means that we should actually
be looking forward to the end of this country.
Do you share the impression in some quarters that the APC
government would be able to reposition the country?
I do not know about that and I do not know whether I am
going to agree with you on that a 100 per cent. The solution
to the Boko Haram narrative is not a military solution. The
military option to the solution to the Boko Haram narrative is
between 12 to 18 percent maximum anywhere in the world. As
long as we continue to think that it is going to be a military
affair mainly, we cannot beat Boko Haram and the end of the
country may not be far. Now, let me look at the presidential
hopefuls.
Whoever becomes the president, if he lacks the moral and
political will to execute what I am about to tell you now, we
are going back to square one. The worst is that after the melt
down, people would be saying why did anybody not foresee it?
By that time, everybody would be blaming and pointing
fingers. But where we are right now, the future is very
obvious. There are things that the person who will become
the president must do for the election to become a factor and
not a nuisance. Whoever comes as the president of Nigeria
must make plans to destroy corruption first in the Army.
If corruption is not destroyed in the Nigerian Army, we have
practically no defence. The Boko Haram is not just better
equipped, they are better motivated and they have the
capacity to sustain hostilities for much longer. There is
something imminent that has to be dealt with very fast.
In 1914 when we had the amalgamation, the key ingredient of
that arrangement is the key factor that is helping the Boko
Haram in Nigeria. I have left many things to zero in on this
factor because of its importance. One of the elements of the
amalgamation under colonial rule is that the two parties you
are joining together, you must make them distrust each other.
Their joining must be based on division, strife, distrust and
mistrust. Why do that? It is to make sure that the union is
forever dependent on the person who supervises it. You will
recall that Ahmadu Bello had said that the idea of a Nigeria is
the figment of the imagination of the British. I want to remind
you that he had said that Nigeria was a mere geographical
expression and I want you to recall that Obafemi Awolowo
agreed to that. I think that the only one who had a pan-
African vision was Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe.
Tafawa Balewa went further to say that if all the elements
that were joined together were left on their own, they would
never on their own come together. They were products of
social engineering of colonial power. There is no northern
leader in Nigeria that did not benefit from the policy of
northernisation of the country.
There is no southern leader who did not benefit from the
division in Nigeria. We have foolishly been building the country
on a foundation that cannot be built upon. President Goodluck
Jonathan is a product of compromise and accommodation. In
any other country at any other time, he could have been an
asset but not when you are in a country whose foundation is
on division.
Compromise would never bring progress. That is why you find
out that a man like Jonathan would go to Minna to go and
greet a former president of the country.
But what would say in the APC ticket where Buhari is the
Presidential candidate and Prof Osibajo is his vice?
If I want to talk about that, I would say that I see a ray of
hope. But I want to state categorically that President Buhari
like Babangida, Abdulsalami and others are all products of the
northernisation agenda of Nigeria. The only thing in favour of
Buhari is that he seems to be a more principled person and
would not use underhand tactics to advance his own cause.
However, if push comes to shove and have to choose between
the Southern and Northern parts of the country, I can bet you
that Buhari will choose what has helped him in his Army
career and what distinguished him.
For Osibajo, what he brings to the table is very unique and I
will tell you why. Just as Buhari is known to be a man of
integrity, Osibajo is a man of more integrity. Many Nigerians
may not know this much. I would tell you that many of the
people like me who would never have thought of voting for
Buhari before are already thinking of voting for him now all
because of Osibajo.
This is a combination that if they choose to work, will work
and can make things better. There is one thing that we would
like to hear from Buhari and we know that Osibajo is a
constitutional lawyer and it will help us.
Between Buhari and Osibajo, if they are able to come together
to say that what has been happening since 1914 which is that
Southerners are in competition, mistrust, distrust with their
brothers from the North, it will save the nation. If they can
come out to say that we are going to erase the line of
division, everything shall be well again. If they can come
together and agree that the North and South should work
together, the reason why corruption is growing in Nigeria
would be removed.