The easiest way to save Nigeria by Olanrewaju Osho.
As a Nigerian on the fifth floor of human sojourn on earth, I have seen a lot, and I believe I am in a good position to offer an opinion on how we can save our country through everyone's involvement and commitment.
This is my 36th year as a Pastor and a market place minister of God. This is is my 29th year as a development / civil society practitioner. In between these years, I have managed to put in 12 years in the private sector and 15 years of public service in the Council of Legal Education / Nigerian Law School and the Securities and Exchange Commission from where I retired voluntarily in the rank of an Assistant Director at the age of 45 years. 25 years of my life journey and service have been offered to Nigeria through the Federal Capital Territory.
In all of these my journeys through life in Nigeria, God has graceously made it easy for me to love him who is my maker and to love Nigeria passionately as my country. God also made it easy for me to be a good ambassador of Nigeria in the over 22 countries I have been privileged to visit for one program or the other. For all these, I am immensely grateful to God and to my beloved country Nigeria.
I love Nigeria unapologetically. My love for Nigeria is so obsessive that at the age of 16, I started thinking of joining the Nigerian Army to lead a revolution and kill all the bad people in Nigeria. At 18, I was number 1 on the list of youths of Ondo State origin shortlisted to join the Nigerian Defence Academy in 1988. It was in the hostel of the Nigerian Defence Academy that God revealed to me that I do not have his express approval to be a soldier. He got me out and gave me admission a year later into the University of Lagos to study Mass Communication.
With most of the revolutionary ideas purged from my head, I buried myself largely in religion and community development initiatives as the best way to serve God, Nigeria and mankind.
Since I live in an ultra religious country, in the spirit of patriotism boosted by an unquenchable love for Nigeria, I have been fasting and praying for Nigeria since 1988 asking God to save Nigeria. To make sure my fasting were not hunger strike, and to not allow my prayer to be empty noise, I made it an habit to refuse doing any act that could sabotage Nigeria or negatively affect the welfare or wellbeing of any of my fellow citizen or any human being.
To my greatest surprise, I found out that the more I fasted, prayed and did the right things, the more I see the problems of Nigeria growing bigger and bigger every day. Asides from several 100 days, 70 days, 40 days, 21 days, 14 days and 7 days fasting, I have done 3 days and 7 days without food at all. Just like me, millions of Nigerians fast and pray for Nigeria for between 14 to 100 days every year. Rather than being saved, Nigeria keeps getting worse by the day. Is it that God is dumb, deaf or wicked? The answer is NO. God is not dumb. God is not deaf. God is not wicked. God is good. But God is not stupid. He will never do for you what he has given you the power to do for yourself.
God can not save Nigeria if we Nigerians are not ready to be his hands and feet to do the job. God can not save Nigeria if Nigerians prefer to JAPA than to get involved in their country's rescue mission. God will not save Nigeria if we are so committed to ideologies and associations that are hurting and killing Nigeria to the point that we can't have a rethink.
God will not save Nigeria because he has given us all the power, potentials, blessings, wisdom, people and capacity to rescue, re-engineer and relaunch Nigeria into global success. Instead of playing our roles, if we choose to bury ourselves in our tribes as ethnic champions or sleep in our churches and mosques always deluding ourselves with religion while our country deteriorates everyday, there is nothing God can do about that. The ball is squarely in our court because God has put us in charge of the destiny of our nation.
To change Nigeria, we need the right people in political leadership, in the judiciary and civil service to do the job. We do not need more religious people to save Nigeria. What we need is the majority of our people with genuine fear of God and true love for Nigeria to forget religion, tribe, sentiments and personal interest for a while and step forward to make the required sacrifices for Nigeria's survival and success.
The reason Nigeria hasn't been saved is because the 200 million Nigerians are big on religion, race and personal interests and poor in genuinely godly people and true patriots. If we can in the interest of Nigeria do the right things and do things right from this moment on, Nigeria will be saved.
We Nigerians must proof to ourselves and the world that our years in school did not produce educated illiterates and paper elites. We must prove that our religion is not empty religion by demonstrating the values and virtues of godliness and unblemished patriotism from now on. This is the only way to save Nigeria without much stress or bloodshed and the 2023 elections offer us a unique opportunity to show how much we love Nigeria above tribes, tongues, religion, selfish interests and all other primordial sentiments.
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- Politics
- 28 Jan, 2023
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