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| Osinbajo |
Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo has rejected the
quota system being practiced in the country, saying it is detrimental to the
progress of any nation. He therefore tasked Nigeria must on merit in the
conduct of our national affairs.
Osinbajo also attributed the lack of development of the
nation to corruption perpetrated by politicians in collaboration with the elite
and religious leaders.
Professor Osinbajo spoke in Lagos during Greater Nigeria
Pastors Conference, with the theme: “Towards A Better Nigeria” which was
convened by the Senior Pastor and founder of Foundation of Truth Assembly
(FOTA), Pastor Yomi Kasali.
According to Osinbajo, Nigeria may never progress if
successive governments continued with the quota system, saying that adopting
merit was the only way to develop the country. His words: “It is important for
us as a nation to change our idea and insist on merit.
“We must continue to advocate that there must be merit in
our appointments and do away with sentiments and Nigeria will be where it ought
to be. When our football teams are playing, we do not ask questions where the
players come from because we want to win.
"In the same vein, if we want to win
in Nigeria, we must insist on merit. We must insist on fair minded and just
people in positions. That is how countries are run all over the world. It is
only in this country that the first thing we do is to ask for quota system.”
Speaking against the
backdrop of the agitation for the restructuring of Nigeria, Osinbajo said when
there was rampant corruption that crippled Nigeria to what it is today “how
many Christian leaders stood up to complain,” insisting that no nation could
have survived the kind of corruption, which Nigeria went through in the recent
times.
According to him, “It is my view that the Nigerian elite,
religious leaders and politicians think alike when it comes to corruption and
they were always very selfish, playing religious and ethnic cards when it
pleases them.”
Osinbajo added that “when you look at the high-level of
corruption in the country, it has no ethnic or religious coloration, our elite
and politicians are united when it comes to corruption. I have never seen a
situation where an Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa and other tribes joined hands to steal
money and they argued about it.”
The vice president therefore suggested that in order to
build a new nation, men and women of integrity must be raised. While he
expressed confidence that Nigeria would take a new turn in the next few years,
Osinbajo challenged the leadership of the church to eschew religious and ethnic
sentiments in their approach to the issue of Nigeria, saying that failure of
Christian leaders by placing too much emphasis on Islamic Agenda as if they
were looking for demon was a big mistake.
He asked, “Why can’t we have Christian agenda based on the
principle of the Bible as the Lord Jesus Christ teaches. The Church must begin
the process of uniting Nigeria by uniting itself. What Nigeria needs to survive
are already contained in the Bible. We cannot practice two gospels. The reason
the country is what it is today is because we (Christians) care to practice
what the Bible teaches.”
He also debunked the sentiments that the crisis of the
Fulani herdsmen killing got escalated when President Muhammadu, who is of Fulani
origin became president. According to him, “The Fulani herdsmen crisis became
rampant as far back as 1996 and it took a devastating effect in 2014 during the
Libya crisis.
On the agitation for restructuring, Osinbajo said the
problem with the demand was that there was yet to be any concrete agreement
even among those championing the cause. He however said what the manifestos of
the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) says is devolution of powers, which
he (Osinbajo) subscribes to.
He charged the church leaders to henceforth speak for the sanctity
of human lives and not necessarily emphasizing that religious extremists were
killing Christians or southerners.
He argued that if many of the people agitating in the
southern region took their time to visit and see the kind of devastation in the
north, the level of destruction and loss of human lives and even Muslims “our
perception would change. We must be able to stand up and condemn whatever kind
of killings,” he said.
Also speaking at the
conference, Director-General, Institute of National Transformation, Professor
Vincent Anigbogu, in his address titled, “Towards a Greater Nigeria, the Role
of Church,” lamented the current state of affairs in the country, declaring
that the church had also failed to play its assigned role.
Also speaking, the presiding Bishop of The Redeemed
Evangelical Mission(TREM), Bishop Mike Okonkwo, observed that Nigeria had not
done much with the God endowed resources available to it, submitting that
churches in the country were asleep and most times, their lights only shined in
the big structures erected to depict their presence all around.
He equally lamented the poor state of the country’s road,
health sector, leading to several avoidable deaths, and called on church
leadership to help build synergy that would help the country out of its current
challenges rather than building empires.
~Vanguard
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