Rev. Ladi Peter Thompson, the Pastor of Living Waters Unlimited Church in Anthony Village, Lagos, is a strategic thought consultant and the International Coordinator, Non-Violence for African Development (NOVAD). In this exclusive interview with RAZAQ BAMIDELE of The Nigerian Xpress, the vocal cleric cum security expert dissected Nigeria’s problems, positing that the country can still come out of its woes if the right solution, which he proffered, is applied.
Sir, what is your candid assessment of the state of the nation?
In a day when many nations of the world have opened the portals of transhumanism, with unimaginable advances in genomics, nano-technology, artificial intelligence, quantum engineering, robotics and other fields of technology, I am not happy to confess that my nation, Nigeria, is still locked in the prison of its past and worse still, we are running an antiquated democratic programme that is being hacked from within.
We might have held on to some dignity if the programme that is being used to deconstruct and destroy Nigeria was a sophisticated device but we are the victims of primitive and barbaric devices.
Look at how easily we are distracted from the major issues. Today, it is a foolish threat of death penalty for hate speech and tomorrow it is another silly bait. For every new day a fresh spectacle is presented and whoever is behind this has studied us so well.
The bloodshed and predictable orgiastic violence recorded in the recently concluded elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states speaks volumes. From the political angle, we claim to be running an American styled democracy but don’t understand that the United States of Nigeria is not really a democracy but a well-crafted democratic republic built on a peculiar foundation that respects the rule of Law derived from the natural law of God. The success of the USA is systemic while our failure is systemic.
We need to sober up and stop comparing a push cart to an autonomous vehicle. It’s time to confess that our problems run deeper than the presidencies of Buhari, Goodluck Jonathan, Yar’Adua and Obasanjo put together.
Both America and Nigeria were former colonial territories but one invested its resources in sophisticated thought and innovative ideas while the other one embraced shallow thought. Now that a melt-down is in sight, the national question is no longer about life and death but existence or extinction.
READ ALSO: http://ECOWAS Presidents to meet on single currency regime Dec. 21
As we speak right now there are young men and women, braving desert treks, drinking their own urine to escape the nightmare that life has become for our youths. Others are crossing oceans in risky vessels that are not sea-worthy to enlist in prostitution and other demeaning jobs rather than staying back to endure the hopeless delusions of the political class.
We have been held at gunpoint by a small percentage of the population from both sides of the political and religious divides that are profiting from the system while a handful of good men are fighting the system at snail speed while corruption is moving at jet speed.
Maternal and infant mortality rates are shooting skywards and the family structure is disintegrating every day. If care is not taken, it would soon be regarded as a curse to be born in Nigeria. That is a realistic capture of the present state of Nigeria, so help me God.
With the frightening scenario you have painted, is there any sign of silver lining in the dark cloud?
Oh yes. Perhaps, I should have started with the good news first. (General laughter). Nigeria is a robust and resilient nation and we still have the capability to change the present narratives and take back the mantle of the Giant of Africa.
Much faster than Dubai or Abu Dhabi, we can present the world with a viable, prosperous and peaceful front line nation. But to achieve this, we have to mature very fast and take a few drastic but innovative actions that would require courage because our nation is being deconstructed from within.
If, however, we refuse or neglect this call to salvage our nation, it should be put on record that it was not the Boko Haram, not the Fulani marauders and not even the moles in government, but the silence or inaction of the people whom God empowered that betrayed Nigeria.
Darkness is never really the problem; it is the absence of light that is the problem. So, I don’t want us to waste our energy, discussing more about darkness when we should focus more on those who refused to switch on the light. This is the time to talk about marvelous light and how to bring that light to destroy the darkness covering Nigeria.
What then is the solution in specific terms?
Well, the solution is very simple because everything still rises and falls with leadership! So, what I am about to say may come out as a shock to some in, who have not exercised themselves in deep thought and diligent enquiry but there are truths that have to be told now because Nigeria is no longer dealing with matters of life and death, but issues of existence or extinction!
My answer is not directed only to political jobbers, religious opportunists or the cream of the predatory business class but to farmers, traders, artisans, young graduates, students, street hawkers and seamstresses. There will be no room for crocodile tears in the future.
We must not entrust our leadership into the hands of people, who want to be seen doing something profiting while temporarily knowing that they never had any hope for success. We must not permit unprofitable political distractions. Nigeria is being beaten by the masters of the game and the window of time is closing.
I am going to prescribe two things that Nigeria has to do now and very fast. I have already laid a foundation by saying that another election would change nothing! Beyond the fundamental colonial problems that we never addressed and the systemic flaws in our design, we also have the opportunistic Boko Haram insurgency, the Fulani threat plus the moles in the government to reckon with. We must deal with all these with one stroke and make a quantum leap into the future at the same time so that our youths can breathe again.
So, the first injection into the national narrative must be the introduction of the Non-violent Communication, NVC, platform of discourse. NVC, must not be mistaken for the strategy of non-violence and once it is in place, we have to address the problem of our fractured leadership selection process, as the second priority.
These are two intelligent things that we should be focusing on right now if we want to give this nation hope. While this may sound strange, Nigeria can never make any progress until certain discussions have been held. We must not forget that a lot of the forces, wreaking havoc in Nigeria are opportunistic.
They are exploiting every fault line, each crack and every division in our national system. United we will survive but if we remain divided, we will be destroyed as it would be impossible to mould a united nation until the issue of Biafra and all its legacies of strife and hatred is laid to rest.
The northernisation agenda and the demonisation of the South is another while the Niger Delta question and other minority issues cannot be swept under the carpet any longer. The resentments stoked by the short gun wedding of 1914 are still at play and so many other centrifugal forces that have immobilised our progress through the decades.
Our elders say that it’s better to jaw-jaw than war-war but we will not admit that our turbulent birth and violent history cannot be aired without stoking deep emotions and painful memories. The platform of NVC is the only option that will allow us to have those conversations in a progressive way.
Till date, there is an unhealthy rivalry, simmering under the surface and our governance has a predatory tonality to everything it does. Our national conscience has been bruised by the years of military despotism and the national spirit was broken by the brutal application of force.
READ ALSO: Boxing: NIDCOM boss, Dabiri-Erewa applauds Joshua’s victory over Ruiz Jr.
In Nigeria, you are either a lion or a lamb, an oppressor or the oppressed, predator or prey, aggressor or aggrieved, either very rich or very poor because the middle class has been eliminated.
Oppressors fight dirty to stay in place while the oppressed aspire to become oppressors! So, the nation has no vision and therefore has no direction. There would not be national progress until these discussions have taken place and there is no hope that such conversation will be held unless we erect the platform of NVC, as the platform for all discourse. Those who want to use the death penalty as a deterrent for hate speech don’t understand that hatred cannot be killed with guns.
NVC is a globally established concept that is attributed to Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960’s but NVC is as ancient as fufu (delicacy)on the African continent. It was the platform on which cultural palavers were often held.
So, NVC is practically a common heritage in all the cultural nations within Nigeria. NVC believes that all human beings basically have the same needs and that there are usually enough resources available if we can have compassionate communications instead of the unhealthy rivalries ruled by generated fears.
NVC is facilitated by cultures that have highly sophisticated conflict mediation tools are like a body of proverbs and adages. The traditional diplomatic arsenal of our cultural nations in Nigeria has tools that can be revived, digitalised and upgraded for universal application.
NVC eliminates the negative emotions, harsh expressions, rabble rousers and demagoguery and facilitate solutions to difficult problems. The advanced features of NVC in the Yoruba heritage have been isolated as the major factor for its exemplary record in religious tolerance and immunity to radicalisation. It is possible that the Nigerian civil war may never have erupted if the platform of NVC had been enabled at the famous Aburi meeting in Ghana.
What exactly does NVC do?
Since NVC is based on the belief that every human being has a capacity for compassion and empathy, it means every human being has a place inside him that prefers peace to war and this advantage can be activated by the use of NVC. If we are wise enough to standardise Non-Violent Communication as platform for national discourse, all our destructive lines of division will be erased.
NVC will also show Nigerians that we have more than enough resources to go around if we can learn to cooperate. NVC separates the wheat from the chaff and exposes the rabble rousers demagogues and political jobbers. NVC will eliminate the exaggerations that rogue politicians use to heat up the polity.
Don’t you think that, if signed into law, the Bill on Hate Speech would help to foster unity and more cooperation amongst the citizenry?
Ha! If such a bill were signed into law in any l, it would provide proof that there are terrorist moles, hiding in high places. It would mean that we have surrendered our future into the hands of those, who are collapsing the nation from within.
If we signed NVC into law, as the platform that must guide all national discourse, we would be able to expose the terrorist moles that are hiding in our government. The existence of that Hate Speech Bill is proof that we have been infiltrated by terrorist moles and we just need to track the process by which the bill gained momentum and the motives of those who worked on it.
Such people are more dangerous than the Boko Haram, the Fulani militia and the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) terrorists joined together. We have established the truth that darkness is not the problemm, rather it’s those who have the light and refuse to shine it into the chambers when all the surreptitious work is being done.
How soon can the NVC be established in Nigeria, considering the sorry state we are right now?
Three months is all we need! NVC can be established in Nigeria and injected into the country’s narratives in just three months. It would also be cheap and cost effective if we would create inclusion for the younger generations to execute the campaigns. Right now, we have to approach the government structures with great caution because of the inflation that corruption could inject and the ultimate sabotage the entire project.
I am not persuaded that our Houses of Assembly are not aware of the NVC. Perhaps, some have diverted attention away from it in the pursuit of their own selfish interest. We must understand that Nigerians are basically a good people at heart; it’s the problems that are systemic.
READ ALSO: http://Nigeria retains 95,000 slots for pilgrims in 2020 hajj – NAHCON
What do you say is the second solution to the nation’s problem?
The second solution is the repair of our fractured Leadership Selection Process! If it is true that all things rise and fall with the leadership, it means that you can destroy a nation by destroying their leadership structure. To destroy a community, you cannot just destroy the leader because they could elect another good one.
If you want to destroy a people, all you have to do is to destroy or fracture the natural leadership selection process. Once the process is fractured the community will continuously throw up leaders that are not the very best.
Things cannot go well if you select good leaders when you need extraordinary leaders and things will go bad when you select one mediocre leader after another. A compromised leadership selection process can only produce compromised leaders. This is not a problem that can be solved without the NVC platform because it involves delicate issues.
Can we embrace truth without observing the change in atmosphere every time Vice-president Osinbajo took charge of the country? The same trend would have happened if Atiku Abubakar had become the president and his deputy, Peter Obi, had to mount the rostrum periodically. Each time President Muhammadu Buhari returned to take his mantle, the atmosphere would again change. To understand the root of this pattern, we would have to go back into history.
Let us establish the NVC platform by explaining that soldiering is a very noble profession. It requires great courage because all other professionals like doctors and lawyers sign up to live while soldiers sign up to die for the nation.
The WAFF or West African Frontier Force that gave birth to the Nigerian Army was established in 1897, even before the 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates. Independence came in 1960 but the colonial lords had invested so much in the Nigerian Army, even before Nigeria was properly defined. The question is, why would they do that?
The British had been enslaving nations for more than 600 years and their social engineering experience is formidable. They knew that men were drawn like a magnet to the disciplines and drills of military life. To become a successful soldier, you would be programmed to obey the word and chain of command.
Your attention would be honed but its span would be shortened to enhance obedience. Sifting through the options some young men were selected and promoted for officer training in the United Kingdom. At the military academy in Mons, Aldershot or Sandhurst, the young potentials would be further indoctrinated into military traditions.
One strange twist would be the subject of how to execute a coup d’état, which was inseminated into colonials only. The British soldier did not need such knowledge because the idea of a coup in Britain was preposterous but the Nigerians were indoctrinated and then returned and planted back into their own nation to wait for the day of appointment.
January 1966 was the appointed month for Nigeria when impressionable young minds with a little prompt decided to execute what they had been taught in officer training in order to “rescue” Nigeria from its elected leaders after independence.
Young chaps that were never instructed in governance, politics, finances, economic planning or diplomacy rose to leadership on the barrel of their guns to start a new culture that was strange to Africa. Prior to this time the idea of a leading, leading the nation was like suggesting that a plumber should lead the construction team in a major construction project.
Using terrorism as a tactic, the young soldiers had been inseminated to hijack leadership and fracture the normal leadership selection process. Nigerians were cowed into accepting soldiers, as leaders and the thought became a national stronghold.
Those who doubt the power of military programming should research the initial role of Hassan Usman Katsina, a royal blue blood, in the early part of the Kaduna Kaduna Nzeogwu-led coup in January 1966. A research on the history of leadership in other African nations will throw up the same pattern.
An honest man like Gowon would probably confess that he would have been content to serve under Ahmed Joda, Obafemi Awolowo or Nnamdi Azikiwe, as the Chief of Army Staff if history had not thrust him into prominence. This enthronement of the military class was an inordinate and wicked imposition that has affected Nigeria for decades and caused us a lot of pain, bloodshed and stagnation.
If our leadership selection process had not been fractured, we would have made greater national progress. The political class would have learned from her mistakes and the cultural force would have provided a balance to check the excesses. The Nigerian Army would have remained professional and life would be better for the average soldier.
Everything rises and falls with leadership and the 10 golden years of Obafemi Awolowo’s captaincy of the western region is proof that Nigeria would eventually have found the right path if the meddlers had kept their distance. Life would be better for the almajiris today if our leadership selection had not been fractured.
This insidious programme is still running today and the military class that was never prepared or trained to serve as national leaders is still around, not understanding that they were themselves victims of deceit. This systemic virus is the reason we are still tolerating ill prepared ex-soldiers as presidential material over seasoned and better educated men.
What effect has that development eventually had on the country?
Nigeria has produced excellent soldiers, who would have stayed professional to secure the integrity of our territories against external aggression.
It was the corruption of the soldiering profession that has produced an army culture that can no longer defend our territories with professional dexterity. The terrorism that was introduced in 1966 has multiplied and destroyed the national psyche and it is this same opening that the Boko Haram explored.
The national psyche has been militarised to accommodate a predatory, winner-takes-all sentiment while the refinement of education was denigrated. It is possible that the Civil war would never have taken place as well as several other incidents like the Odi Massacre.
Our economy suffered the most and the ripple effects cannot be mentioned. Instead of governance by consensus, we have been conditioned to accept brutality and impunity.
So, what is the solution?
First, we must learn from history and remember that the British played the same tricks in America but failed woefully. The founding fathers of the US wrote their own leadership selection programme and locked it down in the Declaration of Independence with an escape clause to prevent tyrannical behaviour.
The first American President, General George Washington, was a brilliant soldier, who used his tenure to eject terrorism and tyranny from the leadership platforms. His soldiering experience was used to nurture and restore rather than destroying the national psyche.
General George Washington did a great job and there has been no need to replicate a soldier in the white House again. Since we don’t have much time left, Nigeria needs to establish some specialised schools for governance that all aspiring politicians must attend for certification and grading.
These special leadership schools can have independent supervision and a curriculum to prepare our citizens for every level from local government chairmanship to the president’s seat. Basic courses in history, governance, finances, accounting, diplomacy, economics, strategy, computing, media and leadership can be designed to equip those who want our votes.
Don’t we have a General Washington in Nigerian history?
We do and they had their opportunities but did not use it properly. General Olusegun Obasanjo in his time could have become a General Washington but never really got it right. A Muhammadu Buhari too could have become a General Washington but we can see that the window of opportunity is again closing.
We have seen no sign that he wants to be a General Washington because he could easily have been the last soldier to ever serve as president. He would have been hailed, as one of the founding fathers of modern Nigeria alongside those that worked to reset the fractured leadership selection process, as General George Washington did.
You said the NVC platform could be erected in three months; the question now is who the men that can get the job done are?
A personality like General Olusegun Obasanjo instinctively has been raising his voice. We also remember that General Gowon later attended university to bag degrees. The damage controls should be spearheaded by some of the retired military leaders, who later realiseed how naïve they were when they were first called to governance.
The list of men, who served with them and helped to minimise the damage probably contains some of the names of those who should have ruled Nigeria if the leadership selection had not been compromised. Such men of proven integrity could be tasked with manning the special leadership schools, as a legacy project so that the Nigerian generation of digitals will never again permit her leadership selection to be tampered with.
But how come founding fathers like Obafemi Awolowo, Tafawa Balewa and Nnamdi Azikiwe did not come up with such an idea?
The predator-prey paradigm of Nigerian oppressing Nigerian was not a norm in their day! Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe as well as Tafawa Balewa were all men of deep thought, who recogniseed the limitations of their struggles.
They locked horns with the masters of the game and got as much as they could, given the exigencies of their time. If you study their notes, they all knew what was up ahead and they admitted that they were liberators not founding fathers. Liberators fight for freedom but founding fathers lay foundations for success. Obafemi Awolowo in 1968, Nnamdi Azikiwe in in 1964 and Tafawa Balewa on the 7th of October, 1960 all prayed that the Nigerian future would provide itself with founding fathers to continue where they had stopped.
They knew that the foundation forced on us by the British could not sustain a peaceful and progressive nation and they gave hints, as to what needed to be done after their time but they did not anticipate the fracture of our leadership selection. It took them a long time to figure out how soldiers were persuaded to wear a hat that did not fit them but it was too late by then.
Tafawa Balewa, for example, suggested that Nigeria would have to use “eternal truths” to level the playing field when the time was ripe and Awolowo listed three things that had to be done, including the neutral isation of the inherited centrifugal forces.
There is nothing new about the things I have suggested because any diligent study of our colonial past, the liberation heritage and decades of meander point to the obvious. Once we put on our thinking cap and resume our march to greatness a lot of things will fall into place but we must remember that the world is moving on and no one is waiting for Nigeria if we choose to keep lagging.
In a nutshell, do you still believe that the window of hope is still open?
Yes. It is still open! We can still regain our position, as the giant of Africa. I have spent a few decades in multi-disciplinary research on our problems and can say that we are well able to make a quantum leap to the fore front of global civilisation.
If we look around, we will see that the children of Nigeria and Africa by extension deserve a better deal. We must restore hope and anchor a great vision that will excite our youths.
A nation can never produce any results beyond its architecture of thought. Every sensible nation knows that the process of producing citizens starts between the 3rd trimester and age 7. So, Nigeria needs to recalibrate its national inculturation programme.
If we really want a united nation, our national programme has to be redesigned to overshadow our Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Efik, Edo, and Urhobo inculturation programmes. We must break away from the prisons of the past and embrace a disruption technology to get us to where we belong as the giant of Africa. This is something we can do.
