ELECTION 2011: HOW-TO GUIDE FOR KINGDOM PERSONS

"Yes, there should be a Christian platform, that is, a set of issues upon which the Christian voter must take a stand and from that stand, vote for or against a candidate or candidates or political party or parties. But, no, that platform do not necessarily carry with the anti-other faith baggage. If it does, it is only incidental. Also, a Christian platform does not preclude voting for a non-Christian. It simply means voting for someone who, irrespective of his faith, will carry out policies that are, to use a common parlance, Christian-friendly...In other words, for the avoidance of any doubt, the faith of a leader, while it would have helped tremendously, does not rank among the things that should matter to kingdom persons as we vote in these elections."

 When I wrote the piece headlined, “Dear Lord, Whom Should I Vote For?” a number of people have asked me, “what if I am not spiritual enough to hear from God.” Should I abstain? Aren’t you over-spiritualising a purely secular matter? 

It is this perspective that I wish to address in this piece. But before, I do that, let me state clearly that if you are a Christian; if you genuinely seek the face of God on any issue, He will speak and you will hear Him. Of a truth, if you’ll just reflect a little upon your life, you will discover that you have heard Him speak on very many occasions and you have responded either in obedience or in rebellion, with appropriate consequences. 

As for over-spiritualising a secular matter, readers of this column, I am sure are aware, that its very essence is that there is a kingdom, a God perspective to every issue, and that is what we try to propagate, within the limits of our revelation. But these are however matters for another day.

Now to the issue of what should matter to the Christian as we go to the polls. In other words, should there be a Christian platform? In attempting to answer, let me state two principles up-front. Yes, there should be a Christian platform, that is, a set of issues upon which the Christian voter must take a stand and from that stand, vote for or against a candidate or candidates or political party or parties. But, no, that platform do not necessarily carry with the anti-other faith baggage. If it does, it is only incidental. 

Also, a Christian platform does not preclude voting for a non-Christian. It simply means voting for someone who, irrespective of his faith, will carry out policies that are, to use a common parlance, Christian-friendly.  The Bible records the exploits of a number of pagan kings that God used for his own purposes. In other words, for the avoidance of any doubt, the faith of a leader, while it would have helped tremendously, does not rank among the things that should matter to kingdom persons as we vote in these elections.

Having said all of that, I shall proceed to suggest a few issues about which, the Nigerian Christians should not compromise. The first is education. My people, says the Bible, perish for lack of knowledge (see Hosea 4:6). A Christian-friendly candidate would be one who has a clear, comprehensive, feasible and viable policy in education. Free education is good and should be encouraged, but the candidates/parties push it must give a clear blueprint about how it would be achieved. Also, there must be a commitment to the three worldview and character-moulding subjects, Christian Religious Knowledge, Moral Instructions and Civics. These will address the yearning gap in the growth of our children who even when they are taught well at home find themselves contending with different values out “in the real world.” 

Next is the structure of our federation. This is important, because as currently structured, there is so much injustice, inequity and therefore, ungodliness in the way Nigeria is run. Whether we wish to acknowledge it honestly or not, God cannot be happy with a situation where the way resources native to any part of the country are controlled and managed from a so-called centre. The continued attempt at tinkering with this issue will get us nowhere. What we need in Nigeria is a true federation; one in which no section is treated as, or even remotely allowed to feel like, second-class citizens. Justice is the only enduring antidote to violence. What are the candidates/parties saying about this?

The Bible says we are one body in Christ (Romans 12:5). It says that when one part hurts the whole body hurts. Yet, for years, Christians in certain parts of Northern Nigeria have been hurting for ages and the rest of us do little or nothing about it. Many have died; many have lost loved ones; many have been maimed; very many are living in mortal fear of their neighbours. In some parts, churches cannot own property, including places of worship. The persecution and marginalization has gone on for too long while our governments and intellectuals are busy debating whether the problem is religious or ethnic or both. Yet the bottom line is that the Christian has become an endangered species in many parts of Northern Nigeria. The Christian-friendly candidate, particularly Presidential and governorship candidate has to be the one who has a clear programme, with timelines for solving this problems. Timelines are particularly important here because life is involved.

Everybody agrees that corruption is the deadliest single cancer that’s eaten up our innards as a nation. Everybody agrees that institutions have to be established and strengthened to fight it. But as we have seen, institutions need good people to nurture them to growth. Besides, we need to understand that corruption is sometimes system-induced. For instance, big governments tend to lead to corruption.  Which candidate or party has a clear idea of how to deal with the fundamentals, as distinct from simply tinkering with what’s on ground?

Of great importance is the issue of integrity. This is as distinct from the problem of corruption. Integrity is the scarcest commodity in Nigeria. That is because, no matter how brilliant the policies; no matter how convincing a candidate sounds, no matter how seemingly well-thought out the programmes look; if the integrity quotient of the implementers is low, it would be more of the same. While it is true that people change, we have little else to judge people by than their track record, whether in public service or in the private sector. But, while we are at it, we should watch out also for the little signs; what the Bible describes as “the little foxes” or the “yeast of the Pharisees.”

In closing, dear reader, it is my opinion that God is willing to lead us the candidates of his choice, as we vote, but should you think you might not hear Him, this checklist should help. Long live Nigeria

FOOTBALL AND EDUCATION…HAND-IN-HAND

"But, the guys at SPDC, with consultant, Segun Odegbami, MON, in the thick of it, had identified a worrying trend in the nation where Nigerian youths, seduced by the megabucks being earned by football stars, were beginning to abandon education for football. The portents were bad. The dangers, of producing many half-literate football stars that would neither be able to take informed decisions about their career, nor be able to fend for themselves after their playing days, were real."

This afternoon at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos, students from four secondary schools will continue their contest for honours in the 13^th edition of NNPC/Shell Cup for All Nigeria secondary schools Football Championship. They are the last-four standing from a starting line-up of about 5,000 schools from across the country. 

The battle-tested but not battle-weary four-some are: Government Day Secondary School, Gwadabawa, Yola, Adamawa state, Government Secondary School, Gwammaja, Kano, Kano state, Brilliant International Pre-varsity, Akure, Ondo State, and defending champions, Government Secondary School, Owerri, Imo State.  

The Adamawa boys got their state ticket through a lone goal victory over Government Secondary School, Numan, went on to defeat all-comers at the zonal preliminaries played in Bauchi; winning 3-1 against Taraba state, 5-1 against Gombe and 3-0 against Yobe; thus topping the table with the maximum nine points, scoring 11 goals and conceding only two. They qualified for the semi-finals by defeating Government Day Secondary School, Birnin-Kebbi, Kebbi state four goals to two in the quarter-final played in Kaduna.

GSS, Gwammaja, Kano, earned the right to fly Kano state’s flag by defeating Government Secondary School, Mijibir 2-0; won the zonal  preliminaries played in Lafia, through one victory - Niger State, 2-1;  a score draw - Kaduna State, 1-1 and a walk-over FCT which earned them three goals and three points in accordance with the championship rules. They secured their place among the top-four at the expense of Government secondary School, Zamfara State at one of the quarterfinals played in Ilorin.

The only private school among the lot, Brilliant International Pre-varsity, Akure, Ondo state walloped state rivals City Academy, Ikare 3-0 to take their place at the zonals played in Osogbo where they went to lead the group with seven points from two victories - Kogi 3-0 and Ogun 2-0 - and a no-score draw against Ekiti. They scored five goals and conceded none.  They bettered Lagos State representative, Ilupeju Senior Secondary School, Lagos 3-0 in the quarterfinals to reach the grand finale. 

The defending champions, GSS, Owerri scraped through 1-0 at the state finals against Secondary Technical School, Okwobor, Orlu, but regained their goal-scoring prowess at the zonals -in Calabar, drawing their first match 2-2 against Anambra state champions, defeated Abia  5-0 and earned three goals and three points from a walk-over Ebonyi state. In the event, they topped the zone with 8 points.and were credited with a total of 10 goals for and two against. Their semi-finals ticket came via a 2-0 quarterfinal victory over Community Comprehensive Secondary School, Okoboh, Rivers State in the quarterfinals.

On offer this afternoon, in the material sense, are cash gifts, certificates of participation and the familiar medals and trophies. Specifically, the winners will go home with the glittering gold trophy, gold medals, certificates of participation, N50,000 for each of the 20 players and a cash award of N2.5million for the school, N1.5million of which must go to sports development. The boys from the second placed team will get the silver medals, certificates of participation, N45,000 for each of them while their school will receive a cash reward of N1.4million. The 20 boys in the bronze medal winning team will, in addition to their medals and certificates of participation, receive N35, 000 each. The school gets N500,000. The fourth placed team is not left out. In addition to the certificate of participation, each of the players will go away with N30,000, while the school receives N400,000.

But all of those prizes, prize money and all of that are not the raison detre for this write-up. The real reason is to celebrate the vision an the consistency of the sponsors and the organizers of this championship which has found a place of honour on the football calendar of this nation. It is such that everybody who is anybody in the Nigerian world of sports and education now drop everything else to attend the grand finale this afternoon, as has become the situation these past few years.

In celebrating the sponsors, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) acting on behalf of its partners, I recall vividly how it took guts and commitment to dabble into the field of secondary schools football sponsorship in 1998 when they took the plunge. If you wonder why, here it is in the words of a top official of the company: “When the idea of introducing the championship came to us in the late 1990s, we had many challenges to contend with. It was not that football competition at the secondary school level was a novelty. No, there had been at least two; but they had been rested due largely to violence that used to characterise the matches particularly among rival schools in the major cities, and poor funding. Poor funding was the result of lack of corporate sponsorship which itself was the result of companies distancing themselves from the potential damage that the violence could do to their image.”

But, the guys at SPDC, with consultant, Segun Odegbami, MON, in the thick of it, had identified a worrying trend in the nation where Nigerian youths, seduced by the megabucks being earned by football stars, were beginning to abandon education for football. The portents were bad. The dangers, of producing many half-literate football stars that would neither be able to take informed decisions about their career, nor be able to fend for themselves after their playing days, were real. 

Continues that official, “there was also the fact that many of the nation’s star footballers were advancing in age and unless there was a kind of nursery to produce replacements, there could be a dearth of well-honed football artists in the medium term. And where else should the nursery be but in the schools, particularly if the tide identified above was to be stemmed.”

These were the rationale for instituting the championship which has been organised by the National School Sports Federation with a lot of help from Odegbami’s Worldwide Sports since then, with so great a success that its incontrovertible that no national team is complete these days without the inclusion of Shell Cup products whether that team be under-16/17, under-21, under-23 or the Super Eagles. Yet the boys didn’t have to leave school to achieve that.

As the 13^th edition climaxes today, I salute the vision and consistency of SPDC, NSSF and WWS even as I recall the great pioneering roles of Rev Precious Omuku, Mrs Elizabeth Fagbure and Bisi Ojediran, among others, all of whom deserve to be proud to have been associated with this enduring vision.

DEAR LORD, WHOM SHALL I VOTE FOR?!

Next Saturday, the long awaited April 2011 general elections will begin. I know that many of you wonderful readers out there, more brilliant, more decisive, and more deeply involved in the scheme of things already have your list of candidates – at the various levels. I truly congratulate you. I really do wish I were that smart, but believe me, tried as I have, I still don’t know who to vote for! That wouldn’t be such a problem were my blankness limited to the local governments and state legislature, where nobody bothers to campaign, anyway. But even at the presidential level, I am still in a dilemma.

Of course, there are the obvious front runners – incumbent Goodluck Jonathan/Namadi Sambo (Peoples Democratic Party, PDP); Nuhu Ribadu/Fola Adeola (Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN) and Muhammadu Buhari/Tunde Bakare (Congress for Progressive Change, CPC). Two others worth mentioning, in my opinion, are Ibrahim

Shekarau of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Pat Utomi (Social Democratic Mega Party, SDMP).

I have taken a close look at the candidates and I would like to state, up front, that none of the three front runners cuts it with me on the basis of a set of criteria I have formulated, based on my understanding of what I consider as the key requirements for leadership as this stage of our national evolution. These are: integrity, consistency, antecedence, and intellectual capacity. Of course, you may have your own set of criteria, which might even be better, but, as far as I am concerned, these are it.

Let me also state, for purpose of full disclosure, that I consider Pat Utomi as the only candidate, of the lot, who meets my set of criteria and for whom I just might vote. The reason for using the word “might” will become clear later in this piece. Now let’s look at the three front runners using the criteria above, beginning with the incumbent.

Dr Goodluck Jonathan is an amiable man who affects a kind of humility uncommon in the history of our presidency. But I submit with all sense of responsibility, that the very fact that he is in this race on the ticket of PDP, puts his integrity to test. I do not support zoning, but he did. He is a signatory to the initial document that affirmed the scheme within his party and a beneficiary of the arrangement. To try, as he did, to sophistically repudiate the arrangement is sheer opportunism. Affecting to be different, he has nonetheless manifested the same double standards, which successive Nigerian leaders have institutionalized. He knows that the use of government facilities for partisan political purposes is, at least, opportunistic and immoral, if not fraudulent. Under his watch, impunity has returned, with the legislative crisis in Ogun state, denial of access to campaign venues, by governments run by PDP as in the case of Buhari at Mapo Hall, Ibadan are poster examples.

The point being made here is that the president’s rhetoric has not been matched by his actions and omissions. As for his intellectual capacity, I’ll just ask one question: has he demonstrated an ability to think on his feet?

Nuhu Ribadu’s claim to fame is his role as chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. As readers of this column might recall, I am on record as stating that the fact that he could not prosecute Chief Bode George exemplified the truth that he was little more than Obasanjo’s attack dog. While his personal incorruptibility has not been in doubt, his double standards, his Machiavellian disposition leading to Gestapo tactics makes trusting him with State power quite risky.

The ticket’s claim to being a breath of fresh air may well be true because neither Ribadu nor Adeola have ever run for the presidency. But, Adeola resigned from Goodluck’s Presidential Advisory Committee, only a few days before publicly announcing his decision to run with the ACN candidate. He was involved in the controversial Transnational Corporation (an Obasanjo idea) and served as chairman of the National Pensions Commission the same man. So it can be correctly said that he had been a part of the system. While none of these disqualifies him, it does raise questions of consistency; not to talk of street hints about the place of Obasanjo in all of these. Intellectual capacity?  Very little doubt about that and they have youth on their side too!

Buhari is just an older version of Ribadu in that incorruptibility is the reason he is a front runner in this three-horse race. That is evident in the paucity of his personal assets in spite of the many high and “lucrative” offices he has held. He approached his job as military head of state with such zeal that all human rights considerations and legal niceties were thrown out the window. To put it starkly, General Buhari has his hands soiled by innocent blood; including governors who died as a result of the trauma they went through in undeserved detention and convicted armed robbers, Ojulope and co, who should have had between seven and 14 years in jail under existant laws, but were executed under a retroactive decree. The way he ran the economy then, was a throwback to the Stone Age. As for Pastor Tunde Bakare, I shall pass, because he is a man of God whose integrity I don’t doubt, even if the consistency of his public statements over time is hard to avow.

Governor Ibrahim Shekarau has an enviable track record of infrastructural development in Kano state and has proven to be an intelligent debater, but I do not knoow enough about him to comment on integrity and consistency. His highly experienced runnung mate, John Odigie-Oyegun is however wel known for consistency and integrity. they are a pair to watch.

As for Pat Utomi, all I need to add to what I said earlier is that he also has no baggages from the past that can hinder him in  office. But Social Democratic Mega Party? They dont seem on ground anywhere, which makes his chamces very slim indeed.

Having said all of this, the big question I am asking, and which I enjoin everyone to ask, is this: “Father, since you are the only One who knows the heart of men; the only One whose counsel for this nation will stand, and who definitely Has a candidate you have chosen to use at this phase of our national journey, whom do you want me to vote for, in order to use my vote to enforce your will?”

That, in my opinion, should be the recourse of everyone who believes that God is interested in the affairs of this nation. So who will I vote for? It’s got to be that man that God will lay upon my heart to, either directly or through a vessel I get a release in my spirit to trust. So help me, God.

OLUFUNMI OLUYEDE MARCHING ON IN VICTORY



Rev Mrs Funmi Oluyede with Husband, Rev Ajibola
...smiles of God-wrought victory



March is normally one of the most important months on the calendar of Christ Chapel International Churches, CCIC, where I worship. The senior founding pastors, Rev Dr Tunde & Rev Mrs Ebun Joda were both born and got married in March. So, we not only celebrate/mark their birthdays and wedding anniversaries (more often against their wishes), but also seize the opportunity to honour them at what is known as Founders Day. This year hasn’t been and won’t be an exception. But that is a matter for another day.

I am today dedicating this write-up to another March-born pastor, who will be 50 on Tuesday (22). Rev Funmi Oluyede, was until December 2010 (along with her husband, Ajibola) was pastor of Ikeja chapter of CCIC, which happens to be my centre, and it is not an exaggeration to say that outside of my mother, my wife and a few other women I have come across, no other person of the female gender has impacted my life as positively and as enduringly as this woman of God.

She would blush at this, I know, and perhaps even feel a bit embarrassed, but I am glad to confess publicly that, this woman, thirteen years younger than I am. is one of my spiritual mothers. It’s not so much what she taught in words, and those were quite often profound, but what she taught in action. I could tell you a million and one things that I learnt from this wonderful woman of God and her husband who literally took me, my wife and our children under their wings from that moment when we met at 92 Adeniyi Jones Avenue, Ikeja where the church was located. It would however suffice here to simply state that if I understand anything about agape, the God kind of love; unconditional, sacrificial and unceasing, it is because, “Rev Mrs” demonstrated it again and again to me and my family.

All of the foregoing, however, important to me as they are, do not begin to explain why I am dedicating this column to her. You see, if the enemy had its way, we would never have celebrated the 50th birthday of this leader of men and women, except perhaps post humously. We might have strung together the best of tributes in flowery language laden with “was” and all kinds of past tenses, but she wouldn’t have been here to hear or read them!


But thanks be to God, who always gives us the victory in Christ Jesus! “Mummy Oluyede” as my children like to call her, took ill. She was eventually diagnosed with cancer of the brain and, as doctors are wont to do, given two years to live! Yes, she went through all kinds of experiences; but she held on to God and His promises. Today the two years have come and gone several times over and she’ standing.

Now that’s only part of the story. When I say she’s standing, I in fact understate it; she is firmly on her feet running even. Today, Mrs Olufunmi Oluyede is busier than she’s ever been; busy serving the Lord in several capacities than she ever did.

Check this out:

When the 2011 Spring Meeting of the American Bar Association, Section of International Law (ABA International), holds April 5 – 9, 2011 at Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill Washington, DC, USA, she would be there not as a delegate but as a Member, of the Planning Committee, who also served in both the Marketing Outreach Committee and Sponsorship Committee. She has served as an ex-officio member and second vice-chair of the Lagos branch of the Nigerian Bar Association, and is today National Treasurer of the national body. At this level, she currently also is on the NBA Human & Environmental Rights National Committee inaugurated on December 9, 2010 by NBA President, Joseph Bodunrin Daudu SAN, at his first Human Rights Roundtable for stakeholders to review the state of Human Rights in Nigeria.

Pastor Oluyede is Vice Chair, International Bar Association - Africa; Vice Chair, American Bar Association (ABA), International Human Rights Committee & Women's Interest Network; ABA Ambassador/Membership Country Representative (Nigeria); Life Member, International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA); Vice Chair - FIDA Nigeria, Lagos Branch.

Dear readers, please join me and all of my brethren in the Rehabiah Family in celebrating our very own dear Rev Mrs Olufunmi Arinola Oluyede, as she marches on into her second 50 years – to the glory of God.