The senior pastor of Living Waters Unlimited Church in Anthony Village, Lagos, Rev. Ladi Thompson, speaks with OLUSHOLA RICKETTS on the state of the nation.
Do you think God has abandoned this country, given all the recent happenings?
The major problem of this country right now is not even religion but corruption. Corruption didn’t spare any institution. All institutions, including religious, were affected by gross corruption.
What we need to do is to handle religion using the wisdom God gave us. We must insist that whatever your religion brings, it must be productive, it must be peaceful, it must bring harmony, and it must bring progress. It must not be a source of nuisance to people around you and to the community. When you level the playing field for religion, there will, obviously, be more progress.
How would you describe democracy in Nigeria?
For the first time since independence, Nigeria is on the verge of the greatest era in the history of the country. In life, you learn from the things you got right and the things you have not done right.
If we look at Nigeria from a vantage position, this is the first time I can confidently say that we have the opportunity to become the true giant of Africa. To understand why this is Nigeria’s best opportunity, you have to administer Nigeria in two parts. You have to look at the generation of indulgent people who have been corrupted beyond salvage. And you want to look at the generation of a people whose thinking is so distorted and they think corruption is no more a crime but a culture.
The generations you are seeing today are longing to be masters of their destiny. All Nigeria needs right now is a leadership that realises that the future doesn’t have to depend on the past. We could create a future based on inspiration and innovative thinking.
How do you think we could have visionary leadership?
First of all, we have to administer Nigeria by dividing it into two generations. There are some generations that have to be kept busy. They are a nuisance, they have no ideas, they are too archaic, they live in the past and they are recycling ideas. And there is a generation today of smart phone users, whose dexterity with the smart phone will shock you.
Now, the future is no longer asking youths to go back to the farm. Most of the old people are just going round in circles. They don’t even understand global economics. That generation has to be kept busy because the generation produced looters, most corrupt persons, political jobbers and destroyers.
However, there is a younger generation of people that are frustrated because they are in touch with their mates all over the world.
There are procedures today available that are completely unknown to the older generation. You can’t be talking of unemployment in a country and tell people to go back to the farm when there are now many professions all over the world that have been created for the future of the globe.
Is it because we lack vision as a country that we now have the high level of despondence in the land?
All the irredentist calls that you have all over the places, the ethnic militias and irredentism that you have all over the places happen when there is no vision to look into the future and show people a brighter day.
Introduce today a fresh national vision, call it a new deal or whatever it is, you will find out that Nigerians are capable of understanding vision. You will find out that Nigerians are capable of the resolve, and that Nigerians are capable of the patience that is required to hold on. Never in the history of this country have we got to a place where the individuals have started thinking for themselves rather than surrender their thinking to the traditional power brokers.
Are you satisfied with the change agenda of the present government?
There are certain things that the change agenda must have. You are supposed to show people a destination and you must tell them a vehicle that will take them to the destination.
Apart from having a vision, you must have a mission statement, you must be able to inform people and persuade them as to the pace because change comes in different phases and paces. Change could be instantaneous, change could be engineered and change could be explosive.
But here we are talking about structured change and any change agenda that doesn’t have a vision, a mission and narratives, does not measure up because narrative is what we used to explain and make it available to the common man. But when all these are missing, you do not have a change agenda; what you have is a fantasy.
So, all what we have now is fantasy?
We cannot conclude, because, let’s assume that they had to buy time for the country and they spent time closing down on insurgency. For those of us who are involved in security, we can tell you that Nigerians are yet to understand how close we were to a meltdown. We are yet to understand what it is like for an army divided against itself to try and fight a war
