Jonathan should sacrifice 2015 ambition for Nigeria’s peace – Akin-John

Dr. Bola Akin-John, founder of Church Growth, is an activist in Nigeria’s Christian community. He speaks with ADEOLA BALOGUN on how the country can overcome the Boko Haram insurgency

What is your take on the call for amnesty for Boko Haram?

It is uncalled for because, according to various reports, Boko Haram is a faceless group. And if you are going to grant amnesty to somebody, you must know them. Two, they must be fighting for a known cause. For God’s sake, Boko Haram is not fighting for a national cause. Rather, they are fighting for an Islamic cause. They said they want to Islamise Nigeria; at a time, they said the President must become a Muslim; though we know that their brand of Islam is not the genuine one that we are used to. They are extremists. So, if they are fighting, maiming and killing innocent people, destroying places of worship, to me, what they are doing negates amnesty. As a Nigerian, the way I look at it is that it is a northern agenda.

When the June 12, 1993 election was annulled, there was a lot of violence in the South-West and they said they should shift power and they gave it to (Olusegun) Obasanjo. Again, when violence escalated in the Niger Delta, they said okay, to pacify them, let us give it to (Goodluck) Jonathan. We don’t have to go far before we know that what is happening is a northern agenda. If they have grievances with the government, they should come out and talk, otherwise there is no basis for amnesty. If you grant them amnesty, what of those that have been killed? I know there are many things that the Joint Task Force in the North discovers everyday that they cannot disclose to the rest of Nigerians. As a Christian, I call on Nigerians to pray to avert a civil war. I beg our political leaders to face reality; it is time we sit together and talk. If we still want a Nigeria tomorrow, the various peoples that make up Nigeria should come together and decide how we want to be governed. People have called for a Sovereign National Conference but our government has been dancing round the issue. Either they call it sovereign or something else, it’s time we come together and talk. The National Assembly cannot do it. They are talking of the centenary celebration now; for what? Of course, we thank God for keeping us together since 1914, but people in other nations have come together and talked about how they want to be governed. It doesn’t need to lead to a war or disintegration. The bus park incident in Kano recently was, to say the least, a very callous act carried out by some people, just to chase southerners out of northern Nigeria. I just returned from the United Kingdom, what is happening there is that Scotland, which is under Great Britain, is going for a referendum to determine whether the people are going to remain under the UK or not. And the most disheartening aspect is that most of our political leaders travel and they see what is happening all over the world. But they come back home and pretend that they didn’t see anything. I think we should even use the centenary celebration to start the talks.

A school of thought believes that the escalation of violence in the North is because of 2015. Do you agree?

Of course, that is the reason. Since the President has started sending several body languages about his intention to contest in 2015, Boko Haram insurgency picked up again. I want to say something, how I wish the President would shun any attempt to contest the next election. I am saying this as a servant of God and somebody who loves the President. But he should not leave without convening a national conference to see how we are going to live together. We can’t continue like this. Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who failed to use the opportunity he had to do it, has started crying out that something must be done to avert a crisis. I don’t want the President to contest in 2015 because it will lead to crisis. I know President Jonathan has a lot of pastors praying for him; I know that he has a lot of people that are encouraging him, but for the sake of Nigeria, let him not contest. Let him sacrifice his ambition for the sake of Nigeria. The North may want to make the country ungovernable for him if he goes ahead to contest. And if he wants to leave, one legacy I would love him to bequeath to Nigerians is to convene a national conference. The signs are so ominous but we pray that God will take care of us.

The thinking when Gen. Andrew Azazi was removed for Dasuki as the National Security Officer was that the Boko Haram insurgency would go down…

It’s part of their political calculation. What happened to Azazi at the end of the day? Was he not the one that died in a helicopter crash? What he said by then, is it not happening now? He said the government knew these people; he said it was the PDP that was behind the crisis. We all thought that with Dasuki in charge as a northerner, the whole thing would die down. Of course, for a few months it abated, but it has since escalated. Our political leaders are there for themselves alone and they are making it a do-or-die affair. I was reading in the paper this morning about a coup in Central African Republic, I pray it doesn’t happen in Nigeria. You see, when people in government don’t have the interest of the greater society at heart, that is always the result. Although we are not praying for it, if you make a peaceful revolution impossible, you are preparing the ground for a violent revolution. We have enough crisis on our hands, people in government should therefore tread softly and face the reality. I think the period of centenary celebration is a chance to convene a national conference because if you married someone and you realised that the number of years you experienced crisis was more than when you had peace, there is nothing wrong for the two of you to sit and discuss the way forward. We need to sit down; majority of Nigerians would love it but I know that the only people who would not want it are the northerners.

We had always thought that the Boko Haram insurgency was limited to the North until recently when some arms were unearthed in Ijora Badia in Lagos. Is that not a signal that it has spread?

Let’s thank God for His mercy. Remember that during the Niger Delta uprising, there was a bomb blast in Lagos. It is a possibility, but I pray that our security agencies would be on red alert to discover more and on time. The government should see what is happening as a wake-up call and do what is right.

Is it true that Christians and Muslims will always find it difficult to live together in Nigeria?

I studied Islam because a good pastor should have knowledge of Islam. Muslims and Christians can live together but we have the extremists, who say that the Qur’an says if someone converts from Islam to Christianity, he should be stoned to death. The extremists use that to destroy and kill. Remember the days of the Maitatsine riots, that was how it started. But we have moderate Muslims who are genuine like the Ansar Ud Deen people, very good people. From time, we have been living together; there are Muslims in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo, Osun and many other states and they are living together with others. In Europe, there are Muslims without extremism. Religion is a personal thing and there is no reason why I should impose my belief on you. One thing we fail to realise is that the present situation in the North had started a long time ago when they would not give southerners permission to buy land in the North. They would ask non-indigenes to live in Sabongari. The killings started with the Maitatsine riots in the 80s. Look at Jos, Muslims and Christians had lived peacefully together for a long time until they politicised Islam. Even the largest Muslim nation in the world, Indonesia, there are Christians there and they live peacefully.

Some people have blamed poverty for the escalation of Boko Haram activities in the North. Who is responsible for the poverty?

It is politics. If you look at it, the number of years the North ruled the nation is more than those from the South. If the North is poor, who made it to be so poor? I remember the days of the late Gen. Sani Abacha, when fuel price was increased and there was an uproar. The Petroleum Trust Force was set up and was headed by Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. Most of the roads, hospitals financed by the PTF were concentrated in the North. That worked against him during his campaign for the presidency. So, I believe we can all live together on the basis of tolerance and freedom.

Essentially, don’t you think the South needs the North to live?

Essentially, we don’t need the North to live. What is the North giving us more than food? If the southern governments are serious with agriculture, we can provide all these things because we have enough land. You remember when there was a crisis and those bringing things from the North could not come in, that was when some southern governments woke up to cultivate things like tomatoes and pepper. We can live without the North if they feel they don’t want us together.