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A former Chaplain of Aso Villa, Yusuf Obaje, on Thursday said that the change that was desired “for Nigeria to be a better country must begin with a collective adoption of a national ideology.”
According to him, Nigerians should resist the tendency of blaming the President Muhammadu Buhari alone for the worsening state of affairs in Nigeria.
Obaje said this in an address he delivered at the Network for African Congregational Theology Conference and launching of a book titled, ‘African Public Theology’, held at Bingham University Hall, Karu, Abuja.
He said, “Let me say emphatically, what we are going through in the country is not a product of the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari. We have all contributed to this mess.
“I don’t think we have collectively defined the Nigeria that we want, because to the best of my knowledge, we have no national ideology. This country has no ideological foundation. I have cried over it. I have said it and written about it.
“As a matter of fact, in the last confab, I presented about 68-pages on the need for us to have a national dream that defines what we want to be. Unfortunately, I was told that the paper was for the future. But I then published it with the title, ‘The Nigerian Equation: A Categorical Imperative for National Ideology’.
“Just as it is impossible for any human being to act or behaviour in any matter without an idea, it is impossible for any nation to function properly without an ideology because it is their dream and the idea that inspires, drives, compels and motivates the citizens. It gives them a goal to look forward to. In the absence of that, we are trying to build a nation on trial and error.”
The former State House chaplain under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government, however, assured Nigerians of God’s plan to return the country to the path of peace and prosperity.
He recalled that at the inception of the current democratic dispensation in 1999, the people were enamoured by the switch from military rule to a civilian administration, and paid less attention to the quality of people they chose to pilot the affairs of the nation.
Obaje, consequently, posited that the challenges and sufferings in the land today were God’s way of chastising the people and rousing them from slumber.
He said, “I pray that one day we shall wake up, and not only take the blame as something that we have individually and collectively contributed to but our desired willingness to wake up from our dogmatic slumber and move on to build a nation of our collective dreams. It is possible, we can do it.
“I have seen a recreated Nigeria in the hands of the Almighty God. So, no need to give up. We must not. God is going to do it. We will wake up because some of these chastising instruments that He is using such as unprecedented poverty and hunger are to rouse citizens from inertia.”
