Apostle Hayford Alile, the pioneer Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, who for many years made great contributions to the Exchange, is a household name. He is a financial expert and analyst who has over three decades of financial management experience and expertise.

A well known technocrat, Alile is still on the Board of several blue chip companies in the country. He is the Spiritual Leader of Saint Joseph’s Chosen Church of God. Recently, he spoke with our SAM EYOBOKA on the state of the nation. Excerpts…

The title of the revelation to your church this year is Fear Not! If we place that side by side with the current state of insecurity in the country especially in a nation where Boko Haram have given an altimatum to Christians to vacate the North. How can Christians live withot fear?

I believe that God has a covenant with this country. We will make mistakes and such mistakes will cost us some lves but His message is Fear Not, because what goes up must come down. The group have admitted and believe that God created them.

God also creat-ed the people they are asking to vacate the North, otherwise they kill them. There is a limit to all these things and our prayer is for their eyes to be opened and their ears to be opened to what God is saying. You cannot just wake up and start killing innocent people. You will have to account for it and the price they will pay for it may not be too far away.

Sir, has the government handled the security issues as it should be?

*Apostle Hayford Alile

Yes and no! In an evolving democratic environment like this, I think they are justified to tread softly and adopt due process because we are still learning the ropes. Democracy is a learning process and that process can be very expensi-ve. The security arm of the government should get up and do their work.

Nigeria is not a foolish country. We are not a foolish people. On the contrary the few people who run the affairs of this nation are very intelligent people. The security people must wake to their responsibility. If there is no cooperation from the se-curity people, the government knows what to do and it should do it fast. If certain persons are not responsible, the governm-ent should put them on their toes.

How do you assess the per-formance of Mr. President thus far?

President Jonathan inherited a very bad situation and he is managing within the cooperat-ion he has been able to get from our brothers and sisters from the North. I don’t think we can assess his performan-ce, good or bad, using the time available.

If we look at all mathematical models for political system, democracy is still the best but the assumptions like high literacy level, commonality of language and distribution of wealth and resources; Nigeria cannot qualify to be called a democratic nation.

Democracy is not a one point action, but rather a process. Just look around us and see who else will replace him. If you bring a non-minority to be president right now, there will be a lot of hue and cry. So, let’s tolerate what we have for the time being.

I have said it again and again that left for human reasoning or calculations, there will be questions as to how Dr. Jonathan got there. What is in the mind of God, is not what is the mind of man. Jonathan is the will of God and we should not fight it. Thank God four years is just a short time in a life cycle.

Nigerians got a very un-pleasant New Year gift on January 1 when the president removed fuel subsidy. What was your reaction?

I was shocked myself becau-se of the timing. I believe in due cause the president should be able to tell the nat-ion why he took that decision. He really had to have consult-ed widely among the stake-holders before that move.

With the little we have been able to read sure enough; if small countries like Ghana can re-move fuel subsidy why not Nigeria? The amount of money we are borrowing to spon-sor fuel subsidy is enormous and we are creating a very heavy liability for our children.

A lot of the youths who are fighting today, will not under-stand the implication of the move. If they know the implications, they will be first to kick against it, by saying ‘no we don’t want our fathers to leave such huge liability for us.’ Therefore, it is a serious matter and we have to reflect proper-ly before we take side.

Sir, is the huge liability not as a result of corruption in the system?

Yes, it is. There are illusions in the minds of people that the price of fuel in Lagos should be the same in every part of the nation. If you go to America, even within a state you will find different prices because of the cost of moving the commodity.

If you want a luxury movement from one place to another, you have to pay a price for it. If government decises to fix our rail-lines to carry goods and services across the country, we have to pay, because there is no free lunch. its part of human relation and existence.

What we are told is that Nigeria spends almost N3 trillion for fuel subsidy per year. Who is providing such money? If we continue to print naira notes, inflation will take us over. What we are hearing is that they have been borrowing the money.

That is how we have managed our economy in the past. In a predominantly agricult-ural country, we are pretending to be a post-industrial country; we have to pay a price for it or else it will collapse.

So, we must hold back a little; encourage our farmers and the young people who are crying for employments should go to the farms. The entrepreneural spirit of the Nigerian will, out of this confus-ion, explode. When got political independence on a plat-ter of gold; so we don’t know the value of it.

If we want economic ind-ependence we have to pay some price. There is a lot of endowments that God has given to this country, but you don’t plant yam today and hope to harvest it tomo-rrow. Neither do you go to the Sahara desert and say you are expecting a good harvest. There are lots of things that need-ed to be done nationally.

But the tragedy of the Nigerian situation is that we pontificate without implementaion. We’ve had all the models in the past—Green Revolut-ion, Operation Feed the nation and what have you….

Well, everything has its good morning. If you wake up by 2.00 p.m. it’s good morning; but now that we are seeing dang-ers ahead and I hope that rascality and foolishness will not push us to dang-erous things. Many atim-es, we were at the brink of falling over but God carried us on His shoulder and He will continue to do that, because God has a purpose for this country.

How do we address the economy without tackling corruption? Today, we still have leg-islators who earn more than the American president. The budget for our president’s feeding runs into millions of naira per day…

Well, that is a tell tale. Left to me and my wife, our food budget will not be up to 10 per cent of what it is today. Why is it like that; people unin-vited, brothers, sisters, church members are hungry and they eat from the kitchen. We may not be able to come to judgement on President Jonathan and the vice president, but they have heard the hue and cry of the people, I am quite sure, they would do something.

What are they eating? There are several ways of tackling corruption. I have said that our government of 30 or 40 years ago made a mista-ke. The military government thought they could legislate morality and decided to take over primary and secondary schools from the missionaries.

I started schooling in a Muslim school befo-re proceeding to a Catholic school and the man in me was brought out before I finished my secondary school. But today, some of the state govern-ments now realizing that they cannot legislate morality and two they don’t really know how to manage the schools. Some of them are now handing the schools over to missionaries which established the schools.

I can’t never allow my children to go and take some other person’s thing; what do not be-long to me—something I did not work for. Never! Because my conscience tells me no. But, today there is nobody bringing up these children. Some-times I drive down here around 8:30 a.m. to 9.00 a.m and I still see pri-mary school pupils walk-ing down the street.

It never happened in our days. We have to go back and accept the fact that we are a rural agricult-ural society and our eco-nomy must take the na-tural curve after agri-cultural self sufficiency in food production. That Nigeria is importing cassava, rice amongst others is an abomina-tion.

What we are telling God is that He made a mistake and He never made a mistake by creat-ing us and putting us in this land. Same thing go-es for our primary, secon-dary and territory institut-ions. Government should accept the fact that they cannot run this country by themselves.

They need the assistance of people who will provide the food and orderliness for the spirit, body and the soul of man and that is not what government can do. They should concern itself with how we can set up proper educational policy that any volunteer who wants to set up primary and secondary schools will settle within these educ-ational policies and its the duty of government to go and inspect the schools and ensure mon-itoring compliance.

It is criminal, abomination, and insult on God and their parents to take a knife and cut their fellow human beings. Today, some of these children are doing it but they don’t know the implicat-ion. I know what I am saying, at least I run a church; some even think taking drug is a routine thing and nobody is correcting them. They don’t see anything bad in doing it. Parents give their children school fees and the children gamble with the money. It is such a serious problem.

Is there any hope for the Nigerian children?

There is hope for them. The whole thing must start with you; in the sense that you know the whole problems and the reason why you know all these problem is because of your exposure. A lot of Nigerians are very exposed but unfortuna-tely, like what you see in democracy; democracy doesn’t tolerate the best, for leadership. The way we are going in ths country, it will take us a long time before we can produce the right lead-ership that propel this country to its promised land, but certainly we will get there.

Recently the National Assembly rejected a Bill on same sex marriage. What is your take on it?

The question I kept asking the western lead-ers who believe in such stupid thing is; ‘if their fathers married their brothers would they have been born? And that is to show you that atimes there can be some mis-takes in human mentality and I really clap my hands for Senator David Mark who stood against it. Our prayers go to him. He is the kind of leader we are looking for in this country.