By Sam Eyoboka

ACTING President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, last Sunday in Lagos, fired the first salvo, declaring: “many people may not know that Pastor Ituah Ighodalo is actually a politician.”

Continuing as the Chief Guest of Honour at the 7th anniversary celebration of Trinity House, Water Corporation Road, Off Ligali Ayorinde, Victoria Island, Lagos, the erstwhile law professor, said: “There are those who will think that he’s just a pastor but let me assure you that I know what some of you may not know. A few years ago, he and I and another brother sat together at his house and we started to talk about the nation.

“This was around 2013, and decided that there must be a way of doing something differently about the politics of our nation, and we held several meetings that ran for hours till past midnight and we continued those meetings till 2014.

*Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (l) and Pastor Ituah Ighodalo at the Trinity House’s seventh anniversary in Lagos last Sunday. Photo: Akinwunmi Ibrahim.

“And we continued that we were going to use Lagos as an example, looking at what could be done in Lagos. And he said we should look at the entire nation and we all laughed and said how is that ever going to be possible. One day we formed what we call the Trinity Accord. He still has a copy of it, I still have a copy of it. That accord turns out what we thought could be some sort of a pathway for our nation,” Osinbajo pointed out.

After that public declaration by the Acting President, our correspondent asked the celebrant to confirm or deny speculations that he was eyeing a Senate seat come 2019. His response was: “I cannot confirm or deny that. I will be led by the Spirit of God. But be it said that whatever God calls me to do to help this nation, I will do my best.”

Pressed to give more details, the chartered accountant who has been using his pastoral calling to build leaders at every sphere of human endeavour declined further comments.

Speaking about the acting President, Pastor Ighodalo Reminded that his APC party appears not be interested in the topic though it was one of its campaign promises, Pastor Ighodalo said: “Well I won’t say so. I’m not a card carrying member. I won’t say that I know the heart and inner workings of the party but I know one thing about my brother, the vice president, anything that will make Nigeria progress, he will try and do it.

“And this restructuring is a bit amorphous right now. It’s not clear what people are saying but all I know is that we need to be more efficient in Nigeria. We need to allocate our resources a bit better, we need to encourage the development of our natural resource: agriculture, mineral resource, human capital and everything.

“I was happy to read in the paper that we are soon going to begin to export our bitumen which is about the biggest field in the whole world. Nigeria has no business being poor, Nigeria has no business not being able to feed herself. Nigeria has no business with illiteracy. Nigeria has no business for this high mortality rate.

“So we, the vice president and those of us who are interested in Nigeria are going to work hard to truly transform this nation,” he stated.

On the seventh anniversary, he it was just the beginning.

“By His grace, we have about seven or eight parishes now. We are going to establish many more parishes all over the world. By His grace, the social responsibility that we’ve taken up to look after the sick, to look after the poor, to direct and encourage them, we’ll continue to do it.

“We will continue to be involved and interested in leadership in Nigeria and in Africa so that we can bring about a change. And then by His grace, we will continue to preach the gospel to save as many souls as possible and make sure that as many people as are able, make it to heaven,” he pledged.

“That is our vision, that is our passion, that is our commitment and by His grace, we will do our best to make Nigeria a great country. Whatever it costs us; we will work very hard and do our best to make Nigeria a great country in Jesus name,” Ighodalo said.