In this interview with Sola Adesoye, Pastor Tunde Bakare, examines steps in restructuring the nation. Excerpt

How can you describe your journey so far, as a legal practitioner, a pastor, a prophetic voice, a nation builder and a statesman?

I started by thanking God. I say, known to God are all His works from eternity. Almost everything I have done today that God has ‘graced’ me to do started from when I was young. For example, it was in 1963 I knew I would be a lawyer. We went to school and as the custom was, whenever they were going to the harvest, they would tell the children to go get palm fronds that they would use to prepare for the bazaar to raise money for church.

I went to a Christian school but was raised in a Muslim home. I went to All Saints Primary School, Ketu, Abeokuta. We were coming from a place called Shikoro River in Abeokuta in the 1960s and we stumbled on a Magistrates’ Court and I saw the argument that was going on between the two men who were in front of the chief magistrate. One of them was the older brother of the Olori of Alake, Oba Gbadebo. He was arguing a case vehemently. That was my imagination from primary school.

Being a prophetic voice; listen, the gift is of God. Some of it had already been in us even before we ever responded to the word. For example, I would dream dreams and I would see visions. The dream I had on April 10, 1964, was what led to my salvation on September 24, 1974. The dream I had on April 10, 1967, was what brought Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Gbenga Daniel and I together from my university days and he mentored us on how to handle state affairs – don’t put your hands in the till go get a profession first or a career or a business so you will not have to steal.

And when I finished my university education, the likes of Gani Fawehinmi moulded, me and even before I entered university, our paths had crossed in 1975 at the National Library, when he came to look for people for free education. That was my first time of setting my eyes on Chief Gani Fawehinmi. God brought us together again.

I served under him as a young lawyer who read his Nigerian law report. He sent me to England to do some work underground on that report and when I came back, I started my own practice, in 1984. In honour to God and all His works for eternity, the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord. He has been ordering me from childhood and at this present moment, so he would receive all the glory and praise. I have no formula other than following God, then following the dreams He has put in my heart from childhood until today.

I want to take you just a few steps back, the key transformation began when you gave your life to Jesus Christ, not when you were a Muslim and been raised in a Muslim home?

Not just a Muslim, my grandfather was the first Imam of Shoneke in Abeokuta. That is where the founder, the one who led Egbas to Abeokuta settled. He was the first Chief Imam. My mother went to Mecca, Medina. My father was a chieftain in Islamic religion and I was trained in Arabic school. I graduated from Quranic school April 16 1967. So I had never planned to become a Christian, but the dream God showed me on April 10, 1964 catapulted me to becoming a Christian in September 1964, when I went to take photographs at Yaba Baptist Church as a Muslim, freelance photographer.

As a nation builder and your involvement in politics. At what point did you know that your destiny was intertwined with the destiny of the nation?

April 10 1967. I had a dream I was on a mountain. It looked like a place in Australia, because I have travelled, I have seen those places. There were only three of us on this mountain top on that day and I say that before God Almighty, who judges the quick and the dead. Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Gowon, and I was sitting in the midst of them, mighty men who were impacting Nigeria; Gowon as a military man and Chief Obafemi Awolowo as a politician and statesman.

At the tender age of about 13 in 1967, I was in their midst and we were looking at the map of Nigeria and plotting how Nigeria would become great again, and I was fired up from childhood and I told friends around me that one day I will be president of Nigeria and the witnesses, the ones I told, like one of the wives in my family, the extended family, Mrs. Adeyemi, recorded this and said this before me from primary school as I returned home. And in those days, as a young wife you do not call the children by their names, you give them pet names.

So, that day, I returned from school and she said, ‘Baba oko mi’ (my husband’s father), what nickname will I call you? They have taken all the names. Soji was doctor and Lati was lawyer, They had taken all the names and we were 21. So I said, Call me president, When we were leaving secondary school in 1973, students were asked, What will you be in the future?’

I remember my classmates, Isaac Ositelu and the rest of them, and I got up and said sure I would become president of Nigeria one day, because after Awolowo, I would revamp Nigeria like never before. So, this has been something that has been in my heart from childhood and God began to orchestrate things. I remember sharing this with Pastor E. A. Adeboye when I first stepped into his church in 1984. I confided in him. I said my destiny is intertwined with that of Nigeria. If it is well with Nigeria, it will be well with me, If it is not well with Nigeria, I carry a burden for this nation.

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By the time we went to what we called Dinner Club at the University of Lagos, it was like a youth wing of UPN which brought Chief Awolowo to the University of Lagos for a lecture, and we would go to his Park Lane house in Apapa with Gbenga Daniel and a few other members of his Dinner Club. It took a while, a long time before I eventually met General Gowon and I am glad that I met him eventually. It has been a privilege to know and to meet these great men and many more of the disciples of Chief Obafemi Awolowo that God has used to impact my life. We know we will fix this nation by God’s grace and when the fullness of time comes, we would deploy.

Have you at any point in time felt like giving up on Nigeria? Now, for someone who carries a sincere and deep burden for Nigeria, have you ever felt like you have done enough?

I am human, many times, you see the prophets of God break down and say ‘God take me home!’ Moses said so. Elijah said so, but they never gave up. Jeremiah thought to a point and he said, ‘God you have deceived me and I am deceived’. The Bible says when Peter encountered Jesus at the lake in Luke 5, He said follow me and before Jesus left in John 21, He said follow me.

Between the first ‘follow me’ and the last ‘follow me’, Peter never failed to follow Jesus. He failed sometimes, but he never failed to follow. And then there were moments of discouragement, but guess what, when God said to Jesus ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ it was not because of the things He had done or the things He would do, but because He waited patiently for God to do things.

So, I patiently wait for the salvation of God. I know that in my lifetime Nigeria will turn around. Nigeria will work in my lifetime and I patiently wait for it and guess what, no man of destiny dies before the fulfilment of that destiny if he stays undercover. Simeon prayed and prayed and prayed and it looked like the Messiah would not come until God told him in the place of prayer, ‘You will not see death until you see the Lord’s Messiah.’

Nobody invited him to the temple that day, but his steps were ordered by the Holy Spirit and he took delivery of his answers. I will be here until Nigeria turns around, by the grace of God and I am not giving up hope or giving up on Nigeria. I can give up on anything, but not on Nigeria and not on my relationship with God. It is impossible, it is too late.

You recently declared a season of reset over the nation. Can you explain in details, the ramifications of this reset?

By the way, ever before I proposed to my wife, I proposed to her February ’83. We met December ’82 before the proposal, I said, ‘Hey, watch your life and what you do and what you say, because someday, you are going to be a first lady and I will be the president of Nigeria.’ Ever before I proposed to her and ever before I actually married her in 1984. So, this is not something I am just saying. It is not empty words. It is not rhetoric.

That which our eyes have seen and our ears have heard and our hands have handled of the Word of Life. But let me tell you this about the reset. We were in London in the UK and all of a sudden, the Lord showed me a rainbow over Nigeria. The arc formed over Nigeria and I saw the word ‘reset’ and when I came back home to Lagos, I ordered for a sticker with a rainbow over Nigeria and the word ‘Reset’ written in between, and I distributed that sticker to every member of the church. And by the grace of God, I took a copy to Abuja to give to Mr. President; that the resetting of Nigeria has come and is rainbow-covered. Regardless of what will cover the world, God will see the rainbow on Nigeria and have mercy upon us.

This process of resetting and restricting, Nigeria will go through. When I gave him the copy, he said, ‘Is this my copy?’ It would be a privilege to be among those who would play a significant role in resetting the nation. That was a vision I saw and I am waiting for the manifestation of that.

Being a voice for the concept of restructuring the nation, you have provided 16 pragmatic steps towards restructuring. How pivotal is restructuring to Nigeria’s attainment of her potential?

When you began this dialogue today, you said we would go back in order to go forward. I heard the words very clearly and I said how prophetic that was. It is unfortunate that they took history out of our educational curriculum, because many people today, especially the young ones, really do not know how flourishing Nigeria was pre-independence and post-independence, before reality struck.

We were three regions in the beginning: the Northern Region, the Eastern Region and the Western Region. Back then, each region was very healthy, robust and maximising the potential of each region. Until 1964, when the Mid-Western Region was created out of the Western Region, and each still had its own great potential.

There was healthy competition among the regions and they were practising the parliamentary system of government. It was the cocoa boom that Chief Obafemi Awolowo used to do all those ‘firsts’ in Africa, including pragmatic taxation that people were willing to pay, for the education of their children; free education. I benefited! If Chief Obafemi Awolowo had not started free education, I wonder what would have happened to me after my father’s death. I was well-grounded in primary school.

Thank God for our teachers back then. He built the University of Ife from cocoa proceeds, not from the federal government. Sir Ahmadu Bello built Ahmadu Bello University. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe built University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Each region had its own representative in the UK, apart from the Nigeria High Commission.

This was how health and wealth, and healthy competition was going on until the military struck in 1966 and turned a pragmatic federal system into a unitary system that locked everyone into the same spot. Everyone was now dependent upon the oil boom, which has now become our doom. I started campaigning for Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1964. There was no UPN then there was Action Group.

I can still sing all the songs we were singing at the campaign. I was young, but I was following him when NNPC was formed. If we do not look back, we cannot go forward. The pandemic has shown the whole world that the federal government alone cannot do it, with all the federal might and recently when the federal government ordered the lockdown in Lagos State and Ogun State, the state government said we will do lockdown, but we will do it in a particular way.

That is it. Governance must go back to the grassroots so that each state or each geo-political zone can begin to determine its own destiny and encourage healthy competition. Now, the states are talking about decentralised policing. How can you ever police a nation like Nigeria in a central structure? It cannot happen. You take a man from Sokoto to go catch a criminal in Okokomaiko. Does he know the landscape? No! So, it is in our best interest to restructure both economically and politically, to see what the federal government should do and let the states maximise the resources in their possession.

There is no state in this country without a mineral resource. When you put everything in one barn, you are wasting your time. It will not work. These are great ideals and something that I believe in as well.

But sir, the question also is how will this become a reality? Do we have to force the hand of government?

I remember that you were part of a conference that was held and constituted of different people from different parts of the country and all that work, beautifully done, is gathering up somewhere. I must say this, it appears that even this current administration is yet to pick it up. And getting to implementing and restructuring Nigeria, it almost looks like the hand of leadership would have to be forced, maybe by a series of events that would spontaneously happen, and they would find themselves forced to look at restructuring the nation. I pray it will not get to that level. I want to remind you that despite the disposition of this government to the 2014 National Conference, a time came when the APC-led government constituted a committee led by the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasiru el-Rufai, to look at how best to restructure Nigeria and they gathered papers.

Everything I knew, and I have written all pragmatic ways to structure Nigeria, I gave to the committee as much as I gave to the president also. If they were not going to do something about it, I do not think they would have done that. And guess what, now that you are deporting Almajirai from Kaduna to Bauchi, from Kano to Jigawa, restructuring has begun. You cannot stop it. It is like standing in front of a moving train. Wisdom is justified of her children and I know that part of the problem is the confusion created by those who were pro-restructuring, who tasted power and backslid completely and took a somersault like it never happened.

But right now, it is clear to all that each state of the geo-political zones will have to develop at its own pace. It is biblical, it is pragmatic and it is the wisest thing to do so that each geo-political zone can begin to determine and work out its own destiny and that is what I think is going to happen. I pray that it will not get to the level of being forced, because there is no honour in that. The place of honour is to sit and say this is the best way forward and to approach it pragmatically. I think the fear is one region may do this to the other. Let us throw out fear. Let us sit at the table of protocol. To be honest, the 2014 National Conference has done a major job of restructuring. I remember weeping like a little child.

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All those people were around me that day and I was weeping when every resolution was passed without us having to fight and without us scattering the whole thing. And out of that, the Nasiru el-Rufai-led committee has also done some extraction. What we need now is not to form another committee, it is to sit down with the National Assembly and start implementation. I think the argument of President Buhari is that that was the responsibility of the National Assembly. The National Assembly alone cannot do it. The Civil Society Organisations, the National Judiciary, the Executive arm, all hands must be on deck to fix our nation to stop the hemorrhage that is going on, so that this nation does not bleed to death under our watch.

How can the Church, being the inn, bring healing to a world that is in need? How can the Nigerian Church play this role?

I have said it before and I say it again, a sick Church cannot bring healing to a dying world. You just need to look around us to see how greedy leaders of the Church have become and how they have turned God’s house and His Kingdom into a private enterprise, to fan the embers of their larger than life lifestyles. So many of us pastors are in it for what they can get. Do not get me wrong, it is not wrong to benefit from where you are working. After all, Peter asked Jesus, ‘We have forsaken all and we have followed You, what shall we have? But listen to this, when the Good Samaritan saw the wounded man, he had been left for the dead and pedestrians were passing by. First, it was the priest who was going to the temple and was too busy to help the wounded man. The second was the Levite who was so consumed by the sacrifice he would put on the altar that he did not have time for the wounded. And the Good Samaritan; I am glad that Jesus talked about the Good Samaritan to describe Himself, because He had been called a Samaritan in John 8 – ‘Have you not said you are a Samaritan? You have a demon.’ He said. ‘I don’t have a demon, but my Father knows me.’ So He now made this parable. He took oil and wine and he used the wine to clean the wound and he used the oil to bring soothing comfort to the man. And when night came, he took him to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him,’ and he gave him two denarii, two days’ wages.

The Bible says a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. He gave him enough to cover two thousand years’ wages. Jesus, the Lord of the Church came with oil and wine to heal the wounded man and to give the innkeeper. Now, government is looking for isolation centres and some people’s mouths are just dragging rough, that why close churches and open market places. I do not know if the church has become another market. The government and the lack of palliatives opened the marketplace so that people can go and stock. I am sure that there will be another lockdown and that is another hunger pandemic.

The same government that said churches should not open also said mosques should not open and Muslims are not crying about it. But some people in the Church are using their mouths to drive all kinds of things. Rather than praying for those in authority, we just want the government to collapse and you cannot even afford to contend with the trouble that would come as a result of it. I think the time has come for those who think their empire is crumbling to shut their mouths up and maintain a posture of a Good Samaritan and be our brother’s keeper. It is a privilege.

I called the governor of Ogun State, I have said to the governor of Lagos State, I have said to the deputy governor of Lagos State also, that our church halls are very available as isolation centres. Let us open it up and let us be there to support in feeding those who need help in this season and be our brother’s keeper. If Spain hotel owners would give their beds to those who are in need and we are just concerned about our tithes and offerings and people coming together to die in church at all costs, oh please! Let us reverse the gear and put our house in order and let the Church play a significant role as the salt of the earth and as the light of the world. We must become our brother’s keeper, so that we would not become our brother’s killer. This is very critical, Many pastors still see the church as a building. If the individual is a temple of the Holy Spirit, then there is no distance in the spirit. The problem is, we have mega-churches without Omega. Because, if indeed we are the Body of Christ, then there is nowhere we cannot function. There were many Christians in Jerusalem, they were scattered everywhere and they did more. The Church is going back to its early stages in meeting from house to house. Household faith, household salvation and not some monumental disasters that we call churches.

I am not against buildings, but if your building becomes your major focus, then you need to do a reset. This is really impactful. Again, I will take you back and bring you forward. In the last conversation, you shared the story and somehow took a different path. You told the story of a facility that the ministry is building and you have offered to the Lagos State government for use as an isolation centre.

Many people complain of the infrastructure deficit today in Nigeria. How come most Africans are not always reluctant in paying taxes to government, compared to what citizens pay abroad?

In the British Empire, no one had a right. The king or the queen had everything. People began to pay taxes and they were demanding to know how their taxes were spent. In our nation, the oil boom had almost destroyed that. At present, there is a lot of drive to increase IGR at federal and state levels. Yes, people are paying taxes to government and they are unable to express themselves and hold government accountable.

It is important that we must be taxed. There are only three ways that government can raise money, is through taxation, borrowing and minting money. We do not want to mint money all over the place and we do not want to go borrowing. So, citizens must give their own quota and then we can hold government accountable. For as long as we continue to depend on oil, that will not happen. We have to look inward and see how to generate revenue to take care of our infrastructure deficit.

Another question: Recognising that authentic census figures are the bedrock of evidence-based policymaking, do you not think that we would not be able to plan projects, forecast and deliver services without reliable and sustainable census figures? I totally agree with that submission, because if you do not know how many you are, you cannot plan or project how many you can take care of. God is not against census- taking. He is only against trusting or relying on people. If you do not trust in God and you trust in people, that would be evil.

Inaccurate census is part of our problems in this country and it has created a lot of friction. Some people believe that census figures are twisted to suit a particular region. When I participated in the 2011 election and saw people trooping out from various states, I thought, we have to take an accurate census to know how to take care of people. This has been a troubled area, because of politicians who think human beings are tools to be used and abandoned after election. We need an accurate census to plan accurately.

Is it ridiculous that the House of Representatives is concerned with a control bill for NCDC instead of building up our healthcare structure?

This is about the controversial bill that they had to step down.Segun Adeniyi, in today’s (May 7) column, the Verdict, has taken Gbajabiamila on a viral spin and I do not want to do any more damage to it. The intention may be good, but the methodology is absolutely wrong. But let us not throw the bathwater and the baby out. The bill can still be passed, but a lot has to go into it, with a robust healthcare delivery system law. The future must be taken into consideration. They would go back and do a rethink and make sure that this time, stakeholders look into it before it becomes law.

I have always wondered, corruption is a global issue, yet some countries seem to develop far better than ours. Is corruption Nigeria’s biggest problem?

Corruption is a big problem here. I think leadership is a bigger problem than what we have. I had the privilege of sitting with the former Minister of Transportation for UAE in Dubai and I asked him a question, for those who think Islam is the problem: ‘Do you practice a different Islam here than we do in Nigeria?’ He said, ‘There is corruption in our country too, but there is one thing you cannot take away from our leaders. Our leaders are like lions. They kill the animals, they eat the ones they would and leave the rest for the people. But your leaders are like hyenas. They kill the animal, they eat the part that they would and keep the rest so that nobody can reach it.’ Is it not madness?

As far as I know, corruption is a problem, but forthright leadership, capacity – they are affecting us. We need visionary leaders. Corruption is a major problem and with all the carrying away of our resources, we still have more than enough to fix our nation. And God helping us, we will. We just need the right people.

What is God saying about Nigeria?

There is nothing new under the sun, economic recession whether regional, national or global. Mankind has overcome it in time past and we will overcome it again. I believe Nigeria’s best days are ahead of us, despite the gloom that is covering the world. Nigeria will be saved, Nigeria will change and Nigeria will be great again. God gave an inheritance to every nation and despite the troubles of colonialism and slavery, Nigerians, home and abroad, must come together and fix it. It has been done before, it can be done again. We went through a gruesome civil war, but God has a way of bringing us back together again. The right people will come into power and he will steer the ship of this nation. In my lifetime, Nigeria will be great and will flourish again.

VANGUARD