Abraham Great is a clergyman. He is a Hope specialist, Author and Leadership Consultant. He is also the founder of the Great Dynasty Group and the CEO of one of the topmost immigration companies called Straight Visas and other companies. Abraham, who is famously known as “It is working”, is a committed changer maker and an astute motivational speaker.

He has featured on many conferences that talked about topical social and political issues. In this interview with Vanguard, he speaks on how the Nigeria can navigate out of its challenges at ease by taking mild steps. Excerpt:

Just recently, Nigeria celebrated its independence and many opinion has it that the country after 61 years of liberation from the colonial incursion, has not lived up to its expectations.  However, despite the surmounting challenges facing the country, we still have to hope that the nation will one day be reckoned with in the global development rating. Right now, I would say it not what it should be.

It’s obvious that nobody decides where he or she was born. And none of us originates from where we are born, because we were born on earth and gets inspiration and divinity from heaven. We must always harp into that, when it comes to looking into state of affairs of a nation.

To measuring the situation of Nigeria, a case study could be drawn from a country called Singapore and Malaysia. Their yardstick for measuring progress was not even the drawn from Western world or Europe but from Nigeria.  Nigeria got independence before Malaysia. But Malaysia used Nigeria as a model to form a nation that rapidly grew into an enviable economy without rushing into the federalism trap that Nigeria is grappling with. When Nigeria adopted the federalism trap, leaving the parliamentary system that would have done us good, that act alone eliminated a regional independent constitution that would have favoured each region in terms of development. This is the more reason why developments seem to be stagnated in the country.

Although the challenges are enormous that however, are part of the agitations for secessions and other common challenges, but the question is whether we break or remain as one, there must be a need to build a nation that everybody can call home.

People speak about diversity as one of the major issues, but I see the diversity as a blessing in a way. We should know that we are not the only nation that has diversity in the world. Although we have more than 300 ethnic groups in the Nigeria, but it may interest you to know that China and India are more diversified. 

In Nigeria, we dwell on our problems as if it is the worst in the world but it may interest you to know by facts check that Nigeria has not contributed one third of problems elsewhere in the world. We need to accentuate more on things that binds us together. We could use social engagements; entertainment, sports, cultural exchange to distract people from seeing themselves as different people from different ethnic group. Instead of doing this, we rather create alternative negative things that divide us more.

Speaking on things that divide us more, I believe that there are outside infiltration into the country that sponsors individuals to divide us. If you really look at what is dividing us, it is not our tradition; it’s not our regional differences or culture. You can easily notice how comedians make joke of our way of life, how we speak, eat or communicate among regional sections. All these have never divided us, but I insist that there has been infiltration of foreign agendas in our heart, perpetuated by religion to cause trouble in the land.

Solutions

To identify the root of these problems, we have to subject ourselves to diagnosis. All these can be achieved by cultural research, opinions and data collation of all these indices. From there, we can decipher within the data, the recurrent issues that have militated against this division among people. Thereafter, we seek opinion from elder statesmen who witnessed the Nigerian Independence and are still alive, merge it with vibrant positive opinions of the youths, to find solution to our challenges.

Obviously, the national conference that was conducted some time ago is not a perfect report to the solution. For a nation to grow there will never be a perfect report because when you look at an existing culture of a particular region or even all the regions, there will never be an agreement. Some of these cultures have to be discussed and parties finding a level playing ground for harmony. After that, everyone has to go home happy, in adherence to an agreed submission.

Also, developed nations are always evolving while underdeveloped nations are very static when it comes to constitutional issues and amendment of acts that are not people friendly. Currently, our National Assemblies including States Assembly pass laws but we hardly see the impact of such laws on the citizenry.

There are pertinent laws and policies that should be amended on a regular basis, based on how we want our nation to develop. For example, a traffic issue that becomes recurrent like banning of motorcycles and tricycles in the major cities should be debated on in the house while laws should be enacted to make it authentic.

However, important issues like that are always swept under the carpet while people die every day from accidents caused by such. Countries always develop with evolving laws and that’s what we should adopt to develop and grow here in Nigeria.