BY PRISCA SAM-DURU

Edegwa Joseph Oghenovo, a Pastor  of  the Four Square Gospel Church is the writer of ‘My Dream of Another Nigeria’, a book that, while exploring the nation’s political space, also attempts to provide what , the author describes as an “ideological persuasion” platform capable of launching the nation into greatness. In this interview, Oghenovo sheds more light about the concern of his book of  political intervention.

Apart from my job on the pulpit, I am also an author. My Dream of Another Nigeria is my first published book. I have also written two other books which are yet to be published, the first one is The Church Must Shake the World and the second one is Your Character is Your Collateral and that means your character is what will take you to Heaven.

It was when I focused fully on ecclesiastical works that God spoke to me to write My Dream Of Another Nigeria which makes me a life changer. The book is an articulated vision about our age long tradition and bad leadership in the country and I felt that one has to tackle the problem prayerfully as a clergy man . So, when I prayed, the aspect from which I wanted to write the book was quite different from what God wanted me to do. In fact, when I wrote 400 pages, I heard a voice that said that I have not done anything useful.

The voice said that what I should do is to proffer solutions to our problems which nobody is talking about and secondly, I was told that my language must be dignifying without being harsh and that I should not begin to mention personalities and bash them, for only by not bashing people that I can be the light of the world. So, I was encouraged to look at issues objectively and that made me think of how to incorporate all these into my book without stepping on any toe.

...the book

In line with that, I thought of the fact that the hitherto political parties have outlived their usefulness because  they have not responded positively to the needs, yearnings and aspiration of the people. So, what I have done now is that I have been able to redefine our political situation by looking into our constitution, the rule of law and due process which are not properly handled by the leaders.

There lies the uniqueness of the book. It is also our meeting point because it readily provides for the generality of Nigerians irrespective of whether you are from the North, East, South or West. It is a national ideological persuasion.
Now, because of the way I have packaged this book, it has attracted attention of Northerners.

There were seminars to which I was invited and what attracted their attention was the question I asked during one of the seminars which bothered on what effort is being made to affect a positive change in the country. Also, when I went to Abuja what they said was that if only the powers that be will accept the suggestions provided in the book, then it is the best thing that can happen to this country.

From there I started getting invitations to other seminars. So far, I have been to so many other states in Nigeria and I then said to myself, if that is the case then it is my calling because the Bible teaches me that I am the light of the world. So, this must be evident not just through the pulpit but in writing.

The pulpit has its own restriction and limitations because it  is only the people that come to church that will hear the message but you can see that the subject matter of this book has to do with the whole nation and not for Christians only. So, I cannot stand on the platform of pulpit and preach to the government or to the whole nation.

What we need now is a national cohesion and  not taking  of sides. I have just made sure that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

In a nutshell, I have been able to put down those things responsible for our not getting it right all these years and one of them is that politics in the country has been monitised and those people there think that they are there to make profit.

Besides, the system does not have any regulatory institutional mechanisms. I am suggesting therefore that politics should be funded by the government and that there should be parameters that will probably checkmate what our politicians  do in office when elected to power.