The Nigerian Who’s Not A Thief Is One Without Opportunity, Heavy Rainfall To Wipe Off Corrupt Leaders -Sen Oyofo

By Kayode Fasua

Edo State-born elder statesman, Senator Kassim Oyofo, in this interview with Kayode Fasua, sounds clairvoyant, as he warns of an impending heavy rainfall that will sweep through Abuja and wipe off society’s corrupt leaders.

Oyofo, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain who was in the Senate from 1999 to 2007, was also at a time the National Leader of the Grail Movement, in Nigeria.

The octogenarian politician casts a critical look at the state of the nation and concludes that the judgment of God is currently at work in Nigeria.

Excerpts:

Q: How will you assess the state of the nation?

I appreciate this opportunity for us to talk about Nigeria. For me to do justice to what you are asking me, I need to do a setting that will make what is happening in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world understandable. This setting requires me to go what you generally call spiritual. You call it spiritual because that is the way people like to talk. But this life is spiritual. Let me go straight to the point and say that Nigeria, like every other place in the world, is now standing in the world judgement; otherwise called the Last Judgment.

Unless people understand it this way, they will not make head or tail of what is happening. In a simple sentence, the last judgment is about bringing to an end, all that is wrong on earth. And everyone who also harbours evil will receive not only the fruit of evil, but may go finally with evil, and must be destroyed.

The content of the final judgment is not new; it is in all religious books, whether you call it the Bible or the Quaran, or whatever else people have as coming from God. All human beings have been warned for thousands of years about what is now happening. But the warnings are falling on deaf ears. And even now that it is happening, many people cannot correlate it, they cannot link it, and this is why their confusion gets greater and greater.

Now, talking about Nigeria in particular, the country’s situation is very, very important because Nigeria has a role to play in global affairs. This means that the purification of Nigeria must take precedence and it must be thorough, to use the human word. Everything that is wrong must be destroyed. I use the word ‘must’ because that is exactly what will happen: whether it has to do with religion, economy, politics or anything you can think of.

The important thing is, Nigeria must be purified. On the surface, you may call it herdsmen attacks, you may call it Igbo against Hausa or Yoruba against whoever. This is just the surface of it. But the kernel of it is that what is wrong must be destroyed; and what is wrong is in everything.

Q: Specifically, what are the problems that pose grave danger (cuts in)...

Very many. Let me finish with the general picture. The purification process would be carried out by nature, not just by people. Let me say this. There is going to be a great rain that will fall in Nigeria, in Abuja in particular; which will last for 10 days and 10 nights. And by the time that rain gets through with Abuja, what is left will be pure.

Everybody who has a hand in what is wrong; whether you do it in private or in public, will be washed away, along with what he acquired. It will be so devastating that it will be like an eyesore, with the total destruction. But that will be the beginning of the new Nigeria. And Abuja will be rebuilt at the command of God. I have been talking about it, especially since 2016, but people think it is something not to bother about.

But that will be the beginning of the new Nigeria. And the city, after, will change its name to ‘The City of Light’, and it will be the central focus of many people in the world.

So, it is what you are seeing that is troubling you. These are just the initial signs of the great things that are to happen. The Nigerian people, after the purification, will be very proud of themselves and the world will be proud of them. So, what you see now are the effervescence. Nigerians have not yet seen what is coming. What they are complaining about is just minor. So with that, the general picture which will affect mainly Abuja will affect the other parts of the country as well. But this is where it is going to begin, because right now, Abuja is the sin capital of Nigeria.

Q: Sin capital of Nigeria? Meaning Abuja will be completely destroyed?

It will not be destroyed like (Biblical) Sodom and Gomorrah, but it will be wiped clean. Let us put it that way, because the Light has hand in the Abuja issue, so it will become the City of Light as it will be called in future. But like I said, Abuja, after the destruction, will be rebuilt with resources from all over the world, and it will wear a new look.

Q: When you talked about rain falling for 10 days and 10 nights, were you being philosophical?

No, no. I mean rain, the rain that falls from the sky. And it will carry many things. Rivers will run in Abuja. There will be total confusion. So I’m not joking.

Q: You said everything that is wrong must be destroyed. What are the things that are wrong with Nigeria?

We will now come back to the details. Take what you popularly know as corruption. You know that the only Nigerian who is not corrupt today is the one without opportunity. So, when people talk of corruption, they think of politicians such as governors, ministers or the President. Yes, those are at the top of the heap of corruption. But the civil servants themselves are all very, very corrupt. They are so corrupt that they stink. Nigerians are so corrupt that they will take the money in their country to another country. You carry millions or maybe billions to Dubai, you buy houses that you will never occupy; or to the United States of America or perhaps Russia.
All over the world, Nigerians do the same thing. They go to Brazil, anywhere. They carry their country’s wealth to another man’s country.

One, in those countries, they are not even regarded with anything honorable. They are treated on the fringes of respectability. So they go there and cannot walk the street with pride. They approach the banks where they keep these monies with trepidation in their heart, because the rules might change. Their children cannot boast that this is their father’s money, because they cannot prove the source of the money. So are those kind of people not sick? Are they human beings? So you can see why there is going to be purification; because purification is to restore justice. It is caused by the due justice of God.

Q: When President Muhammadu Buhari was campaigning for office in 2015, ‘war against corruption’ was his mantra. Six years on, how has he fared?

I won’t make any statement that would amount to judging Buhari, because like I have already said, the only Nigerian who is not a thief is the one without opportunity. Buhari cannot supervise everybody in his office. As the monkey said, the only child she can guarantee didn’t steal the corn is the one in her stomach. If Buhari has a hand in anything wrong, he will pay for it. There is nobody that won’t pay, including myself. It has nothing to do with whether you are APC or PDP or whatever.

If you take any money that does not belong to you; whether you are a minister, governor or President, and you divert the money meant for the people, all the sufferings of those people will be on you. When we talk about corruption in Nigeria, it’s more incidious. If these stupid people knew what is awaiting them, they would rather choose to be poor.

Q: How will you rate the agitation by the Yoruba to secede and form Oduduwa Republic, citing unchecked atrocities from Fulani herdsmen and other unfair treatments?

Let me make a statement here for all Nigerians. Nobody can break Nigeria. Be you Yoruba, Igbo, all; they are just talking. What is coming in the hand of God is the justice. What is lacking in Nigeria is justice. When you are just, people are happy with themselves and with you. If there are 10 things in the country and I give seven of them to my brothers, am I just? The justice of God is now on earth. People don’t understand the significance of that statement, and it’s beginning from Nigeria.

Q: So politically, what do you foresee for Nigeria?

Politically, Nigeria will be restructured along the zones. The reason it’s going to be so is that each zone has something unique on its own, which it contributes to the whole. So, whether you call it true federalism or whatever nomenclature you want to use, it just means the groups of people recognising themselves as part of a family, contributing what they can, for the mutual benefit of the family. It is not now that they are all serving Lucifer. Everybody is operating at the expense of the other.

Q: What have you to say on Nigeria’s worsening security situation?

On the surface, the government should wake up. They took up an assignment by swearing with the Bible or Quaran to protect lives and properties. The should do it to the best of their ability.

As for internal security, the State Police system is a necessity, as Nigeria is under-policed. The Federal Police has been skewed, made to mean something else. Police service has to be a neighbourhood thing. With it, the police are close to the people and strange faces in any community can easily be fetched out for verification.So if a government cannot check evil, then the government is evil. It’s not politics, it’s just straightforward common sense.

Regarding insurgency, how can an army not be able to flush out insurgents from Sambisa Forest? The only reason is that, they are corrupt. Corruption is playing it’s own part in the military setup.

You will hear stories that they have superior weapons. Why should a legitimate government not be able to buy superior weapons and criminals are buying? Certainly, Sambisa Forest cannot be outside Nigeria. It is a shameful act.

Q: How will you rate the performance of the National Assemblies after you left the scene?

When a man like me is talking of National Assembly, I can only use the yardstick that I knew. To compare my time in the National Assembly with today’s is like comparing day and night. I don’t know whether you can compare day with night. First and foremost, the kind of money we saw in our time was minuscule. Records can prove it.

We all supported Obasanjo’s fight against corruption in particular. Like I used to say, Obasanjo was like a man who is building on a borrowed pit. All the underground work he was doing you wouldn’t see it because the hole was too big. That was the picture we got about what Abacha did to our treasury.

But now things have gone so bad and we have a National Assembly in place. Today, I was reading in the newspaper that they were even printing money, fake money to balance budgets. I read in another paper that they want to sell assets to balance 2021 budgets. Nigeria is in deep shit and part of that shit is the National Assembly.

We all know that for some of them (senators) their first job is being senators; they were never anything in their lives.

The worst part of the National Assembly is that the former governors came to the Senate so that they can hold the President to ransom.

Again, they have not proved to be assertive on issues of ethics as one would expect.

For instance, how can the Senate stand up to it own when the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege brought himself so low as to be genuflecting for Buhari in the public? Deputy Senate President prostrating for the President? In the public? So can that one check and balance anything? That is terrible.