The General Overseer/Senior Pastor of Guiding Light Assembly, Pastor Wale Adefarasin, is a man of many caps, especially in Christianity in Nigeria. SEYI SOKOYA brings excerpts of the former General Secretary of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), one-time Chairman of the Lagos State Chapter of PFN, and the leader of several Pastoral Networks at a recent media chat with the Network of African Christian Journalists (NACJOURN), on national issues and the Church.
YOUR position on the need to return to the old national anthem many years back has eventually been achieved, what is your take on this?
I am so happy about the development, ‘Nigeria we hail thee’, has been restored and I will give you a little bit of history; my personal history. I was born and attended a school where we sang the British national anthem on Friday mornings at assembly. I’m sure you all know that it is a straightforward anthem to learn. We sang that every Friday morning until our independence in October 1960. At that time, I was eight years old and we were taught ‘Nigeria we hail thee’, all three verses and to this day, I still remember all the verses. Later, in 1978, it was changed, but not through a democratic process, not even a decree or a bill.
It was simply a pronouncement; this is your new anthem. But that is not an issue. I think both anthems are quite nice. But ‘Nigeria we hail thee’, to me, inspired patriotism in those days. It made me feel proud to be a Nigerian and I think at this particular point in time, we need to get a sense of national pride back in our nation. So, that is what it did for me. Now there are a few things that have stirred up a bit of controversy from that verse. First, it is the use of the word ‘tribe’ and the use of the word ‘native’. Many have said these are colonial terms and yes, the colonialists may have used these words in a derogatory way in the past. But the words ‘tribe and native’ are not derogatory words and I think that in the context they are used in our anthem, they were appropriate.
It is appropriate to use them. The other word that people question in that verse is the word motherland. This is because, with the rise of compatriots, we became a fatherland. And, you know, I just feel that we’ve all grown up, we have more affiliation to our mothers. I don’t see what is wrong with being called the motherland. Then in the second verse, our flag shall be a symbol. Truth and justice reign. Where we are in our nation, we need truth. We need justice to reign. We are in a situation in which truth has fallen to the ground. Justice is not available. And if we are singing this daily, if we are singing this regularly, our flag shall be a symbol. Truth and justice reign. What do we count as gain? To pass on to our children a banner without stain.
That talks about succession. We have a responsibility to ensure the sustainability of our values, and of our vision as a nation and we cannot do that if we are not inculcating our values and our vision in the people that are coming behind us. We have so many challenges today with leadership, state-type leadership. People who are still running for office in their 80s and 90s. Today we see younger people in other climes taking to leadership and doing a great job. So, passing on to our children a banner without stain is very key.
My favourite verse is the third verse, ‘Oh God of all creation, grant this our one request. Help us to build a nation where no man is oppressed. And so with peace and plenty, Nigeria will be blessed.’ It is a prayer and it is praying right in my view. It’s been relevant ever since 1960. We need to build this nation and one of the challenges to building this nation has been oppression. So, we’re praying for something real, for something necessary. Those are my reasons for liking the old anthem.
State of the nation
It would be a lie for me to say that all is well with Nigeria. We all know that we are going through severe challenges. We have had oil theft, we have monumental corruption and we have incompetence. There are so many wrong things. However, I think the first thing that I must point out to you is that for so many years, almost since independence, we have been deteriorating in one way or the other.
Yes, we put up skyscrapers, we have got new streets. But our value system and as a result of that, the things that good values would bring have been deteriorating. It is just a fact that things are not well but because things have been so bad, nobody can come with the magic wand and just change it overnight. We are not going to move from very poor levels of unemployment to employment overnight. It is going to take time, it is going to take years. It is going to take the tightening of our belts. We are going to have to feel some pain to get to where we are going. That is inevitable.
Whoever was in government, whoever had won the last elections, there was no easy ride. It is going to be tough and I feel that some of the policies, one of the challenges we had was that it was easier to get Nigerian fuel in Benin and Cameroon than it was in Nigeria at some points, because it was very cheap for them compared to what they had to pay for their fuel. So the fuel subsidy had to go. I don’t think it was easy to remove it, or I think more thought could have gone into its removal. I wish I had. There are other issues that we face.
The foreign exchange rate was being exploited because we had multiple rates and people were buying, sacred people were buying at official rates and selling it at the black market rates and just recirculating our money.
So, we are faced with many challenges. At the moment the obvious challenge is the minimum wage and my thought on the minimum wage is that the labour movement is unreasonable in their expectation of over N400,000 and they have come down to N200,000. Yes, we’re talking about workers who need to receive a living wage, and that is our desire. But what is the capacity to pay for it? There are many challenges, we need to manage with a lower minimum wage until employers can pay a higher one. I run a church and we have about 25 staff, which means we have to pay the minimum wage to be quite honest with you, that will be a challenge as you will not only have to pay the minimum wage, but you have to adjust the wage levels on your scale to reflect the minimum wage. We may have to let some staff go because we cannot afford it. That is what labour has not focused on. Labour is right to demand a living wage but they need to understand also that we are in a dire situation in the country, if we try to impose this unrealistic wage, it will create challenges for us.
On the state of the Church
Somebody said, as goes the Church, as goes the nation. The Bible says, if my people, who are called by my name, turn away from their wickedness, and ways, and pray, I will heal their land. That is God’s promise. So, the Church has to be fixed. We have to fix the Church. The other day I saw a video, and these days when you watch videos on social media, you can’t be 100 percent sure. But there is a video of a pastor who said he went to heaven and took a selfie with God and he is coming back and he is selling the selfie in South Africa for 5,000 rands each.
As they were trying to get their head around how to take a selfie with God, the Bible says no man can see God’s face. So, how did he take a selfie with God, and then come back having seen God’s face? Then while the debate on that was going on, one said, I don’t even have to go to heaven. God will come to me and take a selfie. Another one has God’s telephone number and can call God, and the congregation is listening, while he is talking to God. They hear his self-conversation. You ask yourself, where, and how? Have we got out of it? I have a strong view on this because money is at the root of the deception we find in the Church. Many people are coming up with all these giving, and I use the word giving without repentance, are coming up with these giving because they make money from them.
When I was the National Secretary of the PFN, my position was and remains that government does have a responsibility to protect its citizenry from exploitation, even the exploitation by ministers of the gospel of churches, and, therefore, to protect them they need to demand accountability, transparency, audits of our financial records, audits of our governance, and corporate governance. These are important things that a lot of people don’t want to hear mentioned by somebody in the ministry. We are going to get there sooner or later. I think that when we do, people cannot run the Church unless they comply with the legal expectations.
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