TRUE VISION Interview, To Foster National Unity. Discard Religion, State of Origin Provision -Bishop Onuoha

From a very humble beginning, Bishop Sunday Onuoha has climbed to an enviable position as a Bishop, social crusader and a voice of reason in Nigeria. Through his Vision Africa project which he established in 1997, the Umuahia-based Bishop of the Methodist Church of Nigeria continues to touch lives and provide a forum for the convergence of faith systems and philanthropic organizations with the principal aim of changing lives and creating amity in the society.
Forthright, humble, humorous and compassionate, Bishop Onuoha places the current crisis of national survival plaguing Nigeria at the doorsteps of both the leaders and followers. In the foregoing interview, he argues that for national unity to gain the foothold that is envisioned, the country should exorcise the mental entrapment caused by the emphasis on state of origin and religion while pushing for a more equitable environment devoid of graft and parochialism.
The interview was conducted by the TRUE VISION Editorial Team.

The portal of your media enterprise, Vision Africa (Love-104.1 FM) states that “Vision Africa planned, constructed, developed and launched Vision Africa Radio, Love 104.1, in order to bring the message of hope, healing, reconciliation and education to the people of South-eastern Nigeria…” To what extent has your vision been realized, 17 years after the station first came on air on 7th December 2004?

Well, thank you very much. Vision Africa Radio, Vision Africa establishment was actually the first private radio station in the South-East and South-South. When we were coming into that part of the world, many people were wondering Why were you going to invest such millions into an area that’s not going to give you the financial returns and they were suggesting I go to Abuja or Lagos; that those are the places you can get your returns immediately. And I said, listen, the primary purpose for Vision Africa is not to make money but to make lives. And when we see the bigger picture of growing people, growing lives, raising a new generation with values, not people without values, then we have a safer and better society Then we’re all better off. Today, the Vision Africa system has provided the best opportunity for our people who are in the media training, who are doing mass communication. And I can say for sure that we’re the only radio station that has opened our doors for all the tertiary institutions in the South-East and South-South. When you walk in there, you see hundreds of young people coming to do their practical training. And as you walk in and see them, you’re happy that you are touching the new generation where they come and have values. Our media training institute is one other thing we are doing that is, heavy. Then each year we have Vision Africa media training institute programme. This year, people logged in from 17 countries all over the world. About 1000 people participated in a one week media training institute where students came from various universities and participated. We had some of our best resource persons, that provided the training, from Canada, the US and Nigeria. And people participated from other African countries. Last year was Covid year, people didn’t come from other African countries, but other previous years, people come from South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and to a large extent, people are beginning to talk about going to Nigeria for media training. What a joy that it is something that can bring people to our own part of the world. So indirectly, we’re opening up doors for businesses through our media training institute. When we have the events, you see many hotels in Umuahia filled up, so you are growing the economy of the people, not just only the training. Now you come to the program, we are doing with the younger generation, that is the high school students. Currently, as I’m speaking, the school debate for high schools in that part of the area is going on. It will be on till the next two months. And then by December, we’ll have the finalist that will emerge and students are so excited that they have the opportunity to be on air to debate. On Saturdays, Saturday morning we have kiddies program where kids from below 14 call and those on air that pick their calls answer the question and discuss with their questions. They spend one hour or two preparing them for the topics we throw out on the air. Other young people will call in and they begin to discuss. If you hear them discussing about loan borrowing, managing money, managing the home, cooking in the house, and what it means to have a teacher that is your role model. When you see young people having conversation, parents are glued to the radio. And you see families gather every Saturday morning or the Sunday evening. We have the youth parley, where young people, the university students gather on Sunday evening and we zoom it life argument. About two weeks ago they were talking about the implication of the kind of money that Nigerians are borrowing and they ask; so, you are borrowing this money for us to come and pay. We see them speaking their minds. So, we are raising a new generation that have value for the society I can go on and on and on.
Vision Africa Radio also has a sports team by name, Africa Waves. It is a properly registered outfit that plays soccer with other clubs. In fact, on Monday 8th November, we are playing in the prison with the prisoners because Vision Africa has a very powerful prison outreach. We have helped to prepare those prisoners that are going to write the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) school certificate exams. The outreach programme extends to those that are going to the university by paying their school fees. Thus, by the time they come out they would have become better citizens.

Your Lordship, welcome to relatively calm Abuja as distinct from the South-East where you reside. Notwithstanding the effort of your ministry and similar ones, how did things get so bad in the country?

Abuja is not calm. Abuja is where the crisis starts. So, the crisis Abuja had, it exported to everywhere because we decided not to manage our Nigerian society very well. That’s why there is crisis all over the country. Things are incrementally getting bad and it will get worse if we don’t do nothing, because people who should be held accountable decided to be irresponsible and nobody wants to be held responsible. So, Mr. A is blaming Mr. B, Mr. C, Mr. D. And before you know it, there will be crisis. How can you have a system where you have the governors blaming the president, the president blaming local government and the local government blaming counsellors? So, we are in the world of blame: Christian blaming Muslim, Muslim blaming Christians. We must come together and forget about all these kinds of blames going on everywhere that is a kin to a house that is on fire and instead of putting it out, the wife is blaming the husband who in turn is blaming the children; is the problem. What is needed now is, get ready, quench the fire before we begin to ask who caused the fire.

Sir, as one of the most vocal voices for national unity, and a new Moral order, do you think that the church and religious leaders could have done more to avert the current slide to anarchy and national disintegration?

If not for the faith community, Nigeria would have disintegrated. I can assure you that the faith community has played quite a number of roles. For instance, a few years ago, I put together a peace accord in Abia and people never believed it would happen. I brought all the governorship aspirants and everybody stood under the sun. The Vision Africa Voices was singing. And these governorship aspirants were dancing and signing, a peace accord in Abia. The people and INEC didn’t believe it would happen. But I said it would happen, because of the people of faith. Know that when people have peace of mind, the faith community is happier. It is better for me to come as a bishop and dedicate your house or pray for you on your birthday than to come and pray for your child that is being killed or slaughtered. If a woman gives birth to a child, and as a pastor, you come to dedicate the child and do baptism when they’re going, they give you a big envelope (laughs). They are happy to give you yam, they give you big chicken. But if you go out to bury a dead child, you go home empty-handed. My brother, nobody wants to go to where people are crying. People need to be happy. We need to create a society where people know that you can practice your religion freely. People have freedom to become Muslims. They have the freedom to become Christians. In a society where people are afraid to practice their faith something is wrong about it. I am a Christian today or a Bishop probably because I was born in Abia. If I was born in Sokoto, maybe I will be an Imam. So, the thing is that, to a large extent, who you are is influenced by your environment. Therefore, Nigeria should accept the fact that it is a multi religious society and faith communities will do their best and look at the faces of people who are occupying political positions or who have been given public responsibility to say: do it right, and when they don’t do it right, condemn the action.

What accounts for what appears to be an escalation in religious intolerance, even with the presence and activities of agencies such as the Nigerian interfaith Action Association, reputed to be the largest Christian Muslim collaboration in history?

Well, the whole truth is that, eh, sometimes some people forget that there is religion, and there is also politicizing of religion. In many places people are politicizing religion, and they carry the garb of religion. And I tell people, when somebody commits a crime, treat the person as a criminal. If I wear my bishop’s robe and slap you, I am no longer a bishop. At that point, I have abused somebody and you should treat me as an abuser. So, until we know the difference between office and person, somebody who’s holding an office decided to defraud the society with public fund to steal public fund, treat that person as a criminal. And many a time, in our society when somebody is going to commit a crime, is going to embezzle public fund, he does not call his community to say, I’m going to embezzle public fund. But when the law apprehends the person, we say he is our brother. Did he inform you that he was going to steal public funds before he did it? So, if he has informed you that he was going to embezzle public fund, then he has the right to invite you when he has been apprehended by the law. So, all I’m saying is that there has to be a differentiation between practicing of faith and politicizing the faith and what is happening in many parts of our country is a deception; religion is being politicized. And people hide under the garb of religion to commit crime. If you go to the community, you say because of your faith, you’re burning down people’s houses, you should be arrested and prosecuted and should not be treated from the angle of religion, but from the angle of being a criminal.

Let us have your reaction to the view held by some people that the displacement of the gospel of salvation by the gospel prosperity probably accounts for much of the derailment in the moral traits of the society

Thank you very much. When all of us were growing up, on Sunday, you do your best to go to church because on Monday, everybody will be on the line Monday morning. And then the teacher will ask you the topic for Sunday school class. What did the Sunday School teacher say? And then those that didn’t go to church will find it difficult. And then on Monday morning, I do not forget this song we sing, (Bishop begins to sing):
Eziomume eziomume
yiri eziomume dika uwe.
Gi ezulahi ohi
ezula ohi gi
agbalahu ura agbamu ura
gi nwu nwanne
ga anya Kazuki
Left, right, left, right is your left, right eziomume eziomume.

So, these are like the 10 commandments of the Bible. And we’ll use that commandments to do left right match. It enters into your nerves that you cannot steal, that you cannot tell lies. And then the most important of all, love your neighbour as yourself. So those basic morals of the scriptures in the old testament and if you go to the Islamic scriptures, you find those moral precepts of, how kids are brought up. How morality is taught in the Catholic setting, is that every evening, the children go for Rosary recitation: this is where the values are taught. Children sat under the elders. In African traditional society, every day, after doing your homework, you sit under the moon and elders would tell you stories, moonlight stories. And at the end of the story, they will ask: what is the moral value of the story? Every child will begin to say this is what it means. And every child will raise his or her hands to say this is what it means because everybody is expected to know the values of the society. Unfortunately, when you come into a system where money becomes the main object, where the people worship money, that explains the present crisis.

We were just talking about somebody like Dee Bob, the late Chief Bob Ogbuagu. He was the epitome of character and morality. Dee Bob Ogbuagu was not a millionaire or a billionaire, but he was highly respected and revered by all. We are in search of such men who were role models. Those days, when you asked a child, what would you want to be when you grew up? You heard replies such as: I want to be a teacher. I want to be a nurse. I want to be a Catholic reverend father. I want to be a carpenter. I want to be a bricklayer. But today, what do you want to be? The child fires back: a politician. Because the kind of things kids see politician do, they feel that being a politician is the best thing in the world. But in times past, the child would probably have said that he or she would want to be a lawyer.

They were interviewing the man in charge of this group, a lawyer from from Imo State and he said that what brought him to be a lawyer was that, as he was growing up, he saw Mary Odili’s (Justice of the Supreme Court) father, who was a lawyer, and his way of life was influencing to him, he decided to go study law: societal influencers. So, I asked myself, who are the societal influencers? Where once, in any community, the role models, the societal influencers become those with questionable character, then the society is finished. And that’s where we are, unfortunately, because people are jumping around and moving around and kids and youths are looking at them. Many of them are those who cannot tell me, you can’t justify how they made their wealth. How can you have a sane society? Okay, take for example, in a developed society, when you build this house, the government will papa-papa say, let’s see how much tax you have paid? How can you own this kind of house? You cannot substantiate it with how much you have paid in your tax, and so, how did you make the money? I was in the United State and a friend of mine gave me a cheque to cash for him. It wasn’t just cash; it was a cheque for $500. And when I brought it, the bank said to the owner, well, this is a valid check but, in your history, you don’t have this kind of cheque coming to you for this business in the past 20 years plus that you have been in the US. So, who has the cheque? That is a society that has checks and balances because all through the years, they can stand up and say this is how his money comes and this is how it goes. Once it goes outside of that, they will block it. Because there is a pattern. So, in a society where anything goes, any person can spend any money, any person can do anything as long as you can buy the law enforcement agencies, you can buy the churches, or you can give gifts to pastors and they praise you; then we are in a moral eclipse.

Related to the above is the contention that unlike in the past when prophets admonished civil rulers, many religious leaders over-indulge present day politicians hence the poor governance environment that accounts for paradox of gnawing poverty in the midst of plenty. Why can’t we just hold every group or profession culpable we have all over-indulged the political class?

Unless we change, we may wake up one day to realize there is no more Nigeria. Unless we repent, and we are at the verge of total collapse. The basic fabric of a society is the rule of law. I give you an example. Ross Perot, one of richest people in the world is a member of our church in Dallas. We were going to have a dedication of his grandchild and Ross Perot pulled out from his house, which is less than two minutes away from the church. He pulled out and drove off because he was running relatively late. You know, in America, where there is a stop sign, it is stop, not just slowing down, just stop. So, Ross Perot drove a little bit and did not stop. A police car pulled out and continued to pursue him just less than twenty seconds. They stopped him. He apologized that he was sorry, that he was running late to his grandchild’s dedication. He admitted his mistake. “Can you allow me to go into the church; let’s finish the child dedication. I will come out”, he assured the police. “Okay”, they replied, adding “We respect your status; we will follow you”. And they followed him for the thirty seconds drive to the church. Ross Perot went into the church, and came out, then they invited him to the police. That’s one of the richest people in the world. Nobody is above the law. When once there is the rule of law, and people respect it, then we have a better society. Unfortunately, many people behave and act as if they are above the law. And that’s the problem we have, the priest is not above the law, the bishop is not above the law, the police should not function as if he is above the law. And we must also realize that we cannot, and we must not and there is no way we can survive as a society where there is lawlessness. And that is the problem that we have. I mean, if you’re a pastor, and we cannot justify how much money you have in your account, and you are a pastor and can’t justify the money you got, they should be accountable to the society. Some people are wishy washy prophets to prosperous people. And the Old Testament preacher and prophet says, woe to my prophets who prophesied peace when there is no peace.

Your Lordship, Sir, against the background of all that you have said so far, should the youth still take the blame when there appears to be a conspiracy among the various leadership elites to destroy their future?

It is conspiracy of everybody, since 1999. When we translated into the current democratic processes, I can list the names of those who were governors. Forty percent of them, were those who were between the ages of 39 to between 45 and 47. Looking back, we can ask ourselves: what did they do? For example, the speakers of the House of Representatives? How old were they when they became speakers? So, it is not a question of young or old, it is a question of the moral system that has collapsed, where everybody wants a short cut, where people forget that when the system collapses, we are all in trouble. I want to cite an example for you. My daughter who is 21 this month (October), when she was five, we were driving from Port Harcourt to Umuahia and she said: “Dad what is wrong with our driver?” I asked: “any problem”? So, she said that other drivers were shaking hands with the police and he refuses to shake hands with the police. How do I explain that kind of shaking of hands to a five-year old girl? Other drivers are shaking hands with the police and our driver does not say Hi to the police. So how do we explain it to a five-year old girl? We have a system that has collapsed. Now that she is 21, she will begin to understand the pain of that immorality. She was here for almost eight months, during COVID. We had a wonderful time. She went back to the president of African students by the University of Houston. She came back; she was organizing African youth program. All of a sudden, she called me and was crying: “Dad, dad, evil, evil, this is evil. How can the police shoot a person, a demonstrator with the Nigerian flag? That is felony that policeman will be arrested. A policeman molesting a youth that is demonstrating with Nigerian flag is a felony. That police should be arrested. Somebody holding national flag, you molest the person that is evil”, she said and cried and cried. It took me more than a week to comfort her; that someone holding a national flag was molested by the police. So, it is a collapse of value. Where armed men that were sent to protect the people will begin to rape women, is collapse of the system; where judges will give judgment and you wouldn’t know where they got the judgment from, is collapse of the system. We have a system that is crashing on us. So, you can’t hold only Mr. President accountable. We can hold him accountable for what he didn’t do well. But going down the ladder, it looks like evil is now the order of the day. And we baptize immorality.

Thank you, sir. Would radical constitutional review or restructuring change anything in Nigeria?

Invariably, we need to talk about moral rebirth, this is the key thing. There is no constitution that you have in this country that can make people behave well. The Constitution is the law of the head. We need the constitution of the heart. As much as I subscribe to trashing the current constitution we have because it does not reflect who we as a country. The Constitution, as wonderful as it may do. I don’t believe that the constitution represents the will of Nigeria. It should be completely trashed. However, write 1000 constitutions’ without moral rebirth, we are not going to do well.

At the recent triennial conference of the Nigerian Union of Journalists at Abuja, you had proposed the deletion of sections on state of origin, religion and ethnicity from various documents as a way of forging a sense of nation? Do you think that the mere removal of those sections can forge a sense of “nation” even when primordial sentiments are deeply rooted in the people’s DNA?

Listen, if I have my way, I will gather all the SANs (Senior Advocates of Nigeria) and take the Federal Government to court to make sure that in the next census, there is nothing about state of origin or religion in the census, We are the ones creating disharmony and problem for ourselves. A child is born in Kaduna; that is the child’s place of origin, Kaduna. And then because the parents are from Oyo, the child will now when filling out form, you say his place of origin is Oyo; this is not true. The place of origin is Kaduna. Because that’s where he originated from because the forefathers migrated from Zamfara to Sokoto. And then the child is born in Sokoto. You said the state of origin that he is going to write Zamfara; it is evil. A young man that lived and grew up in Port Harcourt and went to university of Port Harcourt. The parents are from Abia. And then when he was filling the state of origin in the the NYSC form, he is posted to Port Harcourt. Is that fair? How has he served the nation now because his state of origin, according to what he filled out, is Abia. Then the NYSC posts him to Port Harcourt, Rivers where he originated, lived and grew up. That is a violation of the very essence of the NYSC.

Another example I give is from a program that I implemented for the World Bank in about 13 states of the federation about ten years ago. In two states, I had very unique experiences and have I told the story, over and over again to point in the direction we should go. In Bauchi state, we met a young girl whose surname is Nwachukwu. Her parents lived and grew in Bauchi State. Nwachukwu was born in Bauchi, she went to school in Bauchi up to the university level. To implement the programme in Bauchi, we said we needed a girl. The community nominated Nwachukwu and said she was the one that would implement it. She spoke Hausa fluently and didn’t know how to speak Igbo. Her cultural background is northern culture. The only thing Igbo about her was that she was bearing Nwachukwu; but language is north, food is north. How can you ask that poor girl to fill out Anambra as her State of Origin? I had the same experience for the same program in Anambra with a young man named Abdul whose parents were from Kano. Abdul lived in Anambra. His parents live in Anambra. He attended primary and secondary school in Anambra and was working in Anambra. To implement the same program, the young people in that community said it was Abdul that would implement it. I wasn’t there: they voted Abdul. Abdul spoke Anambra Igbo fluently. Everything about Abdul is Anambra. The only thing different is his name, Abdul. So, you want Abdul to fill state of origin to be Kano: you are unfair to him. So, we have a system in our country that we are calling for national unity and we are disintegrating the nation by what we ask children to fill out.

As one of the foremost leaders from the South-East zone, give us your view on the agitation for the leading political parties to zone their presidential slots to the zone for the 2023 elections?

Well, you know, in politics the Igbos calls it ndoro ndoro ochichi. The Igbos got it very well in that one you know that in ndoro ndoro, you don’t, you don’t sit and it will be given to you. I also want to plead with my people from the South-East that in this political arithmetic, you negotiate, you consult, you discuss, you reach out, you plead, even you beg. So, this is the time for them to apply all the political sagacity they have. And is it time to pray that you have people like the KO Mbadiwe’s, people like Michael Okpara, people like Sam Mbakwe. And this is a time to know that you can’t be a president of a country from an ethnic sentiment. You just must reach out to people from other parts of the country. And I can assure you there has never been any person in this country that became president from the ethnic sentiment. It has never worked. When Olu Falae came out based on ethnic sentiment, Nigeria didn’t vote for him. When Buhari tried for years, on three different occasions from the northern sentiment, he didn’t become president. Until you open up yourself to other regions and reach out to your friends, the Igbo’s have friends, from all over the country; this is a time to take advantage of such level of relationship, for people to have begin to identify presidential materials from the South-East and there are many good hands that can be President of this country.