A Professor of African History, Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Ibadan, Isaac Albert, has called on religious leaders in the country to lead the people to God in order to stem the tide of criminal activities.
The don made the call on Thursday during the 10th annual colloquium organised for the 70th birthday of the Primate of the Church of the Lord Worldwide, Dr Rufus Ositelu, in Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos.
Albert, in his lecture titled, ‘A nation at war with herself: The panacea for genuine peace’, also urged the citizens to acknowledge, discuss and negotiate their differences for peace to reign.
He stated, “Those of us, who are religious leaders, have a big and important role to play in society. Many Nigerians are living in sin and are praying for grace to abound.
“We need to lead the people to God; we have many religious houses around us, but criminality still abounds in our country today. I want to ask our religious leaders, do we promote truth in our assemblies? What do we teach our people? Our focus should be on the tools to change people and not our rituals.”
“As Nigerians, we are warring against one another because we deny the realities around us. We think that solutions to our problems will come from outside and that is why our leaders spend the best of their time junketing the world in search of solutions that are not working.
“They do not consider that internal mechanisms are important and most of the time, we use confrontation to deal with problems. We do not have a society where we have mechanisms for dealing with our problems; so, we resort to force.
“The problem why Nigeria is not progressing today is because we are denying our differences; the differences are there; they are to be negotiated and discussed. There is a difference between a Yoruba man and an Igbo man; there is a difference between Christians and Muslims; now, what we need to do is to bring all these people together to discuss their differences and put in place frameworks for having what we call sustainable peace, but we keep blocking opportunities to sort out our differences.”
The Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who was represented by a former Chairman of the Mushin Local Government Area, Otunba Bayo Osiyemi, promised to identify with the church.
“Since our father in the Lord came into the ministry from the world of computer science, he has been able to computerise the Church of the Lord in accordance with the teachings of God. This administration and I will continue to identify with the church in solving various problems since the church’s headquarters is located in Ogun State, our neighbouring state,” he stated.
A former governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, stated, “With the amount of gold and silver in this world, without spirituality, without the blessing of God, they will come to nothing. So, my own panacea is that it is time to go back to God. If we continue to leave these issues in the hands of politicians, they will not be solved.”
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