Nigerians are the most anxious people in the world

A.P. Ibironke

Apostle Prophet Israel Olufemi Ibironke is the General Overseer and presiding pastor of the Assembly of the Faithful Worldwide, in this interview with GOKE OLUWOLE and TAI SHOFELA, the Flight Operations Officer with the Nigerian Airways highlights the prospect of Nigerian transforming into an economic giant and the relationship between individual success in business and the ability to remain focused on a business venture

How would you describe your background?

I am by God’s grace the General Overseer of The Faithful Church Worldwide, born exactly 60 years ago, today, February 5, happened to be my birthday, February 5. I was born, bread, and raised in a good Christian home, my family church is the Apostolic Church, and my siblings are nine, eight boys and one girl. All the eight boys, today, are Pastors but I am the only one that administers a ministry outside the Apostolic Church. I am still part and parcel of the Apostolic Church till today, my calling is that of a prophetic apostolic.

In the early days of my life, I used to work with the Nigerian Airways as a Flight Operation Officer [a trained aviation expert for over 20years], I left to go into private business as a Cold Room –frozen food merchant, operating business then under the registered name of Hibbies Nigeria Limited, which was then my company’s name. My cold room then was popularly known as Big Fish Cold Room situated at Surulere, Itire and Ijeshatedo.

But I had to leave the business due to various spiritual attacks. I lost all my businesses in the course of finding solutions to my afflictions until I accepted him. While we were growing up we were all members of the Apostolic Church Choristers at the Inalende Assembly, Ibadan. But while working at the Airport, I decided to become a free thinker so I can do whatever I like and that was the beginning of my troubles, such that wherever I went I always saw the hands of God.

Between 1989 and 1990, I was afflicted with a very terrible sickness that defied all healings, I was bedridden for nine months, and for days, I couldn’t drink nor eat. In that state of health I would have dreams where I would find myself evangelizing, preaching and whenever I woke up the Doctors and the Nurses told me that I was always talking during my sleep. At times they will say I was smiling at some unseen guests.

After the ninth month, I got divine healing and a divine mandate to kick start my ministry I told God where and how, but I was directed to Anthony Village from my residence at Ketu, in Lagos State here. Precisely on 1 January, 1995 I moved to the Adekoya Community open field with myself and children where the lord fulfilled his promised that he will build a cathedral for us called the Cathedral of the Faithful on Ikorodu road.

What are the things that differentiate your ministry from the others?

Since the establishment of this church many transformational and revolutionary activities have been introduced by God through our instrumentality. I am not called for televangelism that is why most people always ask why I am not on air, this is not because of lack of money but it is our divine mandate not to go on air.

The most notable differentiation of our ministry is our annual Feast of the Nobles, celebrating the irrevocable call of God, we always celebrate it, but now it is celebrated according to Gods command Bi-annually with an Award ceremony for distinguished Nigerian who are doing wonderfully in their chosen professions and even those in governance that are doing marvelously well are honored as our own little way of identifying with them. At least, if your child did well, you’ll pat him on the back, so that he would be encouraged to do more and even better.

I am a positive thinker, I have a pact with God that during my time, Nigeria must be the greatest nation in this world. Many Americans, when they wake-up in the morning, before their morning devotion, say, “God Bless America,” why will such nation not be great? How many of us who are even religious leaders pray for our nation and our leaders. Despite the global financial Meltdown hitting the American economy, the people are still hopeful on President Barrack Obama.

But do we in Nigeria have leaders with Obama qualities? Apart from Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, tell me how many present and past leaders have the Obama’s pedigree. God has mandated us from this ministry to preach hope and prophesy about the great future of this nation, it is God desire to still make Nigeria the African capital of the world. Please beware of the evil preachers and prophet of doom within the churches who are always seeing evil. What God is showing us is very different, we see hope and a total rebirth and renewal in the land, some will prophesy death, evil, sorrow and they will pray towards it to come to fruition so that people can hail them that they are seeing visions. But why should any servant of God be seeing vision about death and blood in the land why can they silently pray to ward it off in the land?

Please tell us more about this your Bi-annual Feast of Nobles ?

Yes, the feast is for the nobles, when you feast with the Lord you become a Noble, all the disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ were called Nobles after they dined with Christ at the last supper. For us, our identified leaders too will become Noble men and women when they are feasted in the Cathedral of the Faithful. This event will hold inside the Faithful Cathedral, on Saturday, 28 February, 2009. A lot of Nigerian have been identified and screened by a panel of judges which include many men and women of integrity.

Since the Lord mandated us to start the feast none of the people we’ve honoured here had been indicted of any illegality or abuse of office or charged with corruption and embezzlement while in office. Our panel of Judges is led by one of Nigeria’s most respectable Jurist, Hon. .Justice G.O Kolawole, who is a justice of the Federal High Court, currently sitting on the case of the man with 86 wives. Hon. Justice Kolawole is by His grace a member of this Church and he is an ordained Deacon. The feast is celebrated in grandeur and spiritual ambience as directed by God, the Nobles we select are not necessarily big names but how we perceived their great achievements.

With the gathering of the ominous cloud of economic problems over Nigeria, what do you think is the way out?

The only way out is for us in this country to be patient. Little drops of water, little grains of sand make a mighty ocean. So all of us should join hands together with the government to salvage our economy, we need to learn how to be patient even a seed must have a sowing, grooming, and harvest time so is the situation in the country.

God himself is a God of orderliness, Nigerians are the most anxious people in the world, you see a lot of business men losing focus on their businesses, many marriages are failing and a lot of students are failing out of colleges and University just because they are not focused and patient in the race to success. Success is for the steady not the weary.

Some Christians have turned themselves into religious wanderer while some business men have also turned themselves into business wanderer in the course of looking for risky shortcuts. There is a popular Yoruba adage which I imbibed from my father that goes like “before the yam is transformed into pounded yam, it must be pounded in the mortar and that it is only when you keep looking at a spot that you see things well and deeper, it is also when you continue to urinate on a spot that your urine will foam“ all these form part of the Yoruba’s belief system and they underscore the principle of been focused and dedicated.

For Nigeria to be great, we must all learn that for a business to be regarded as not profitable it must have been operational for not less than three years, before we start to complain. These are part of the things that had led many to be preyed upon by scammers and financial predators in business circles. In advanced countries many of our people there work for hours and in those hours, no room is left for cavorting. Let’s follow the laid down rules of God rather than the laid down precepts of Men. Many failed in business because they build their business on shallow ideas, no feasibility studies,

We should also learn to appreciate government policies; we should try to understand that not all government actions are politically motivated, many are with good intentions like what Governor Fashola is trying to do in his attempt to transform Lagos State.

In our time, Nigeria will be good again, look at all these thieving governors and public office holders, go and look at those of them that had died; they were victims of one terminal ailment or the other. Some you will not have heard of before, so God has his own EFCC, because the other appellation of money is trouble, when you get to acquire too much money it will affect your psyche.

I remember the first day in this ministry when somebody paid a tithe offering of N350,000 then for one week I couldn’t sleep even I was afraid to put it in my room I kept it under the staircases and covered it with some rags and other abandoned items under the step so every morning I will have to check it and took some, and whenever there were any strange noise I will be scared whether somebody was coming to rob us of the money.

Among religious groupings in Nigeria there is this contentious issue over government’s intention to tax certain qualified income, what is your response?

Few years ago when the issue of divine healing and preaching prosperity on the pulpit was generating serious concerns among Christians, I was one of the selected pastors invited by NTA Lagos to come and discuss the issue and throw light on it. For me, my vision, calling and anointing is a mandate to lead a generation of righteous believers and as passionate advocator of divine mandate and apostolic prophetic utterance among church leaders I support the preaching on pulpit of divine healing and prosperity because my own God is God of the rich.

He had promised me that he will not call me to poverty but to prosper in my ministry but Christians must very vigilante so some lions in sheep skin among the Pastorate crowd will not use these things to cajole them into religious servitude to enslave their followers.

On the issue of the government intention to introduce tax, this, to my mind is a baseless rumor, but if it becomes a reality because out of every ten rumours in Nigeria six are always genuine, so if government of the day decided to forge ahead with the plan, good for them, if it is the only avenue that will aid the final transformation of Lagos Pastors must pray for divine wisdom before reacting. I, for one, will support such idea, after, all I am already a dedicated tax payer and a passionate advocate for the transformation of Lagos. We at the Faithfuls’ are ever ready to support any genuine and sincere move to liberate the people of Lagos from the stranglehold of backwardness and hardship.

I am proud to tell you our Church is a socially responsible organisation. If Governor Fashola calls me today, I will show him my tax certificate, this is the laminated plastic id card we are now using in Lagos, like my driving license expires today been my birthday first thing tomorrow I will go and renew it .I will implore other Pastors to pay their taxes as and when due and if tax is eventually imposed on our churches, we must pay, after all Our Lord Jesus’ disciples paid in the bible. What Pastors need to tap into is the divine provisions and the spiritual intervention of the disciples in paying their taxes.

Obudu Ranch, Another Bermuda Triangle?

The Hausa/Fulani aircraft engineer, who had been lamenting the death of Nigeria Airways at the hands of military and civilian ex-presidents in some our past editions, is now here lamenting the sheer complacency that had led to two air-crashes en route Obudu Ranch, Cross River State. “This reminds one of Bermuda Triangle…,” he says.  Jonah Etufunwa reports the chat between FORTUNE & CLASS Weekly and the retired engineer.

 

Is Obudu Ranch, now a kind of Bermuda Triangle?

Out of sheer complacency, we are creating one. Planes do not fly in the sky (in the void) Take-off and landing of any plane go with some fundamentals: predicting the weather, the control tower, aerial navigation, etc. For safe flight (take-off and landing), all the fundamentals are non-negotiable.

Do our airline operators, civil and military observe these fundamentals?

To their best, they do, because they value their lives and that of the passengers. Mind you, the first law in aviation is safety, like we used to say in school of aviation. There are brave young pilots; there are no brave old pilots’

What do you mean?

You can’t defy nature. The mind may be  willing, but the reflex may not be there because of age. In spite of modern technology, man has to be in the cockpit for passenger confidence to be there.

At what age should a pilot retire, does it mean it is the younger the better?

Medicine and good living have improved life-span from 60 to 65 now…

How do all these affect the two aviation tragedies at Obudu Ranch?

Ours is a need neglected

What need had been neglected at Obudu Ranch?

Obudu is nature’s beauty charming the elite, yet like several other airstrips, the necessary things have not been done. And this negligence has proven expensive. Cream of our generals lost their lives to this national odious negligence.

Were the aviation professionals not aware of these facts before the ill-fated flight of the generals from Abuja to Obudu?

Our generals were gathered from all over the country at Abuja and finally, Makurdi. The military air-flight operators were aware. But you see, in Nigeria, orders from above sometimes would demand you doing the impossible. And familiarity can breed contempt.

What do you mean?

Here, presumptuous familiarity with the weather can just be misleading. In spite of all the instrumentations in the aircraft, bravery and acumen of the flight group, God’s mercy, often save the day, but it wasn’t so with the two tragedies at Obudu; these incidents make it look like Bermuda Triangle where anything on air or sea disappears without trace at this spot. The ability to find way around the skies, pilots need to know their position and their direction. Finding direction using simple magnetic compass, is easy and there is, at least, one of these on every flight deck. Other kinds of aircraft use gyroscope (rotating wheel, the axis of which is free to turn in any direction and which can be set to rotate in any place independently of forces tending to change the position of the axis).

The modern aircraft compasses are complex and highly efficient. You see, finding position is more difficult for a pilot than finding direction, hence the need for complex aids on the ground to air.

What went wrong with the generals’ flight?

The pilot must have flown there severally without mishaps. You see, oldest and simplest form of aerial navigation is still used by pilots of light aircraft that depends on ground recognizable landmarks. The pilot pilots his track on the map before take-off and using his compass, will simply fly in the right direction.

Knowing his speed can enable him calculate when he should fly over certain landmarks and so he can check his progress.

But wind, carrying the aircraft off course, or possibly causing sudden speed ups of slowdowns, can upset such simple navigation. However, by relating to last known position, to the direction he has flown, than the speed, the pilot is able to determine an approximate position several times during the course of the flight.

This then creates a kind of circle called ‘circle of uncertainty’ whose radius is said to be about ten per cent of the distance flown since the last landmark. A seasoned captain in that ill-fated air-flight, who must have flown that route severally, must have encountered adverse weather phenomenon of some sort that is avoidable if only radar coverage was accorded that air-strip.

Was lack of radar coverage a cause of the air-crash?

Absolutely!

Right now, is there radar coverage at Obudu Ranch?

There are several air-strips nationwide without radar coverage, but the potential of Obudu Ranch, should accord it that little privilege.

Is radar coverage financially prohibitive that Nigeria cannot afford it?

This only reminds me of a statement created to Collin Powell that ‘Nigerians are basically scammers.’ You’ll recall that N300billion was budgeted for road repairs sometime ago, but only a 100 and something billion was eventually released. A case of neglect on the part of government to see that our roads are repaired! What happens on the ground in Nigeria also happens in the air, because we have lost value for human life; which is really tragic.

Talking about negligence of our roads, do you think Ore to Benin Road, does not need an urgent declaration of state of emergency?

It’s like something is wrong with us black people south of the Sahara. We’re caged by land, see and air. And we cannot develop without ease of transportation in those areas. Talking about air, where is Air Afrique, Ghana Airways, Cameroun Airways and Nigeria Airways. In spite of the endowed human and natural resources of the respective nations, such vital colonial legacies could not be sustained, let alone be improved upon. Glaring economic trapping by seas, land and air, in whose interest? Certainly, not national interest!  Surreptitiously, the Nigerian National Shipping Line eventually disappeared, and to date, Nigeria Railway is on the verge too. They all died at the hands of civil war heroes who would have appreciated transport system without which they would not have won the war. They killed the system with their own economic warfare against Nigerians. IBB with his SAP; Obj with his belt-tightening as military head of state and with his reforms as a democratically elected president with tacit backing of IBB, both contributed to our present economic malaise.