Orji Uzor Kalu also known as OUK is the former governor of Abia State from 1999 to 2007 before he reportedly installed his successor who later cross carpeted from the Peoples Progressives Alliance that produced him to the Peoples Democratic Party.

Chief Orji Uzor Kalu is the founder of the Peoples Progressives Alliance which incidentally also in 2007 produced the governor of Imo State in the person of Chief Ikedi Ohakim who also left for ‘greener pastures’ in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but lost at the 2011 election to the All Progressive Grand Alliance -Chief Rochas Anayochukwu Okorocha.

Although the Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA) later suffered monumental political setbacks in the South East, the fact that the party that was barely one year of registration could achieve such a political milestone of winning two states in the 2007 governorship elections, is a testimony of the political sagacity, acumen and the energetic approach to politics that was brought to bear by the founder and his team.

For some inexplicable reasons, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu who vied to represent his people in the senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria during the 2011 election, was manipulated and rigged out by the political machinery of the ruling people’s democratic party which was bent on producing the winners of all the elective positions to score cheap political victory in Abia State.

Unperturbed by this profanity that was carefully couched as hire wire conspiracy, this gentle man Chief Orji Uzor Kalu has proceeded with his legitimate chain of business activities which he left to contest the governorship position which he won by landslide in the 1999 election.

But unlike other political aspirants who would either lose at the poll or rigged out and completely go into their cocoon or disappear to do their private business without working to promote peace, democracy and growth of the nation’s economy, OUK is not one of those who will turn his back on his country especially during these trying times.

Since losing out to the rigging machinery of the ruling party at the center and made to face Kangaroo anti-graft trial, OUK has remained a consistent patriot who is unhappy that his country has slide into anarchy, lawlessness, terror-related violence and is now in a state of anomie.

He has severally proffered workable intellectual and pragmatic panaceas to the challenges of insecurity, poverty and corruption which confront Nigeria.

His latest intervention is his acceptance to mediate in the ongoing terror-related killings in the North on the delegation of the Federal government to dialogue with the dreaded armed Islamic terrorists – Boko Haram.

A self acclaimed commander of the dreaded insurgents had two weeks ago listed some terms of possible truce with the government of Nigeria which included the appointment of the former Head of State General Muhammadu Buhari as the head of the team from the Islamic rebels to engage in peace talk with the Nigerian government.

In what is seen by many experts as a wise decision, General Buhari has turned down the offer in the proposed dialogue. He (Buhari) stated that he does not know any member of the group and that he completely dissociates himself from the murderous terrorism of the group which has claimed several thousands of innocent lives in the last few years.

But in a surprise move, the former Abia State governor who grew up in Maiduguri, Borno State, the hot bed of the ongoing religious insurgency has offered to be part of the federal government delegation to dialogue with the insurgents should the Nigerian government accepts to enter into dialogue.

Most Nigerians who opposed the peace talk proposal from the dreaded insurgents, doubted the credibility of the person who offered the truce talk because in the thinking of these analysts, the man is not one of the channels that that the real Boko Haram insurgents interfaces with the public.

The Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka on the other hand believes that there are no bases legally or morally, for the Nigerian government to dialogue with these same persons responsible for the killings of thousands of innocent Nigerians.

Professor Soyinka, like most people, it is preposterous for anyone to seek to impose his brand of religious beliefs or ideology on the other members of the society.

Soyinka said negotiating with mass murders would not end the cycle of violence tearing at the country. He also suspects that crooked politicians had a role in Boko Haram’s early rise.

“Politicians who wanted to rig elections activated this brainwashed horde of religious militants. That’s how it started”, Soyinka stated. Soyinka called the prospect of the government engaging in peace talks with the armed Islamic rebels as abysmal appeasement”

But the former Abia State governor said his decision to offer his services to bring about lasting peace was because the majority of Nigerians who have lost their lives and livelihood are from the South Eastern part of Nigeria.

He also applauded Buhari’s rejection of his “appointment” by Boko Haram on the ground that most Nigerians would misconstrue Buhari’s acceptance to mean that he was the arrow head of the violent insurgency.

It could be recalled that the terrorist attacks increased with the release of the 2011 Presidential elections in which General Buhari lost to the incumbent.

In making his offer to mediate OUK said he is in a position to marry the feelings of both the victims and the perpetrators to bring about lasting peace.

In my humble opinion, there is the need for peace to return to the volatile Northern region. I believe that the Federal Government has failed to carry out the primary constitutional duty of protecting lives and property by abysmally failing to put to an end the growing armed violent insurgency in Northern Nigeria.

I also believe that no genuine dialogue can happen in an atmosphere of lack of social justice for the thousands of innocent lives that have been wasted in this terror-related violence. I believe that any peace regime institutionalized without first and foremost delivering justice to the thousands of persons whose bread winners have been killed by the terrorists will not be sustainable and is inherently unfair, unjust and unconstitutional.

But I do also view the offer of mediation by the former governor of Abia State as historic, salutary and heroic. The Federal government is hereby advised to weigh this option comprehensively in the best interest of Nigeria.

Government must put an end to all forms of support for terrorism.

In his beautiful book “There was a country”, Professor Achebe stated rightly that the Federal government is guilty of tolerating terrorism.

His words: “Nigeria’s federal government has always tolerated terrorism. For over half a century the federal government has turned a blind eye to waves of ferocious and savage massacres of its citizens-mainly Christian Southerners; mostly Igbos or indigenes of the middle Belt; and others-with impunity”.

Achebe stated further; “Even in cases where their hands were found dripping in blood, the perpetrators have many a time evaded capture and punishment. Nigeria has been doomed to witness endless cycles of inter-ethnic inter-religious violence because the Nigerian government has failed woefully to enforce laws protecting its citizens from wanton violence, particularly attacks against non-indigenes living in disparate parts of the country”.

This vicious cycle of terrorism and government’s conspiratorial incapacity to resolve them must stop.

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* Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, blogsp@www.huriwa.blogspot.com.

The Nigerian praying system enthrones a prosperous church while the nation is in a state of backwardness. Some prayer warriors of Nigerian extraction have effectively prayed self out of poverty, lack, sickness, madness, infertility etc while the nation is still backwards, sliding deep into, poverty, insecurity, inequality, injustice and despair. This is the mystery of Nigeria prayer system- some individuals are prosperous while the nation is backward.

The earlier article ‘’Hypocrites as prayer warriors: How can God heal Nigeria?1 & 2’’laid the foundation for the discussion and attempts to distinguish between personal prayers and corporate prayers . The principles of corporate prayers, prayers for nations, cities, villages emphasizes that the prayer warrior must stand on the path of equity. Any prayer against corrupt public officials cannot work if those praying have the same corrupt tendencies exhibited by those they want to replace.

A lot of prayer warriors have been given divine opportunity in the past to lead their constituencies to the Promised Land and there was no evidence in the manner they administered public trust to suggest that they ever prayed. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo turned a Born Again prayer warrior while in Maidugeri prison. When he became the president of Nigeria in fulfillment of the earlier prophesies of Bishop Duncan Williams of Ghana, the major achievement of his prayer prowess is that he frustrated the presidential ambitions of the feared Nigeria’s self styled evil genius, former military president Ibrahim Babangida in 2003, 2007 and 2011 and publicly declared Babangida a fool at 70 . He also introduced a ‘do or die’ electoral fraud system. His predecessor, late General Sanni Abacha so much believed in prayers that while he and his marabous were enchanting in the State House, his lieutenants were harassing, imprisoning and assassinating political opponents, irrespective of religious affiliations.

There are many in Full Gospel Fellowship, Grace of God Mission, Assemblies of God Church, Living Faith Church , Redeemed Christian Church of God, EFAC members in Anglican Church, Adoration members in Roman Catholic Church, Knights of Catholic, Anglicans, Methodists who have occupied positions of trust either as Senators, Governors, Ministers, Ambassadors, Party Chairmen , Permanent Secretaries, Heads of government agencies and yet there is no evidence that these people ever knew God nor had conscience in the manner they looted the national treasury and impoverished the masses, except probably that they donated to the building of church cathedrals and maintenance of the parsonage.

Their Muslim counterparts have not fared better; the level of poverty they hoisted on the majority of their people in the northern parts of Nigeria is evidence of years of prayers, sallat, pilgrimages to Mecca, Medina and other sites of worship. They are in corrupt enrichment contest with their christian counterparts in the civil service, politics, economy and other spheres of national life. When some muslim adherents got tired of following

insensitive leadership, they formed Boko Haram as a means of liberation, visiting mayhem on the nation. The majority Sunni sect has a lot of super rich members. The minority Shia and Ahmaddiya sect members boast of equally affluent members in the society. The rate at which individuals build gigantic mosques attached to their homes and in their remote villages suggests increased financial prosperity.

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The prayer warriors of Nigerian extraction have effectively dribbled self out of poverty, lack, sickness, mental illness, infertility etc while the nation is still backwards, sliding deep into, poverty, insecurity, inequality, injustice and inhumanity. Some have gotten breakthroughs in career, promotions, demotion of enemies and completion of abandoned projects, academics, marriage. All the spiritual pilgrimage programmes in Nigeria such as Holy Ghost Congress, Shiloh, Power Must Change Hands, Adoration and numerous crusades have no doubt salvaged a lot of members from the grips of invincible forces; and lot of evidences of divine intervention and verifiable miracles are not uncommon in those and other spiritual centers. In essence God hears the personal prayers of Nigerians for a better personal life but when it comes to extending such to national life, the same God shuts the door. Something is wrong somewhere. Therefore we have a lot of financially successful orthodox and Pentecostal Christians who must solicit the blood of Jesus for robbers and kidnappers not to gain entrance into their mansions. These wealthy personally blessed Christians must constantly change the shock absorber of their brand new cars and waste precious time on mechanics because the inept leadership have handed down bad roads to everyone irrespective of whether the person is a prayer warrior or not. The wealthy Christian must spend some hard earned money to bribe his wards into the university because the scarcity of university space, occasioned by bad leadership has made the admission process a highest bidder exercise.

Nigerian prayer warrior have succeeded in the areas of personal deliverance, personal prosperity and healing, however, they are still frisked like criminals at the point of entry to many nations because of negative image which leadership mediocrity have hoisted upon the citizens.

Is it not preferable to have a nation where the generality of people live above poverty level with a few super rich than the present situation where the majority live in poverty and a few successful prayer warriors live in opulence surrounded by hungry, angry and hostile mob? The spiraling prosperity fixation in the churches is building a super capitalist system which is gradually dwindling into a contemporary feudalism. This is not the prosperity preached by Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ fed the poor. He made Zacchaeus ,the corrupt government official, to return his loot (Luke 19 vs 1-10)and He called King Herod , the tyrannical president/ commander-in-chief, a fox and rejected his friendship overtures (Luke 13 vs 32)

The Nigerian church have no doubt prospered financially and have removed the toga of a church rat but the nation where the church is located have moved down in corruption index to being 143 out of 182 most corrupt nation in the world( according to Transparency International 2011 report). We thank God for prosperity in the churches but why the nation has not witnessed economic transformation is a mystery. There is something wrong with the prayers offered for Nigeria- it is the hypocrisy of those leading and other participants in the prayer bouquet. God’s word says in ‘2 Chronicles 2vs 14 ‘’if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land’’ . Until those praying for Nigeria repent from their wickedness, humble themselves and seek national justice, equity, fairness and shun all tribal and sectional bias in the assessment of all pending national issues, the prayers for a nation where rule of law, economic prosperity and social security abounds will not be answered.

The self centered personal prosperity craze of the Nigerian prayer warrior at the expense of national rebirth, national transformation and national development will certainly lead Nigeria into a banana republic populated by very few super rich church goers with their subservient beneficiaries and an overwhelming majority held hostage by corruption, nepotism, armed robbery, kidnappings, communal strives and hunger. A prosperous church cohabiting with a backward nation is a social time bomb capable of exploding anytime

It is so unfortunate that there has been so much ignorant carping and malicious tittle-tattling about the report of the Petroleum Revenue Task Force chaired by Malam Nuhu Ribadu, both failings arising from a deliberate attempt to individualize what was actually group work, a mischievous attempt to politicize one report out of three, and to smuggle into an emergent grand web of conspiracy, elements of blackmail, mischief and outright opportunism.

I should like to dispel the putrefacious stench of the fart that seems to have overtaken the subject by returning all of us to certain basics that have not changed since President Jonathan approved the setting up of committees to inquire into different aspects of the Petroleum Sector and particularly since the reports were presented and accepted. The facts are as follows.

The committees in question and the probe into the Petroleum sector were initiated by President Goodluck Jonathan to ensure transparency and accountability in the extractive industry; the goal was to transform the sector and raise levels of integrity accordingly. Every step that has been taken by this administration in this regard has been in fulfillment of this well-stated principle. This includes the decision to completely deregulate the downstream sector, which has now resulted in the exposure of oily deals in that sector, with consequences for the indicted persons.

It also includes the launch of a concerted fight against crude oil theft and illegal payments of fuel subsidy. Zakari Mohammed of the House of Representatives talks absent-mindedly about “lack of political will” to fight corruption. He certainly doesn’t know what he is talking about. A legislative position should not confer a right to mendacity. He should know, if he had been reading the newspapers, that on the basis of both the report of the House of Representatives and the Aig Aig-Imokhuede committee report on fuel subsidy payments, persons are currently being prosecuted in the law courts by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The Federal Government has not done anything to stop or discourage the prosecution of indicted persons. We have made the point, again and again, that in this on-going fight against corruption, there will be no “cover ups”; and no “sacred cows,” and that President Jonathan’s only interest is the people’s interest. This same President has demonstrated the political will to deal with corruption in the country’s electoral process, to both local and global acclaim. He has no reason to make compromises in other areas of national life. Interestingly, many of those who are now talking ignorantly about “political will” are beneficiaries of this administration’s commitment to the rule of law and fairplay.

On the specific issue of the Petroleum Revenue Task Force report, the mischief-makers should go back to the statements made by President Jonathan, and subsequently by the Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, on the occasion of the presentation of the report. The President’s position that the work of the Ribadu Committee, and of the two other committees that presented their reports on that occasion, the Idika Kalu committee on Refineries and the Dotun Sulaiman Committee on Governance is useful and enlightening has not changed. Alison-Madueke has further echoed that position more than twice. The three committees were set up as fact-finding and advisory bodies. That fact was further underscored by the President’s mature response to the altercation that the Ribadu Committee Report generated when he said that those who have issues to raise should be free to make their own independent submissions. This shows a determination to get every possible piece of information and to accommodate all concerns. This shows a will to act. President Jonathan has not dumped any input, rather he welcomes every possible input and he has no private interest in this matter. So for anyone to say that the Ribadu committee was “calculated to fail from the beginning”, is absolutely uncharitable.

Indeed, for the benefit of those playing politics and doing quick business with this matter, the truth is that President Jonathan is already taking steps to address some of the issues raised in the various reports. When President Jonathan sets up committees to investigate particular issues, he does so, because he wants to address those issues. I had, before now, drawn attention to the fact that the President gave clear directives on the state of the refineries and that at least one meeting had been held since the presentation of the Report on Refineries, to act specifically on the recommendations made. President Jonathan has directed that he wants the refineries fixed and steps are already being taken; deadlines have been set. That didn’t make the headlines, rather, falsehood hugged the headlines, because these days it pays to fart all over the place, and attract attention.

To set the records straight, here is what happened. After the presentation of the reports by the three committees; the President directed the Minister of Petroleum Resources to take up the recommendations of the Kalu Idika Kalu committee on refineries. The committee recommended, in part, that the country’s refineries should be rehabilitated without any further delay. On November 8, the Minister and her team were at the Villa to brief the President about the state of the refineries, their current capacities, and steps that need to be taken to get them to function at optimum capacity.

The President made it clear that the government is committed to getting the refineries to work, so that we would no longer have to import refined petroleum products, which he considers shameful, and by so doing, government would have succeeded in creating jobs and put an end to the hardship that attends importation. The meeting discussed the possibility of ensuring the Turn Around Maintenance of the refineries by March 2013, and subsequently, the rehabilitation of the facilities. The meeting ended with a directive that the Minister and her team should return with further presentations on the technical details of the agreed plan of action. This is one clear example of prompt action and demonstration of commitment.

President Jonathan has no reason to embarrass anyone who served on any of the three committees. While receiving the reports, these were his words: “…we have seen that the people that have been selected in these committees are people that are known by Nigerians, people that are credible, most especially people that are patriotic and I believe that they put all that into consideration for the interest of the country not for the interest of any individual. You have submitted your reports today. We have to thank you very sincerely and government will surely make use of these reports… because we feel that the oil industry as it is, need to be reformed.” I urge you to note the emphasis on all the reports without exception!

Thereafter, President Jonathan commented on the work of the individual committees. On Dotun Sulaiman committee, he said: “…we feel that our governance and control, (in the oil and gas sector) we need to look at it. And of course quite a number of issues raised by the presenters link up with even the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) issues and I believe it will even help the National Assembly robustly in terms of looking at some aspects of the PIB. So we thank you very sincerely for that.”

On the Kalu Idika Kalu Committee he said: “In the case of the refineries, I really have to thank you because I was listening, trying to see the kind of recommendations you will bring up…Maybe some of you don’t know but those of us who are in politics, they used to “yab” us some years back that in Nigeria we import what we have and export what we don’t have. They say we import what we have because we have crude oil for God’s sake. Ordinarily if it is a country where we placed our focus right, we should be having filling stations all over Africa and all over the world …It is disgraceful that we are importing petroleum products. If in the next ten years this country still imports petroleum products then all of us who have the opportunity to be here, in fact when we die they should write something and put behind us that we did not rule this country well, because we must stop the importation of petroleum products.” Hence, the President held the aforementioned follow-up meeting on refineries.

Now, on the Ribadu Report, President Jonathan said, inter alia: “…Probably not everybody agreed on some of the conclusions but I don’t think we need to bother…what we would say is that any member who has one or two observations should please write it either directly to me through the Chief of Staff or through the Minister of Petroleum Resources…But the issues of finance, if it borders on corrupt practice or outright stealing, definitely it will go to the EFCC for investigation…If there are errors of calculation or misinformation from the relevant agencies of government that are supposed to give the correct figures, that will be filtered out. It will not be used against anybody, because the interest of government to set up these committees is to help us do what is right. It is not to help us do what is wrong. And that is why we have to be careful and do what is right. So I plead with you. But let me assure you that government has no interest in hiding anything…”

Let me cut this short, at this point, by saying that President Goodluck Jonathan has no reason whatsoever, personal or political (since at least one character has said that the furore over the Ribadu Report has something to do with 2015!) to protect wrong-doers in the land. He took on this assignment to make Nigeria better and that is what he is doing everyday: working hard at the Nigerian project and taking every step to transform it for good. The Nigerian people are enjoined to stand on the side of truth and to reject the mischief of all hunters of fortune whose interest is their own ambitions, for in this Ribadu Committee Report matter, personal ambitions are beginning to becloud the facts. President Jonathan will continue to provide leadership. Nobody should drag him into the cheap arena of opportunistic demagoguery.

Dr. Abati is Special Adviser to President Jonathan on Media and Publicity.