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REMARKS BY THE VICE PRESIDENT, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, AT THE Greater NIGERIA PASTORS’ CONFERENCE, LAGOS, ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2017


We stand on the threshold of possibly the most significant moment in the history of our nation. It is a time of financial challenges, ethnic and religious tensions. In May possibly 2015, oil rates crashed from about $100 to $37 by 2016, we were losing 1 million barrels a day.


I say that we stand on the threshold of the most considerable moment in our history, a time to construct!


It is a time, when by the sheer grace of God, we have the greatest opportunities, to be, not just Africa’s biggest economy by GDP, but also its most efficient and most productive.


We will, by 2050, be the 4th largest nation by population in the globe, and we can, like China, also turn out to be one particular of the ten most thriving economies in the globe by that date. This is our best moment but since we have shown that, in spite of the lowest earnings from oil in the previous 15 years and, in 2016, recording the lowest production of oil in the previous 20 years, and a recession as a consequence, we could still invest N1.3 trillion, the largest quantity of revenue in capital projects in 15 years. We have shown that as tough and painful as a recession might be, we have the capacity to come out of it and start the developing of an economy that emphasizes productivity and will provide enough jobs. We began the huge diversification of our economy by investing in agriculture. We set targets for self-sufficiency in rice, tomato paste, sorghum, millet. We are now one particular of the world’s largest producers of paddy rice. Milling is the weak hyperlink, but in the previous year, a number of new mills have been open. The newest is the Wacot mill in Kebbi. Coscharis and Dangote have currently invested in about 1 million Mt of capacity.


We are operating every day on the complete farm- to- table value chain and we count on that the next industrial explosion will come from agri-company.


We are providing the environment for smaller enterprises. The big challenge is access to finance, and interest prices. We are operating with the CBN and development finance institutions to crack that difficulty.


In the same period we have set aside the biggest quantity of cash beneath a social investment scheme in our history that these days employs 200,000 unemployed graduates, and will employ an additional 300,000 by subsequent year. A college feeding programme that, nowadays, feeds properly more than three million Nigerian kids in public schools and we are set to triple that figure by the finish of subsequent year.


Our private sector is bullish. From the young men and women in technologies and entertainment, to the compact manufacturing and fabricating companies in Aba, Awka, Kano, Katsina to the bigger producers in the Ogun industrial zones and in Lagos to the likes of Dangote constructing the largest single line Refinery in the globe and a 550 kilometre subsea pipeline to the refinery and Indorama, the biggest single line fertilizer in the globe, opened in September we are seeing a renewed optimism but much more importantly, backward integration and greater use of neighborhood raw supplies. By 2019, we will no longer be importing any petroleum merchandise.


The significant constraint remains energy, but we are receiving there. Our country will, in the subsequent handful of years, turn the corner. We are in the pains of childbirth and we will soon expertise the exact same sweetness and joy of childbirth.


What can hold us back? Two issues.

Initial is corruption. We will have to deal with it decisively. It is difficult simply because it is systemic and affecting all institutions perpetrated by a leadership elite that incorporates, not just politicians, but private sector individuals, and even religious leadership.


The second is tribalism, religion and other parochial tendencies. Unfortunately, simply because of state failure in some respects, numerous, even pastors, have gone into their tribal groups and speak and act mostly from that viewpoint. But, possibly, the most vital difficulty is the failure of Christian leadership to take our rightful location. We have focused our minds on an Islamic agenda, searching for and locating it in just about every action, or inaction. But exactly where is the Christian agenda? We are also divided to craft one.


The truth of the matter is that the important to the unity and progress of Nigeria is in the church, the Church which is the pillar and ground of truth. It is the church that is imbued with the revelation that: there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free of charge, there is neither male nor female for you are all one particular in Christ Jesus.


There is no way of dealing with deep ethnic and religious divisions, deepened by the injustices, blood-letting and prejudices over decades, except we reach into the gospel the wisdom of God exactly where Jesus repudiated the law of Moses on the query of retaliation and revenge and commanded that we not repay evil with evil, and to turn the other cheek when we are slapped on one.


In Matthew five:38-43, the Bible says, "You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil individual. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If any individual desires to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two… You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall enjoy your neighbour and hate your enemy."


Verse 44 and 45 also say: "But I say to you, really like your enemies, bless those who curse you, do excellent to those who hate you, and pray for these who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may possibly be sons of your Father in heaven for He tends to make His sun rise on the evil and on the superior, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."


And to these who have urged revenge, the answer of our faith is, vengeance is mine, says the Lord.

How can a man pray for those who, in his presence, killed his youngsters and ripped the unborn infant out of the womb of his pregnant wife? How do you appreciate an individual who comes into your neighborhood annually to kill as numerous as he can locate? How do I turn the other cheek when the bones of the appropriate side of my face have been cracked by the very first slap? Is not wiser to defend ourselves and indeed kill our assailants?


The answer of the gospel is contrarian. Adore even those who persecute you. That is the wisdom of God and, certainly, it is as correct as scripture that men will locate it foolishness of the highest order. We have to note that, regardless of the extreme persecution of the early Christians, they by no means when fought back.


All via the book of the Acts of the Apostles, all we ever heard was how they were beaten, disrobed and stoned to death. Yet they turned the globe upside down. And centuries immediately after, the gospel is as powerful and transformative as when it was initial preached.


But what we hear currently, as an alternative of the gospel, are cries of war these telling us from pulpits that our enemy is a physical a single who must be destroyed ahead of he destroys us. It is populist and well-liked rhetoric each and every time it is repeated in a Christian gathering it excites applause. However there it is, fully contrary to almost everything in the new covenant of Jesus Christ.


Permit me, then, to make a concluding submission. It is my view that the Nigerian elite - political, enterprise and religious - regardless of ethnicity, think alike, and are driven by largely equivalent motivations. The elite are generally self-centred, selfish and unprepared to make the sacrifices either in service or self-restraint that leaders of thriving communities have to make. Playing the religious or ethnic card when vital so as to get the masses in line is the grossly cynical default tactic of our elite. Having said that, the most poignant point to note is that, when you look at any list of alleged perpetrators of a heinous case of corruption, all tribes, ethnicities and religions are properly represented. In other words, high level corruption knows no religion or ethnicity.


Neither, by the way, is intense poverty parochial in its incidence. The conspirators involve Christians and Muslims from all the geopolitical zones. They are in governments, the legislature, the judiciary and the press. They are united, they protect every single other, they fight for every other and they are ready to go down together. They are one tribe, indivisible regardless of diversity. It is this tribe that confuse the arguments for transform in society.


It is my respectful submission that, to develop the new Nigeria, we need to have a new tribe a tribe of men and girls of all faiths, tribes and ethnicities that are committed to a nation run on higher values of integrity, really hard function, justice and adore of nation. A tribe of guys and women who are prepared to make the sacrifices and self-constraints that are vital to creating a strong society. Who are prepared to stick with each other, fight corruption side by side, and insist on justice even exactly where our friends are at the receiving end. A tribe consisting pros, businessmen, politicians, religious leaders and all other individuals who believe that this new Nigeria is possible.


Nigeria’s greatest battle is the 1 to bring integrity and accountability to public service and the private sector. Righteousness, the Bible says, exalts a nation. This calls for a new way of thinking, a new leadership corps, a new tribe. The challenge right now for us all, friends and colleagues, is to populate that new tribe. Thanks incredibly a great deal for your consideration.