According to youthful Garba 11,
founder/CEO, IPI Solutions Nigeria Limited, a leading cloud computing company
based in Lagos, religion had contributed to most of the crisis in the world and
should be completely detached from politics.
In this interview, the young
presidential aspirant also promised to turn Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones
into nine economic zones.
You said if you become president
you will remove both the church and mosque from the federal and state
governments, what made you to say that?
Seriously, I mentioned to you, if
you check the history of the global religious involvement in politics, usually,
religion fair very well when they run as traditional and cultural course than
when they become part of politics, because politics is a very sensitive area.
Now, if you check the 30 years
war of Europe, the war consumed more than 40 million lives, it’s all about
religion.
If you check the King Henry
Revolution, it was all about religion. Killings and killings.
If you see again what is
happening in the Middle East, it is religious motivated war.
So, once you integrate religion
in your policy, you are indirectly amplifying a frontline and creating a
process for a direct confrontation that will create an endless circle that will
consume everybody in the nation. The best thing is to separate this institution
from governance.
So does removing churches and mosque
solve this problem?
I think the symbolic
representation of an intention of the president is to show you that I don’t
come to Aso Rock to pray but I come to Aso Rock to work.
My job is for all Nigerian people
and I don’t believe Nigeria has only Muslims and Christians, I believe there
are other several religions that have right into the nation and they are also
principal stakeholders of the Nigerian project.
As a democratic leader, your job
is to protect the interest of the minority regardless of what they believe and
to me, I believe that if I truly want to be the real democratic leader, if I am
not bringing all religion into Aso Rock, no religion should exist them.
If even any media agency snapped
me praying in a mosque because I’m a Muslim, I will sue the person for libel
because I am not in Aso Rock to pray, I am there to work and so what I want you
to see me as first and foremost is the Nigerian president, not a Christian, not
a Muslim, nor a southern and northern, the eastern, the western, the up or down
president, but the Nigerian president.
And if I want to do that, I
should symbolize it and part of the symbol is, taking out this to houses and
making it a free place where everyone can come.
If you become the president, what
will be your priority?
My first day in office, I will
restrategize the whole of things, but I am going to work immediately on the
identity of Nigerian crisis.
We will have to identify the brand
Nigeria. Everyone will have to buy the product called Nigeria. That will be my
first assignment and I promise to do a press conference every week so that
people can understand God has placed us in a very important place and we are
all going to benefit.
The second thing is to initiate a
policy that will liberate over 160 to 180 million people from poverty and my
target is by the end of my administration if I am opportune to stay for eight
years, we will have over 160 million people living above 10 dollar per day with
the policies if they are properly implemented.
With this, I believe Nigeria will
have a journey away from poverty/
So four years is not even enough
to achieve this?
Yes, four years will set you on a
path to doing that. First and foremost, we need to define ourselves and
understand who we are. Secondly, we need to focus on infrastructure because we
need that money people share in Abuja to build our roads, bridges and dredge
our River Niger.
Each state should be able to
create an economic zone within the country, about 9 economic zones with Lagos
as the centre.
All we need to do is to make sure
that each zone is powering the state within their locality.
So, I believe that with this,
infrastructure, power, maybe because we already have regular oil money that I
think we will use to power our productivity, because we won’t export oil again.
It is easy said than done. Remember that you are not going to rule alone. Your success is a function of people in your government. This should be the problems PMB is facing. May God make it easy for Nigeria.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that observation
DeleteYESSS!!!
ReplyDeleteA Vision Without Mission is an Illusion.
ReplyDeletePMB for example is facing the practical aspect of governance which is not as easy as you are saying.May God make it easy for our leaders to lead well.
ReplyDelete