 The national chairman of the People's Democratic Party, PDP Uche Secundus, has urged Nigerians to continue praying for the country to overcome all of its challenges. He said a lot of prayers are needed for the nation, adding that there are storms everywhere in the country, and it's now pathetic. Recently several leaders have given similar admonitions, talking about this situation. But my question now is, are prayers the new solution to issues plaguing the country? Well, joining me to discuss this is Dakhwa Dara Mullah, a Reverend and a Political Analyst, and Ken Okolubu, who's also a Political Analyst. Thank you gentlemen for joining us. It's my pleasure. Okay. I'm going to start with Dakhwa because you are a man of a cloth, obviously. And we're talking about prayers here. Nigeria has been faced by, with all sorts of things, I mean, name it. I always say that our place is literally full, including that of Mr. President. But when we say that we ought to pray, you know, for solutions to our problems, why do we need leaders if prayer is truly the key? Once again, good evening, and to all our viewers, a good evening. As people of faith, you know, a country like Nigeria is predominantly saturated with a lot of religiosity. So it's not strange when everybody calls for prayers. I mean, you hear politicians, when they tell you that God has asked them to go and serve the people, and they get there, and they become, you know, looters, and, you know, people who still are commonwealths. So it's very easy to always talk about prayer, about God, about faith, and religiosity when it comes to addressing the problems of the country. But I think in all of this, it's mere distraction. You know, we pray, yes. And what are the people who are praying more? The common man, the common years, who is suffering, are the ones who spend time in church to pray for things that ordinarily should be working for them, should be working in their favor, dividends of democracy, good roads, good hospitals, that is good healthcare, you know, good education for their children, you know, and affordability of all of these amenities. So these are the things they end up praying for in church or in mosque when ordinarily a commonwealth is sufficient to provide all of this. But because of the corrupt nature of our politicians, we have come to this level where everything has to be a prayer. So that's number one. However, when you look at it also, when, you know, PDP steps out and say prayer, prayer, prayer, you wonder what kind of foundation they laid for this country. They were in government in 1999. How many of our schools were functioning or were functioning under them? I mean, how many of our hospitals were functioning under PDP? How many of our refineries were functioning, ultimately, under PDP? So you can go on and on, you know, what exactly was, what kind of foundation did they lay for the future of this country? I remember even under PDP government in the world by Good Luck Jonathan, this country sold, I mean crude oil, we projected to sell at 65 dollars, we ended up selling at 100 and something dollars. Now, what exactly did we do with the money? What kind of future did they build for ourselves? So these are the issues, you know, so we cannot use prayer to keep distracting ourselves. Whereas as a man of God, I would say, yes, we must pray everything good and everything, you know, that is on the contrary, all requires prayers, yes. But God has endowed us as a nation so much that all we need is a leadership that is thinking. A group of people who are supposed to be leaders who should be, you know, considerate in terms of how they deploy the resources that God has endowed us with. But this is, I'm sorry to talk over you this and that, but I'm so sorry to talk over you. But let me put in there. You have, of course, laid out all of the mistakes that the previous leadership had made. But this is the reason why the APC won the election. They campaigned on all of these ills, all of the loopholes that the PDP had created. And here we are again, it's five and a half years, if not six down the line and we're still dragging blames and trading it when we should be actually dealing with the situation and giving answers to the problem because this is what the people were promised. So what makes, what's the difference between the APC-led government and the PDP that you're comparing them to? No, I agree with you that we should not be in the area of excuses anymore. I am one of those who believe that fundamentally this government should be doing something and in terms of tangibility, we should be able to place our hands and say, this is after we have come. I mean, not at the time when they came on board, we remember Boko Haram was everywhere. I mean, they even had flags or, you know, I said in many places in the north, but to a large extent, they were decimated. I would use the language that they were, they were eliminated, they were decimated and their capacity was reduced. Unfortunately, we should have consolidated on that as a gain, but we didn't. Somehow, you know, we lost direction, we lost focus and, you know, they gained strength again at the moment, you know, they became fractionalized. So, and of course, we are still, you know, what we're arguing is that we're in another deficit and that is why a lot of boys that are taking place, a lot of boys, you know, that were down under the pretty big government, were not utilized properly. So whatever money they are looking for now, they are not having, what they have to do now is to do what those governments should have done. They are having to redo all of, I mean, these things all over again. But we need to move into the area of tangibility. You know, we must begin to see investments. The, whatever investments we have done in the last five years, we must begin to see results. So I agree with you totally. That we cannot, you know, we cannot wait by the side of excuses. We must begin to see results. You know, and that is what the boy government needs to show us. But we must look at, you know, all the big ones to look at the background to the story and then look at the fact that PTP are not the ones stabilizing. You know, so that's what I said. I went back into the past. I, you know, I try to lay a background for the present. All right. Let me go to Ken Okolokbo. Today we have banditry. We have kidnappers. We, as I said, some days ago, 20 people were killed as bandits attacked Zamfara State. I saw a man who was, you know, almost, he was almost crying. You know, it sounded more like the government has failed them, that they have been left to their fate. And so I wonder why in that situation somebody would tell us to pray, whether that person be in power or not. Again, I ask, why is it seemingly so difficult for these issues to be addressed head on? Well, prayer, first of all, I'm a knight of Saint Christopher of the Anglican Company and apart from the fact that it happened to us to be a politician. But we all know what the efficacy of prayer is. At this critical point in time, you see, you look at the situation and you know this has gone beyond just criticism. I wonder who your guest was that was speaking, what you referred to him as a man of God and I doubt if he's a man of God because he spent all the time politicking. The first thing he was embraced when somebody talked about prayer is because the situation has gone totally out of hand. You don't start talking about the blame game when we are in this kind of situation where we find ourselves. In the southeast we have, they call them unknown government but as of yesterday they almost ran over the police headquarters in Oka. As of the last time they said 95 policemen have been killed. INEC has lost over 25 officers. In the north, like you have rightly said, the banditry situation has gone beyond. The governor of Niger has said that there are two hours from Abuja and over 50 villages have been overrun. These were areas that were hit out to not being occupied by Boko Haram and the fact that the service teams were changed at the time they were clamoring that the service teams should be changed and suddenly the chief of army staff, not only the chief of army staff, the provost of the Nigerian army, the army, the directorates of army intelligence, I mean the three most top people in the army are dead and you say we shouldn't be talking about prayers now. It's not the time to start even criticizing the government of Boko Haram because this has gone beyond the ordinary because it looks as I think we are doomed or we are an autopilot to crush landing the government in terms of the security situation. So at this time we really need to pray, we really need to seek the face of God because what is happening in this country has gone beyond just criticism. We are seeing something that is beyond the grasp of our leaders. Let's have our religious leaders lead the country then so we can all just be praying to God to lead us. That way we can just get direction from above and I'm not in any way trying to make fun of the idea of praying but leaders are elected to those positions for a reason and if they are unable to deliver and then we all have to say oh let's go and pray then it means that those leaders have failed, doesn't it? Certainly. But there was a king that was told that he was going to die in the Bible and when he went to pray he was delivered. Some years he added to his life. What I'm seeing here is that when you hear that to the general of the federation tell you that spare parts markets can be banned and compare this to ban on open grazing and that is one man that advises the president. Don't you think you need to pray for God to touch his mind? You remember the way the heart of Pharaoh was hardened until God touched him and the Israelites were allowed to go. What I'm seeing here is that the leadership of the APC is torn between itself. So I'm trying very hard not to criticize at this point but where you see a situation whereby you have tried to offer solutions and those solutions. Oh I think we lost that connection there with Okolubu but let me go back to you Mr. Dakwa. Mr. Okolubu, can you hear me? Yes I can hear you. We lost you for a second, go ahead. So when you have leaders who have refused to listen and look at the economy the misery index 33% is unemployment, inflation is 19% and we know the misery index is unemployment plus inflation and the leaders are doing nothing about it. They have told us that they're going to employ over 7,000 and 4,000 Nigerians and pay them 20,000 for three months which can reflect the economy of this country. That is almost at a snail's speed. We really don't know if people are even getting their last over six, seven months we have been on that. We are told about the empire that they have registered the 500,000 that they've had. Oh dear, the connection there is gone again. Back to Mr. Dakwa. Mr. Dakwa, you did hear what Mr. Okolubu said that you were rather politicizing the issue other than addressing the issue. But I asked you the question that I asked him earlier on why is it seemingly difficult for our leaders to address the issues that we're facing head on. I'm one of those people that does not really care if the president addresses us. But Nigerians are asking the president to address them. They want to feel a sense of belonging, a sense that they want to be sure that the president understands where they're coming from and does sympathize with them and not his personal aids. Of course Nigerians also don't want to hear lip service paid to anything. They want to hear that government is doing something and see it. Why isn't that what we're supposed to be experiencing right now? And why are we not experiencing it? The question I'd like to say, and I hope Mr. Ken is listening to me, I'm very politicized, number one. I spend over years my other life as a journalist on television interviewing people. So if you understand that it's alright for any guest to come on board and begin to challenge whether I'm a man of God or I'm politicized or whatever. If you agree with me, when you want to disagree with me, you don't need to delve into where I am or who I'm not or none of that. You know, 40 songs are not permitted on television. Number two, let me say clearly here that you are very correct when you say that what we want are results. I'm a man of God and so I do pray as every minute of my living, of my existence. What I'm saying is there are some things that we don't need to begin to pray about. We don't need to if we have done what we ought to do. There are clearly things that are expected of us over the years as an addition that we're failed to do that is haunting us today. So for me, I think whatever the government is, it will only government must understand that people repulse confidence, you know, in them. And the reason why they did that is because they want results. People have focused so soon that we have been at this level before. Even the likes of Michael Zekoume and many work it now. Even the likes of Michael Zekoume and many work it now. You know, we've been at this, we've been on this for many years. And that's why some people, I mean, in Pudungyadi, you know, in your best case, some school students were bound to death. You know, we're bound to ask history. So, I mean, we've been here, we've been here before. What we now want to begin to hear and begin to see, we want to begin to see a level of change, a level of progress. And that's why I understand that it's been years of investment. If this government is saying that what they've been doing is investing in the critical sectors of their company, now let's begin to see results. You know, a couple of, I mean, the billions of money have been released, you know, from the corpus of government to also acquire token objects and to acquire half objects and, you know, to fight insurgency. Let's begin to see that the insurgency, I mean, they have been totally, even if not completely eradicated or, you know, we should begin to see that they have been totally disbanded. It's launched. You know, not see token of progress. Let people have some measure of safety. I mean, some assurance that they are safe. This is what we should be doing now. Now, I don't want to focus on the federal government, what the countries of security. Let's talk about the state government also. The state government is getting what is called security votes. They do not declare it to anybody. They don't know how much is worth after that. You can see at the end of the system, the country and the whole state. Okay. Now everybody is looking up to Abuja. To Daribullah. There's not the issue. I can tell how passionate you are about this particular topic. It's very sensitive, Mr. Daribullah, but I want to thank you. I don't know if we have Mr. Kolowo back quickly for his final statements. Okay, you're here, Mr. Kolowo. In closing, because he said that we need to see action. We need to see things happen. But I want to go back to you on what we were saying before you went off. If these leaders who we have given a job to do seem to be unable to do this job, and we keep waiting at the expense of more and more people dying, dead bodies are piling up, the toll is going higher and higher, and more and more people are feeling unsafe. And you know, before now, when it's happening in the north, we feel like, oh, it's very far from us. So we don't really understand how serious it is. But now people are being picked up in Lagos. Kidnappers are everywhere. We see and hear stories every other day. What if the government fails again to come to our rescue or do what it needs to do? Where does that leave us? And what do we do in closing? Well, I think quickly what we need to do is we have the constitutional hearing conference starting from the 26th and the 27th. We quickly need to devolve, there should be devolution of powers quickly. We need state policing. We need restructuring. We need to make the sense are very weak at this point and make the state stronger. Because you talked about the states and the fact that the government is the chief security officer of the states. But that is only on paper. In actual sense, the commissioners of police don't take instructions from the governors. The director of SSS for states don't take directives from governors. We need to actually carry a devolution of powers. We need restructuring. We need to remove the powers from the center, give more powers to the state. Then we now have lookouts, policing their territory. There we can give more measure and sense of security. Without security we cannot be in this state. We cannot move forward. We need to secure our lives first. All right. Ken Okolubo and Dachwa Dairamala. Thank you very much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. All right. Thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a short break now and hear what Nigerians have to say on prayers and the country. And when we return, I will give you my take. Prayer without work is nothing. So even Bible made it as a priority. Prayer without work. So looking at the predicament and the circumstances that have surrounded Nigeria now, we just need to get out of our comfort zone and do something about it. Because when we look at the government, it's a kind of recycling from APC to PDP. Just normal people. They are still the same people that are managing us from ages. So what we need to do, what we pray, we youth, we need to go out and take the mantle. Prayer can solve Nigeria's problem if we are praying hard and praying for God to answer our prayers so that this country will change because we are suffering. Things are getting hard every day, more and more. Prayer can change this nation. Is it really prayer can solve Nigeria's problem because what is going on now? Nobody, nobody has any time to do this. Anyway, Bible said with God all things are possible. So I trust God when you pray, understand and your prayer will be answered. So by prayer, I believe Nigeria will be a better place to go. Well prayer is a very essential tool for a change of every country. But likewise, Bible makes us to understand that faith without work is dead. So keep praying for Nigeria to be better and not taking step while praying is another religious exercise. So when we are praying for the country to be better we have to take necessary action or steps in making the country to be better. Even the Bible says faith without work is dead. So when you pray, you work. You pray to God then you move and do the action. If you pray and without doing what we need to do it amounts to nothing because everybody prays and why are we still having corrupt people on hierarchy of places? So even those people they pray as well and yet they don't do what they ought to do. So it's personal. So when you pray at the same time guide yourself with that prayer and do the needful. Here's my take. Nigeria is at a point where its leadership needs to be clear and succinct specific strategies enunciated and acted upon in order for us to move this country away from the troubled waters that are raging within security with ethnic and regional tensions, banditry, kidnapping and terrorism shaped in different forms. What Nigerians need is a government that is alive to its responsibilities not one that would politicize issues instead of addressing them. We are getting set to roll out the drums very soon to celebrate 20 years or more of what we call a democracy yet can the average Nigerian say they've gotten good governance nor the dividends of democracy? So dear Nigerian leader what we want is for you to provide clarity and leadership can you at least give us that? Is it within your grasp? Because we are tired of the talking. Well that's my take. I'm Marianna Cole. Thank you for watching.