The Acting President, who
himself is a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, said church
leaders must begin to talk more on honesty, unlike the current situation that
more emphasis was placed on giving.
He said it was only when
church leaders resolved to ostracise and expose corrupt members of their
congregation that the problem could be solved.
Osinbajo spoke at a special
service organised to mark this year’s Father’s Day at the Aso Villa Chapel
located inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
“Every time that we come to
church, we are told about giving. But we
need to talk more about honesty. We need
to talk far more about honesty. In the
same way we talk about giving, we need to talk more about honesty,” he
declared.
Osinbajo said church
leaders must be ready to confront their members who were living above their
means.
He said once the church
took its rightful place and decided to expose treasury looters, the nation’s
problems would be solved.
Osinbajo said, “If the
church says you are not allowed to steal and we will ostracise you in our midst
if you did — if what a man has does not measure up to what he earns; if we
found that a man has more money than he should have, if a man is earning a salary
of a civil servant or a public servant and he has houses everywhere, we have to
hold him to account.
“He must be held to account
in the church. He must be told first in
the church that ‘we will not allow you here.’
“If the church says ‘we
will not accept you here’ or that ‘we will expose you if you are stealing the
resources of the country or stealing the resources of a private company or
other establishment where you work,’ then we would not have the type of problem
that we have in this country. If only
the church does so; just the church.”
He said it was the role of
the church to build the nation, adding that the responsibility was assigned to
the church “by virtue of God’s proclamation that the church is the light of the
world and the salt of the earth.”
Although he admitted that
the role was a difficult one, Osinbajo said the church was not meant to teach
the world how to be like the world but to teach the world how to be like Jesus
Christ.
Aligning himself with the
position of the Prelate, Methodist Church of Nigeria, Dr. Samuel Uche, who
delivered the sermon, the Acting President said Nigeria’s problem could not be
attributed to the absence of prosperity.
He said the nation had
enough for its citizens’ needs but not enough for their greed.
“The greed of many is what
has landed this country where it is today.
“It is the greed of so
many; many who have been placed in position of authority. It is their greed that has landed us where we
are, where it is difficult to do the sort of things His Eminence (Uche) saw in
Washington and so many other places.
“You cannot steal half of
the resources of the country and expect to build the sort of things you see in
other places.
“Many would say the reason
why they steal is because they want to have an arsenal for future political
exploits. It is a lie. It is greed. In any case, even if you want to do that, you
have no right to do it,” he said.
On Father’s Day
celebration, Osinbajo identified building nations and generations as the roles
of fathers.
He cited the biblical
Abraham as the example God set for fathers.
He said God wanted a father
who would teach his children the way of righteousness and justice and how to
fear Him (God).
He later told reporters
that Christian fathers had not done the best of what God required from them.
He added, “The Scripture
says that we must love our wives as ourselves and also goes on to say that
anyone who does not love his wife certainly does not love himself.
“Anyone who indulges in any
form of domestic violence obviously needs some teaching and some discipline. I
think it is a shame. Although in some cases you find that it is a disorder of
some kind or the other. And I think
people need to be counselled. In some
cases people need to be treated.
“It is really a sort of
thing that should never be tolerated, beating anybody at all is wrong, let
alone beating one’s wife who is supposed to be one and the same person.”
Earlier, in his sermon
titled, “Fathers to the Rescue of Our Beloved Nation,” Uche had attributed many
of the problems besetting the nation to failure of many fathers.
He regretted that many
fathers could not give their children good education, hence, they turned out to
be criminals in the country.
He also condemned the
elders in the society who were backing the young people in their agitation for
Nigeria’s break-up.
Speaking with journalists
after the service, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara,
warned against the collapse of family system in the country while urging the
government to invest more in family.
The Corps Marshal of the
Federal Road Safety Corps, Boboye Oyeyemi, read the service’s first Bible
reading from Ephesians 5: 22-33; while Dogara read the second lesson from
Ephesians 6: 1-4.
Gifts were presented to
President Muhammadu Buhari; Osinbajo; the Senate President, Bukola Saraki;
Dogara; and the Chief Justice of the Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen.
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