July 2019 Edition

governor
the
July 2019
done wrong', or 'king you have misbehaved'
so a nation needs that.
The church also needs to teach people what
good governance, leadership, ethics,
morality, right from wrong, holiness, and
righteousness are: so that the church is the
oven that bakes the quality of people that
we need in governance and in the society,
and the church needs to pray for our leaders
and our nation, needs to ward off the
attacks of the enemy over the church, so the
church needs to be very involved in every
aspect of politics and governance.
They don't need to be political but they
need to be involved in politics in the choice
of our leaders, in what the leaders do and so
on, and if there are members of the church
that wants to get into politics, even if the
pastor wants to get into politics after he has
done his preaching, by all means, he is a
Nigerian citizen and is entitled to it. We
must not shank our responsibilities, and
then the church needs to support
governance, provision of schools, hospitals,
welfare, looking after the poor and the sick,
etc. that's the church's responsibilities. It
must come out of the church and be part of
society. Government can't do everything,
most of the big educational institutions,
hospitals, technical institutions were churchbased
like CMS, St Patrick, St Gregory, Mary
Slessor, etc. So, we need the church, and the
church must keep on doing what it has to
do, and be part of governance, choosing
leaders, training leaders, speaking through
to power and helping the society become
what it's supposed to be.
Sir, as a friend of Prince Dapo Abiodun who
is the Governor of Ogun state, can you
share a few words about him and your
reaction to his emergence as the
governorship candidate, his victory at the
elections, and perhaps expectations over
the next 4 years?
I thank God for Dapo's life; we've been
friends for many years, almost 30 years. We
met in the late eighties or early nineties and
he is a very resilient man. He is a man who
has started from virtually nothing and
worked his way up to building a very great
company in the oil and gas business and
some other things that he is doing.
So that speaks for his resilience, his
determination, his forward-looking, and
he's always being interested in governance
and leadership. He's tried for the Senate, a
couple of times, he even tried it for
gubernatorial at a certain time, but he was
dogged enough to be persistent. To be
honest, this time around I wasn't so sure he
was going to contest again especially having
lost his son a couple of years ago with the
pain and grief. But the ability to come out
and try again, I really salute him. But I would
like him to know that definitely, God helped
him. God must favour him and definitely,
God has given him a huge responsibility and
he must live up to that responsibility and