What is your reaction on the same sex marriage which President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law prescribing jail terms for people practicing it?
I will say congratulations to Nigerians and all the supporters of natural sense in human social philosophical and psychological issues. Great courage! It has added another feather to the leadership position of Nigeria in Africa. It has proven that we can be a reference point. Mr. President has laid a precedent for the Africa and the world to follow. We have made bold statement concerning the issue.
The European Unions and other international bodies are threatening to stop giving aids to Nigeria. Do you think that will in anyway have any negative effect on Nigeria?
Who cares about what they do or say about us? Before the international bodies exist, we were living. Sometimes, you find out that the under-development of Africa cannot be exonerated from them. Some of their business men can also be said to have introduced corruption into our system. It is quite ridiculous and it is all over the place and let it be told all over the world that it is not until they give us money before we can survive. We have been surviving before they came, a lot of people have been surviving, our great grand fathers have been surviving without any aids from anywhere, they uphold the dignity of themselves very high above money. There are some people who just believe the character above corruption whether social corruption, sexual corruption and what have you. They believe righteousness above any other things. And this is the issue to tell Africans, the negative perception of some people. There are many people with positive perception about Africa but there are some people that feel negative and derogative perception about Africa. A lot of us survive with any money from anybody but we have the good sense whether we go to school or not. Now, we (Ethics & Values office) need to move on, we are setting up community centres and farms and raising cooperatives all over the country. If I have my way, I will say everybody should belong to a cooperative society so that we can be self-reliance according to the constitution. This is the concept of our constitution, if only we are ready to abide by it. We African women have not given birth to children who will remain economic slaves or philosophical or sexual slaves, to extreme liberality to social and sexual life. It is not good. The globalization of commercializing woman nudity as well as pornography is abominable to us and it is fast encroaching our culture and values in the continent. And if we are to go by the tenets of the cultural diplomacy, it is high time that civilization is checkmated. Civilization makes person to respect one another; civilization means positive influence, it does not mean negative or derogative influence of human values or culture. The positive culture that we want to uphold and promote from Africa to the rest of the world and this is the same thing we are saying to our people in diaspora, that they must uphold the good, positive values, the dos and the don'ts of their home. They must show their good home training wherever they are, not only in Nigeria but in Africa and the rest of the world. They must uphold the culture of our sexual discipline and it is the same to everybody and that is why God created Adam and Eve. He knows Adam needed a helpmate hence He didn't create Adam and Adam but Adam and a woman, Eve and that is the order of God. And God says it is an abomination, any nation that chooses to go against it is calling for the wrath of God, as He did in Sodom and Gomorrah. So we have no apology to those who are opposed to the passage of the law against same sex marriage because they have libelous mind against the nature of God. Same sex is not the order of nature, it is the so-called civilization that is creating uncontrollable liberty by human beings. Human beings cannot raise a standard for the Almighty God. The standard of God remains absolute. We still have the fear of God in this part of the world and they should allow us to live according to the sanity of our dignified values.
How do you intend to take this message to the grassroot especially the youth?
That is what we are taking about my brother. We are packaging some programmes for them; we already have them prepared. We are also going to get to those in the primary and secondary schools. It is going to be included in our national curriculum on civic and class moral and also from the family to the primary and all the way to the secondary schools where the children are still under our purview and ethics after that, we are going to have sporadic campaigns. Also in the tertiary institutions, we will talk about philosophy which deals with their working and marriage ethics as well as mentorship. We are doing this in conjunction with the ministries of Culture & Tourism and Education. We will have the ICPC and the director of Education as chairman of the committee. We are going to have a roundtable discussion with the traditional rulers and religious leaders as well. We have also told the people in diaspora also, now we have set up community standard there to relate the message to them and their young ones.
What is the relationship between your office and the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy, ICD?
Well, we share the same philosophy not as individuals but as countries. I believe human beings should be able to respect the differences and accept their differences and observe the differences. The ICD believe that Nigeria can be a hub of cultural diplomacy and that was why they included me in the advisory board. They also want me to lead a delegation to Addis Ababa from Nigeria; that also means that Nigeria is serious about the issue. In May, they are having Nigerian roundtable and we may have the ECOWAS roundtable and before March, we are coming up with African chapter.
Let's look a little about politics. How do you politicians decamping to other parties?
Generally, I think it calls for a little bit of impatience, cynicism if one is resolute. It is unfortunate that anybody can move from one political party to another within 24 hours without anybody blinking his eyes. This is parts of the unethical things going on which is indiscipline we are talking about. You cannot say you belong to an ideology and you jump out of that ideology. You raise your voice and in-house, it will be resolved. I think it out of philosophical ignorance that is why they jump up and down and that is why people say we, politicians don't have ideology; we do have ideology. The power to the people is the greatest ideology you can think of in life - Power of maturity, power of character, power of wisdom, power of self-reliance. The PDP founding fathers sat down and analyse what they mean by power, it is electricity. The power to be the best of human beings which is wisdom; the power of conflict resolution, recognition, human creature, individual, ethic differences and yet by wisdom, you respect them all. It will take a little bit of exchanges but the people that have power of wisdom don't use force, not human killing that will solve the problem. So therefore those who are decamping, I think have gone too early because it is a separation of the chaff from the wheat, so let it be but one question I want to ask majority of those decamping is – where have they been getting money to run their states? What have they done with the money they get from the federal government? How many industries have they built? How much have they been able to generate from the resources that abound around them?
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