By Chukwudi Nweje
Matthew Ashimolowo, clergyman and real estate mogul, is the senior pastor of Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC), founded in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1992. He shared his thoughts on many issues, including the state of the nation and some prophesies made by clergymen ahead of the 2023 general election.
You plan to hold what could be one of the biggest crusades, a compassion crusade, in Ikorodu, Lagos State; what is it about?
About eight years ago, I spoke in Ghana and after speaking they took me to the Green Room where they entertain guest speakers. They always video their crusade, and I noticed that whenever they go out on crusade, they shared relief materials on a large scale. I had never seen anything like that in all the 49 years I’d been in ministry. I looked at it and thought it was a good way of touching lives. If we keep waiting on the government, we will wait until ‘kingdom come’. I cannot recall how long I have heard government in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, tell people to tighten their belt, austerity.
I’ve never heard any government say we should relax our belt; the last time I heard that was probably in Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s era when the government deliberately announced oil boom and said we had so much money that we don’t know what to do with it. Since that government, I have not heard anyone say that. I cannot recall the government ever telling us to loosen our belts.
I began to go to these crusades; I followed them to the villages of Ghana. I followed them to understand what they were doing, because I felt that God wanted me to do the same in Nigeria.
What informed your decision to hold the ‘Compassion Crusade’ in Ikorodu?
I prayed for direction as to which city to hold the crusade for a long time. One day, I was standing on the balcony of the little house I have in Lekki, facing the lagoon. I was standing on the balcony of my house looking at the lagoon when suddenly God spoke to me, that what you are trying to look for, is it Sokoto, is it Akure, is it Enugu, is it Aba? Your starting place is next door. And I’m thinking next door, where?
God said, look to your right. I looked, and there was Ikorodu. It struck me that was where I went to school; my seminary was at Four Square Bible School, Ikorodu, and from my house, you will be in Ikorodu in 12 minutes using a boat. I grabbed my iPad, googled for the largest ground in Ikorodu, and it turned out to be Igbogbo Stadium.
Another reason that informed the choice of Ikorodu was that, in 1974, when I went to Bible College, there were 84,000 people there; today, there are over 1.1 million people in Ikorodu with 151 villages.
What is the nature of the crusade?
The Compassion Crusade would be fivefold. The first is surgery; we would carry out surgery at our expense at Ikorodu General Hospital on the first day. We will bring in doctors, nurses and our own equipment. There would be 200 to 300 surgeries. The government cannot shut down Ikorodu General Hospital for us but they created a facility where we can put our own equipment. The surgery would be such that the patients can go home the same day. In the future, when we hold the crusade, we can come with cases where the patients could be referred to specialised hospitals.
Phase one of what we want to do is to bring in compassion through surgery; phase two is the evening crusade. We believe God sent us to lead people to know Christ. The phase three is giving relief to people; we would be distributing 50,000 packets of rice, 50,000 packets of beans, and 10,000 bottles of oil, clothing, and many other relief items. In stage four Igbogbo Stadium would become a hospital; there would be 100 doctors, 100 pharmacists, 50 pharmacy technicians and other medical personnel on ground to attend to the people. We have also put aside about N70 million to share to the crowd that will come out. In all, the total relief we would give out will cost between N300 million to N500 million. The crusade is to touch Nigerians and bless people.
What is the selection process of the intended beneficiaries, and what is the role of the Lagos State government?
There would be announcements in churches and other outlets where doctors will check people and see who is qualified.
The Lagos State government also has their committees that will work with us; the government is not helping us, they are there because the people are involved. We are renting buses from LAGBUS that will cost us N24 million to carry people from the villages to the crusade ground. The only thing the government may have done is that they focused on finishing the Igbogbo Stadium out of the 10 stadia. They are building and tarred the road to the stadium.
Could you clarify the rumour that made the rounds that you are giving up ministry for real estate, and handing over to your son, has the church become a family business? Again, looking at what you are doing, is it because of the failure of the government?
The report that I left the ministry is one of those painful things you get from baby journalists who do not know how they hurt people by waking up and using a headline they think could attract readers.
I was called to ministry when I was 21 and went to Bible school at 22. Afterwards, I started preaching when I was 24; I have not done any other thing. I do more ministry now than when I was younger.
For a long time, I kept apologising for doing business by the side, until God told me I could do business as long as the ministry does not suffer. I have no apologies God gave me a business.
I did not hand over the church to my son; I am still the president of KICC. My son, Tobi, read information systems up to master’s level and worked in the banking sector in Nigeria. I wanted him to take charge of the real estate business but he called me one day that he was coming back to England that God called him into ministry; he went to Bible school himself. I do not know what led Pastor Taiwo Odukoya’s son or any other person into ministry. I only know that when my son said he was coming into the ministry, I told him that I was only the president, not the CEO, that he must go through the process of interview.
You asked whether what I am doing is because of the failure of government. The jury is still yet to decide on that. Is it a response to the failure of government? No, the ministry in Ghana opened me to a scripture, Acts 10:38, that says that Jesus Christ of Nazareth went about healing the sick and doing good. We love to read about the feeding of the 5,000. Did the preacher have to feed the crowd? No. Jesus did it because it was part of what he considered the duty of the church. Personally, I feel we have failed, the church has failed; I feel that we missed this compassion part. I think the compassion part of the church in Nigeria is missing.
I think touching the needy is sacrosanct to the gospel, but, somehow, we missed it, and I think the reason we missed it is in the fear that we do not go too far into just relief. We are not replacing the government; we are just doing what the Bible taught us to do.
People say the church was quiet during the election campaigns; what is your take on that?
Whatever I say, I have the right to speak my mind, because I am 71 going 72. I was eight when Nigeria got its independence. I was born in Zaria; I grew up in Zaria, Kaduna, and Kano.
I know some church people will almost eat me alive but I will say the church failed. The church got it wrong by screaming, ‘We do not want Muslim-Muslim ticket in a nation where you know that religion is sacrosanct to political decision.’
You do not start preparing one week to the election; you start four years, six years, by creating your own pressure group, and teaching your people; we must make our demand now. There is no political pressure group in Nigeria that is Christian that I know; America has it.
Suddenly, some bishops rose to say we do not want Muslim-Muslim ticket, we want Christian-Muslim. The first question I will ask is, who among the northern Christians is it that has enough political strength to win an election? We never strengthened the Christians from the North. When Christians in the North were being killed, the church in the South was silent. A Christian pastor, and I mean a speaking-in-tongues pastor, sponsored the first term election of the governor in the North in whose state the most Christians were killed.
We do not vote capacity in Africa, we vote our own umunna, our own akataka, our own omowani. I know this is controversial, but I will say it, one of the finest minds that arose in this current politics was Peter Obi but until he has a strategy for changing the North from voting religion, he will keep trying.
I was born in the North, I grew in the North, it was when the easterners were killed, my dad was a soldier, I saw it, and you just needed to be from the East to be killed, not because you did anything.
Nigeria is a very funny place. We do not like to tell ourselves the truth; we vote religion.
Take out the map of Nigeria, you will notice 12 states, up, up north, that could not have voted for him because they were engrossed in voting because of religion.
Three things, region, religion, resource control, determine elections in Nigeria because whoever has the resource controls everything.
There were prophecies during the election, people saying the Lord told them this or that, what do you think?
A good number of people heard from the Lord but decided they should not speak. I think some of what happened with the last election was, one, some people played to the gallery. They wanted the world to see that they were speaking against one group. Some others wanted the world to see that they were speaking in favour of another group, and sometimes they said the Lord said, when it was their personal view and perception.
Second, the Bible says we see as through a dark glass.
The Greek word for dark glass there is kalopsis. Revelation is apocalypse. Kalopsis is something that is covered. Revelation is apocalypse, removing the cover to expose what is hidden. Therefore, when the Bible says we see us through a dark glass, it says we see us through a covered thing.
Sometimes, what we are seeing is not totally as we saw it.
The problem with many people when they receive a prophetic word, and I have no doubt of what they receive, is that they are like four men describing an elephant.
Many of them truly received but instead of stopping at this is the little I saw, they did not stop.
I will tell you a revelation I once had, and I did not ever share in public except with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. When Obasanjo was to choose his successor, I did not pray an unusual prayer for Nigeria.
I did not fast, but I went to bed. I was in London, and I had the revelation. I saw Obasanjo seated, all PDP governors around him, and telling him to endorse Atiku and he said no. In the corner, hoping that he would endorse him rather than Atiku was Babangida.
I now saw an emerging young man’s face. I think he was Yar’Adua. I called President Obasanjo and said, I do not know if you are praying about the next President but this is the revelation I saw. He said, thank you very much, for what you saw. He said, I am in a place of prayer, and I am hoping that I will make the right decision.
Some preachers would have carried that revelation to the television stations to convince the world that they see revelations. I never shared it.
So, one, some prophetic revelations are not for public consumption. Two, some prophetic revelations are not full, so you see only a little, stop at what you saw. Three, some prophetic revelations, when you know it is not clear and you don’t have the clarity, keep praying and use what you saw to pray for a change of season.
Some of us kept quiet, firstly, because of that. The second reason I kept quiet was that, honestly, I knew that the church was leaning very strongly in one direction and I knew that the election might not go in that way. I did not want to be part of any consequence of saying, ah, if you do not go this way, we must burn Nigeria down.
What are your thoughts on the state of the nation under President Bola Tinubu?
I will try my best to answer the ones that I can. One of the things you experience when you receive parcels from DHL, if it was badly handled, they will put a label that says, damaged on delivery. I think Nigeria was damaged on delivery into the current administration, and the challenge of governance, particularly in a place like Africa, is that you wanted to have all the control before you probably spoke out your mind.
That is the way I see the current administration. Again, you see, even though I have lived in England 39 years, I still know some Yoruba proverbs. One of them says, until you have the sword in your hand, you should not be asking for the name of who killed your dad.
I think the current government is new, young. It has not given us a full audit of the previous. I personally think the previous administration spent the money of seven generations to come. I think the previous administration prepared the level of damage that I have never seen. I think the previous administration has created a dichotomous nation, a two-nation situation. We deceive ourselves.
Not knowing he will be President one day, I made my observation, to President Tinubu.
I do not know why I felt I should share it with Tinubu. I landed at Murtala Muhammed International Airport one day and observed the Nigeria Air Force Base. I observed that there was only one C-130 aircraft.
The C-130 aircraft is a molue, so it meant that the whole of the South, particularly Lagos, has only one aircraft protecting it. Sixty per cent of business done in Nigeria is done in Lagos; 65 per cent of VAT paid in the whole of Nigeria is paid in Lagos. Nigeria has 21 fighter jets. They are all in four Air Force bases in the North.
We all hide our head in the sand because we do not like addressing certain things.
I once asked a four star General to do a paper for me on what he sees as military balance or imbalance of Nigeria. The paper showed that there are nine training places in Nigeria, eight are in the North, and only one is in the South, the Navy, because this is where water is.
Now we even have Navy in Kano.
All I can just say is that the current administration inherited a parcel that was damaged on arrival. It was fair of Tinubu to tell us that things will get very difficult before getting better.
If you ask my opinion, I think this administration is going to do well later. The reason I think so is because I see the indices of doing well, which is, one, having round pegs in round holes.
You have an engineer in charge of the ministry of works, not some person who does not even know anything about civil engineering.
You have crack persons in various key places that will cause the change in the nation. That is the first indication that there is going to be a change.
I do not know much about economics but, in my opinion, part of what should bring a change to the nation should be to stop all these over-empowering of only two, three people and making noise about them.
The highest one person of all these big billionaires can hire is 200,000 people.
Imagine if you take the kind of billions of dollars you have empowered them with and ensure that every small enterprise has access to funding.
In Nigeria, we will emphasize two, three people who have the money and we do not realize how many they employ.
They inherited something that was damaged on arrival. The previous system was one-sided, low-sided. We were very quiet. We were not willing to speak. However, if we do not give this an opportunity and all we do is use the problem created by the previous to judge them, we might just put them in a corner where even any good thing they do, they look wrong.
When you look at all that is happening in Nigeria today, people are leaving the country in droves, do you see hope?
I will speak as a merchant of hope.
I say Nigeria is hopeful. The reason I say Nigeria is hopeful is because I travelled to some other African nations and when I came back, I felt like kissing the ground of Nigeria and I am glad to be a Nigerian. I am glad to be a Nigerian because we are a people who are very effervescent in our dreams and visions and our desires to make it and to achieve.
We are not laid-back people. Yeah, the government may have not backed us, as they should. Nigerians are great people.
Maybe the challenge we have is that we have not seen the kind of system that will help us.
I personally think, going forward, number one, young people who read this paper should get into politics.
The last election, I think was the beginning of the crack of the old brigade. In my opinion, that was a crack. I would say young people should get involved in politics. There is also a need to review the Constitution of Nigeria, which over-empowers certain people. They have almost all control of all funds. We need to visit that. We need to return power to the regions, in my opinion, we should return policing to the region, return power to the regions, return capacity to make decisions to the region, reduce central power; in my opinion, that would make the power come closer to the people.
Many people who are leaving Nigeria leave because they have a picture of El Dorado that Europe is better. Some of them get there and are in trouble. I am a pastor in London, and I cannot count how many we have had to rescue. They sold everything here, and after some time, they will not be able to cope.
To rent one room for a month is N1 million, £1,000 pounds. Since 1989, Margaret Thatcher, the laws have been changed, the system has been changed; everything has been tightened.
I personally think that this rush to Britain, Australia, and Canada is reverse slavery. The first slavery, they came to carry people against their wish. The new slavery, you buy the ticket to go there and when you get there, all you can do if you do not know the system is you get your house to live in.
The only place I know you can really thrive, as a Nigerian is Africa; it is the only place where you can do well. For every Nigerian whom you hear is breaking through in Europe, there are 10,000 who are still doing some odd job.
So sometimes, there are two sides of it.
You know, create a system where somebody has known how to run a system. He knows how to steal the bag. If he does not steal the bag, he knows how to walk his way; he knows that in politics, what money cannot do, more money will do.
There are those who have gone out and they’ve made a difference. If you remove the Nigerian doctors and nurses from states in the United States of America, the medical system will collapse. If you remove the Nigerian doctors from the medical system in the United Kingdom, the system will collapse.
So, one, we need to create the enabling environment here for our people to be able to come back. Two, we need to be able to empower small enterprises. Like I said, instead of empowering three big, two big names, and our musicians are singing about them and they control the system and they are only hiring 100,000.
Imagine if every small enterprise were empowered. And each enterprise that is empowered is hiring four, four, four, four, four, four persons.
We will have millions. We need to change our system. Finally, our government needs to look at five E’s. Electricity, economy, education, the engineering part of our society, and then the environment.
How would you advise president Tinubu on measures to take to address the challenges facing Nigeria?
Number one, it is very clear and obvious that there is a disequilibrium in Nigeria and you cannot blame the person who sees resources leaving his area and going to somewhere else while his place is underdeveloped.
How can the South provide all these resources and remain without infrastructure while you build railway to Niger republic? It does not make sense. Most of the economy of Nigeria is in the southern part of Nigeria.
The people feel negleted, they feel abandoned, and they feel that they are behind.
I think in my opinion, if I were president, or if I was to advise the president, my counsel would be, number one, a high-powered group of people to not just go down and say they are quelling people who have agitations.
The first thing to do is empower people by creating industries and make them guardians of their own economy. You do not destroy what is your own land.