By Gift Samuel, The Sight News
Abuja-As Nigeria marks its 57th Independence Anniversary today, the Federal government has been called upon to deal precisely with hate actions so as to control hate speeches.
Making this call on Sunday in Abuja, the General Overseer, All Christian Fellowship(ACF), Rev.(Dr.) William Okoye in his sermon, stated that if Nigeria must move forward, the country must have sincere, honest and exemplary leaders.
Speaking on the topic: “The Tragic Consequence of Missed Opportunities”, he said that though God planned for Nigeria to be one of the leading nations, the country has remained crippled and a disappointment to the world, stressing that the number one priority in Nigeria now is fairness, justice and equity for unity and love to exist.
On the clamour for restructuring, he emphatically stated that restructuring is an idea whose time has come and if the Nation fails at this because of personal interests and hypocrisy to wholeheartedly embrace restructuring, Nigeria will run into serious problems.
According to him; “At this stage in our National life, there is no better way to put our Nation on the part of rapid progress and create room for the promotion of justice, fairness and equity than restructuring. Many who are opposed to restructuring or pretend not to understand what it means, do so because of their own selfish interests”.
While commending the federal government in the relative success recorded so far in her fight against corruption, he advised the government to be holistic in the fight, adding that corruption is more than the recovery of looted funds.
He said; “We cannot say we are fighting corruption when we are encouraging all manner of discrimination, that is the heart of corruption. You cannot be telling people to be united, to be peaceful when you are on the other hand creating problem yourself. Our leaders are creating problems on one hand and they want us to be singing all kinds of songs for Nigeria to be united, there is no way!
“Nigeria should create an environment where people can maximize their lives and rise to become everything that they desire to be. The present system we have is choking people up, they are suffocating, we need to open up the nation so that people can rise to their fullest potentials” he noted.
He also expressed pain over the number of lives that have been lost in the hands of herdsmen as he gave his support to the calls for ranches to be created to properly cater for the animals and give farmers the liberty to do their work.
Rev. Okoye further urged Nigerians to endeavor not to create avoidable problems for themselves by making peaceful change impossible, but to make the most of the available opportunities from God to move the nation forward.
Nigeria which gained its independence from Great Britain on October 1, 1960, is today celebrating 57 years of Freedom.
