INSECURITY: Fashola Blames Pastors Who Preach ‘Sudden Wealth, Miracles’

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has accused clerics that preach ‘sudden wealth and miracles’ of contributing to the worsening security situation of Nigeria.

Fashola, during a TV interview monitored by THE WHISTLER on Sunday, said the country’s value system has progressively become worse because religious institutions and parents have left the bulk of the job to the Federal and State Governments.

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According to him, the situation may never improve until all hands are put on deck to address it.

“I maintain very, very seriously that until we deal with our value system until we go back through the homes, the religious institutions, reshape values from preaching miracles, sudden wealth….because some of these things are driven by that, they are driven by drugs, were driven by parents (me inclusive) not as involved in the development of our children,” Fashola told Channels TV’s Seun Okinbaloye when he was asked about the state of insecurity under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.

“It is going to take more than the federal government…it is going to take a whole nation to come back and say this is where we went wrong and I think that conversation is going to be a very extensive one,” the former two-time Lagos State governor said.

Fashola also blamed past administrations’ failure to adequately fund and equip the country’s security agencies for the degeneration of the security challenges.

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THE WHISTLER recalls that before President Buhari took power in 2015 and appointed him minister, Fashola had blamed former President Goodluck Jonathan for a robbery incident at the branch of FCMB on Admiralty Way in the Lekki.

Babatunde-Fashola
Babatunde Raji Fashola

The then Lagos governor said the deployment of “all our security personnel, all our security vehicles” to protect “one man (Jonathan)” during the then president’s visit to the state made it impossible for the police to prevent the robbery. Jonathan and Buhari were in the state for different functions at the time of the robbery.

But speaking on the country’s worsening insecurity under Buhari’s administration on Sunday (today), Fashola said: “I sympathize very deeply and sincerely with everybody who has been a victim of crime. I have also been a victim of crime in my previous life and it was not a nice experience. And I hope that somehow this government comes through for them and brings them relief

“But having said that, security is not something I would sit down and politicize. It is like oxygen. Now the odds against the government every time is that government has to be right all the time (and) the criminals have to be right only once.

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“And that is why I said earlier that the security conversations require some very, very detailed rigor. If we are not looking at values, we are not looking at how crime proceeds are dealt with, how we can intercept that to make it unprofitable, if people believe for example that you can kidnap a human being and take body parts and you can make money from human heads and all of those funny things.

“Look, in this country, don’t forget that sometimes it takes a long time for a problem to come to full bloom, but the seeds for some of the problems were sown many years ago. Remember that in 2001 or 2002, Nigerian policemen went on strike. Maybe you don’t recall, the nation went without policemen for a week or two. That was a warning. You will see that is the state governments that are resourcing and funding policemen. It didn’t start yesterday and that was also a problem.

“So, all of the basic law enforcement civilian capacity has not been met by the previous federal government and I am not saying that we have also met them. They have all accrued at a time now.”

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