Gradually, Nigeria is falling into anarchy. Primordial sentiments and cultural ill feelings leading to ethnic anger, are all over the place. Poor reli
Gradually, Nigeria is falling into anarchy. Primordial sentiments and cultural ill feelings leading to ethnic anger, are all over the place. Poor religious understanding, poor conflict resolution mechanism, culminating in revenge and indiscriminate bloodletting, arson, wanton damage of lives and property are recurring decimals in Nigeria today. Governments, religious organisations, institutions of learning have tried to proffer solutions to our problems without success. Unknown to us is an algorithm, a procedure, a formula for solving problems based on conducting a sequence or specific actions and until the algorithms for solving the African puzzle are discovered, the confusion with us could easily continue for the next five centuries. In this interview, Ladi Thompson, pastor of Livingwaters Unlimited Church, Nigeria, a security consultant to four generations of CAN presidents, an accurate prophet of the African situation, dives into the history of a section of the African society, specifically, the Yoruba in the South West region of Nigeria and locates an ethos known as Omoluabi programme, which has preserved the people long before the advent of western religion and education, long before democracy and military peace keeping efforts. Omoluabi ethos is a self-developed mechanism, imported from North Africa by the progenitors of the Yoruba people which has preserved and still continues to preserve them in spite of the vicious centrifugal forces of the modern age. Excerpts from an interview conducted by Bola Adewara.
With the situation in Nigeria, it is pertinent to ask you what you think is in the mind of God concerning this country?
The Bible says the heaven of the heavens belongs to God but the earth He has given to the sons of men. Therefore, the first thing we have to understand about the situation of Nigeria today is that, though God is omnipotent, He has given man the power of choice. Where we are today should not be a surprise and I will tell you why. If we look at Nigeria today, we are what we call a product of failure engineering from the foundation of the country. The scripture says if the foundation be removed, what can the righteous do?
Beyond the foundation, take a look at the speech made by Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa on October 7, 1961 at the general assembly of the United Nations. He looked forward and foresaw a lot of the troubles that would happen in Nigeria. He said that when the time comes, the solution will come through what he calls eternal truth. If we look at the few of the comments of other political leaders like Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1968, Awolowo spoke about centrifugal forces that were packed into the core of the nation. This, he said, would blow the country apart.
What has happened is that nobody took time to realise that we are a deliberate product. We have had a slavery experience, first was human slavery before we entered into colonialism. All these are programmes that work by breaking the human spirit, by crushing the soul and yoking the body. So, the effect lingered. In more recent time, we have struggled and struggled. Nigeria is a classical case of what we call deterministic chaos, a permanent chaos that you do not know was created deliberately. So, we now have what should have been expected.
Omoluabi training programme in Ibadan Polytechnic
There was a global resurgence of Islamism, which is Islamic terrorism in Nigeria. Beyond the Chibok and Dapchi girls’ episodes you mentioned, for so many years, people like the late Sheikh Gumi and co were already preparing the ground for what you are seeing today. If we understand what we call a Displacement Sequence, it has a template that can be recognised globally. The current phase is what they call Soft Targets, where they go after women gatherings, children gatherings.
Briefly, we spoke about these things as far back as 1998, warning that there would be suicide bombings. We toured the country, speaking to stakeholders that these would happen. The idea is to use terror as an instrument to break the spirit of the country. They go after soft targets to send a message of fear into every heart. So, this is just another phase in a process and they have made tremendous progress in Nigeria. It is a problem that can be solved and it can only be solved if we admit that we have foundation flaws and then the complication of the local phase of a global problem.
In all of this, what do you think God wants us to do now? What are the solutions to these?
I will tell you the truth: Nigerians have been very careless through the years. Somehow, we did not wake up early enough to this latest problem. Nigeria has to understand that it is not just a religious problem; it is satanic problem with a religious cover. Over 20-30 years ago, there were certain things that the leaders of the nation could have done, things the political class needed to slow down 20 years ago. But with where the Displacement Sequence has reached today in Nigeria, the only hope that Nigeria will survive will come if the light decides to shine. By the light, am talking of the ground and the pillar of truth, the Church. Only the Church right now can do anything that can really save the nation. I say that with many gravitas because, the Mosque is under attack.
What is troubling Nigeria is actually a supremacist ideology covered with an Islamic theology for the purpose it was designed and it has proven very deadly across the entire world. In the case of Nigeria, we have allowed them so much latitude and they are exploiting all the front lines in the foundation of the country. So, as we speak right now, the Church is under pressure but the Mosque is in trouble. If we want to help the nation, the first thing the Church needs to do is to realise that we are dealing with a supremacist ideology that has a theological cover and if we separate the theological cover from the supremacist ideology, then there can be hope and what does that mean? The reason why they use Islam as a cover is that the people who designed it needs to be able to have a recruiting ground for radicalisation.
I have been fortunate to advise four generations of Christian Association of Nigeria presidents. I recall a particular time when the killing first started. We started having meetings with different people as we toured the country. From about 2002 upward, for about three-and-half years, we went to the North Central, North East, North West, warning everybody. We told them that the Church is going to be the first target, but it will not be the only target. I remember advising the CAN president when the killings were getting unbearable and they had mounted an interpretation of it as a Christian versus Muslim affair.
When they sought my opinion, I said we would make a greater mistake if we allowed people to interpret this as a Christian versus Muslim thing. What we need to do is to expose it as a satanic supremacist ideology, which is what it is, and by so doing, we can cut-off a lot of where it recruits and radicalises its militants and if we are able to do that, even the Mosque gets stronger. He said what do I mean by that. I told him to watch out, that in a short while, these people would start killing Muslims too including imams who will not agree with them. I do not think it was up to two weeks when the Boko Haram began to slaughter Muslims as well. I said if you go back to Nigeria’s history, how local version of this started in 1804, what you want to remember is that the Usman Dan Fodio-led Jihad was very similar to this ideology but it’s a lesser version. This new one is a global version, much more deadly, much more efficient.
In those days in the Bornu area, Islam had been there as a religion for almost 600 -700 years before Usman Dan Fodio arrived on our shores. When he came in and the killings started, El-Kanemi wrote him a letter (it is still in the archives till today). Apart from engaging them in the war field militarily to curtail them, El-Kanemi began to engage him theologically that if this is a Jihad, why are you slaughtering Muslims?
I guess actually this gives us a good idea of where to start from in this country. It is a hydra headed shape shifter that shows itself today on the Boko Harm front because the global funding came through that. When that one is going down, it moves to the Fulani narrative. Any time from now as the Fulani threat is curtailed, it will finally shift its shape and I can tell you that it is probably going to reappear as Almajeri problem. So, it is very difficult for you to pin it down if you don’t understand it as satanic. That is why many people who are limited by their knowledge and understanding find it difficult to diagnose what it is talkless of giving us the solutions to it.
Omoluabi training programme in Ibadan Polytechnic
All these problems have been in the North, not in the South, especially South West where Muslims and Christians are cohabiting. Why is this not happening here? What have you seen in the South West that the nation could use as a solution?
The first counsel I will give starts with the fact that the Bible says there is a wisdom that is better than weapons of war. That is the wisdom that we need to embrace, but because it is a satanic problem, we have to use things like word of wisdom, word of knowledge. There is no other way to handle this thing effectively but having said that, I will now redefine it from another perspective and then bring from history some of the things that we have found out that are a solution that God may have even prepared even before the problem started.
Remember that it thrives on chaos, the use of terror. So, what has happened is that when the Nigerian Army and the other armies of the world try to interface with it, what you have is chaos meeting with structure and order. The so-called asymmetric warfare and people who have been taught in a regimented way. The conventional methodology of the soliders, the regular training of intelligent officers are not working in this particular case. What they actually need is what we call adaptive methodology. Nothing more than 17% to cure this thing. The military aspect is just about 17% the rest is the wisdom that is better than weapons of war.
Nigeria is losing ground because we have not realised that we are at war. We have been at war for more than 12 years, the casualty figure alone should be enough to tell the government that we are in a state of war. Having described it as a state of war, we have to see it as a new kind of war, where only 17% of it goes with military and kinetics. The rest has to do with wisdom, not a machete but a scalpel of a surgeon.
I will shock you by telling you that one major blow that can be struck against it is based on our research. In an address I made in 2012 in a UN Track 3 meeting in the US Congress Auditorium, I gave them a new direction, a novel idea that I know works powerfully. What I am talking about in the history of religious war in the South West region of Nigeria is called the Omoluabi Ethos. We were able to show that 1400 years plus of the history of those who carry this programme, there was no religious war. Not only that, it also defiles religious hatred and extremism. By itself, it contains certain sophisticated social culture tool that should be on a digital platform today and applied globally.
The Omoluabi programme actually started in the 7th-8th century by the agreed patriarch of the Yoruba people, Oduduwa, who came from North Africa having been driven away from his war-torn area based on the kind of religious war we have today. Therefore, when Oduduwa landed in Ile Ife, he met 13 communities there that usually rotated their kingship. The communities were not highly sophisticated but as a social engineer, he made some impact, which saw Ile Ife become the epicentre of civilisation.
In his civilising programme is a specific thing that addresses religion. It recognises that there is a realm of the spirit, which interfaces between man and the realm of the spirit. For instance, an adage says, Orisa bo legbe mi, se mi bo se ba mi. Meaning that if it is not going to be progressive, no matter how spiritual it is, we really do not want it.
The brilliance of what Oduduwa laid down was not just the identification of the contribution and the influence of the unseen, the realm of the spirit in the lives of the people; it also went further to lay guidelines between what was an acceptable worship and what would be categorised as pure Satanic work. You find out that anybody processed through that programme from a young age automatically knows the difference between the act of worship and Satanic act, Esin and Ise Esu. These are two completely different things.
So, if you, for instance, call somebody who has been processed by this programme to rise, raise his right hand and leg and let’s worship, as long as it is not prone to evil, he will agree with you. If you tell him to hit the back of his head on the wall, he will do it. But if you tell him to take a knife and cut somebody’s tongue as an act of worship, he will tell you, ‘Wait a minute, this is not an act of worship. This is a satanic act- Ise Esu.’
So how did they achieve that? They dedicated one altar to one deity, Esu Odara. Anywhere you see bloodshed, troublemaker, confusion that has not root, anything satanic, is a complete altar with its own priesthood. By so doing, they have isolated and defined the real terrible parts of the spiritual influences that we know can be highly negative. So, you find out that they back it up by making sure that the average child is processed through proverbs and things like that, to ensure that conflict resolution, conflict prevention and conflict management is built into the citizens on an individual basis, in a self-supervised way.
Professor JOID Peel was a professor emeritus of the College of Oriental Studies, London. His specialty was “YORUBA”. Till he went to his grave, he kept telling the world that there was something unique about that Yoruba culture that he has studied. There was also a German anthropologist, Leo Victor Probenus, who had earlier on surrendered to the same conclusion. How? Between 1935 and 1938, he was in Ile Ife where they discovered certain artefacts at Erumonije Compound and by the time they carbon dated them, the German ran back to Europe to announce that he had found the site of Atlantis, an ancient civilisation that was far ahead of any other human civilisation. The forms of realism depicted in the art works, the terracotta, the bronze work was so ahead of pre-renaissance Europe, that the man was persuaded these could never have come from a black civilisation. So, when he got to Germany, what they announced was that there must have been white people in Ile Ife before who had a very sophisticated civilisation and left things behind.
So, it’s interesting that this highly advanced programme had also supplied an answer to terrorism that takes care of the invisible influences that were malevolent, which is what we need to put on a digital platform today to apply to governments across the world and that will be the total end. That is why the South West has been difficult to radicalise because Muslims, Christians and whoever, have already been schooled in this programme and have within them something that resists satanic things automatically. Not only that, when you start off a conflict, he has conflict resolution, conflict prevention and conflict management tools in his blood.
Has the Omoluabi Ethos been subject to academic research? What spiritual backing have you to support this?
The word Omoluabi is actually a shorten form of Omotioluiwabi, which refers actually to God in the first office that everybody knows Him, the office of the Creator. When you meet God in His office as Creator, you go back to the book of the Genesis in the Garden of Eden when He created all things. There are certain things that we recognise from the book of Genesis. That is the first office, it does not matter your religion, it does not matter where you are from, it doesn’t matter where you are going to. In the gospel of the Kingdom, the first office of God is His office as the Creator, so you find out that apart from maybe some extremists, everybody agrees that God created them. So, in studying God in His office as Creator, there are certain things that come to light immediately, first of which is the freedom of choice which the Creator gave to man.
Cicero, the ancient philosopher who was a Roman Consul and studied in Athens, wrote a paper on this. If you read his works and look at the New Testament, you will find out that this man studied creation and began to like hold in on God. Why is Omoluabi scriptural? If you go to Psalm 19, Romans 1: 20, 21, you will find proofs that as far as God is concerned, even without ever reading a Bible, just by studying creation alone, you will come to the knowledge of the details of the Godhead. Cicero, by studying creation, said man is different from beasts primarily because of his architectural thought; the way he thinks is the way God thinks. His ability to structure things and practically within an ambit, to create things the way God had thought us by watching creation. So, he said, first of all that means that man is the caretaker of this world.
Secondly, by studying the cosmic universe, the order in the universe and everything, this Roman philosopher came up with the fact that because of this, all men are created equal and that there are two things that every man has, one is the alienable rights, and the other, undeniable duties.
Also, if you check the American civilisation and the so-called democratic republics of today, they are laid on the foundation of God in His office as the Creator. That is why the Declaration of American Independence 1776 says, ‘We hold this truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they have certain alienable rights.’
So, for the Omoluabi programme, it is a study of God in His office as Creator. The only thing is that it is a culture of discretion, a culture that weighs more on the undeniable duties that you owe to your fellow man. That is why they say in Africa that it takes a village to bring up a child whereas in the western sense, what they have is that emphasis has been much more on the personal rights of everybody to pursue happiness. If you look at the issues of today like homosexuality and things like that, the greater good of the community is what drives the African world. The personal pleasure is part of the rights that is emphasised in the western nation. So, I believe that the future will come out of rationalising these afresh, looking at God in His office as creator and then counter balancing the right and duties of all men.
The Omoluabi programme is a culture based on discretion. When you create a culture based on discretion and you fine-tune it, the culture produces people who are not far from the kingdom of God. That does not mean that they are born again, it does not mean they are spirit filled, but what it means is theirs is a culture that produces citizens whose lives point towards the kingdom of God. That is why a person trained in the Omoluabi ethos, who now becomes a Christian, when he gets to the religious setting and they tell him not to tell lies, not to kill, etc., he will say he knows that already. When you ask him why, he will say ‘my parents taught me that before coming to the Church.’
And if you say to him, ‘you have to be careful the way you talk because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’, he will tell you he knows that already because he has been taught at home that the way you use words can start wars or end wars. So, you find out that there are many things in the Kingdom of God that you already have a fore taste of them when you are trained in the Omoluabi gospel. I use the word gospel (good news) because the Omoluabi gospel means that there is a good news in Africa, that God beforehand, when men didn’t know that problems like these would come, put down the solution that can be applied by anybody- Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, everybody, to level the religious playing field and define extremism completely. That is what the Omoluabi programme stands for. This can be put in a digital platform and we have to remember that its author was a North African.
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