I am a prophet in my own right. And don’t ask me who anointed me as one. My prophetic gifts began to manifest in my early teens. A few years to my teenage-hood, I had finished reading all the passages in the Holy Bible that have story lines. I loved reading as a kid. And the Bible was readily available. In my time as a kid, there were no children’s story books.
There was only one Bible in the house while growing up in Kumasi, Ghana. And my father was always busy with it. He had some Muslim friends and neighbours with whom he engaged in regular sessions, comparing the Old Testament accounts with the Quran that bear so many similarities. The polemics would become so intense to the point that if you passed them by with a bowl of fuel, it would catch fire!
There used to be this competition for the Bible between my dad and I. One day, he came back home earlier than usual. He rummaged the entire parlour for the Bible to no avail. I had disappeared to my usual spot to entertain myself. Then, I emerged from nowhere with the Bible tucked under my armpit. His friends had been waiting for him. He was livid with anger and warned me to stop being a Bible thief! He also wondered what as a kid I was doing with a literature like the Holy Bible.
Panic was my response but I never stopped the habit because I could not. The temptation to steal his Bible was very strong. So, instead of sneaking away with the Bible, I decided to be reading it at home. One day, I was so engrossed in the pathetic story of Samson and Delilah that I never knew when my dad stepped into the room and caught me with the Bible. He stood still for a while. When he noticed that I did not sense his presence in the parlour, he cleared his throat. I was startled, almost dropping the Bible. After that encounter, he let me be.
A few years later, obviously influenced by the exploits of the prophets in the Bible, I found myself foretelling what the day had in store. One morning, I told my mum that on our way to the farm, we would encounter a fallen tree across the road and that a snake would cross our path a little distance away. And both predictions came to pass! At a point, I was prophesying for fun. I could decree that it would rain at a particular time of the day even during dry season. And rain must fall!
One early morning, I sauntered past a cousin who was sharpening some cutlasses belonging to him and his siblings. I stopped by and told him I could identify his cutlass amidst the bunch. He laughed. I bent down, picked one, handed it over to him and went off. When I looked back, his lower jaw was literally on the floor in utter surprise.
My prophetic prowess was also noticed by my fellow kid hunters. One day, we had a frustrating hunting expedition. As the day was running out and we were still battling to smoke a bush rat out of its hideout, my boys reasoned together and said that since I could command the rain to fall, l should order the sun to stand still until we were able to hunt down the bush rat. We had laboured all day without success. I told them there would be no problem but that we should continue digging. Their request was scriptural because Joshua commanded the sun to stagnate while the Israelites were at war with the Amorites en route to the Promised Land. However, we recorded a success before the sun went down.
There was a day I wanted to prophesy but my mum shut me up. She had been feeling uncomfortable after my prophecies about the fallen tree and snake on our way to the farm. She was so scared l might prophesy something ‘doomful’. The prediction mongering played out while vacationing in a community called Inisa in the present-day Osun state.
Many years later, away from the prying eyes of my mum, l had opportunity to prophesy when I ran a weekly sports column in The Nigeria Standard Newspaper of Jos. For about eight years that I ran the column entitled ‘Saturday Commentary’, my predictions of outcomes of sporting events nationally and internationally between the 70s and early 80s all came to pass. The first prediction that announced my arrival was in 1974 when Muhammad Ali took on George Foreman in the epic fight that took place in Zaire. I foretold that Ali would floor the undefeated reigning champion in round seven. And it came to pass! That prediction was captured in the compilation of the selected write-ups which was published and released into the market when Nigeria hosted the All-Africa Games in 2003.
One day, a regular disciple of the column wrote to advise me to open a church in Jos and that I would make cool bucks than relying on my salary. He, however, pleaded that l should appoint him as the treasurer of the church as a reward for selling the idea to me! Looking back now, I should have listened to him.
You might have been wondering all along what the prophetic stuff has got to do with the topic of this piece. A lot! About a decade ago when Sam Nda Isaiah invited me to join the editorial board of his newspapers, the LEADERSHIP, an issue that always agitated my mind was the rising statistics of joblessness and its implications on the socio-economic lives of Nigerians. The chairman of the board, Ogbuefi Aniebo Nwamu, shared the same apprehension with me. And he never got bored anytime I came up with topics in that regard. Oftentimes, I would round off with a warning like this: “By paying a lip-service to the vexed issue of joblessness, government at all levels is steadily breeding urban guerrillas. At the fullness of time, they would creep in on all of us… and no one would be safe….” The urban guerrillas now tormenting us have manifested as kidnappers, armed bandits, terrorists and allied criminals. What could have been more prophetic than that?
Today, no one can pound his/her chest like a gorilla while leaving home and declare with absolute confidence that he/she will be back. No one! Not even top security personnel who now avoid the notorious Abuja-Kaduna highways for fear of being abducted by fearless criminals.
The cure-all for criminalities of all hues is to massively create jobs or create conducive environment for job creation through sound economic policies, revamp ailing industries and tackle endemic corruption and poverty. A nation that relegates critical infrastructure like power to the backstage leading to the collapse of the manufacturing sector is providing a breeding ground for armed criminals.
I have also canvassed for the establishment of state and local government police to achieve two objectives: provide more security and jobs. Imagine the huge numbers of the present-day urban tormentors that would be sucked out of crime if each of the 36 state governments, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), recruits at least 50,000 young men and women into its police formation, while each of the 774 local government rakes in 10,000, depending on its size. The prophetic crusade has been on for more than seven years and no government is either listening or serious about it. Those who attack the idea, arguing that Nigeria is not ripe for state police operation because the state governors and local government chairmen would weaponise them against their political opponents, are being myopic and selfish.
In November 2017, security details of Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state and the former minister of Transportation, Chief Rotimi Amaechi, flexed their muscles at the popular Trans-Amadi Industrial Layout, Nkpogu, Port Harcourt. The 30-minute drama occurred when Amaechi’s convoy driving from the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa, was intercepted by the convoy of Governor Wike.
The two camps forgot that they belonged to the same federal police patina! If the Wike-controlled state police system had been in place then, critics would have thrown their arms into the air and shouted: “We said so!”
So, until government at all levels addresses the issues I have been prophesying about, no amount of threats, arrests and even capital punishment would deter them. These criminals are the medusas of our time. Remember the mythical Medusa the Gorgon that had snakes for hair? You killed one snake and two would spring up from the blood upon hitting the ground!
The recent confession by a suspected abductor that he made N200m in six months is a proof that nothing else except corrupt practices can be more lucrative in this country. And it would not be easy to wean them from the industry until the government provides alternative means of livelihood.
May God deliver us from these evil elements.
