‘Father Mbaka is my brother and my father in faith’ – Peter Obi.
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, has replied to Rev. Father Ejike Mbaka, the spiritual director of the Adoration Ministries Enugu ,Nigeria,also known as AMEN, over the controversial and derogatory comment he made about him over the week.
He did this while interacting with Oseni Rufai on Voice of The People 90.3 FM on Sunday. In that conversation, Mr. Peter Obi referred to Father Mbaka as his brother and father.
Father Mbaka had, in a widely circulated online video, criticized Mr. Peter Obi for being ‘stingy’ in front of his congregation.
The public heard him declaring that ‘God hates stinginess.” He also rhetorically told the community that ‘a stingy man will not be our president”
In the now-viral video, Mr Peter Obi stated,
“Rev Fr Mbaka is an ordained priest of God and as a
priest,he remains my priest and I will always respect him and I owe my allegiance to the church.He is my father,my father in the faith and i respect him.He is my brother,we are very close.And whenever he says something wrong,I pray over it.mine is prayers and whatever he does,love him. This is is me because he is priest of God. I don’t have any problems with him.Whatever he says,I put it in prayers.”
The crowd applauded the priest when he made this statement, but many could be seen and heard as they visibly remonstrated, apparently uncomfortable with what they had just heard from their spiritual director.
Others openly attacked the priest for such a poor judgment of the person of Peter Obi and the indecorous pronouncement from a supposed spiritual leader who had become a role model for thousands of people over the years.
“I have an allergy to money being wrongly spent.”
Mr. Peter Obi has also reiterated his stance on money and how fiercely he detests reckless and irresponsible spending of money,especially public funds as has become commonplace in our society and polity.
Speaking with Oseni Rufai on Voice of the people FM 90.3 on Sunday, he remarked that he hated seeing money used injudiciously.
The anchor asked him if he was actually ‘stingy,’ as people alleged.
He responded,’ I have an allergy to money being wrongly spent.”
Recall that in one of his interviews, he had decried the stealing and hoarding of the dollar by politicians.
He then declared that people who carried out such acts in his government should be jailed because they sabotaged the country’s economy and perpetuated poverty and hardship. In contrast, the nation’s manufacturers and services providers who truly needed the dollar could not find it.
“A leader should take responsibility, not complain or blame the past” – Peter Obi.
While responding to questions from the host, Peter Obi stated that a leader should always take the responsibility of reshaping things and not complaining or making excuses.
“When you are elected, you are in charge. The job of a leader is not to complain or give excuses but to solve problems. The aspirant for any political office should be open to learning and should be ready to learn how to solve the anticipated problems at all times from anywhere in the world’, he said.
He had this to say about solving the nagging power problem in Nigeria.
“The fastest deployments of power (electricity)in the world happened in Egypt, Vietnam, and India. Vietnam upgraded its power capacity from about 20,000 to 55,000 in 5 years.”
”That is, between 2015 and 2020, Nigeria has generated only between 1000 MW to 4000 MW for over 60 years. That shows a crisis”. He said
He continued, ” So, you need to go and learn. In Egypt, they took around the power facility. I met those in charge, the power holdings company chief, the people in the ministry, and those who financed the project. I know it is easy to achieve power generation, transmission, and distribution from where we are today to between 15 -20,000 MW in Nigeria in 5 years”.
Why Didn’t you use local content,what can you learn in 3 days?
The radio host asked him, “Many people have asked why you didn’t use local content and why Egypt and also what you can learn in three days.”
Mr Peter Obi responded,
“They don’t know what they’re talking,I have been speaking to people here.I need to go and see. There is nothing wrong in learning.It’s not as if I was in the office and traveling.They want you to be in office and then say that you are travelling.Part of the problem we have here is that people don’t want to learn.Leadership and learning ae insepareabel.Leaders must learn always. When I was campaigning to be governor ,I visited to Bangladesh to know how they dealt with the poor,pulling people out of poverty,what they were doing about education. That was my first trip.I did the same thing with India ,rural India.That’s where I found out that while we go into office here and start building governors mansions and offices, they were busy building rural roads to increase access to the markets for the rural people ,bringing their farm produce to the markets and making more money.So ,in Anambra state ,every community is connected by rural roads. That’s what you learn…..that’s what I am doing.”
You can learn can hear more in the video above.
