"THE NIGERIA THAT I KNEW"

I remember vividly growing up in Nigeria when the economy of that nation was prospering in the 1970s. There were no prosperity gospel pastors and Churches anywhere in Nigeria at that time. The young men and women that graduated from the Nigeria's tertiary institutions went directly to work and to pursue their different professional careers and life goals unlike today when they are all flocking into the pastoral work or the Church ministry.

In those days, the post-secondary education in Nigeria was the surest passport, the most reliable path and the easiest avenue to prosperity and to the Nigerian Dream of a comfortable middle-class life, car ownership, home ownership, good health care, vacations, financial security or stability and a decent future retirement.

Today in Nigeria almost 30 years or more later, we have Churches in every nook and cranny of this nation with rising unemployment, chronic poverty, official corruption, mismanagement of our state resources, lawlessness, insecurity of life and properties, religious violence, fanatism and bigotry, sectarian riots, brutalities and a failing nation in the making.