Chairman, Northern Christian Association of Nigeria, Dr. Joseph Hayab, has said that the June 2026 report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which says that 63 per cent of Nigerians have been thrown into abject poverty, cannot be disputed.

According to him, a visit to any street, and most homes in Nigeria validates that figure, adding that hunger is written on the faces of the people.

In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Rev Hayab, noted that power rotation is not what Nigeria needs, but a patriotic, godly leader irrespective of where he comes from.

What are your expectations of 2027 election?

It is better for a Nigerian not to have any expectation so that you don’t get heart attack or you don’t become over-troubled or overburdened. Sincerely speaking, things have really never been what we wanted to see in our country. Once politics is around the corner, the actors will quickly lose their senses and start acting as if they were not the same people who were speaking right some few months ago.

So, for any expectation, I’m not sure myself or a very large number of Nigerians have expectations. We just pray for the best and then encourage ourselves despite the lack of sincerity we see around.

Let’s keep going and see when God will give us the right person or when we will as a people work together to make things work for us because those who are supposed to make things happen, keep disappointing Nigeria.

One of the greatest problems that has made this country not to make progress is the lack of genuine accountability, as far as Nigerian electoral process is concerned.

The day Nigerians will decide who they really want, not the one that was manipulated, Nigeria will be healed. If those who go to our National Assembly; if those who are in our Executive, if those who are in our states’ assembly; if those who are in our local government councils, actually are the ones we voted for, they will come to do what we want, and they will be sure they deliver the goods.

But they are always those who manipulated and got it; so, because of that, they are not accountable to us; they don’t even think we belong; they see us as just noisemakers.

Some people want to comfort us and tell us, yes, vote counts. Even if vote counts, it is with so lower percentage, the larger aspect of it doesn’t count. So, I don’t want to start expecting anything.

What is your view on the insecurity in the country? Bandits just attacked a school in Kogi community, killed the vice principal and two others.

What is happening, and what we are seeing and hearing is a simple way of disputing all the claims of successes that we have been singing and clapping for.

The bandits have dared our country; they have dared those in power, and have dared our security agencies. This shows that they have not done what they are telling us they’re doing.

So, the onus is back to the security agencies and those in government to show the bandits that, we are not what you think. But as long as we continue to see this, the bandits are the ones winning. If there’s any success at all, it’s really nothing much to celebrate.

So, those responsible; those who are supposed to make things happen should know that the bandits are showing the world that they are the ones in charge. If they are not the ones in charge, prove them wrong.

Senator President, Godswil Akpabio, yesterday said that the abduction, killings and insecurities are being sponsored to rubbish Tinubu’s administration and his reforms. What’s your take on that statement?

Sometimes, I feel ashamed when I hear what our Senate President says. When people are in power and they reach a certain stage in power, they should respect themselves and be careful what they say in public.

The way our Senate President speaks sometimes embarrasses the whole nation, as if we are not people that reason. Imagine Nigeria with our education, with our exposure and we have a Senate President who just comes and makes stories like that.

These bandits were operating at the time of Jonathan; they were also operating at the time of Buhari. So, for someone to come and start making it looks like it is a local conversation is unfortunate. There is a mistake we’ve done, and let’s own up to it that we didn’t go after the enemies of our nation when they started; we allowed them to grow strong and become footed, and now we are making noise.

Some churches have banned prayer vigils, and churches are not being held in communities in some states. What do you say to this?

Personally, I’ve been to Kwara; I’ve been to Kogi and other parts of Nigeria to speak to our pastors that we must apply wisdom, considering what is happening. We must think about how to secure or ensure the security of our people than doing any activity that will endanger their lives. There’s no Bible passage that says that if you don’t gather in church in the night then God will not hear your prayer.

There’s no Bible passage that says that until you hold an all-night before God will be in your midst. These things are just a way of helping to strengthen spirituality.

What matters is prayer. How, where, and the duration of your prayer is about your conviction and the strength of the situation you are. So, I’m not sure there’s anything they’ve done that is wrong.

I can commend some pastors because they are beginning to now apply wisdom. As the Bible says, watch and pray. So, they are now beginning to watch even as they pray.

So, this is a welcome development to avoid the more casualties we are getting. We call people out in the night, and we don’t even take measures to properly secure them.

If anything happens to them, the best we can do for their families is to say sorry and nothing more. So, this must be done.

But it tells you a lot. That we have to come up with these measures because the security system has failed; the security system has not given us what we want.

We are in a deep and a very difficult, delicate and dangerous situation in this country at the moment.

That’s why we have to come back again to tell the government, when the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) nationwide called on all of our members to declare Friday 12th, Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th for prayer and fasting, and to even come out in black on Sunday to pray, is for her to declare a state of emergency on insecurity. It is to tell them that we are tired, we have suffered too much and we don’t want to continue to suffer.

We are calling on the government to declare a state of emergency; to show to the world that you are serious about fighting insecurity; to show to the world that you have the capacity to defeat this evil.

Declare a state of emergency; show to the world that you have the political will because that’s what many Nigerians have been asking for.

It is not capacity; it is the political will, and let’s stop this evil.

So, for me, that’s what we need to do, and that’s where government needs to wake up and show her might. We have been talking too much about this. We have condemned it, the ordinary citizens condemn it, and the government condemns it.

The bandits know that when they strike, everyone will condemn it and nothing happens. Now it is no longer condemnation, go after them, let the worst happens; use anything you can use to go after them, and let them know that there is no space for them.

I’ve had many people in this country tell me that, ‘look pastor, this kidnapping is not what you are seeing. It is worse than that because it seems they have connection beyond what you can imagine.’

So, the government should prove to the world that its hands are not in this kidnapping; show them that you are not part of it.

But, when you keep allowing this evil to persist, then people will believe that yes, there may be a connection and that is why you are not going after them.

When the U.S. sent its troops, many Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief, but since then, the insecurity has escalated. What is your take on this?

Truly speaking, I was also part of those who felt it was a sign of relief, first with the attack in Sokoto in December, 2025, and then the elimination of one of the big commanders of ISWAP. But I also do know that as I celebrated that one, and on behalf of our association, I called on the American government or American security agencies that are coming to help us to know that it is not enough to just come with a one-off strike and go and rest for three months. They must consistently attack these people until they fish them out from their hidden places. We keep calling, but those who command are different from those of us who call to report. Now there is no action, they strike them and give them a space to regroup, which is quite disheartening. They are supposed to sustain these strikes until every one of them in every hideout is fished out, but when they strike and wait for another three months, they keep on regrouping and multiplying

The International Monetary Fund report released on the 10th of June, 2026, says that 63 per cent of Nigerians have been thrown into abject poverty, higher than previous years. What do you say to this?

These statistics cannot be disputed. If you go to the streets of Nigeria, you will know people are hungry. If you go to homes of Nigerians, you will know people are hungry. If you meet Nigerians in this country, in every state, you will know people are hungry. So, the statistics is just a further proof that this hunger we are seeing has a figure.

As a government, when your economic indices are showing that you are making progress, but the reality is that people are hungry; people have no food to eat, then think and do something. So, that’s the way I view it.

It is sad that the percentage has risen to that. But, when you look at the level of insecurity in Nigeria, there’s no way we can progress, there’s no way we can fight hunger, fight poverty, when we have not done enough to address insecurity. That’s the truth about it because insecurity has made more families poor, insecurity has made more families hungry, insecurity has destabilised so many things.

So, what we are seeing and what is happening is the true reality or reflection of what is going on in homes, in villages, in towns, in different places.

Nigeria is in a deep, deep, deep mess. So, we either wake up to find a solution to the mess, or we keep coming to the media and blow figures when people are really hungry, when people are still crying.

It is even for the good of government so that it can sit up and do something immediately.

Anybody who comes out to tell government that people are hungry, or people are not secure, is not an enemy of government, he is just telling government that your house is leaking, roof it; there’s fire on your roof, put it off; there’s a problem around, ensure you address it. But I think those around government these days don’t want anyone who would tell people the truth. They just want praise singers, and that’s where we are.

Yes, there are some good things happening. No one would dispute that. But the reality is that when you put the good things and the bad things and look for average, the bad things seem to outweigh the good.

The external debt is said to be hitting about N200 trillion. Most Nigerians are asking what this government is using the huge amount it has borrowed to do. What do you say to this?

Some experts will tell you that there is no nation that never borrows. However, the difference is that if every nation borrows and we can also borrow, then what do we do with the money we have borrowed? Do we use it to invest on people? Do we use it to develop our land? Do we use it to change the situation? Do we use it to improve lives? Do we use it to make people happy? Do we use it to correct the wrongs? Do we use it to make poverty disappear? Do we use it to improve schools? Do we use it to improve hospitals? Do we use it to construct roads or we siphon it into individuals’ pockets? That is where the big problem is.

When we borrow and people cannot see what we borrowed the money to do; when we borrow and people cannot feel the impact of our borrowing, then something is wrong.

The government must sit up and know that today, if you want to share the money we borrowed in this country, every Nigerian has just slipped into serious debt because your earnings in the next 10 years, individually, if you don’t buy food and take anything out of it, you can still not pay some of the monies the federal government has borrowed or some of the monies the governors have borrowed. Let’s tell ourselves the truth.

What are we borrowing the money to do? Have we really invested in the lives of our citizens? Or we are borrowing it to just win elections? Or we are borrowing it to just fund our trips abroad? Have you seen that any time our leaders are travelling, they travel with some kind of group that you just wonder what are they for?

But because the money is not their parents’ money; the money is not the money that they care about how they spend, so they spend it anyhow.

I am not going to say our nation should not borrow; I am simply worried about what we have used the money we borrowed for. And today we have become the borrowing republic of Nigeria. I think that is wrong.

Nigerians thought things would be better with the removal of fuel subsidy, but things have been worse. What do you think of this?

The speech about subsidy removal on the day of inauguration came out not from a deep thinking, not from a proper planning. It came out of emotion, out of playing to the gallery to show that we have arrived. And that is where we are today.

If government had allowed deep planning, proper planning, deep analysis, proper understanding, and assuring that we will remove subsidy but we are going to do this; we will remove subsidy but we are going to do that. We will remove subsidy but this is what we are going to do the next, we wouldn’t have been in this situation.

But out of emotion, in the crowd, we say things that we do not understand. Unfortunately, media houses like yours and others hold government to what they say, and the government started wanting to prove that, we have said we are going to do it. But they never have a blueprint of what to do. And because they did not know what to do, that is why we ended up where we are.

Rotation of power between north and south is dominating the political discourse. What is your view on this?

Well, we have tried all this rotation and we keep rotating people who just come and try; we have tried this rotation and we keep rotating people who come and siphon our funds. We have tried this rotation and we just keep giving some group of people the opportunity to be the ones to take over TransCorp.

Have you observed that when a South-South person is president, everything in TransCorp will be South-South? When a North-West person is president, everything in TransCorp will be North-West? When a South-West person is president, everything in TransCorp will be South-West? I think that is not what we want.

If rotation is to just give people the opportunity to further steal, destroy our economy, then we don’t need rotation. What we need is a true, sincere, patriotic pilot or driver.

I have always cited this example that one of my friends used to remind me. None of us will ever take his car and give it to anybody to repair just because that person is from his tribe. You go to an expert mechanic, who may not be from your tribe, may not need to be the same religion with you, may not to come from your region, but he knows how to put the car in order and the car will move.

Similarly, nobody will board a flight just because the pilot is his tribe’s man or the pilot is his General Overseer or his Imam or from his religion or from his region.

We need an expert pilot to pilot Nigeria. We have been crashing and crashing and crashing because we give our flight to someone who is not even a pilot, who does not even know the art of being a pilot, who does not even understand the rule of being a pilot.

Nigeria is looking for a patriotic, godly leader today. Forget where he comes from, forget his religion, and forget the rotation. We just need someone to take us out of this madness, out of this evil, out of this thing that is not working well for us because every day we are talking about the country not working.

When politics come, they will gang up and start talking about region, about rotation. For me, I wish anyone who will just give us good leadership and deliver us, let him come. If he comes from the far, far, far West, let him come. If he comes from the deep, deep, deep East, let him come. If he comes from wherever, as long as he can deliver the goods because we have tried this, we used this in the past and never got good results.

Is it not enough for us to stop talking about region and others and just look for someone who can truly deliver the goods? Because what these regional champions or divisional champions are doing, is simply to say, ‘oh, it’s also our turn to be the ones to take over rooms in Transcorp. It’s also our turn to be the ones to take over CBN. It’s also our turn to be the ones to be appointing people from our village, from our town,’ even when they cannot deliver, to come and hold offices.

I think that’s not what Nigeria wants. Unfortunately for all of us, you can still bring people from your town, from your region, from everywhere you want, to take over Transcorp, to take over CBN, to take over NNPC, to take over everything, and all of us will still languish in poverty. (The Sun)

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