Chaplaincy has failed Nigeria----- Chaplain General Olanrewaju

Chaplain General Tunde Olanrewaju Bankole is the Chief Commandant General of Universal Chaplain Corps and Rescue Mission in Nigeria and also the President of the International Association of West African Chaplain, a Para-military organisation that is into moral, social and religious advocacy in both Nigeria and West African region. The organisation, a non Governmental Organisation has been in advocacy campaign against youth restiveness, criminality, corruption and political thuggrey. But have also campaigned for quality electoral process, emergency rescue missions and with over 1000 members in Nigeria, the group has established itself as one of the responsible Chaplaincies in Nigeria with branches in Sierra-Leon, Liberia and other West African countries. In this interview with Emeka Ibemere, Bankole revealed why he established Chaplaincy organisation and said lack of religious tolerance and ethnic bias is the bane of Nigeria’s unity, Excerpts.

What is you mission and vision for establishing this organisation?

It’s borne out of the realisation that most of the Chaplaincies in the country are purely Christian Chaplains. And I believe that as a Chaplain, I value my faith and I respect others’ opinion and this has helped me to have tolerance with other people no matter their religion and backgrounds. And looking at the current insecurity in the land, you notice that everything is boiled down to lack of religious tolerance and now the only machinery that the government can use to stop this menace is not gun. You cannot use gun to stop the menace. When you want to keep peace and you are holding gun, you want to stop man holding gun, you are passing a message to the man with gun that you are also coming for war. So the only thing we are to use is not violence; but to sensitise and re-orientate the people and going by the kind of philosophical views they hold, they believe that what they are doing is right. So you have to have superior philosophy to counter their own opinion and know when you have the kind of organisation like this, bringing the two religious group together under one organisation, you are bound to make it. the basics by which this organisation comes to be is to build a structure where the two religion can be infused together and have new orientation with a purpose to build a brand new Nigeria and that is why name is the Universal Chaplain Corps. We also want to see a kind of Chaplain that has a passion for life. All those Chaplain saying that their motto is service to God and Humanity and others, frankly speaking I have not seen any one that is serving God and Humanity and I have not seen any one with passion for life. I must tell you Chaplaincy have failed Nigeria because none have lived up to what Chaplaincy is all about 

What are the core responsibilities of your organisation?

We preach religious tolerance, against ethnic discriminations, political discriminations and abuse of human-rights, illegal arrests and detentions and maltreatments. And because these things are so high in the community, that is why we are partnering with National Human Rights Agency, serving as their eyes as human rights activists in our locality and report domestic violence, gender inequality and so many other cases like that.

Now, even organisations like National Emergency Management Authority, NEMA, and you know they are into emergency services and we carry out emergency services and rescue missions and operations.

We are not only Chaplain Organisation and so; these are the things that make us different. Apart from that we campaign against religious intolerance, knowing full well the effect of religion on the national development. We also organise empowerment programmes, and we use this empowerment project to fight poverty.

We had an event last year with the Lagos State Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Lagos State Ministry of Women and Poverty Alleviation on empowering market women on development in Lagos State. We also organise national prayer for the nation. As this election is coming now we are into campaigning against violent election, thuggrey, political apathy, rigging and others.

And when Ebola issue erupted in the country, even in Sierra Leon, we organised sensitisation programme by telling people what to do and what not to do and how one can manage it and things like that. We distributed a lot of sanitizers, liquid soaps to people. We also issue scholarships to so many indigent students and so many other things.

Can your organisation affect arrest and prosecution of suspected criminals?

  Yes, the law permits us to arrest but never permits us to prosecute anybody. We arrest and hand over to the police, even the Constitution of Nigeria permit even you as civilian to arrest anybody you caught at the scene of crime and hand him over to the police and that is while we are like inter-links to other security agencies and other Para-military organisations in Nigeria. This is because; we cannot leave everything to the police, army or the Navy alone to do. We need just to support them to carry out their duties.

What is your relationship with the Nigerian Army, Police, Navy, Customs and others?

 We work hand in hand with their Chaplaincy Units or departments, like most of the programmes we do here, we have being inviting the heads of the Chaplaincy of the police. He has been coming and giving us some training and attends some of our programmes as we continue to look and develop more things we can be able to do together.

Funding and the scholarship programme you talked about, where and how have you being getting funds to push this particular project.

Well being an organisation that is based on charity, that gives service to humanity, we strictly depend on charity funding from foreign donors and individuals. When have projects, we look for sponsorship from organisations and partner with them and like the service we rendered to the Nigeria Road Safety Corps, like road use sensitisation and accident rescue operations and creating awareness we partnered with them.

How do you go on rescue operation when I haven’t seen any of your operation vehicles on the road before? 

Even when we have vehicles we expected it to be mobile and not to be parked here on somewhere. Each of our officers has their own vehicles also and most of our senior officers because we are into humanitarian and voluntary services, do use their vehicles to do some of the works we do.

What is the different between your organisation, Universal Chaplain Corps and Rescue Mission International Association of West African Chaplain and Nigerian Pentecostal Chaplain International is that your own work with both Muslim and Christian while the other one is mainly for Christian?

I think one of the reasons why the government has not been able to consider Chaplaincy in Nigeria as a serious Para-military organisation, was because there is a kind of religious attachment and bias there. Example, we have over 300 registered Chaplaincy in Nigeria and all of them are about Church Chaplain or Christian Chaplaincy. Some of them are Pentecostal Chaplain, others are orthodox Chaplain and when you go to the military barracks, the Chaplaincy there comprises of all. You will find the Chief Imam there, you find pastors and Reverend and Bishops. Now when we talk of Chaplaincy, the ethics say, value your religion and respect the view of others; then I think as a Chaplain, when we want government to help us, and even when you send it to the House, it must contain the interest of every religious group we have in Nigeria and it will have to have formation that would include all other nationalities or ethnic because the entity called Nigeria is not only made by Christian and not only made by Muslim alone. Even government was to give a strong support for these entire Chaplaincies, its going to be problem because; the Muslims will have to come up with their own Chaplaincy. We are going to have Muslim Chaplain, Christian Chaplain and we are all working together for one purpose and vision. One thing I thing the Chaplain we do is to involved in campaigning against religious intolerance in the country irrespective of what you believe in, where you come from in as much as we Nigeria are one as a country.

 Until we see ourselves as one there won’t be any progress in this country. One of the greatest problem we have as a country is not corruption but religious intolerance and ethnic bias. Now, you are here in Lagos State as a Nigerian, but there are lots of things you are deprived of because of where you come from or maybe you are not APC or you are not a Yoruba or from East and what have you which are not supposed to be so. So, what I see these Chaplaincies are running is Christian Chaplaincies. So if Chaplain is going to be Chaplain, it must be involved both Muslims and Christians.

Is your organisation a registered organisation with the Nigerian government?

We are fully registered organisation with the Corporate Affairs Commission and this is our certificate of registration and incorporation..... (Showing it). Even the branch in Sierra-Leon and other affiliate groups in other West African countries.

Why your interest in Sierra-Leon and Liberia are you from any of these countries.

Well my interest is not only in Sierra-Leon alone. And I’m from a Nigerian from Oyo State but there is an Association called WEST African Chaplain that brings together all Chaplain Corps irrespective of where you belong either as a military Chaplain, Prison Chaplain and Civilian Chaplain and by the grace of God, I’m the President of that Association in West Africa so I‘m not only interested in the Nigerian Chaplain alone but Chaplain in West Africa. So its not only Nigeria, Liberia or Sierra-Leon alone but in all West Africa. My mission is to promote Chaplaincy in the entire West African region.

What are other areas you think that is giving you challenges apart from funding?

Apart from funding, but funding is also another and core challenge we encounter here but others like when we are in rescue operation, the organisation is in dire needs of equipment, Ambulances, Vans and many other things like that because we still have great other things to do for the good of the nation and her youths. Like participating in patrol, surveillance and during environmental days, we need to go out and sensitise people to participate in the sanitation exercise. So all these things cannot be done without vehicles, with limited funds and materials and resources including facilities, so we need the government at all levels, spirited individuals and organisations to come to our aids and donate patrol vans and ambulances to enable us serve God and humanity.

Have you been able to reach out to the state and federal governments in the past?

We are taking a step on that, all we have been able to do is that last year we wrote a letter to the Senate President and to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and even do we haven’t received any response on that, we believe that they are going to honour our letter looking back to our track records outside and within the country for the benefit of our country, Nigerians and humanity, I think knowing what we have done any organisation, government or individual will not hesitate to partner with us. Although, we know its not going to come easily like that but we are very optimistic that the help is going to come.

What effort are you making to show your presence in schools, churches, mosques, universities so that after you people there will be younger ones to take over from you?

That is a very good question and thank God we have some officers who are in-charge of schools and he is working assiduously trying to take this vision to all the schools in the state by working with the State Head of Service and Ministry of Education to reach out to schools and catch them young and intimate them with the vision of Chaplaincy by creating awareness.

 We know that if you want to catch them young, you use their peers to catch them and this is what we are doing and it will help us to create high level of awareness among the youths by letting them know about the ugly side of molestation, intimidation, gang wars, drug abuse, rape cases, robbery and other criminalities. In terms of moral conduct, Africa is very poor at that, although we have quite a lot of educated people in Africa, but their moral conduct are very high, so we try to sensitise the younger ones on these ills and see how best to model their character and make them responsible youths.

Election is quit at hand and you know the tension it’s generating in the land, what are the roles your organisation is going to take to make sure the Nigeria recorded violent-free election.

Like I said we have being involved in a lot of sensitisation and awareness projects since forming this organisation in 2009. We have been involved in campaigning against election violence, political thuggery, and quality electoral process in Nigeria. We have done a lot. Last December, we organised a programme against election violence, thuggery, rigging and need for people to go for their PVC. We have also advocated for free and fair election and qualitative participation by all Nigerians in the electoral process. We have also done something on electoral malpractices and why Nigerians need to vote in an election and why they don’t need to sell their votes. We have done all these since December and we are still campaigning on it and we will continue to do it before and after election. By our constraint has always being with the little resources at our disposal. We have the intension of covering the whole nation but that depends on the facilities to do so knowing well that we are voluntary organisations and we aren’t paid for it.