Bishop Barr. Otuekong Ukut, PhD – NIGERIA’S DETERIORATION IS IRREDEEMABLE
The Clergyman’s quest for Knowledge and why he is multitasking
- EPITOMIZING COMPETENCE AND CHARACTER IN PRIESTHOOD
- His verdict on Pastor Umo Eno’s 2nd Year In Office As Governor of Akwa Ibom State
He is one of the outstanding friars of the contemporary world who has distinguished himself through the uncanny bent for excellence. His inner cravings daily fuel his appetite for knowledge, life-skills and competence across the marketplace today’s complex world.
When you look for authenticity, uncompromising values and quest for excellence in leadership, you’ll find the Rt. Rev’d Barr. Otuekong Ukut, PhD., a round peg in a round hole. Today, he bestrides the global stage as a luminous beacon of integrity, purpose, and impact; picking up from where His Eminence Dr. Sunday Coffie Mbang, CON, late Prelate Emeritus of Methodist Church of Nigeria and former President of World Methodist Council (WMC) left off.
From the intricacies of governance in Nigeria’s public service to the sacred duties of shepherding the flock of God in the Methodist Church as the Bishop of Atamunu Diocese, Calabar, he has enjoyed exponential growth in life, career and ministry. With his recent elevation to the World Methodist Council’s pivotal arm of Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Affairs, Bishop Otuekong Ukut rides on the pedestal of competence and right perspective of the worldview, not only as a representative from the South South Nigeria but a voice of unification, truth and transformation.
In this exclusive interview with EME ARTHUR – OSO, Bishop Otuekong Ukut, PhD., who is also a barrister at law, offers a compelling reflection on his life, ministry and Nigeria’s deteriorating state of affairs; proffering his candid perspective on how Nigeria’s complex and unending woes can end.
STEPPING INTO THE BIG SHOES
Your Lordship, I want to congratulate you on the recent elevation and appointment to the Methodist World Council. Please, what does this entail for Methodist Church
in Nigeria?
Methodist Church Nigeria has a very serious affiliation with the World Methodist Council; early this year, I was appointed into the World Methodist Council. The World Methodist Council consists of several Wesleyan denominations, almost 80 of them across about 190 countries of the world. I belong to the primary committee of the World Methodist Council, which is the ecumenism and inter-religious relationship committee.
We have about 20 members from different parts of the world, and I’m the Nigerian there, following the footsteps of our late father, Dr. Sunday Coffie Mbang who was a member of that committee before becoming the President of the World Methodist Council. So, I’m the Nigerian in that committee, and the other members of the committee are from various countries of the world, from USA, from Britain, from Brazil, from Argentina, from Netherlands, Australia, very far and wide. And we meet every now and then through hybrid and then physical, every now and then.
So, I am more or less a follow-up replacement in that committee, because it is a crucial committee of the body. And after the Prelate Emeritus Dr. Sunday Mbang left as president of the World Methodist Council in 2006, no south-south person has come into the Council for the past 19 years, it’s the first time a Nigerian has been placed in that committee and so I feel very elated, I feel very honoured.
I have been in the World Methodist Council both as a member from Methodist Church in Nigeria. But this one is now as a recognition of my devotion, my competencies and capabilities that I have been put in that committee.
Your Lordship, you have been a very strict leader, both in your days as a public servant, and now as the Bishop of Atamunu Diocese of Methodist Church, Calabar. How do you compare your days as a public servant and as a full-time minister?
I started my ministerial journey way back in 1998. I managed it with my service and my career in the civil service. So in any case, I was a minister before I was a civil servant in the year 2000. As a civil servant in the Akwa Ibom State Government, I was a lecturer in the University of Uyo, and so, what am I saying? I ventured into the public sector in the 90s and it’s not a comparison; it is more or less complementary because we are still talking about the same person, it’s the same me, the same me that have been in the civil service delivering projects as a civil servant and in the university as a lecturer; in the Akwa Ibom State government, in the inter-ministerial committee, and as a Permanent Secretary, it’s the same me that have also ministers in the Church.
Moving in from a deacon to a reverend in the hierarchy of Methodist Church. And now as a Bishop of Methodist Church. So, it’s the same person, it’s not a comparison, rather, they are all complementary. Don’t forget I was in the private sector previously since my graduation in 1984. My movement into the public sector began after winning an election in the Ikot Ekpene Local Government Council in 1995-1996.
So, that has been the journey. In the private sector, I kicked off first of all in breweries in Port Harcourt and then, from there, I moved on to accounting, which was my core course in my first degree.
I worked in accounting firms handling management consultancy, training, retraining and turnaround of companies. The knowledge garnered in the private sector was a great asset before venturing into the public sector.
Your Lordship, what inspired you to pursue all these academic goals and how do you combine all these with ministry?
Having up to eight degrees in various fields, and getting to the peak of each of those fields; as an accountant, I’m a fellow of the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN), and I’ve been a Council member at the national level; as a management consultant in Human Resource Management, I am a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) and a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM); that’s in the area of management, accountancy and consultancy.
I am a full fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, and a tax expert with my own tax firm. As a lawyer, I’m a member of the Nigerian Bar Association and the International Bar Association. In fact, I’ve been a Chairman of one of the sub-committees, we are going to be in Canada, Toronto, for the International Bar Association Conference this year.
As a civil servant, I rose to the apex as a Permanent Secretary in the Government of Akwa Ibom State, and now as a Clergy, I rose to the apex, which is being a Bishop of Methodist Church, Nigeria, in the Diocese of Atamunu, Calabar. Last year, I was appointed into the African Methodist Council, as the Chairman of the Human Rights Commission of the African Methodist Council, the AMC. It’s about a seven-member committee with members, membership from other countries of Africa, from Ghana, from Togo, from Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and myself in Nigeria, I’m the Chairman.
What inspired you to earn these feats?
I’m inspired by lots of things along the line; the first was my father, late Major Alexander Akpabio Ukut, of the Ndito Udo Ukut Royal Family, who inculcated in me the spirit of being multi-skilled; he kept harping on me being multi-skilled. He told me not to be tied down to one skill and one field of knowledge, one exposure, but be multi-skilled and also excel in each of those fields. That has been what has always inspired me to get to the top, to the apex of each of the skills, do well. Apart from my father, the background that I come from, Ndito Udo Ukut Royal Family, we’ve had professors, we’ve had military leaders, we’ve had bureaucrats in various fields. I just happen to be multi-skilled, and then reaching the top of each of them, because of such encouragement.
But along the way, you also have to have inspiration from various people who have achieved great feats. For example late Dr. Alex Ekweme, who was a one-time vice president of this country, I read that he had six to seven degrees, then I said to myself, ‘If Dr. Alex Ekweme can do that, why can’t I do so?’ So, along the way, you pick up inspiration by other people’s success.
Don’t forget that knowledge also brings money, knowledge also brings power. Knowledge, one thing that we truly own in this world, is what we know.
What you own that you will get to your grave is what you know. It’s your knowledge. And so, this has been the inspiration, this philosophical inspiration, that it is what you truly own.
You don’t truly own your dresses, you don’t truly own your cars, you don’t truly own anything in this world. But what you have in your brain, your knowledge that you have gathered, is what you truly own, that will follow you to your grave. And you can only impact it when you want to. I’ve been a lecturer on the University of Uyo. And I taught a lot, mentored and taught a lot of people. A lot of students passed through me, which is what I know. So, it’s what you know that you will impart. And so, intellectual, academic and knowledge-based life is what I live for
How do you manage your time with all this attainment?
How do you manage your time with all this attainment?
On how I combine all this with my time for ministry: yes, early in my life, I learnt a lot about time management and how to prioritize. That’s what a lot of people have not taken note of, to check that aspect of knowledge. All of us have 24 hours in a day. So, how do you use your 24 hours? How do you deploy it towards issues that you gain, the world gains, the country gains, your family gains?
Time is important! Do you spend it and while away your time in the clubs and matters that are mundane and get thrown all around by the wind? Or do you chart a path that will always add colour to every moment?
I see a whole lot of people not prioritizing and doing what is beneficial both to themselves, to their family and to the community that they belong. Time waits for no one, we are all controlled by time. So, we have to key into the advantage of time, which is what you do with your time that matters.
One of the things my grandfather said is; “If you live in a place where there’s a university, attend that university. Get a degree from there. Create out time and get it.” All of us have 24 hours a day. So, you just deploy yourself and go get one degree or the other. Learn and learn and continue to learn.
Then, of course, you have to put the aspects of our father, the God, our father, who keeps us alive and ensures that we do not waste our talents. And so, these achievements, they all run, a lot of these things run in pari passu, but the most essential thing is be multi-skilled. Be multi-skilled and then excel in each of them. Get to the end.
Don’t put your hands on the plough and look back. In each one of the skills, infuse yourself in it and be the best in that field. So, as an accountant, I’ve gotten to the peak. As a human resource manager, consultant, I’ve gotten to the peak in the Chartered Institute of Personal Management and Nigerian Institute of Management. As a tax expert, I’ve gotten to the peak. As a civil servant, I retired as a permanent secretary.
Nigeria is going through a lot of challenges in leadership, if you were to speak to the leadership of the nation, what would be your thoughts?
Let me be very straightforward; you will not be able to publish my thoughts on the country Nigeria, because those thoughts are very profound and run against the general public opinion. But for the purposes of this interview, whether you publish it or not, let me put it this way. Nigeria is a farce, Nigeria is not well constituted and so because of that, whatever leadership that we throw up is going to meet a system that is not properly formed.
So, what every national leader tries to do is to accommodate the un – accommodatable and so we get into the quagmire of continuous deterioration. The country was not set up to succeed at initial stage and so every leader has been in the quagmire of: ‘How do I correct this?’
Let me explain to you what I mean: Nigeria is an amalgamation of so many entities that are divergent and cannot develop with such divergence. You cannot put an oil protectorate region with a western region, different cultures, different thoughts, different ideas on development, and then go and act with a northern group that has different thoughts, different developmental aspirations, and then you think that is a country; it will not succeed.
Success always comes where each group is as homogeneous as possible and brings out a patriotism that can drive development. What we have is that a conglomeration that has become atavistic, tearing ourselves apart, bringing ourselves down. And so when you hear terms like Federal Character Commission, meritocracy is mortgaged for allotment, allocation, and all these are anti-development elements where merits, competencies are taken to the cleaners.
Our leadership throwing up process has become so bastardized that the people are totally not in control. God-fatherism, religionalism, ethnicity are all in control. Can a president come out on the basis of competence like an Obama in Nigeria? The answer is No! So, how did we find ourselves here? What is the solution? A leader must come out and be selfless, so selfless that he would then realign this country to the several countries and groups, to the several components that it has.
USSR realized it and they broke out and out of that one disparate country called USSR, they came out of over 23 countries as at today, all of them are doing very well. Yugoslavia tried it and for 70 years they pulled themselves together and they found out that they were tearing themselves apart and so they came out. Some that have become a country is as little as Montenegro with only 350,000 population but today Montenegro is a tourist attraction, you can even see their adverts on CNN. Albania, Slovenia, all of them coming out of that 10 countries, coming out from a small country as Yugoslavia. Britain, UK as it stands is not one country, these are the people that put us together through the mistake of 1914, I always call it mistake of 1914 of Lord Luggard. But they themselves, they are about 4 countries or 5.
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. All of them independent people, only donating some members to the Central Parliamentary Department but their development and aspirations, budgets are all separate. A Welsh is a Welsh, a Scottish man is a Scottish, so what do we have here in Nigeria? We have refused to realize our identity, we are forcing an identity upon ourselves. I want to see a country, I want to see a previously convocation of Nigeria coming out; convocation of a meeting of the leadership, selfless leadership, coming out and bringing out a true realignment.
A true realignment where people who have the same aspiration will come together, form a country and then align. Have we fought any war like Guinea? Like Burkina Faso? Like Niger? Like Cameroon? So, why are we afraid of being several countries and aligning and being good neighbours? Why are we afraid? The United Nations Charter of 1945 has made it very difficult for countries to go to war anyhow amongst themselves. There is what we call the pacific settlement of international disputes and so even if Nigeria breaks up to 20, 30, 40, realigns to 20, 30 countries, we will still be at peace and be trading amongst ourselves. Then each group will progress and develop, given its own human resources and the material resources available to it. That is my view on Nigeria.
What is your candid assessment of Pastor Umo Eno’s administration as he marks his second year anniversary in office?
It is action pack, compassionate and delivering dividends of good governance. It is delivering the good work down to the grassroots, delivering to the middle class, delivering to the upper class; the administration is a total service delivery government. Just two years and you can see, you can feel, you can see it, you could feel it.
The administration of Pastor Umo Eno has been vibrant, more vibrant, reaching out to the poorest of the poor, to the remotest of the villages. Things that were thought not to be possible have now become possible with Pastor Umo Eno, he’s God sent. Umo Eno is without any wile and guile, he is plain, humble, straightforward and godly. He has no wiles and tricks, and because of this, the good people of Akwa Ibom State rally around him. You see good people with him, anyone that is not with him just know he is not a good person. So that is what we have had for the past two years and we wish for more.
Eight more years of that, and then setting a template for every other leader that will come, no more days of trickery and politicking, rather governance – Godly, goodly governance. Pastor Umo Eno is setting the template which other leaders from Akwa Ibom needs to follow. I am very impressed, I am very happy, he has brought to play his competencies in learning. Far back in 1998, I delivered a lecture where Pastor Umo Eno attended; then I knew he’ll be a great man. So, you see, he learns and then he puts these learning into practice. He is open-minded and open-hearted. With these kind of qualities, he has succeeded and my only prayer is, ‘Let his success form a template in governance, such that we should never go back down the drain again.’
