Focus on Ending Banditry, Not 2027 Politics – PFN President Tells Tinubu

In a recent interview with OLUSEYE OJO, he said the growing insecurity in Nigeria, characterized by banditry and terrorism, can’t be solved with cold statistics or routine military updates.

Instead, he says, real resolution would only come when President Bola Tinubu sees the gruesome murder, torture or abduction of any citizen through the agonising lens of a grieving parent, where every single victim is not a collateral casualty of statehood but the heart-breaking loss of the President’s own child.
The cleric, set against a background of increasing grassroots vulnerabilities, rural displacements and an economy losing critical foreign investments to safer continental neighbours, serves a prophetic, non-partisan charge to the nation’s political elite.

In this interview, Bishop Oke explains the structural constraints of the body of Christ, exposes the sophisticated economic syndicates behind rural terror and takes off the veil on the massive, multi-million naira, humanitarian relief interventions the church quietly deploys across Nigeria’s worst hit regions.

What is the main message the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) is trying to pass across to the authorities at this moment when the level of insecurity across the nation is at a boiling point?

“We are burdened for Nigeria today because we have lost our sense of value, human life and its sanctity. The level of banditry, kidnapping, violence, insecurity and savage killings all over the Nigerian landscape has risen to an intolerable height. It is now a situation where every Nigerian must cry out to God for divine intervention and to our governments for immediate and effective action.

In Nigeria what is happening is more than taking lives. It shatters our national cohesion, discourages critical foreign investors, is causing a huge brain drain as our brightest minds flee, and fatally erodes the link between the people and the state. It has created a pervasive wave of insecurity and terror that ensures that the Nigerian people no longer feel safe anywhere in their own country. “We are under great pressure as this intolerable violence is tragically being normalised in Nigeria.

You talked about the loss of humaneness. What were the specific systemic failures and regional carnage that evoked this urgent cry from the PFN?

We are burdened for the loss of our own humanity. Witness the unchecked rampage of bandits and murderous herdsmen slaughtering Nigerian farmers on their own farms. Take for instance the Boko Haram insurgents who are using the noble religion of Islam to unleash horrible violence on peaceful Nigerians without any restraint across our national landscape.

The destructive historical and contemporary trajectory of this failure. Years after being abducted en masse by Boko Haram insurgents, many Chibok girls are still in captivity. “Leah Sharibu remains in captivity by religious kidnappers just because she refused to deny her Christian faith and the Nigerian state did nothing. The killers of Deborah Samuel who was burnt to death in Sokoto by a murderous mob for mentioning the name of Jesus? Nothing happened.

Since then, Taraba, Plateau, Benue states and Southern Kaduna have turned to killing fields on a daily basis. Edo, Kogi and Ondo states have not been spared either.

“Today, as we speak, some communities in Kwara State have been completely sacked by rampaging bandits armed with sophisticated guns and dangerous weapons.

Innocent people are being killed, raped and kidnapped over and over again in large numbers in Borno, Niger, Sokoto, Kaduna and other states of the federation.

The newest killing field is Oyo State. This climaxed in the recent horrific abduction of some teachers and students whereby one of the teachers (Mr. Michael Oyedokun) was gruesomely beheaded while another was shot dead.

Our political elite were carrying on business as usual during these satanic acts as if nothing was going on. “This is an unspeakable and despicable act of terror,” he said.

You have rightly said that the President has to see every citizen as his child. How does that paternalistic duty inform the government’s response to the current socioeconomic collapse and the flight of foreign investment?

Basically, all Nigerians are sons and daughters of the president. The president is the father of all Nigeria and that is a basic principle of leadership and governance. So when one person is killed, one of his children is killed. It should hit the leadership in that personal and painful way. When a citizen is brutally beheaded, humiliated, tortured and tormented, crying while they cut off his head, it means that one of the president’s children has gone through that horrible treatment.

It should never be treated as a normal news item. When our government leaders feel in their hearts the reality, when they feel the deep personal pain of a father losing a child, then they will stand up and deal decisively with these situations. That is what the Nigerian people want. They want a government that feels pain when its people suffer and a leadership that acts with unwavering resolve to protect its home.

All this violence is definitely affecting not only the farming profession, it is affecting every profession.

Farmers can’t tend their fields for fear of being raped, slaughtered or kidnapped. This triggers a catastrophic chain reaction through the entire economic ecosystem. Food prices are skyrocketing, supply chains are collapsing, and hunger is looming large over the nation. It cripples markets and livelihoods far beyond the agricultural sector.

Look at our position in the world and our economy on the whole. Currently, there are investors from developed countries who are coming to Nigeria because of our strategic advantage as the largest black nation in the world with a massive percentage of highly mobile and enterprising young men. We have a very vibrant, very energetic and very intelligent youth population and this makes Nigeria a particularly attractive market for global capital. They are eager to invest here but the lack of reliable power and the insecurity are causing them to shift their capital to countries such as Ghana and South Africa, which they see as having a more secure and predictable business environment.

We are losing billions of dollars in potential investments, losing jobs for our teeming youth, losing our competitive edge on the continent because we have failed to secure our territory.

Therefore, the Nigerian government must rise to the occasion and deal decisively with these criminals in our forests, in our farms, in our cities, and those attacking churches and mosques to slaughter citizens. No criminal should escape justice, no matter where they commit their crimes or whom they victimize.

In many of these theatres of conflict the military has been deployed but the killings continue. Where’s the disconnect?

Our Government is clearly not demonstrating political will to crush these horrible evils. They have let this cancer grow unchecked, making empty promises that have done absolutely no good.

Instead of crushing terrorism, banditry and the likes, our governments are busy rehabilitating so called repentant Boko Haram killers and even drafting them into our security network! Thus the Nigerian military is getting demilitarised.

And this is why our brave Generals and their brave soldiers are being slaughtered like chicken. Why? Because our security system has been completely penetrated and fatally compromised from within.

Nigerians have had enough of this evil. They are tired of the apparent misplaced attention of the political class on winning elections by all means, rather than focusing the full weight of our law and federal might to crush the killers of Nigerians.

As a response to this crisis, the PFN has declared a three-day national fasting and prayer session from May 22-24, 2026. Could you tell me about the background, the strategic aims and the real political position of the PFN behind this exercise?

The National Executive Council of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, met on the night of May 19, 2026 for fervent prayers and deliberations on the scary state of affairs in the country.

We as a Pentecostal community spread across every single state of Nigeria resolved that we would stand together in spiritual warfare and fast and pray to God our Almighty Father to arise and scatter the enemies of Nigeria.