The stylish pastor made this revelations in Ibadan last week while speaking on the topic "History As A Catalyst For Peace And National Development". As Guest Speaker at Pastor Dotun Ojelabi's 51st birthday and inauguration of the James Adekunle Ojelabi Foundation (JAOF).
History, according to pastor Ighodalo, is an umbrella term that relates to past events. Which he said is regarded as memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about events.
"I used Dr. Ojelabi's book for history at King's College in 1970s way before the Babangida era and it was interesting to know that even in this present edition, there are write-ups on the Babangida era, including a section on Book Haram.
"The activities of yesterday have suddenly become history, the history of the past is therefore the foundation that guides the activities for today and the future."
The now historical agreements of yesterday have now formed the basis of our economy and activities of today. For example today, the Jews are fighting for peace, and at the same time they remained one of the most developed and economical strong nations in the world. This antecedent is based on their history, but peace eludes them even till today because of historical conflicts with the Philistines now known as Palestinians in the past even since the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their economy is strong based on the historical principles of restructuring their values in the Torah and the leadership style of David and Solomon. Past history has directed their present.
Similarly, Europe is relatively peaceful today and their areas are very well developed largely because of the historical antecedent of the Europeans, who rose from centuries of Medieval wars that metamorphosed into an industrial revolution and they all concluded at the end of World War II in 1944/45 that peace was an important criteria for industrial development.
Coming nearer home to Nigeria, it is deeply unfortunate that a lot of our leaders did not take the history band antecedents of this nation into consideration before making any unresearched quest for national leadership.
A political friend of mine who is doing a program on African/Nigerian history at the Oxford University recently admitted to me that the lessons he has learnt have been invaluable, so much so that he attests to the fact that peace may elude some parts of Nigeria based on a deep seated mistrusts among people as a result of the activities of the slave trade.
Why do we have such unrest and underdevelopment in Nigeria? Ethnic problems, mistrust among tribes, issues of Boko Haram, a fractionalized leadership, an underdeveloped economy and calls for restructuring? The truth is that history tells us that Nigeria is made up of different nations of different cultural and societal values whose natural evolution were truncated by the British and European invasion. Part of whose collateral damage was a destruction of our cultute and values.
For example, a great friend of mine Yemi Candide-Johnson SAN, told me recently that one of the challenges we are having with our legal system is that, while the British legal system evolved out of the historical practice of their culture, the Nigerian legal system was imposed on us by the British without any reference to our cultural values and traditional system of justice.
He again explained that our present constitution is largely flawed because a constitution is a simple document contributed to by different federating unite based on their history, background and values as a foundation of their agreement, to co-habit, co-operate and co-participate together in the building of a nation that will promote their various interests.
There must be mutual agreement between federating units for there to be federation. The present constitution that guides our democracy is not a product of any agreement between any federating units.
The last proper constitution in Nigeria to which the various units participated and agreed was in 1963 and the military truncated it in 1967 and from then till now, Nigeria has known now.
Hence, the massive calls especially those who understand a bit of the history of the nation for restructuring and a general ignoring of same by those who want to mischievously change our history.
History determines economy, the peace and progress, the thriving economy of Singapore is based on their history.
The progress of China and even India is based on their history.
Our leaders should learn our historical past so that the can properly shape our economic future.
History is not just a catalyst for, it is advancing the foundation of peace and national development.
If you are not able to understand where you are coming from, it will be difficult to determine where you are going. May our history give us peace."
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