Interview with Pastor Ladi Thompson by Chidi Iketuonye
When our contact took us to meet Pastor Ladi Thompson we expected to have a subdued exchange with a popular pastor who would naturally only say what is both politically correct and generally accepted in conventional circles. We were pleasantly surprised; as we were held spell bound for the next two hours. From philosophy to advanced physics, from history to anthropology, from rationalism to metaphysics, he took us with unaccustomed ease dissecting social issues with remarkable candour. He reminded one of those lecturers that would come into the lecture hall without notes and still manage to keep students enthralled and at the edge of their seat till the end of the period.
We also found him to be unaffected and without airs. He had a knack for breaking the ice that could make you forget you were with a veteran, a pioneer social crusader who had redefined the relevance of the pulpit long before the latter day motivational speakers discovered their groove. The only southerner singled out by Nigeria’s deadliest terrorist group to be placed on their death list, his battle weary humour belies the fire smouldering underneath. He spoke with apostolic clarity of concepts like failure engineering and chaos theory, delving into the historical fault lines the cause of the chronic dysfunctions of today’s Nigeria.
He is not a pessimist and that is why he talks of reverse engineering; and the raising of founding fathers who would build on eternal truths. He has pioneered many initiatives aimed at taking the Nigerian and the African into the mainstream of human ingenuity and creativity; and also initiatives that have helped to stave off the ethno religious crises which threaten our corporate existence periodically. He is still very much on duty and has a lot to say as we sat down with him in a very engaging conversation part of which is reported below.
Question: Sir can you tell us more about yourself and background?
Ans: I was born in Ikeja, at the Ikeja General Hospital in 1961. From the account in my father’s diary, I could deduce the level of professionalism obtainable then in our health care delivery system. My father was a medical doctor and was amongst the pioneering hands in the health care delivery system. My mum herself was a product of Queen’s College and so my parents were intellectuals. I studied Architecture in Ahmadu Bello University, and went on to complete my master’s degree there also. My siblings all studied medicine, and I was the third child and the first to depart from that tradition.
I wanted to study overseas then but I knew I had to fail in securing an admission here in Nigeria to achieve that. So I schemed to fail. Although I chose ABU I was hoping to study in Italy. However after sitting for Jamb and while waiting for my plans to materialize, my father put a call through to the Vice Chancellor of ABU then, who asked for me to come and see him, since in his opinion, I could still get admitted into ABU based on my scores which were good enough. And so that’s how I proceeded to Zaria. I expected Zaria then to be a desert town but I was surprised to find life in full swing and I quickly settled into the full blown social life even while processing my admission.
Q: So how did you make the shift from Architecture to full time gospel ministry?
Ans: After University I consulted as an Architect for twelve years. There was a downturn in Architecture and the economy generally around 1985 so one had to diversify then. Together with some partners, we started a timber exporting company which led to my moving often between Nigeria and Ghana. At that point I felt I had settled into what would be my life until some friends started inviting me to Church.
Before then I had come to a place where I decided to strike out on my own without any help from my parents or dependence on family. I found out that life was very tough for a person who did not have these advantages. I found out what it was not to know where your next meal is coming from, where to rest ones head for shelter; I even came to discover how easily one could, without a name or family influence, just be picked off the street and thrown behind bars.
Faced with this reality, one had to think of how to succeed against the odds; how to increase the chances of success and narrow down the possibility of failure. And one option then was to join occult groups featuring prominent people like doctors, lawyers etc. it was not strange then. But my religious upbringing did not allow that and I also wanted to weigh the pros and cons as there were negatives which people did not talk about. It was in this questioning mode that an Architect friend started inviting me to church. Being widely read and with a full blown social life I didn’t see the need for church and I could easily rebut anyone trying to persuade me otherwise. However this friend was equally intellectual and could counter my arguments. So I attended a popular Pentecostal church then but I found their manners a bit too affected with pseudo accents, etc. But as I listened, I heard things that I didn’t realize were in the bible and when I confirmed them to be true, my mind was stimulated and I decided to find out more. I would party weekends and end up in church on Sunday morning.
I would ask questions concerning life and faith and find answers dropping in my heart-from a presence. And that presence kept urging me to yield more to him in order to understand more. I decided to yield a bit but on condition that I would pull back if ever I discovered a hoax in my faith walk. Since then I have seen things beyond logic; blind eyes popping open, cripples getting out of bed, cancers disappear and I have experienced revelation knowledge beyond the natural senses. I began to understand spiritual influences; to discover another world which governs this material plane. In the process God spoke to me about my future and I became a minister. Instead of finding the faith to be a hoax I discovered it was more real than even the institutions of religion itself. I have also realized the need to separate between the kingdom of God and religion and have learnt that one can invest in eternal life and still be part of this earth as well.
Q: What informs your message?
Ans: I am not really used to a religious concept of what people expect me to be as a minister of the gospel but one experience made it impossible for me not to be a minister of the gospel. I had a friend who was ill and refused to take drugs. I considered that silly and mocked him. Then one day I attended a wedding and returned with a fever which was not unusual. I intended to get some drugs later but at night I had a vision with instructions about life, divine healing and in that vision I was instructed not to take drugs for my healing. God told me to get his word, speak his word and I would be healed. I laughed it off when I woke up and went back to sleep only to have the same sequence repeated in a vision. It was uncanny to me. No one had the same dream twice over within the same time frame. The next day I began to apply my faith in the word of God. I decided to exercise my body since I was healed by going out and ended up being brought back on a stretcher. It took about a week of high fever, confessions and corresponding doubt and skepticism. I wondered how the son of a doctor like me could just die of malaria fever which to my knowledge was possible. I went to a prayer meeting where I was prayed for but it was at the end of the meeting that the power of God hit me like an electric current and I was completely healed of the malaria fever and all its symptoms. That singular encounter made it impossible for me to deny the existence of another world around us and the truths espoused in the bible. Since then I have experienced all kinds of miracles; a man who lost a lung had it restored, one who had no eyeballs had them formed and many other logic defying miracles.
Q: What is the problem you would say you have been created to solve and have been attempting to solve all these years?
Ans: I had been praying for the sick and they were getting healed but if you prayed for ten people, you would likely have about three people healed. So I discovered that divine healing was good but divine health is better. I realized a lot of sicknesses could be prevented if there was quality health care. So we set up NGOs to address these issues like the Men of Destiny Foundation with Christopher Kolade as life Chairman. We saw the need to go beyond the pulpit and engage our minds creatively in tackling social challenges because God who had given us a sound mind expects that we use it.
Again by revelation knowledge I foresaw the impending geo political and ethno religious crises that would sweep across the world in general and Nigeria in particular and began to organize and mobilize those in authority and the likely constituencies to be affected to prepare against it. Between 2000 and 2005 we were able reach out to the leaders across virtually all the geo political zones in Nigeria and even outside Nigeria in a bid to minimize the impending crises. The quantum of work we did in this regard cannot be written in a book and perhaps is reflected by the fact that I was the only southerner placed on the death list of the deadliest terror organization to spring up in Nigeria in recent times. However the problem I was created to solve resides in what I refer to as failure engineering. It would take me only fifteen minutes to show anybody that Nigeria today is a product of failure engineering; everything happening today in Nigeria was predictable to those who engineered Nigeria. These issues were identified by our founding fathers like Obafemi Awolowo; their solutions were hinted at by Tafawa Balewa when he spoke of intractable problems and eternal truths; and the consequences of failing to resolve these fault lines were spoken of by Nnamdi Azikiwe. In speaking about this issues, one often takes on the garb of a security consultant as pastors are not traditionally accustomed to these roles.
The failure of fifty four African nation states and ten dependent territories is not natural. It is not consonant with the ingenuity and creativity that is part of humanity. The GDP we contribute as a continent to the world is less than four percent. What naturally translates as wealth is interpreted as poverty in the African experience. I believe my purpose is to crack the code of this failure engineering. It does not matter who is in leadership until we reverse the programming behind this failure engineering. It is similar to solving a rubix cube problem. The way it is designed it would take seven generations to solve without the set of instructions known as algorithms. But once you have those algorithms even a child would be able to restore the colour harmony within ten minutes.
The features of failure engineering in the African and specifically Nigerian experience include our faulty foundations; the capricious carving out of nation states; the deliberate militarization of our post independence political destiny; the politics of divide and rule; and the militarization of our collective psyche even in post military era. All these intractable problems can only be solved by finding and applying the correct set of algorithms.
Q: how do we reverse this failure engineering?
Ans: we must find the right algorithms. For instance in Rwanda, the colonialists succeeded in creating two tribes out of the same language resulting in the genocide of 1984. The first step would be to revisit the carving up of Africa into ungovernable units; to revisit the foundations of the existing nation states. The second is to deal with the programming that resulted in the militarization of the African polity and psyche which began from pre independence era. The result of this militarization is that we have state actors who are not used to critical thinking piloting our affairs. This militarization is also reflected in the pervasive violent rhetoric and hate speeches obtainable in our national discourse and the attendant low value placed on human life. So unless we reengineer the low value for human life and the intolerant and violent rhetoric that is a product of militarization; unless we reengineer our thoughts into creativity and productivity from consumerism, no African nation has a future.
Q: What should be the role of clergy in modern Nigeria?
Ans: There is an attempt to divorce religion from reality which should not be the case. Taking Jesus for an example, he never preached any religion; as a matter of fact his greatest opposition came from leaders of the religious institutions of the day. The role of clergy is to advance the thoughts and principles that will prosper the country and maximize the impact of God’s kingdom as captured in those eternal truths. We are made to be problem solvers who can see the future and access the mind of God. The problem is that one can go to church and not be impacted by God’s kingdom principles. One can be led into religion without being spiritual. Our role also includes counseling government on how to handle religion so as to minimize conflict and religious bigotry and hatred.
Q: Do you have any hobbies?
Ans: Yes I do. If I say problem solving you would probably laugh. When I turned forty I went hang gliding and I have taken that up at every opportunity. It is like flying a massive kite from an altitude. If I had my way, I would like that sport introduced in Nigeria. Our idea of enjoyment is often limited to alcohol and how to outdo each other. The view from hang gliding is breathtaking; one can see the earth from perspective and also see birds flying and clouds below. It is quite a sensation to conquer flight on a clear day, gliding lazily up in the air.
Q: How did you meet your wife?
Ans: She was working in a bank when I met her. I had quite an understanding about marriage before we met. That understanding is that marriage should be modeled on God’s values. Take God out and what is left is mere human union. Love is an intelligent decision not the western concept of mere chemistry. It is lack of this awareness that has led to so many failures in marriage. Marriage is a union of two whole people not halves. I have been married over twenty five years now and we have built on that knowledge that the spiritual foundation of marriage is more important than the romantic. The romantic is good but it is subject to changes. I remember once I had to sell the television to raise funds towards a crusade and my wife was so discouraged. But now by the mercy of God there is a television or two in every room. So what love does is to teach you how to accommodate each other.