Martin Luther Agwai’s pedigree speaks volume about honesty, integrity, loyalty, patience and humility to mention, but a few. Looking at his humble beginning and his gradual rise to the peak of his career as a military gentleman would not have been without his ardent commitment to his faith, dedication and trust in God. One of the qualities of his is his astute resolutions to keep faith with Jesus in every task, responsibility and office he was assigned. He regarded himself a Christian before his career; and stood by his principle not minding what obtains in the system.

In 1970, young Martin Luther Agwai enlisted as an Army Cadet at the Nigerian Defence Academy Regular Combatant Course 8. By 1972, he was appointed the Senior Under Officer, the highest appointment a cadet could be given in his final year. He won the Sword-of-Honour, and the Gold Medal for being the Best-all-Round Cadet, and the first in the order of Merit in his course of graduation. That same year, 1972, the young ebullient, indomitable Martin was commissioned as an officer of the Nigerian Army.

General Martin Luther Agwai was the Chief Instructor at the Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji, Kaduna. Between 1993 and 1996, this General of Uncommon intelligence and vision served as Nigerian Defence Adviser for the South Africa based in Harare, Zimbabwe. In the year 2000, General Agwai was appointed Deputy Force Commander of the United National Mission in Sierra Leone. Two years later, he was appointed the Chief of Army Staff in 2003 by then-President Olusegun Obasanjo. Three years later, this unparalleled achiever earned a promotion to four-star General and was appointed Chief of Defence Staff.

The four-star General holds a post-graduate diploma in Public Administration with distinction from the Administrative Staff College (ASCON), and a Master of Science Degree in National Resources Strategy from the National Defence University in Washington DC, where he earned the first foreign officer award for excellence in research and writing. In the year 2010, he was conferred with the Visionary Award by the African Center for Strategic Studies, Lisbon, Portugal for his achievement in peace and security, particularly on the African Continent.

Having disengaged from active military service in 2009, General Agwai has not disengaged from doggedly and practically pursuing his program of developing leadership and vocational training. He was crowned with the prestigious national award, the Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR). Today, he is an esteemed member and chairman of various national and international organisations.

The very gentlemanly and highly decorated General granted COUNTDOWN's Taiyelolu Ojo  (Editor @ countdownmag.com.ng) this very straight-to-point interview at his office in Abuja. It is a must read.

CD: We will start with your personal life; your name Martin Luther is a bit foreign and it has been there, you have gone through the military and today you are a respected Nigerian, we want to know the link between that name and the person Martin Luther Agwai.

MLA: (Chuckles) Thank you very much for coming, I have told people severally about my name, because when I was growing up I found, most of my peers that I grew up with had names from the Bible or they had native ethnic group names – the Jaba, the Ham people in Southern part of Kaduna State, or they had Hausa names which is the common language spoken in the part that I grew up. But I now grew up to find that I had completely different name, a name that is not in the Bible, a compound name, because actually I was named Martin Luther at birth. Honestly at some point I wished I had changed my name, because of not knowing what it stands for. When I grew up much older, in primary school I then had to ask my parents and interestingly even my mother who could only read and write in Hausa called me Martin Luther especially when she’s happy with me, that is what she will call me. So I now asked how I came to be named such a name, my mother then told me. My father was in Kagoro Teacher’s College in the 40’s, it was there (you know then people go to school very old), it was when he was in Teacher’s College in Kagoro I was given birth to. They gave birth to me and according to him, at that period they were studying the life of Martin Luther the protestant or the reformer and so when I was born that is how they just gave me the name Martin Luther. When I then found out as I was growing older the Martin Luther was I named after was also born the same month I was born and the birthday was just a few days different so I felt much happier. Then you know most people think I was named after Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King was a very young person, older than me, but he was not old enough when I was born, by the time he was born in 1948, nobody knew about Martin Luther king Junior. Then I found out that the name is significant and the person who I was named after was also a significant person, so I took some time to read about him, to study his life and everything and I found there are some things that really motivated me, and with the knowing again of Martin Luther King, that added to my pride and also challenge because I wanted to be like any of them. That’s how I came about that name.

CD: Like I said earlier most of our questions are already at the back of your palm, you already answered about 3 questions in one, but we will still mention them. The influences in your life; because that name is a distinct name and you have distinguished yourself from your peers, especially in your military career, at a peek, you rose to Chief of Defense Staff and even after that you have been serving this country in greater capacities. So what other things do you think sir really influenced your life, apart from the motivation you get from your name, one would have thought you are a pastor’s son or what is it that has made you identify with the church even at the peak of your career? What is the influence behind you sir?

MLA: Well again I think that is why I actually believe when I read the Bible about a child, your bringing up a child in the fear of the Lord. I remember vividly the first verse I knew in the Bible, was Proverbs 1:7 “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and that is the verse that have never departed from my lips. Because that was the first verse my father taught me and that has remained a big influence on me, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That has helped me, that has motivated me and that has also cautioned me, that has also been a sort of wake up call to me, each time as a human being I am going to derail, each time as a human being I am going through some challenges, I have just got to know that everything that I have done, everything that I have said, everything that I have achieved are all by the grace of God. So that has been my influence, and as you grow up you find that there are a lot of people that have motivated you. One of the ladies; if I had known I would have showed you a lady that really motivated me; my  Sunday school teacher, she, incidentally, I told you went to teacher’s college, but she left teaching  and became a policewoman. So we grew up in police barracks in Jos, and these missionaries used to come to teach us Sunday school in the barracks. It was nice, you know all these cards, that is why up till today I am fond of cards, they used to give us cards. I remember vividly they used to give us cards at the Sunday school, during Christmas, New Year and Easter,  they will remove the name and they came to give us every Sunday and we cherished that and that was an attraction that we wanted to go to Sunday school to get our cards. We were calling her “Dogua”, you know virtually all the white missionaries, because some Nigerians couldn’t call their names they had local names for them. So she was called “Dogua” which shows you she was a very tall lady, and she ended up becoming the wife of the last SIM president in Jos, Crouch. Mr. Crouch lost his wife and later on married her. She was Vera, later I got to know because our relationship lasted virtually the whole of her life, she became Vera Crouch, she was a Canadian and she died in US, California. We communicated with her up till when she could still write in her 80’s, she died in her late 80’s. She had a lot of influence on me; she encouraged us, and I got my first English Bible from her. To get the Bible she gave us portions to memorize and when you do it right you get a gift, and that was the gift, that was in 1961-62 that I remember I had to recite St. John chapter 3 verse 1 to the end and John 14 verse 1 to the end. After I had done that successfully I was able to get the Bible. Those are mainly the major influences I had as I was growing up. But when I became more grown up, honestly the person that impacted greatly on my life was my mother. She’s in her 90’s, she’s still alive, and she’s had a great impact on my life.

CD: Fantastic, thank you very much sir. In your capacity as a leader, you are a leader in your own right, what in your own opinion, is there a gap between the leaders of the present and the leaders of tomorrow.

MLA: No, I think leadership is leadership. And I think leadership has been and will remain the same, the attributes of leadership will remain the same, the practice may differ, and the expectation, what you need to do to become a good leader may differ with time to time. But any leader that is not honest can never be a leader, whether yesterday, tomorrow or next tomorrow. Any leader that has no integrity can never be a leader, whether yesterday, tomorrow or next tomorrow. I define a leader as a person who can influence others, and if the influence is positive that is what I define as a leader. And what is integrity? Integrity is doing what you ought to do not what you want to do. For example if I have given you this invitation, you have asked me you want to come to interview and I say yes, and then you come in and you stay the whole day and you don’t see me, and then no apology, no cordial reason why I didn’t do it, how would you respect me tomorrow. So leadership to me is constant, but because it is a way to influence people what you would do to influence people in last year or last decade will be different from the next decade. But if you cannot influence, you cannot be a leader.

CD: Thank you, sir. So in your own assessment of this new breed of politicians, do you think young people are ready to steer the ship?

MLA: Well, I am sure that at every given point in life, there are people that people will stay with them and they will stay with people, because as a leader the first thing you do is to reach the heart of the people. If you can’t reach the heart of a person then how can you lead him? But if you just want to lead him, then maybe you just want to become a boss, you want to boss the person around and you find out that a lot of us do not know the difference between a leader and a boss. You fear your boss but you may not respect him, but you respect your leader and may not fear him. So until we are able to get that, because I honestly believe at every time leadership is leadership. Leadership is not because that you are in a position to be senior to somebody; that is boss, you are not his leader, because, let’s take the ministry you are a permanent secretary and somebody is just a clerk, you will now treat him with contempt without respect for his own right, then you feel that you are leading, you are not leading. Leadership is respect and you know what the Englishman says, not by coincidence or by accident, in their language they say “you earn respect”, “you earn your salary”. If you don’t work you will not earn your salary, the same thing with respect, if you do not work for the respect, you will not earn it. But if it is fear, there is a limit a day someone will say “to hell I don’t fear you any longer”, but if respects you, whether you are direct boss or whether you have departed from that department or that organization he still respects you because he respects you as a leader, because you have earned the person’s respect.

CD: Thank you. Leadership and religion, do you think there is a correlation between the two, vis-à-vis the state of things in Nigeria today?

MLA: Well, to me you cannot separate the two, because, and this why I sometimes find it difficult when I find some people say that because you have attained some level, you are no more a religious person, you have now gone beyond the religion, you have now gone beyond the people. No, religion has to do with you and your God, can you be ever, unless you don’t believe that there is somebody superior and supreme who created us. Even if you are not a Christian, if you believe that there is somebody somewhere supreme that created this world we are living in, that has control over it, then, doesn’t matter your religion you have to respect that thing, and even in our traditional religions there are norms of the religion, there are the dos and don’ts of that traditional religion and if you follow them it makes a better environment, it gives us better living conditions, guides us in what is right and what is wrong. So that is the real challenge when I find people want to separate them, there are principles in religion that give us a peaceful coexistence with everybody. I have known and have read some other religions, each religion talks about loving neighbors as yourself, so if the religion says we should love our neighbors as ourselves,  if we follow them we will definitely live in a more peaceful, more stable environment, because it is only when I want to move to claiming my right and I forget that you too have a right then the I take the space of my own right plus your own right  and I start infringing on your own right, once I start  infringing on own right there will be conflict and there will be friction and definitely when you rub your hands for too long there is heat. That is my take on that.

CD: Still on leadership sir, but now specific, we go on to the nation, by God’s grace you have been able to serve this country in capacities that made you have access to almost every part of the country and with the benefit of hindsight, the recent elections just concluded there were a lot of agitations about the possibility of Islamizing Nigeria, at your level sir, when you hear that kind of discussion, do you think it’s really possible.

MLA: Well, you see, link up to the last question and I stated, what is religion to an individual? To me it is a way of your own life and your creator. If it is a communication between me and my creator, where is the problem with that? I have never had problems with that, I have seen everybody, and we are all Nigerians, by the grace of God this is where He wants me to be born. If He so desires He can do anything, if He had wanted me to be born in Australia and be an Australian, I would have been an Australian. But by His mercies, this is where He wanted me to be, so I don’t see where we have this problem that someone is going to Islamize or Christianize, whatsoever it is. If what you are doing is right, and acceptable that is a way of witnessing, your own life can be a testimony and a witness to so many people, ‘I want to be like her’, ‘I want to be like him’ or ‘if this is what Christianity is’, or ‘if this is what Islam is’, ‘if this is what Judaism is’ I want to be that, because I have seen a perfect person, who has the fear of the Lord, who accepts every person as equal and created by the same God, who  has given her own space and I take my own space, and you take your own space, and who if I live a life that is acceptable you will always say I want to be that person. If that is Christianity I want to be like him, if that is Islam, I want to be like him. But the only time it changes, and there are people who adopt things because of materialism, because of what they personally feel they will gain and if by my beliefs as a Christian ‘what shall it profit a man if you gain the whole world and lose your soul’? If you believe that you want to get all the latest and by converting to one religion that will give you what you want, and that is what you are aspiring to, where you want to spend eternity and you think that that thing will make you gain heaven and spend your eternity, then somebody can covert you and make you, but if you don’t think so, it’s just like putting water in a basket, the person can keep pouring and when he lifts it there is no water. So it is we as individuals, I don’t believe there is any person who has the power to convert people over to one religion or else what would have happened to people like St. Paul, when they were in prison or what happened to Peter when they were told to go but don’t talk about that Jesus any longer, don’t talk about him and what did he say to them, he said if that is what will happen then they should forget about it, he will continue to preach what he saw and what he knows.

CD: Thank you very much sir, we are still on that issue and we want to look more on the 2015 election. We have heard from you now, that it is because of what people gain they tend to bring religion as a yardstick for determining who is going to be who. But sir, still on this issue of Islamizing Nigeria and the agitation that has been there, with this insecurity and the rest in the North – East and some other parts of Nigeria. But as Christians sir, you know in Nigeria it is not a rule but it is what we have seen, second term is supposed to “be naturally right”, and as Christians we feel our candidate in the last election, let me use the word, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, could not get his second term, do you think there could be some lessons for the church or Christian politicians?

MLA: Well, first and foremost, I honestly believe that God almighty who created us has a purpose for every life. It is left for us to find what the purpose is and to live for that purpose. You have been in this country, there are stories about even myself, at one point, the same issue you are talking about election, was one point I came out and I made statement, not directly but at a lecture I presented at the 70^thbirthday of former president Olusegun Obasanjo, and I have said, you see the whole thing, if you say it is democracy, if you believe in democracy, it is the will of the people. I don’t think it has anything to do with religion, and you may either try to beat the drum of religion and convince some people. I have said it in my last comment to you about religion, who you are, what do you present? What is leadership? It is not being the president; that is not leadership. Leadership is what you do in that office, how many lives have you touched? How many things have you changed positively? How many mouths have you fed? For how many people have you provided basic traits of leadership? You cannot satisfy all the people, but there are majority that will want to do it. And I have said there is only one thing that is permanent in this world, that is change, change is permanent, and you cannot stop it if you say it is going to be by election, you have to, your religion may help you but it does not have the ultimate say. I honestly do not believe that your religion the best ruler, or else, who helped Nehemiah and Ezra to go back and build the temple, was it a Christian or was it somebody of their faith? It was not, so I believe God can raise people anywhere. Again let us go back to what  I have said, if you are a leader that has shown integrity, that has shown acceptability by the people and you are a leader that have made everybody want to be like you, he is somebody I trust I want to be like him. It does not matter where you are, people will vote for you and even if they don’t vote for you, you will walk tall because you have nothing to hide, you are transparent, you are living because you know there is something beyond this life, that you know you are going to be accountable. If they cheat, you will still not be worried because you know that all of us will be held accountable for what we have done. But if we go about saying we must take a pound of flesh or revenge, that is where we have challenges and that is where I feel we just start whipping these sentiments, our candidate. As long as you are a Nigerian, I see you as a candidate, Christian or Muslim. By the way is it by name that you are a Christian? What are your practices? Are you a little Christ? You see these are the sentiments that people use to confuse us. What do you aspire to lead? You want to lead Nigeria, and Nigeria is made up of Christians and Muslims and heathens and every sort of thing. Not every Nigerian is a Christian and not every Nigerian is a Muslim. Some us honestly, if we are Christian and if we are Muslims the way it is being portrayed we wouldn’t be where we are today.  Most of the things that are happening will never happen. When you find armed robbers caught red handed and bearing Christian names, because they are bearing Christian names so you must support them? There is what Christianity stands for and every religion has something they stand for, and that is where integrity comes, what you ought to do, we are all tempted. One day I want to have this opportunity if I can do this little business here, cut corners here, I can do this, if you have integrity, integrity will tell you, is that what you are supposed to do? Is that what is expected of you? And one will quickly know, the inner voice will tell you no, it is not. That is integrity, it is not the name, it is integrity to do what you ought to do, that is the right thing I should do and you do it. Not that I go about parading myself I’m a Christian so all the Christians must come and vote for me, just because I am bearing a name and I go to church. Not every church goer is a Christian, or just because I won election I go to the pulpit, or I bring money to pour on people and that makes you a Christian, no it is not, it is more than that. I honestly think, that the way we are running politics in Nigeria, I hope we begin to run it based on principles and not on sentiments. I will never cast my vote for you, just because you are a Christian nor you have a Christian name, I will not, or because you say you are a Christian, no; there is more to it than that. And even if you have no religion in this world, if I look at you and I believe you can be fair to everybody around, you know that you that we are all created by a supernatural being, whether you call him God, you call him Allah, you call him anything, that you know there is somebody greater than you, and you know there is fairness and justice, you know that every one of us has his own space, that you don’t encroach into other people’s space because of your power or your selfishness, that is what I take as a leader and that is the person I will cast my vote for.

CD: That is interesting sir, thank you very much. We are going still on Nigeria. In the past ten years or there about, we have been facing these insurgents called Boko Haram, and I think it has got to do with military action and knowledge. If you look at it sir, do you think this Boko Haram thing is a religious problem or a political problem?

MLA: You see what people fail to realize, I want to quote French General, Joe Mini, who said that all these Jihad and Crusade you are hearing, they are all for power. If I really want you, I believe I love you so much that I do not want you to go to hell fire, is it by putting a gun on your head that I will force you to follow my way so that you don’t go to hell fire? No, it is by my words and actions, what you see in me, you will say yes, if that is what it is this man is following the right thing. But, if it is for power, I will coerce you, I will frighten you, and I will use all means to force you to change. By the way, again, this is the issue of integrity; this is the issue of materialism; this is the issue of what we want; it is the issue of life after death and I believe that, by following that road you are taking me, will mean me losing in the next life, why don’t I give up today’s life for tomorrow? But, I want to say with all sincerity that if you are talking about insurgency it has never shown whether it is an Islamic issue or a Christian thing, because if it is Islamic, how many Muslims have been killed? How many mosques have been attacked? If you attack a market in a predominant place or you attack people on Friday in Kano, the chances of killing Muslims is much higher than killing Christians. So, it is all what we want to accept in our minds, if I want to convince you to think in a certain way,  I will use so many things around to use them as an example to convince you that it is this or that. I have never seen the insurgency in the North – East as religious issue. Because, if it is then, there would have been no one Muslim casualty. By the way, we simplify these things too much in this country, there are so many other threats that we are not looking at, and we are just looking at the thing. How have we gone to where we are today? How can you convince somebody to pit explosives on himself in are car to go to kill other people? He must be brainwashed, I am sure if you are not brainwashed you will not do that. But, what would have led that person to that extent that is the question you need to ask. What would have led that person? Either the society has been so cruel to him or her or either the society has not given that person the basic that the person need so know. Education is a basic thing that we all need to know. If I am not educated, if I don’t understand the tenets of the religion, one person can sit down and start interpreting it the way that he wants me to believe, and I can’t challenge him and I follow, then you will find those things. But if you are knowledgeable of the issues around you, on what your religion says, you can challenge. But when you have leaders that you cannot challenge them, you cannot argue or ask questions, then you have to beware, that there is something terribly bad. So that is where we are on the issue of the North – East. Why do you want that I must become a Muslim of your own practice? And why do you believe that your own practice is superior? The same thing with Christianity, you see, we sit down in this country and just blanket everything, everybody say Christian, and everybody say Muslim. Even in the Muslim world, haven’t you seen friction? What brings the friction? It is the issue of power; you are trespassing into my territory. What is making us have so many sects in Islam and so many denominations in Christianity? Go along most of the streets in Abuja and see how many churches you have? Has Jesus changed? Did He die for a particular church or a particular people? So if you find out that when we start bringing out our personal issues, some of the churches what broke them? It is over distribution of position and distribution of power, how you share whatever provision and everything you have in the church, this leads to the breaking. So I believe that, honestly the challenges we have are not issues of religion, it is the issue of human nature wanting to dominate the other person and seeing how can I do it successfully?

CD:  Sir, we still like to ask that question again on the issue of insurgency. As a military strategist and a retired general, what can you really say is the reason the Nigerian military has not been able to eradicate this insurgency?

MLA: (Laughs) You see, do you know why I laughed? I think a lot of us in this country are ignorant. As a former military person with all my interaction and knowledge, I have taken part in operations, both internally and externally. I will tell you that there is no way you can defeat insurgency militarily. Go and check in any history, military history or development in the country, go and check, or else how can you expect that America had lost the war in Vietnam. America never lost a battle in Vietnam, virtually every battle they won but at the end they lost the war, because, insurgency is the war of heart and mind. If I tell you today you follow my brand of Islam you will have good houses, good education there won’t be any poverty, every one of you when your child is sick there will be a hospital for him, if a woman wants to put to bed there will be a maternity ward for her, everything is there. Then you have convinced people, and especially if they start practicing it, in a little area that you have you start convincing people. That is what brought the French revolution, so you see, people sit down and believe that it is a fight. It is unlike the civil war where a part of Nigeria was trying to secede and it was called Biafra, it is different, when you occupy that space, you have conquered, you have won the war. But insurgency is not war of space, you can take all the towns on and terrorism and insurgency, you can have all the town of Abuja occupied by your troops. It cannot stop one man who has made a bomb in his house, put it in his car and drive to Wuse Market to explode it or if you stop him on the way he does it, he has still achieved what he wants to frighten people. So you see when people think that you can defeat insurgency militarily, I laugh, you can’t. The military can only provide an environment to help government or the authority, to insert an authority, because it is the lack of authority. How did they grow up? They didn’t grow up in one day, there is a failure on authority in some areas that they created a vacuum and the people take over the vacuum. So until you convince those people, who are supporting them, that it is better to be on this side than that side, then you will never win. Because it is not a one day, or one week or one year affair, it is going to take a long time to convince the people, to win their hearts and minds to know that what they are doing is wrong and that is not the way forward. But if you just believe that you will sit down today and Nigerian Armed forces or the authority in Nigeria believe that you wake up one day and say you have captured the whole of Boko Haram or the whole of North – East, you are mistaken. Look at all the other insurgencies in the world, look at Northern Ireland, how long did it take the British? You think the British who were a major power, who colonized virtually the entire world, how long did it take them to overcome Northern Ireland? That is why I am saying it is not the classical, conventional military war. That is why to fight this war of Boko Haram, you need everything together, the churches, the mosques, the economists, the teachers, the military, everybody. Because everybody has to come and convince those people that there is something better here than there, then they will become fishes, when the government has finished doing that or when the authority has finished doing that, they are moving them like a fish, do you know the best way to kill a fish? It is either to take water away from the fish or to remove the fish out of the water. But as long as there is water and there is fish, you have problem. So it is easier to find what are those things, we have to sit down and ask ourselves this frank question, what has happened that has led people to do what they are doing? Once you know it, you have to counter it now, these are the root causes of this problem, so like a tree you remove the roots, the tree will die, you leave the roots and follow the branches and cut the branches, it will grow again. That is what people are saying military, the military can only cut the branches.

CD: That sounds like there is a real problem now, some of us have been ignorant, from the way you said it and from the way some of us have been analyzing the insurgency, from the media we are seeing that maybe because the former president was not a military strategist, he may not know what to do, and the present president is told us that by December 2015, Boko Haram will be brought to an end.

MLA: What I will believe is that, what I think the president said, I am not saying that is what he said, I said what I think is  that in three months they will not have the capacity to do all the things that they have been doing. They will not freely do it, go to a church, bomb the church, take over a town and rule and put their flag and everything, which is what I think the president is saying. But to say that you will not hear anything about Boko Haram after three months, I think we are joking. It is not only the military, it will take the military, the police, the prison authority, everybody to put their hands together to reorient all those people, to tell them that there is, just as they have been convinced to agree to follow that way, now you convince them that there is something better and that those people are deceiving you, educate them by the religious leaders, whether they are Christians or they are Muslims, educate them by good religious leaders who hold the tenets of these religions honestly, you will find out that the thing will die a natural death, but it will not be a thing that you will conquer completely by military might.

CD: This is very interesting and I believe that our readers are really going to be thankful for the light that you have begun to shed on these issues on insecurity. Our theme in this coming edition is, we are looking at the signs at end times, and some of us from our own angle see Boko Haram as a sign of end times, from a spiritual aspect what will you say about that?

MLA: I will not argue with that but I will also say, my understanding of the Bible is that one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day to God. So, if you say end times, end time is a period, what is the length of that? I am not a theologian, the theologians may tell us, but there are basic things, that even if it is end times, what were we told, those who withstand it will get the crown and their names will be in the book of life, that is what we are told so even if it is end times and it is even good for us because we know we should not succumb, we should now know that the end is coming. In Revelations it talks about the release of the beast, and we now know when the end time comes, when God will cage the beast. Then those who conquer to the end, who remain faithful to the end will have a crown of life and they will be His and He will be their God, so really to me in as much it is good to love our friends, to convince our friends to do everything, but the most important thing is to look at religion, and to look at life after death as my own responsibility, it is not for the father, it is not for the mother. You will help your sibling, you will help your friend, you will help the nation to go the right way, but for you to do it you must start with yourself. We must start with ourselves, have we been witnesses to ourselves, to witness what we are saying is true and show that light ourselves. Or is it the saying that we want to go and remove a speck  from somebody’s eye when we have something in our own eye, so even if it is end time, how soon that time is I don’t know , you don’t know, but the most important thing is that each one of us has his own end time, there is no portion of the Bible that I have read that has said there is somebody who will stay forever, so we will die in one way or the other and if it is this insurgency that will cause the death of some of us, we can’t help it, that is what God has destined, but the most important thing is ‘where will you spend eternity’? Knowing that the end time is coming, so what? If the forces from the east will attack and this and do that, so what? That is the question I think we should be asking ourselves ‘so what?’ If you find an answer to that, stick by it. If you have to get the crown and you have to stay, it may, lead to your end; it leads to your first death, how about the second one, are you prepared for it, these are the important things that we as human beings should be thinking every now and then and not blanket statements, end times and this. Wars have been there, from First World War, we have fought Second World War and people were saying those were end times, there was Iraq war, people said that was the end time, it came in front of our houses now, blowing from North – East people say it is end times, we do not know what will happen. But one thing is clear are we ready if it is the end time? Are we individually ready for it?

CD: Thank you very much sir, it has been a very good pleasure talking with you. We have really benefited and our readers are going to benefit more, by the time this makes it to the press. Thank you very much sir, we are grateful.

MLA: Thank you. You are welcome, it my pleasure.

By:Countdown Interview with General Martin Luther Agwai Rtd CRF