The Nation Newspaper

Author: Segun Ayobolu

  • PMB: Simplicity in life, dignity in death

    PMB: Simplicity in life, dignity in death

    It would have been surprising if his death last Sunday, July 13, in a private hospital in London, had been received with universal approbation and adulation of a virtuous, unblemished life in a polity as complex and fraught as Nigeria. First, there are no human beings without fault. With the possible exception of the immaculately spotless Peter Obi, according to the holy gospel of the ‘Obidients’, mortal leaders are no angels. Again, an inevitable and unavoidable price of greatness is the intense controversy evoked by those who make a significant impact on history across time and space. Those who love them do so fanatically, and those who detest them are implacable in their hatred. And so it was with President Muhammadu Buhari, unassuming military Head of State for about 20 months between December 1983 and August 1985, and two-term elected President of Nigeria from 2015 to 2023. It was no different with Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa, Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ladoke Akintola, Murtala Mohammed, Odumegwu Ojukwu and several others who had played prime roles in Nigeria’s political evolution.

    When he died in 1987, the great sage, unrivalled administrative genius and first Premier of the Western Region in Nigeria’s First Republic, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was passionately mourned by his teeming followers and remorselessly reviled by those who could not differentiate him from Satan. The great novelist and thinker, Professor Chinua Achebe, had issued a public statement after Awolowo’s death, accusing him of supporting genocide during the Nigerian civil war, and vigorously canvassing against according the great politician a state burial. He did not believe that the dead deserved some respect, and he was no doubt entitled to his view in a free and open society. It is instructive in this regard that Awolowo’s arch political opponent, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, who defeated him in the 1979 and 1983 presidential elections, awarded him the National Honour of Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR), even though Awo was never President.

    A near-unanimous refrain in the outpouring of emotions following President Buhari’s transition to eternity from both his friends and foes alike, however, was the unrivalled ethical pedestal he bestrode and the impeccable moral integrity that characterised his over five decades in public life. His aversion to material accumulation earned him the lifelong adulation, adoration and reflexive loyalty of millions of ordinary Nigerians, particularly in Northern Nigeria, where mass poverty is particularly pronounced, largely as a result of leadership lack of vision and elite venality.  Indeed, in his slim but powerful classic, ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’, Achebe had traced the excessive materialism that is the bane of contemporary Nigeria partly to what he described as the deficiency in the political thought of some of our key founding fathers.

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    As Achebe put it, “A perceptive student of Nigerian politics, James Booth, has drawn attention to the poverty of thought exhibited in the biographies of Dr Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo in contrast to the expressions of ideology to be found even in the more informal works of Mboya, Nyerere and Nkrumah! In a solemn vow made by Azikiwe in 1937, he pledged: ‘that henceforth I shall utilise my earned income to secure my enjoyment of a high standard of living and also to give a helping hand to the needy’. Obafemi Awolowo was even more forthright about his ambitions: ‘I was going to make myself formidable intellectually, morally invulnerable, to make all the money that is possible for a man with my brains and brawn to make’. Thoughts such as these are more likely to produce aggressive millionaires than selfless leaders of their people. An absence of objective and intellectual rigour at the critical moment of a nation’s formation is more than an academic matter. It inclines the fledgling state to disorderly growth and mental deficiency”.

    Though controversial, Achebe ‘s contention here in my view contains some grains of truth. Buhari was no intellectual and did not pretend to be one. He was a simple soldier who defended his country’s territorial integrity first on the battlefield, next in a war against indiscipline and corruption through ‘redemptive’ military statecraft between 1984 and 1985 and then on the partisan political terrain as a politician and emergent statesman between 2003 and 2023. Yet, he had a strong moral orientation to life undoubtedly influenced by his deep commitment to Islamic spirituality. It is amazing that a man who was military governor of the former North Eastern State comprising about five states today did not seize the opportunity to amass stupendous wealth. He was a former Chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and military Head of State but never allocated any oil bloc to himself. He never acquired any property in Lagos. It almost sounds like fiction.   It was after he left office in 2023 that the succeeding Tinubu administration upgraded his house in Kaduna.

    When he assumed office as military Head of State in 1984, following the martial overthrow of a thoroughly corrupt and decadent Second Republic, the military still had the image of being a redemptive, messianic institution with the requisite reservoir of patriotism and professional integrity to rescue Nigeria from the havoc of predatory politicians. There is no doubt that Buhari and his deputy, Brigadier General Tunde Idiagbon, pursued their War Against Indiscipline and Corruption in essentially purist and uncompromising, Messianic terms. Thus, they set up anti-corruption tribunals that tried and jailed corrupt politicians of the Second Republic for terms that amounted to life sentences. They publicly executed drug couriers and jailed foreign exchange speculators. They drafted draconian punitive laws against a media they perceived as veering beyond the bounds of liberty into licentiousness.

    Even before his emergence as military Head of State, Buhari ‘s patriotic commitment to Nigeria was indisputable. In his thrilling and authoritative book, ‘Soldiers of Fortune’, the lawyer, writer and historian reputed for his extensive knowledge of Nigerian military history, Max Siollun, wrote, “Buhari was in charge of troops sent to Nigeria’s north-eastern border region in 1983 to prevent infiltration by armed rebels from the neighbouring Republic of Chad. After his troops successfully cleared the rebels from the border area, the troops advanced several kilometres into Chadian territory. The political hierarchy ordered Buhari to withdraw his troops, but he refused, arguing that the Chadian rebels would return to the area as soon as his troops departed… Buhari was finally persuaded to withdraw after President Shagari enlisted Buhari ‘s superior officers, Lt-Generals Jalo and Wushishi, to order him to pull back.”

    As expected and as Max Siollun writes, the incident created a tense relationship between top members of the Shagari administration and Buhari and that “It also caused enough concern in the government for the Transport Minister, Umaru Dikko, to place Buhari under surveillance. Dikko also pressured the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General Wushishi, to block Buhari ‘s posting to Lagos…The strong-willed Buhari complained to President Shagari that Dikko had asked his movement to be monitored. When Shagari raised the issue with Dikko, Dikko did not deny the accusation, but simply warned Shagari that Buhari could not be trusted and should be retired. Dikko had woken a sleeping tiger.”

    Widely reviled by Nigerians, Umaru Dikko had a reputation for corruption, arrogance and contempt for suffering Nigerians. When asked on national television about the economic hardships being experienced by Nigerians under the Shagari administration, he responded by asking if any Nigerians had been seen eating from dust bins! The audacious attempt by the Buhari regime to abduct Dikko from Britain, where he had escaped to after the 1983 coup, an effort coordinated with the support of the dreaded Israeli intelligence outfit, Mossad, made global news at the time. Dikko had been successfully kidnapped outside his residence when he was taking a walk, anaesthetised into unconsciousness, bundled into a waiting van and driven away by Nigerian and Israeli security officers. He was later offloaded into a crate labelled “diplomatic baggage”, addressed to the Nigerian Ministry of External Affairs in Lagos and transported in a lorry to Stansted Airport, where a Nigeria Airways plane was waiting to depart for Lagos with its “diplomatic baggage” at 3 pm.

    Unfortunately, there had been a last-minute lapse in the operation and British security and immigration agents in and around the airport had been put on high alert. Attempts by the British authorities to inspect the diplomatic crate were vigorously protested by a Nigerian officer, Major Ahmed Jarfa Yesufu (rtd) and one Okon Edet, a member of the Nigerian High Commission in London. According to Max Siollun, “The vehement protests were dismissed and the police opened the crates with a crowbar. What they found inside was shocking. In the first crate was a bound and unconscious Dikko with his torso bare. Dikko ‘s captors had shoved an endotracheal tube into his throat to prevent him from choking on his own vomit when he was unconscious. His captors wanted him brought back to Nigeria alive. Besides him was Shapiro, brandishing syringes and a supply of additional anaesthetics to administer to Dikko if need be. Shapiro asked the customs officers, “Well, gentlemen, what do we do now?”

    Those were momentous episodes in Nigeria’s foreign policy at the time, resulting in a prolonged diplomatic face-off between Nigeria and Britain. Buhari’s transition from a feared military dictator to a democratically elected two-term President who governed with utmost respect for democratic ethos is unprecedented in Nigeria’s history. Obasanjo also governed as a two-term elected President after previously serving as a military Head of State who voluntarily handed over to a democratically elected President in 1979. But on his second coming as elected President, his attempt to secure a tenure extension for a third term in 2007 had to be thwarted by a concerted resistance of critical political stakeholders. Obasanjo sings his anti-corruption credentials from the rooftops and labels everybody else as corrupt. But the monstrous Hilltop mansion in Abeokuta and the expansive Obasanjo Presidential Library complex, as well as numerous multi-billion Naira private investments, give the lie to his rhetoric. Buhari has no such baggage.

    This column does not intend to join the debate on the achievements or otherwise of the  Buhari administration for his eight years as elected President.  His accomplishments are there for all to see, and his failings too, like any leader. One of these is that he was too trusting of some of his key aides who hid behind the cover of his unstinting integrity and credibility to amass humongous wealth without the slightest iota of compassion for the teeming talakawa that Buhari loved and who reciprocated his affection fervently. Yet, some of such unscrupulous persons see his consistently over 12 million votes over several electoral cycles as an asset they can inherit and trade with, even as the honest one leaves us in a blaze of glory. They should not underestimate the intelligence of Buhari’s masses.

    Flashback to October 1, 1974. In his address to the nation, Nigeria’s military Head of State at the time, General Yakubu Gowon, told his stunned countrymen and women that his earlier pledge to return the country to democratic governance by 1976 was no longer feasible. Aba Saheed, pen name of Akogun Tola Adeniyi, fiery and unsparing columnist with the then trail-blazing Daily Times, responded with a pungent and incisive piece titled ‘Death, I salute you!’. He warned about the transience of human existence, the ubiquity of death and the ultimate vanity of power. Buhari needed no such admonitions. According to his media adviser, as President, Femi Adesina, towards the end of Buhari’s tenure, he asked the former President, “after here, what next?” And he responded, “I’m looking forward to leaving. And from there, I go to my grave at the appointed time”. No wonder he was so indifferent to the obsessive accumulation of wealth and the arrogant utilisation of power. May the honest one rest in deserved peace.

  • New constitution as a political magic wand?

    New constitution as a political magic wand?

    Seek ye first the kingdom of a new constitution for Nigeria and every other thing – prosperity, stability, security, electoral rectitude, moral integrity, etc – that have largely eluded the country since independence will be added to her an influential school of thought appears to believe. For instance, the eminent pressure group known as The Patriots, when they paid a courtesy call on President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, in August last year, made the demand for a new constitution the fulcrum of their essentially two-point demand. Led by former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the group is made up of experienced statesmen and respected elders, including former governors and other ex-public office holders, distinguished professionals and accomplished leaders whose views are no doubt deserving of respect.

    Speaking on behalf of The Patriots at the meeting with the President, Chief Anyaoku appealed to him to send an executive bill to the National Assembly to convene a national constituent Assembly with the mandate to produce a draft people’s democratic constitution for the country. The group advocated that the proposed Constituent Assembly should comprise individuals elected on a non-party basis from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. They also proposed that the Constituent Assembly should be supported by seven constitutional lawyers representing the six geopolitical zones and the FCT and that its deliberations “should take into account the 1960/1963 constitutions as well as the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference and indeed of the various national conferences that considered the Nigerian constitutions.”

    Continuing, the group advised that “The draft constitution, produced by the constituent Assembly should be put to a national referendum and, if approved, should then be signed by the President as the genuine Nigerian people’s constitution”. Insinuated subtly in this proposal is the belief that the current 1999 Constitution (as amended) is a fake document but The Patriots do not proffer any logical or empirical reasons for arriving at this conclusion. Although President Tinubu did not necessarily disagree with the proposals of his distinguished visitors, he hinted that his major preoccupation for now was to see through his administration’s ongoing economic reforms, after which the suggestions of The Patriots would be reviewed and carefully considered.

    However, the group of eminent persons has obviously not given up on its demand for a new constitution as the cure-all panacea for the country’s socio-political and economic maladies. Towards this end, the group plans to meet with the leadership of the National Assembly to further push its agenda for far-reaching constitutional reforms. Speaking at an event marking the 20th memorial anniversary of their founding Chairman, Chief FRA Williams in Lagos, the group’s General Secretary, Mr Olawale Okuniyi, reiterated The Patriot’s commitment to constitutional reforms stressing that their meeting with the National Assembly would focus on amending Sections 8 and 9 of the 1999 Constitution to allow for a referendum to enable Nigerians to directly influence constitutional changes.

    According to Okuniyi, “The 1999 Constitution is fundamentally flawed and structured in a way that benefits only a small elite while enabling corruption. We are calling on President Tinubu to convene a Constituent Assembly where Nigerians can negotiate a new governance framework that works for everyone”. Incidentally, The Patriots have the support of many eminent senior lawyers in their campaign for a new constitution. For instance, when he received a group, the Prestigious Sisters League at the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, campus last year, the founder of the university and respected Senior lawyer, Chief Afe Babalola, unequivocally threw his weight behind the demand of the Patriots.

    In the words of Chief Babalola on that occasion, “I read the publication of The Patriots visiting President Tinubu, and I am in full agreement with them. We need a new constitution. But I do not agree that we should go through any constitutional conference. Recently, you are aware that President Bola Tinubu asked us to go back to the old National Anthem; there was no conference for it before it was passed by the National Assembly and assented by the President. The 1963 constitution was the one made by all of us. By the same token, the parliament should bring back the 1963 constitution and reenact it”. This is an incredible view from a SAN of Chief Babalola ‘s pedigree. He spoke seemingly ex-cathedra and apparently saw no reason to justify through rational arguments his advocacy for a return to the 1963 Constitution under which the First Republic collapsed catastrophically, and the country drifted to a tragic civil war.

    Unfortunately, another esteemed SAN, Chief Wole Olanipekun, did no better when he delivered the 32nd and 33rd convocation lecture of the Olabisi Onabanjo University in February last year. Describing the 1999 Constitution as fake, Chief Olanipekun told his audience, including impressionable youths that “We need a constitution with a humane face. I’m a lawyer, but we are deceiving ourselves; our constitution is fake, and I have said this over and over, but then you will ask us, lawyers, ‘If we say the Constitution is fake, why are we practising it?’ Lawyers and judges apply the law as it is, not the law as it ought to be, so we apply the law as we have it now and we have been pleading that we should amend the constitution, let us overhaul it’. But Chief Olanipekun did not believe that he owed the public, given his legal expertise, the benefit of his rigorously articulated position on what he thinks a ‘genuine’ constitution should contain and why he describes the 1999 Constitution as fake.

    The casual and rather cavalier manner in which these revered lawyers approach the very critical issue of an appropriate constitution for Nigeria is a far cry from the seriousness with which Obafemi Awolowo undertook the same task. Awolowo seized the opportunity of his incarceration at the Calabar Prisons to undertake extensive research into the constitutions of most countries in the world at the time based on which he formulated rigorous, near-scientific principles to guide the formulation of an appropriate constitution for Nigeria. Among the principles he arrived at in this respect include that (1) If a country is unilingual and uni-national, the constitution must be unitary (2) If a country is bilingual or multilingual, the constitution must be federal, and the constituent states must be organized on a linguistic basis (3) Any experiment with a unitary constitution in a bilingual or multilingual or multinational country must fail, in the long run. He articulated his political ideas on constitution making as well as Socio-economic policy in such books as ‘Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution’, ‘The People’s Republic’ and ‘Strategy and Tactics of the People’s Republic of Nigeria’.

    Chief Anyaoku talks so casually about the present Constitution breeding corruption but perhaps forgets that humongous corruption was a behavioural pattern of our political elite right from the First Republic. Indeed, the corruption of the political class in that period featured prominently in major Kaduna Nzeogwu’s coup speech in 1966 as one of the reasons for the military intervention that sacked the First Republic. In his seminal work on the failure of Nigeria’s First Republic, Professor Larry Diamond wrote that “Each ruling party set about in the early 1950s to use the lever of state power – the control over patronage, coercion and chieftaincy in particular -:to consolidate its political base and to suppress those elements that resisted consolidation…Rank favouritism in the award of loans, contracts, bank credits, positions on public boards and corporations and licenses to trade commodity crops gave rise in each region to a ‘privileged group’ of entrepreneurs who came sudden and fantastic success and who, in return, were expected to contribute substantially to party funds, use their wealth and influence to mobilize support for their parties in their various localities, and maintain unflinching loyalty to party leadership”.

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    Indeed, the flaws and ills of the 1960/1963 constitution informed the change from the parliamentary to the presidential constitution of the Second Republic and even then the rampant corruption, intemperate politics, blatant election rigging, promiscuous vagrancy of politicians from one party to the other that resulted in the collapse of the First Republic led to the breakdown of democracy once again with the coup of 1983. Another respected Senior Advocate in the person of Mr Babatunde Fashola, former Lagos State governor and Minister of Works, in my view, summarizes the crux of the matter succinctly and poignantly in his book, ‘Nigerian Public Discourse -‘The Interplay of Empirical Evidence and Hyperbole’.

    According to Fashola, “My summation is that “Nigerians want a better life, not a better document”. The conviction that the Constitution serves as a universal remedy, a magic bullet with the capacity to address all our tribulations, perhaps warrants a re-evaluation. Proponents of the perspective that our political architecture is the principal barrier to our progress may indeed possess a legitimate argument. However, l advocate that their contentions necessitate less rhetorical flourish and more exactitude”.

    Fashola continues, “Interestingly, while an impressive number of commentators and agitators for constitutional change endorse the 1979 Constitution, they disown the 1999 Constitution in many aspects such as to assert that it lied about its source and that it was written by the military. However, they continually forget that the 1976 Constituent Assembly leading to the 1999 Constitution and Justice Niki Tobi’s constitution debating and coordinating committee share one thing in common – they were both inaugurated by Military Heads of state. As I acknowledged earlier, there may be the need to further amend part of the Constitution, and indeed – the amendment was made in 2023, but those who seek those amendments must move away from wholesale condemnation and recommend specific amendments that they seek”. I concur.

  • Professor Tunji Olaopa and the reform struggle in Nigeria (2)

    Professor Tunji Olaopa and the reform struggle in Nigeria (2)

    Like some of our country’s most profound and accomplished literary and intellectual minds such as Professors  Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Chinua Achebe, Femi Osofisan or Niyi Osundare to name a few, who were deeply grounded in the language, culture and traditions of their communal, ethnic origins, Professor Tunji Olaopa’s intellectual memoir reveals his firm rootedness in and immense gratitude for an early penetrating immersion in the values of the Okeho and Aawe Yoruba communities of South-West Nigeria where he was born and had his childhood and youthful acculturation and maturation. He writes fondly of the moral values, life-affirming communal ethos and virtues as well as disciplinary ethic that molded his growing up in these communities. Olaopa’s profound love of and limitless affection for western education and its rich intellectual heritage did not alienate or delink him from his traditional cultural moorings but rather the traditional and the modern had a mutually reinforcing symbiosis in his mental and psychological makeup as exhibited by his expansive, accommodationist and syncretic worldview.

    Olaopa demonstrates a deep knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the historical origins, cultural matrix and psychic predisposition of his native Aawe. He is the urbane, global intellectual and citizen who is yet acutely embedded in the local soil that sprang him. Indeed, his unquenchable thirst and hunger for western education and knowledge responsible for his no mean accomplishments in life so far have their roots in his Aawe socio-cultural environment. As he put it, “The re-education I got on my return to Aawe went beyond Mama Muniratu’s good doses of lessons in physical hard work and industriousness. I was also regaled with stories of the diligence that went into the founding of the town and the vision that bred so many illustrious sons and daughters who became beacons of possibilities for younger generations like mine. It became obvious early in Aawe that the only way to make up for what Awe lacked in historical significance, like the imperial glory of Oyo, was to take education seriously”. It was from this early period that the example of the great Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, the renowned economist from Aawe, was to be of profound inspirational significance for Oloapa in his evolving educational odyssey and future intellectual as well as bureaucratic career.

    He writes that “The first fifteen years of my life was spent in cultural and educational journeys from Okeho to Akure, and then Sango-Ota, back to Okeho, then to Iseyin and, finally, Aawe”. The political scientist in him draws critical parallels or divergences between the political organization and cultures in these communities of his early local peregrinations in the South-West and the larger Nigerian polity of his later adulthood. For instance, writing of Okeho, he notes that “Indeed, Okeho is many things that Nigeria is not. Aside its original confederate communities, Okeho grew to incorporate many other peoples and different faiths in relative peaceful coexistence. I remember we had Hausa-Fulani neighbours who were Muslims as others who were adherents of traditional religions. The Hausa-Fulani had stayed so long as to have integrated themselves into the Yoruba cultural environment without being forced in any way to jettison their cultural identity…But Okeho of those years signaled for me the very possibility of plural coexistence that Nigeria is striving for”.

    No less fascinating is Oloapa’s narrative of the impact of mutually accommodating and harmonious coexistence of the various religions of Christianity, Islam and traditional African spirituality characteristic of Yoruba communities in the evolution of his religious belief and practice. His description of his quest for spiritual illumination and religious fulfillment reminds one of similar narratives in Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s autobiography of his spiritual adventures during his studies in the United Kingdom which took him from theism through agnosticism until the sage finally birthed at a firm orthodox Christian faith even though he was also deeply immersed in esoteric, mystical spirituality. Professor Olaopa’s strong spiritual convictions as a practicing Christian of a restrained, non-materialistic Pentecostal orientation is obvious. There is no doubt that his Christian moral convictions partly nourish and fuel his obsessive lifelong preoccupation with ceaseless and never -ending reform at the personal and institutional levels. There is as Bishop Hassan Kukah notes in his foreword a subtle, unobtrusive spiritual sense of mission in the passion and fervor with which the author has dedicated his life to the actualization of his vision of reform. The author points out that “Okeho and Aawe were my first introduction to the deep and experiential understanding of what Ali Mazrui calls Africa’s triple heritage of the confluence of western Christianity, Islam and traditional African religion” noting that “The force of modernity that colonization accelerated became a disruptive influence on how Africans perceive themselves and others. And in its place is a new template of three different cultural values struggling to find coherence. In a place like Nigeria, the coherence of Christianity, Islam and Traditional religions has failed to materialize still”.

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    We follow Olaopa’s educational trajectory from his humble beginnings at Christ Baptist School, Aawe, through Ebenezer Anglican Primary School, Akure, Iseyin District Grammar School and Aawe High School where he completed his secondary school education in 1977. His attendance at the famous Olivet Baptist Heights School, Oyo, where he obtained the Higher School Certificate (HSC) was a major milestone in this regard. In his words, “From Aawe High School to Olivet Heights, I learnt precious lessons that added to my stock of life capacities and values required to advance in life and be a better person, first, to oneself and then to others”. Recte Sapere fons (For knowledge and Sound Wisdom), the motto of the University of Ibadan, where he obtained his B.Sc and M.Sc degrees in Political Science, was a powerful motivating factor in the molding of Olaopa, the man, bureaucrat  and scholar. The academic, social and personal fulfillment he experienced at the prestigious institution as narrated in chapter four of the book is evident and infectious.

    According to him, “In retrospect, it would seem that all my journeys towards intellectual “beingness” climaxed at the University of Ibadan. At the time I was still undecided about the choice to make between law and political science, the University of Ibadan had already cast a long shadow over the other universities; it was simply the place to be. It was already a symbol of academic excellence and, I believe, it is still unbeaten today – it is the first and best”. Particularly enthralling is his narration of his foray into student union politics when he made an ultimately futile but no less personally edifying bid for the presidency of the students’ union. Oloapa writes fondly of his various teachers at different stages of his educational career and particularly at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. So important were the writings of Plato to his intellectual development that he devotes a chapter to ‘Plato and the Intellectual Mentors’. Although he had read widely in literature, politics, philosophy and biographies of eminent personalities, Plato’s ‘The Republic’ in particular made a marked impression on Olaopa and possibly laid the foundation for his lifelong preoccupation with public sector reform in Nigeria.

    In his words, “However, when I started rummaging through the book, I got more than just the dramatic contents. On the contrary, I was opened up to a large expanse of intellectual frameworks that speak to what it means to reform a polity that had gone terribly bad and had sabotaged its original objectives. In retrospect, I suspected the seed of inquiry into social harmony and institutional reform was sown at that time”.

    To be concluded

  • The naked gods (2)

    The naked gods (2)

    Unlike the Catholic Bishops who were more reticent about making predictions of electoral outcomes before the February 25 presidential election, many Pentecostal spiritual leaders rashly and brashly prophesied an outright Peter Obi victory at the polls. Many of them spoke with such boldness and seeming spiritual authority that many people would not be blamed for assuming that they were on personal speaking terms with God Almighty. I was aghast when one of the Pentecostals openly demanded that his leg be amputated if Obi did not win the election.

    Another declared that as a prophet of the most high God, it would mean there was no God in heaven if the Labour Party (LP) candidate did not triumph at the polls. Because of the brazen way they literally danced naked in the market square with their confidently asserted prophecies of the outcome of the presidential polls, it is not surprising that many of the politically partisan Pentecostal pastors have been more restrained in commenting on the outcome of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).

    Prior to the judgement by the PEPC, a Pentecostal pastor who had vehemently condemned the outcome of the election without resorting to rhyme or reason had placed large-sized pictures of the five judges on the altar of his church and prayed as well as prophesied vociferously that they would deliver Justice. He was a well- known Peter Obi supporter and in his jaundiced view only a verdict that favored Obi could be regarded as being in consonance with truth and Justice. Another fanatical and reflexively thoughtless pastor in his support for Peter Obi, Paul Enenche of the Dunamis International Ministries purported on his pulpit to avail the PEPC judges of the benefit of his jaundiced advice on how they should judge the petitions before them!

    These crassly partisan Pentecostal clerics apart from desecrating the altar of God also embarrassed, denigrated, and disgraced the name and image of the Almighty. It is not unlikely that the prophecies of these Pastors on Peter Obi’s assumed electoral victory emboldened the latter to believe that he had any chance of winning an election in which he failed to forge a possible winning coalition.

    Indeed many of these pastors reportedly got their congregations to fast and pray that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would not win the election or that he would die. I watched one of these Pentecostal Bishops prophesying on national television after Tinubu had won that the then President-elect would not be sworn in. He vividly described a vision in which he claimed that he saw Tinubu being arrested by soldiers on May 29, an interim government put in place and fresh elections ordered. Or what do we make of the popular, fiery Pentecostal pastor who boldly told his congregation that God had categorically told him that he would be the country’s 16th President after ex-President Muhammadu Buhari. Did this pastor realize that the calling of a pastor is infinitely higher and more critical than that of a political office holder in God’s agenda for humanity?

    Indeed, he went on to pay the sum of N100 million to collect the presidential nomination form of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), contested the party’s presidential primaries, and scored zero votes from delegates. Is his God so profligate that He would ask him to spend such a humongous amount on procuring the nomination form and yet not guaranteeing his victory at the intra-party polls? Is it really the voice of God that these failed pastors heard or that of some sinister being bent on deceiving them and eroding the integrity and credibility of God? Is the Christian God such a capricious and inconsistent being? I don’t think so.

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    You must give it to leading Pentecostal pastors like Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor W. F. Kumuyi of the Deeper Life Ministries, Pastor Daniel Olukoya of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries or Pastor Sam Adeyemi of the Daystar Church who were restrained and refused to desecrate their altars for cheap and selfish partisan political goals. It is sad that most of the pastors campaigning openly for Peter Obi on their pulpits were of Igbo stock like the LP presidential candidate and it was difficult to decipher if they were actuated by genuine Christian motives or selfish ethnic considerations.

    There were of course those especially from the dominant Christian states of the Middle Belt who were irked by and were reacting to the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket. They assumed that the Christian God would not endorse such a same-faith ticket and presumed to speak God’s mind when they had apparently not heard from Him. As the APC repeatedly explained to these clerics to no avail, their same-faith ticket was a pragmatic and expedient strategy to achieve electoral victory given the realities of the country’s demographic composition and nothing more.

    The outcome of the presidential election justified and confirmed the projection of the APC on the electoral viability of the Muslim-Muslim ticket. In any case, the fiery rhetoric of many Christian clerics in support of Obi, the candidate’s elaborate campaigns of church tourism where he was received by enthusiastic crowds of Christians at big church events effectively de-marketed him in predominantly Muslim states in the North-East, North-West and North-Central as well as substantial Muslim populations in the South-West making it impossible for him to win the pan-Nigerian victory imperative to emerge as President.

    Beyond this, what gave the Christian clerics the impression that a Christian president or Vice-President would necessarily lead the country to the promised land of our dreams? Were Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan not self-professed Christians and did their tenures witness any effective dent on the country’s multidimensional problems of poverty, corruption, gross infrastructure deficit, mass unemployment, insufficient housing and other indices of underdevelopment?

    Again, it is sheer fallacy to presume that any religion can Islamize or Christianize the state in a democratic Nigeria as claimed by most Pentecostal clerics. The Christian clerics were deaf to explanations that President Tinubu’s wife, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, is not only a Christian of Pentecostal persuasion but a Pastor to boot. Even the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Borno State testified that Vice President Kashim Shettima was of great assistance to the church during his tenure as governor of the state for eight years. Only recently I read a complaint by Professor Ishaq Akintola’s Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) that President Tinubu’s appointments so far are skewed in favour of Christians and calling for the appointment of more Muslims to key positions. I do not know how the Muslim Association came to this conclusion but this complaint is instructive and demonstrates the sheer mischief of those who sought to give the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket a negative and pejorative coloration.

    Although I cannot claim close familiarity with Christian theology or Biblical exegesis, it would appear that God in the Old Testament made use of non Jewish, pagan Kings like Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus to pursue and fulfill his purposes in history. It is part of the sovereignty and unquestionable jurisdiction of God to choose who to utilize as instruments of his will in the history and evolution of nations. Furthermore, it is misplaced and misleading for Christians to believe that they need the backing of the state through the support of those of their faith in high political positions to advance the cause of their religion. After all, in what ways did Professor (Pastor) Yemi Osinbajo’s occupying the office of Vice-President for eight years between 2015 and 2023 necessarily have a beneficial impact on the progress of the church?

    In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus kept far away from the palaces of Kings and royalty preferring to equip his 12 disciples of humble origin to preach the good news which ultimately brought the mighty Roman Empire to its knees in supplication to the Christian faith. State patronage has all too often had a negative impact on the efficacy of the Christian church across space and time as Christ does not require the support of Caesar to propagate his good news of salvation to the world.

    The preoccupation of the Pentecostals with politics in the 2023 elections was a needless distraction and their often erratic prophesies that were wide off the mark have done incalculable damage to the credibility of the church from which it will require considerable time to recover. The most critical mission of the church in our contemporary world is not to anoint political leaders but to preach Christ’s message of salvation to a world so obviously headed for a catastrophic implosion. Much more dangerous than the economic crisis, political combustions and social dysfunctions that afflict our world are the moral turpitude and spiritual paralysis that erode positive values and demean the human worth and essence.

    Politics and political leadership will not save the world as important as these are. In the same way, neither economic prosperity nor high educational attainment will heal the malignant cancer at the heart of contemporary human society. Rather, it is my view that the solution to the current human dilemma lies in Christ and the church should urgently halt its distraction by politics and return to its primary reason for being which is to save the souls of men through the unique message of Christ.

    Just like the Pentecostals in Nigeria, the Evangelicals in America got unduly immersed in that country’s electoral processes during the 2020 presidential elections. Many leading evangelical men of God predicted publicly that Donald Trump would win the election as he was purportedly the choice of God. Yes, genuine evangelicals in America had every cause to be unhappy with the moral decline attendant on the influence of the liberals in that society through, for instance, the legalization of abortion rights, the elevation of gay rights to a cardinal principle of state policy or the elimination of prayer from public schools. But it was wrong for evangelical clerics to claim that God had told them that Trump would triumph when it became obvious with the victory of Joe Biden that they had not heard God’s voice. As the case in Nigeria, this falsehood had a corrosive effect on the integrity of the American church.

    Both in Nigeria and America, the Christian church should strive to enthrone positive and ennobling values in the larger society through the force of their moral example and the influence of their spiritual vitality and virility. Claiming to prophesy the outcome of elections when they have not heard from God and thus effectively portraying God as a liar will only make more people lose faith in the church and embrace the amoral values of a secular society gone amuck. And it becomes even worse when the church in both countries joins deliberately dishonest politicians like Trump or Peter Obi in peddling the falsehood that they won elections which they glaringly and patently lost. That would be the equivalent of stripping the church naked to the scorn and jeers of her detractors.