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Tag: Okotie

  • As Okotie sentences Catholics

    As Okotie sentences Catholics

    Reverend Chris Okotie is a child made in the public space. Now wait right there dear reader because this pregnant statement must be properly disambiguated before we take another step further. Hardball would be a child of mischief if he suggests by any chance that our new age man of God was conceived in the open space or anywhere for that matter because he has no fact about Rev. Chris’ conception. What Hardball is stating (rather awkwardly, I crave your pardon) is that Chris was made through the public, by the public and for the public. He is the democracy of the public sphere; a public animal. Think for a moment what Chris would be if he were to be banished from the public space!

    Chris invaded the public arena when as a law student in his early twenties he became an instant music star and celebrity upon the release of his first music album. This was in the early 80s. He went on to make many more hit songs even after qualifying as a lawyer. A life of a successful musician and show business personality was all laid out for him and his teeming fans were in for a good time with their rave-of-the-moment barrister-pop star. But they were soon disappointed. Not quite long after, Okotie announced suddenly to his fans that he had seen a new light. He was no longer going to prance about the stage singing and entertaining the world; he vowed to henceforth, sing the Word and preach Christ. Not a few of his fans thought he suffered a temporary seizure of the ‘spirit’ and that he would soon shake it all off and return to the ‘beautiful’ and electrifying world of wining, wenching and shin-digging.

    But such fans were disappointed. Chris never looked back. He never sang another song for the world; he preached the Word in his own peculiar way, he built a ministry that must have become the envy of some men of God if they had such vice in them. Household of God, Rev. Chris’ church at its peak, became the touchstone of Nigeria’s modern day Pentecostalism. It is a mark of Rev. Chris’ genius that in a short time, he became even more a successful preacher of Christ than he was a pop singer.

    But he was not done. He dove into politics headlong but heart-first; not as a fresher but as a founder, leader and presidential candidate of the FRESH Party. He has been the sole runner for his party for the past three or so presidential elections with little impact. He has discovered to his chagrin, that it is an obdurate political system and set up we have here in Nigeria. It yields to neither rhyme nor reason. Chris has also had a turbulent marital life which does not commend itself to the Christian faith and certainly not exemplary for a great man of God but we are willing to blame it on the carnal man in him.

    But to what do we put Rev. Chris’ recent and obscene outburst against Catholics and the Catholic Church? One hates to repeat it but you need to hear it to appreciate it: “The Catholic Church is a counterfeit church set up by Satan. Catholics bow to idols and crucify Jesus every Sunday when they eat bread claiming they are eating Jesus’ body.” He said also that Catholics will go to hell. The first time I read the statement which was purportedly made during a sermon last Sunday I was in a quandary whether it was me who had lost my mind or the clergy man. This really has gone out of the realm of normalcy and commonsense. Being a child of the public space, is it possible that he seeks controversy to regenerate his waning ministry as some people have dared to suggest? Is Chris preaching hate; is Catholicism the bane of humanity?

  • Issues from Okotie’s roadmap template

    Issues from Okotie’s roadmap template

    These are trying times. And everyone agrees that only a revolution or a reform could restore the country and halt our current slide to the precipice. Rev Chris Okotie’s well-articulated views on the need for a new development roadmap highlighted in his article on his Facebook page said it all.

    As one Lai Ashadele wrote in his reaction to the Reverend’s commentary on Facebook: “succinct and proactive as the submission in A Roadmap To National Recovery are, the bulk of our leaders is made up of visionless people with corruption fully engraved on their bodies. To them, the clamour for a proactive leadership is a noise from the pulpit. Some of them agree with suggestions from people of Okotie’s class, although they have, by implication, been indoctrinated into the corrupt bracket to which a large percentage of them belong.”

    Don’t mind the new configuration of an opposition party; its human contents are the same with the current ruling class. Nigeria should revert to the parliamentary system. It is cost effective and allows free hand for zonal development, according to the hopes and aspirations of each zone. An alternative option is revolution, like the Arab Spring’s; or complete disintegration.

    Tough talk! Unfortunately, some of Mr Ashadele’s ideas may not fly because of our peculiarities as a multi-ethnic and disunited nation. Disunity, more than anything else, is the reason why the Arab spring-style revolution may be very difficult to actualize in Nigeria and not timidity as Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State said recently, while dismissing suggestions that the current dispensation is under threat of a revolutionary change.

    It should be reckoned that at the end of the new constitution review exercise, the final report of the majority views of Nigerians from the collation of votes nationwide on various contentious issues like terms of elected office holders, rotational presidency, immunity for public office holders state police, fiscal federalism, return to the parliamentary system etc, is that the new constitution may not be a revolutionary document after all, if the National Assembly adopts the report of the reviews.

    From the view expressed by a broad-spectrum of the Nigerian society, we’d continue with the present presidential system, perhaps with slight modifications. The parliamentary system, though cheaper to run, was rejected, perhaps because of our past bitter experience with it. Yet the changes we need are drastic and far–reaching and may not necessarily require constitutional amendment or dramatic changes in the governing structure. Decisions like reduction in government overhead cost, enforcement of fiscal discipline and effective implementation of federal character in the appointment into government jobs require strong incorruptible leadership, not necessarily constitutional changes.

    Some people have argued that even with our present faulty system, a bold, transparent and effective leader should be able to function with little encumbrance. Personal sacrifice by leaders has a way of percolating down to the populace as Rev Okotie suggested in this excerpt: “The reported donation of the President’s salary to charity is mere tokenism. Mr. Jonathan should shed weight; he has too many aides, about 130, according to an estimate, not counting those of his vice president, ministers, permanent and temporary secretaries, etc. The bureaucracy is top heavy at the centre. There are too many ministries and ministers. Each of the 36 or so ministries has a minister and minister of state.

    “The ministers have individual aides who, in turn, have secretaries, personal assistants, drivers, advisers, consultants and so on. No wonder personnel cost takes a large chunk of the federal budget. We do not, at this critical period, need more than 18 ministries, run by 18 ministers and 18 ministers of state. The MDAs should be drastically reduced. The states and local governments should also cue into this cost-cutting plan. We must save money from prudent management of national resources and show Nigerians that our leaders can actually offer sacrificial leadership in times of emergency like this.”

    Any strong leader can effect these changes, if he buys into them, but Jonathan, from his antecedent, lacks the political will to carry out reforms that could ruffle sensitive feathers. His handling of critical national issues from oil, the subsidy probe, oil theft, the banking reforms, PDP internal affairs and, most importantly, Boko Haram and related security issues have confirmed fears that our president is merely groping, not sure of what polices to pursue to tackle the daunting challenges he is facing.

    The latest indication of the president’s lack of firmness is his response to the Boko Haram amnesty request by northern elders. After initially rejecting amnesty for the violent Islamists, President Jonathan reconsidered his position only days later after the Northern Elders Forum met with him at the Presidential Villa to lobby for amnesty.

    But clearly, this kind of President’s flip-flop does not augur well for a nation that is anxiously seeking to rebuild and remodel through a Transformation Agenda. Presidential Jonathan must show he is fully in charge of Nigeria.

    A reaction by one Dr. Stephen Ogbudu to Rev Okotie’s piece hit it right on point: “President Jonathan needs a willing team to salvage Nigeria from the decay of the past and the present. What we need today is a national rebirth; not rebranding. I bleed inside of me and ask when can we do away with greed and put our nation first? Let us stop blaming Jonathan. He does not have the guts.”

     

    •Effiong wrote from Lagos