Tag: Oyedepo

IT is not quite often statements from religious leaders are subjected to serious public scrutiny. This is especially so on these shores given the sensitive nature of issues that impinge on other peoples’ faith.
In a clime where fanatical adherents are known to have taken laws into their hands to extract punishment for actions they consider offensive to their religion, the complexity of the matter can be better understood. Unfortunately, sundry religious leaders (both real and fake) have taken licence of this to make bogus claims or justify actions that ordinarily would not have found rational explanation.
Somehow, we have come to live with this situation. So also the claims of miracles and associated healing shows we are regularly treated to. But if all these could be tolerated for being the private affairs of those who elect to subject themselves to them, it is a different thing altogether when ecclesiastical arguments are deployed to manipulate or justify actions that ordinarily should demand secular or rational explanation.
Such was the scenario that played out last week when the founder of the Living Faith Church, Bishop David Oyedepo sought to justify the high school fees charged by a private university promoted by his church. He had in a telecast warned those criticizing the high school fees charged by Covenant University to desist so as to avoid incurring the wrath of God
Oyedepo told the story of one critic who had developed a strange plague of chronic mouth odour over the act but only received spiritual solution following his confession and “my intervention before he was restored to dignity. He said the school fees has God’s approval and is in accordance with the quality of facilities provided by the university in meeting the educational needs of the nation”
Before his latest outing, Oyedepo had been a strident defender of high school fees paid by private universities in the country. At one time, he had justified that fee regime on the ground that education is expensive and nothing of value is free. At another, he charged those complaining of exorbitant fees to get their priorities right.
For him, people spend millions of Naira for burials but when it comes to education, they are reluctant to invest in the future of their children. According to him, it is a matter of priority. The implication of this is that if people get their priorities right, they should be able to pay the fees charged by private universities. We shall return to this shortly.
The issues canvassed by the Bishop in terms of education being expensive and nothing of value is free are trite statements. Even those complaining about the fee regime in the private universities are not unmindful of that reality. Also, there can be found a molecule of merit in the argument that people should set their priorities right and with right prioritizing, some of them may be able to fund the education of their children either in the private or public universities.
But that is where there is a living income to prioritize. For a greater majority of our people, there is little or nothing to save rendering the idea of prioritizing to meet the educational needs of their children an exercise in futility. For this majority, no amount of priority setting can get them close to the high fee regime charged by private universities; many of them promoted by religious organizations.
Ironically, much of the funds with which these faith based universities were set up came from the meagre but regular contributions of the very poor members of such religious groups. Those complaining cannot forget in a hurry, their contributions to what the church and its affiliate institutions are today. They nurse with nostalgia, the feeling rightly that they have a stake in what the church is today and that their needs ought to be factored into whatever decision the church takes.
They feel a sense of loss that their children have been serially shunted out of those universities due to the high school fees they charge. These people are justified to complain. They are right to seek accommodation of their children in schools founded by their churches if anything, to further the faith of their children in what those religious groups stand for. And where the authorities have done nothing to assuage their feelings; they are free to complain, to criticize. The right to complain that the fee regime is high and cannot accommodate their children should neither be abridged nor circumscribed by threats, the kind that emanated from Oydepo last week. It was very surprising hearing the man of God claim that a man that criticized the high fees charged by that university was struck by a strange mouth odour for daring to open his mouth too loud. But for the man’s confession and his healing by the Bishop, perhaps he would have lived with that strange affliction for the rest of his life!
As indicated earlier, religion is a very sensitive matter on these shores. And since much of the claims canvassed do not lend themselves to empirical validation; it is safer to leave them just at that. But that is not to ignore the increasing danger this country has been mired on account of the purported miraculous prowess of sundry pastors and clergymen. The issue is too common to deserve elaboration.
However, the recent arrest of some people hired to stage manage miraculous healings in Enugu says it all. According to reports, the people comprising of males and females confessed to the police that they had been in the business of being procured to fake miraculous healings at a fee for sundry religious organizations and pastors. That is how bad the situation is. That is why claims of miracle healings are now increasingly being received with utmost caution.
But if Oyedepo could be excused on his claim that a man was struck by mouth odour for daring to criticize the high fee regime of that university; if he could be excused on his miraculous healing of the critic, he ran into troubled waters when he claimed the school fees were ordained by God. By that claim, he seemed to have been entangled in a serious contradiction that had engaged the energy of medieval philosophers- the inability to draw a line between the corporeal and ecclesiastical realms.
He failed to reckon with the dividing line between the state and religion or religion and politics. That is a fatal error. By that, he completely lost sight of the allegory of the two cities as vividly captured by St. Augustine of Hippo- the city of God and the City of man. By deploying religion to justify the exorbitant school fees, he chose to operate in the two cities at the same time. That is where he got it all wrong. By the same argument, if the high school fees were ordained by God, then every action on earth would find justification on the same premise.
The same mistake was evident in his claim that the man who purportedly contracted a strange mouth odour found himself in that condition because he criticized the high fees charge by the university. Such a claim completely veered off the boundaries of religion.
The God we all serve is all powerful and most merciful. It is difficult to fathom how he could strike that man with such a disease just for saying that the fees are very high and not affordable. The man’s position is nothing but the truth and God cannot punish the just in a world full of iniquities.
If the claim is to scare those who criticize the fee regime, one is afraid it is bound to meet a brick wall. It would have made better sense had Oyedepo expanded the other strand of his argument that the fees charged are commensurate with the quality of facilities provided. That could have made for better understanding.
Even then, such standards and their accessibility must relate to the operating environment. And for a faith based organization, it is least expected to sacrifice the spiritual needs of its members on the altar of financial expediency. That is the point some members are making and in this, they are with the majority.
Oyedepo must listen to the cries of his members who seek the accommodation of their children in that university. He can do so by way of generous bursaries and scholarships. That is the way to go rather than issuing treats of strange affliction and doom on those who dare to criticize. Such posturing runs at cross purposes with what the church stands for.